CovOps
 Location : Ether-Sphere
Job/hobbies : Irrationality Exterminator
Humor : Über Serious
 |  Subject: Via AnCaps: Crony capitalism's always on tap in Trenton  Thu Apr 05, 2012 7:16 am | |
| I spend a lot of time in the Statehouse watching hearings on bills. Recently, I dreamed up a simple reform to greatly improve the way the process works for the public.
All of the chairs at which the lobbyists sit while testifying would be positioned over a trap door. A representative of the citizens affected by a particular piece of legislation would have a button. Whenever a lobbyist made an argument calling for the government to enrich his client at the expense of the public, the consumer could push the button and spring the trap. The lobbyist would fall into an immense vat of beer.
I came up with that idea after I ran into Jeff Linkous at a microbrew festival in Point Pleasant Beach last weekend. Linkous is a former reporter and beer enthusiast who has a blog called the Beer-Stained Letter.
We got to talking about two of my favorite topics: Beer and free markets. Unfortunately, the two are opposites here in New Jersey. The liquor lobby has done everything in its power to get the government to crush any competition from the microbrewers. A bill now before the state Senate would slightly ease the industry’s stranglehold on small brewers, but it’s in the process of being gutted by the lobbyists and their wholly owned subsidiary, the state Legislature.
Linkous was at a session of the Senate Law and Public Safety Committee when the bill was heard. “The halls were lined with lobbyists,” he said. “I was the only person there who was not directly related to the industry.”
After I got home, I listened to a recording of that hearing (go to the March 5 recording here.). One by one, the lobbyists got up and made the usual pleas for the legislators to squelch competition. Typical was Paul Santelle, president of the New Jersey Liquor Store Alliance. Santelle said he didn’t mind the microbrewers getting a few breaks, but “what we don’t want to do is become competitors with one another.”
Sproing! That guy would have been soaked in suds if a beer drinker had control of that button.
So would Larry Blatterfein, of the New Jersey Restaurant Association. Blatterfein cautioned that any effort to give beer-drinkers more options “only serves to cause further instability in the market.”
Into the beer bath, Blatterfein! Free markets are supposed to be unstable.
Also due for a dunking would have been the guy who warned his fellow co-conspirators: “Your liquor license value is under attack.”
Under attack? That value should be zero. Into the drink!
In other states, a liquor license is like a driver’s license. If you meet the standards, you get the license. Such a state is Delaware, where the Iron Hill microbrewery has three brewpubs. Iron Hill was founded by Jersey guys, but they had to flee the state to find free enterprise.
Founder Mark Edelson testified that Pennsylvania, where Iron Hill has six pubs, produces 50 times as much microbrew as Jersey. Edelson told the panel Iron Hill has just one brewpub in Jersey and it can’t expand here because of our anti-business atmosphere.
Another brewer, Gene Muller of Cherry Hill-based Flying Fish, said, “We’re forced to compete with one hand behind our back here.”
Indeed they are, and this bill wouldn’t do much to change that, Dave Hoffman said. Hoffman is the head of Climax Brewery in Roselle Park, which won the 64-beer “Malt Madness” competition that The Star-Ledger held a few years ago.
Hoffman sells his beer only through liquor stores, but he’d love to be able to open a small restaurant and pub in his brewery.
“I want a bar so anyone can come in,” Hoffman said. If he had that option, he said, “I would immediately fire up my slow cooker.” He would then dish out some of the excellent barbecue I’ve had when I’ve hung out in the brewery’s backyard with him.
During that hearing, however, a lobbyist boasted of success in keeping the restaurants free from that form of competition. By the time the bill gets to the governor’s desk, if it ever does, expect it to be watered down worse than light beer.
But perhaps you don’t care about beer. Keep in mind that the same process occurs with everything regulated in Trenton, from insurance to education. Our legislators take it as a given that their role is to keep out competition no matter what the effect on the public. And they’re right. That is their role — till I get my trap door.
http://blog.nj.com/njv_paul_mulshine/2012/04/crony_capitalisms_always_on_ta.html |
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