13 Responses to “How Your Beer Paid for John McCain’s $500 Loafers”

1. #1 |  Cappy |  October 15th, 2008 at 4:35 pm

   This happened in Wisconsin within the past year. Wisconsin passed legislation that requires wineries to now use a distributor.

   So what we have now is Brigadoon Winery (local winery), just 10 miles down the road from me, is required to contract with a wholesaler to sell it’s wine at the local hometown IGA. Something the owner could deliver as he sells pretty much only locally.

   Luckily, it appears that some of these small wineries are banding together and forming their own wholesale business. I’m sure the state will figure out something to stop them from doing this as well.

2. #2 |  Cynical In CA |  October 15th, 2008 at 4:39 pm

   The State always does.

   The State always gets its cut.

   Always and forever amen.

3. #3 |  Bernard |  October 15th, 2008 at 5:18 pm

   It’s an irritating problem, but as nothing compared to my weekend trip to Oslo where beer in the supermarket is $5 a can (and $12 for a half-litre glass in bars).

   My holiday probably paid for 71 medical procedures and 12 new schools.

4. #4 |  Jeff |  October 15th, 2008 at 6:16 pm

   That was good stuff, Radley. Thanks for posting.

5. #5 |  Bill |  October 16th, 2008 at 12:20 am

   The liquor lobby will stop at nothing. Here in Tennessee, they’re trying hard to keep wine off the shelves at Wal-mart and Kroger, claiming to be worried about teen drinking. Direct shipment of wine from wineries is also verboten. See this page:

   http://www.stopteendrinkingtn.org/petition.aspx

   The truth is that they’ve finagled the laws to keep ownership of liquor stores limited to one per person/entity, in order to make sure no store has enough power to demand better prices from the wholesalers (this on top of the wholesalers having brand monopolies and pretty much everything else Radley mentioned). They are, of course, scared to death of Wal-mart getting to set prices.

   They have a lot of cash and a lot of bought-and-paid-for politicians in their pocket. They won’t go down without a fight.

6. #6 |  Light |  October 16th, 2008 at 6:53 am

   That nasty little niche started with Prohibition getting the business into the hands of criminals, then the repeal of prohibition made those criminals politicians in it’s regulation. Who’da thunk?

7. #7 |  witless chum |  October 16th, 2008 at 10:02 am

   There’s been some talk about wine sales in Michigan related to this. It’s just f’in crazy. I’m not a libertarian at all, but there’s no government or public interest here, it’s just arbitrary weirdness.

   Can anyone see an actual problem if these disappeared overnight?

8. #8 |  ClubMedSux |  October 16th, 2008 at 11:09 am

   …there’s no government or public interest here, it’s just arbitrary weirdness…

   Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong. It’s not arbitrary at all. It’s designed to protect two main interests: the distributors themselves (who would lose a lot of business if the government didn’t mandate their use) and large breweries/beverage companies who can use their control over the large distributors to protect their interests while keeping smaller competitors from growing. There’s a reason the distributors and big breweries donate so much to local and statewide election campaigns (and why distributors tend to be so well connected politically; see, e.g. Cindy McCain and Jesse Jackson’s kids).

9. #9 |  Bernard |  October 16th, 2008 at 11:20 am

   And it’s also not arbitrary for the government. Boondoggles come about, as Radley describes in the article, where a small amount can make a large amount of money at a relatively minor cost to a large number of people.

   It’s no coincidence that those industries spend a large amount of their (entirely unearnt) revenue buying politicians to maintain their position and no surprise that politicians pay more attention to small but aggressively focussed contributors than to the large number of largely uninterested consumers who rarely even know the situation exists.

   Sadly it’s also the reason why real market liberalism is so tricky to bring about. There are a million ways to game the system so that those in the know gain big and everyone else loses small here and there to fund it.

10. #10 |  Jim Collins |  October 16th, 2008 at 12:26 pm

    What wholesalers? Pennsylvania just cuts out the middleman. If you are buying anything other than beer, you have to buy it from the State. It even goes so far to tell you what specific store you have to buy from if you run a bar or a club. It doesn’t matter if they are out of what you want and the store 2 miles away has 30 cases of it.

11. #11 |  jwk |  October 16th, 2008 at 1:54 pm

    Not that I care how wealthy Cindy McCain’s family is… but this is yet one more example of why government subsidies should go bye-bye.

    I’m also a Tennessean – wine won’t be sold in grocery stores any time soon. The liquor lobby is extremely powerful and I don’t see that changing any time soon. Unfortunately.

12. #12 |  witless chum |  October 17th, 2008 at 10:24 am

    “Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong. It’s not arbitrary at all. It’s designed to protect two main interests: the distributors themselves (who would lose a lot of business if the government didn’t mandate their use) and large breweries/beverage companies who can use their control over the large distributors to protect their interests while keeping smaller competitors from growing.”

    I mean it was arbitrary that the system was created at all. It’s maintenence is pretty standard inertia/big money/doesn’t really show up on people’s radar.

13. #13 |  Fascist Nation |  October 17th, 2008 at 7:41 pm

    Amen! I pay more in Arizona for my single malt and microbrew due to this craphound family essentially creating through legislation a monopoly on alcohol in this state. A lot more.

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