Conservatives, liberals and socialized booze

Back in 1985 I earned a sweet free-lance fee for an article titled "The State Liquor Monopoly: Is an End Coming?" It appeared in Pennsylvania Outlook: A Quarterly Review of Business, and my lead raised a simple question: Should the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania be in the business of selling alcoholic beverages? How was I to know that such a question would prove to be immortal, on the order of "Does God exist?"

At that time I genuinely believed that Pennsylvania would sell off its liquor monopoly. The state House then was Republican-controlled, and there was a conservative drift nationally; Ronald Reagan had just delivered his second inaugural address, in which he set a tone of free enterprise and less government "interference in people's lives."

But I was young and naive. The state did nothing, except to make my article relevant a quarter-century later. Today Governor Tom Corbett and some lawmakers say they're going to push to abolish the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board. I say: Go for it, guys. Maybe I can recycle my piece and rake in another handsome fee.

Equal opportunity rudeness

The State Store system and I got off on the wrong foot almost immediately when my wife and I moved to Philadelphia in 1967. In those days, you gave your order at a counter and an employee fetched your bottles. That was annoying enough; we had come from California, with privately owned stores and the ability to browse the shelves and choose the stores that stocked what we wanted.

In addition, at my first visit, I was addressed so rudely that I thought it was because I was white. But then the customer behind me, who was black, as well as the black customer behind him were addressed in the same disrespectful manner. The clerk, I was relieved to find, was an equal opportunity offender.

Big-government quandary

The memory of bad service has a long half-life. Eighteen years later, in 1985, when I had the opportunity to write the article, I eagerly accepted the assignment. "I ought to tell you," the editor warned me, "we're funded by the Pennsylvania Manufacturers' Association, so we have a point of view."

"So do I," I replied. "I don't think it's a problem."

As a liberal, I don't have a lot in common with the Pennsylvania Manufacturers Association. I prefer to examine raw appeals to the principle of free enterprise on their individual merits. But Pennsylvania's Liquor Control Board can challenge the basic assumptions of even the staunchest big-government Bolshevik.

To be sure, Pennsylvania's State Store system has changed a lot over the past 25 years. I like shopping in its self-service stores and know I can tap the expertise of the employees. Yet the system still has an uncanny way of alienating customers— which isn't surprising, since it isn't accountable to them. Despite the system's improvements, I still can't see how patrons could lose if the whole system disappeared.

Mission impossible

At its inception in 1933 (following the death of national prohibition), Pennsylvania's Liquor Control Board was "designed to protect the public welfare, health, peace and morals of the people." But that had nothing to do with accommodating customers. Governor Clifford Pinchot, upon signing the system into law, said he wanted the board to "discourage the purchase of alcoholic beverages by making it as inconvenient and expensive as possible."

Ever since, the Board and its supporters (including its unionized clerks) have been rhetorically trapped between a rock and hard place: Is their mission to discourage drinking or to accommodate customers who drink? Are they supposed to service bars and restaurants or drive them out of business? Should they emulate a business or a state agency?

For principled Republicans, the Liquor Control Board poses one more ticklish conundrum: Which do we prefer— free enterprise or temperance?

My favorite gin

I, too, have my principles. When, as expected, a bill to abolish the Liquor Control Board comes up this fall, I will favor any result that enables me to buy gin made by Organic Nation, based in Oregon. I discovered this subtly aromatic spirit this summer but cannot get it in Pennsylvania. (The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board is only partly to blame; the other obstacle is the Oregon Liquor Control Commission.)

But truth be told, I'll come out a winner no matter what happens. You see, if the Pennsylvania Legislature fails to take action, as it has so often failed in the past, I can continue to exhume my old magazine piece every few years to resell it yet again, at yet another sweet profit. At a time when Congress is discussing reductions in my Social Security check just as I approach my twilight years, this is a comforting consolation indeed.