http://www.change.org/petitions/pennsylvania-senate-stop-the-privatization-of-the-pa-liquor-control-board-2

If PA doesn’t raise taxes, increases the convenience by the amount proposed tax revenues will increase by a substantial amount. Add to that some decrease in border bleed for convenience (we’ll never capture the people who only price shop) the business taxes the PLCB doesn’t pay, the license fees the PLCB doesn’t pay, the increase in fines, the not having to give the PLCB $110 million in an interest free loan every year (no matter where it comes from money is not free) and the savings from not having to pay retirees in perpetuity and the state has more then made up for the non-tax contribution of the PLCB.

Also, your statement about not ever having something like Moore Brothers is wrong because the demand for a wider selection on the shelves will allow for a number of stores like that. Having four times or more the number of products as any state store will create business and competition will keep prices down. If they aren’t as low as the state stores then you have two benefits, One, you collect more taxes per transaction and Two, higher prices reduce the amount of alcohol sold per transaction, if they are lower then the state stores you still are making more tax revenue due to higher sales and may or may not have any increase in the “social harms” that PA is already ahead of it’s neighbors on. An example is somebody who might make that extra trip to the state store to buy a bottle of wine because of a meal that was planned might buy 2 bottles in the week because he/she saw a special on something not planned and thought a Zin would go well with it. Weekly consumption doubled but no social harm resulted or increased.

Crunch the numbers and you’ll see it doesn’t take a very large (certainly not the 44% you mention) increase in dollar sales to make up for the entire profit of the PLCB and sales tax discount. Getting rid of the PLCB gives people choice which is something they don’t have with a bureaucrat in Harrisburg selecting for the whole state and it will give the majority of the population a convenience that the PLCB will never be able to match. And the most important reason is that the citizens don’t want the state store system. There has never been a scientific poll showing support for the state store system in 40 years of polling. It is time the legislature does what the people desire and that time is now.

Privatization IS Modernization

Second, if any of you read my piece, then you know that I don’t think this argument is going to play well at all for the Republicans. Women not only have a right to abortion in the abstract, they need safe, respectful, comforting places to get an abortion if they need one. (And it looks like my numbers were low. Cloer to 40% of women have had an abortion.)

Third, last time I looked, there are women in the T. Some are pro-life. A lot more are pro-choice. And there are pro-choice men. And the basic fact is, as Julia and I keep pointing out, pro-lifers dont’ vote for Democrats anymore. We lost them a long time ago.

I have no doubt Corbett is going to raise the issue. We already konw from the DGA poll that it will make little difference. What I”m saying is that in the reality of a campaign, it will blow up in his face. Allyson will know exactly how to make that happen.

For God’s sake, Obama is not only black and pro-choice but was the pro-gay marriage candidate and he won enough votes in the T to carry the state by a substantial margin. Why does anyone think that a pro-choice women is going to have problems.

Being pro-choice and having owned and operated an abortion clinic are two very different things. I have no doubt that this issue has been played to death in Philly. But the truth is in central and western PA this will be a very difficult issue for the congresswoman.

Before anyone gets into the arguments of the central and western part don’t matter I would tell you that you don’t understand how to count. It’s true a Democrat cannot and will not win many of the counties in the central and western part of the state. You always play those sections for the margins. If a Rendell gets 39% and a county and Onorato, for instance, gets only 22% who makes up the difference? In PA politics you must learn to chase spread as much as you chase big numbers. Too many very smart people make the mistake of ignoring counties they know they cannot win. They fail to understand that they need a minimum number coming out of each of those counties to be successful statewide.

So the central and western parts of the state matter. To equate the pro-choice views of all of the announced and likely candidates for governor With the fact that an abortion clinic was owned and operated by one of the announced candidates, Is putting your head in the political sands.

I am assuming Mark brought this up so that all the cards can get on the table early. I have no doubt no Democratic candidate will slam the congresswoman over this particular issue. But sometimes we need to look deeper and beyond our own personal preferences for governor and other races. I am envisioning 3o second television spots right now the Corbett and other Republican operatives will do on this abortion issue. We cannot be blind to this.