WCLCB - Two Cents for Socialism
In a recent post on the Wicomico County Liquor Control Board I was amazed to see this comment posted on Salisbury News:
I’m not hearing any reasons or logic in your post as to why privitization (sic) would be beneficial …just a lot of rethortic (sic). Nice try though G.A.
The commenter, “two cents”, has been a recent shill for Haemel, Alessi & Co. over at the WCLB (while claiming that he’s NOT Haemal). I certainly don’t expect everyone to agree with me, but some of the arguments coming from the pro-dispensary people are actually frightening.
If you are an employee of the WCLCB (or your pockets are being filled in some other manner) I can understand why you want to keep dispensaries. I’m sure criminals have a justification for their chosen occupation, so why not someone working for a legal entity regardless of the legitimacy of that entity.
If you believe the FALSE rhetoric coming from the WCLCB about a liquor store on every corner, or the Wicomico taxpayer losing $400,000 a year in revenue, I can understand your concern. It is the job of the proponents of privatization (like myself) to present the facts rather than to promulgate fear and falsehood using taxpayer money as Messrs. Haemel and Alessi are doing.
Let’s assume for a moment that “two cents” is truly just a concerned Wicomico citizen. Let’s also assume that he/she is sincere in their belief. This is cause for great concern.
How can a person honestly believe that it is a moral action to use taxpayer funds to buy political advertisement? Do you wish Gov. Martin O’Malley to use your tax dollars to buy billboards saying “VOTE MARTIN”? How about County Executive Rick Pollitt using your money to buy a weekly radio show whose sole purpose is to provide propaganda for his re-election in 2010? Of course you wouldn’t, unless you are so partisan that ANY action by your favorite politician is acceptable. Yet, we are expected to believe that regular citizens like you or I are supposed to accept the WCLCB using taxpayer money to buy newspaper ads, or fancy postcards to be distributed at the dispensaries and COUNTY OFFICES.
People like “two cents” argue that this is not taxpayer money. “two cents” is WRONG. Political propaganda IS NOT a LEGITIMATE EXPENSE! Therefore, that money should have gone to the profit of the WCLCB. Therefore, that money should have gone to us as taxpayers.
The fact that this current board is using taxpayer funds for political propaganda infers their corruption, if not the innate corruption of the dispensary system. Some could argue that the best action would then be to replace the WCLCB with those more competent and worthy of the taxpayers’ trust (the old baby / bath water argument). However, we still come back to “two cents” quote at the beginning of this post:
I’m not hearing any reasons or logic in your post as to why privitization (sic) would be beneficial…
Privatization is almost always beneficial. Government-owned business is a classic example of socialism. It’s hard enough to fight the creeping form that we see every day in our federal and state governments; but how many people are going to make an honest argument that our government should be in the retail business?
If you wish to argue that we need dispensaries to adequately regulate distribution of the devil rum - fine. Be careful for what you wish for.
Those arguments, if valid, apply far more to the distribution of prescription drugs than to alcohol. Therefore, using the same logic, we need to put Wal-Mart, Rite Aid, Walgreens, CVS, Giant, and myriad other locally-owned and chain pharmacies out of the prescription business. Only the government can do that job, right?
If this were so, why are these companies trying to build a drug store on every other corner? At least with liquor distribution the Liquor Licensing Board will have a say as to how many liquor stores we will have in Wicomico County and where.
Read Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom
Note -
for those shills of the WCLCB that will attempt to counter by claiming that my argument means that we would (or should) have liquor stores with at least the same frequency that we have pharmacies, PLEASE DON’T TRY. I’m an American conservative, not a libertarian. There are valid reasons for zoning laws and the regulation in the awarding of liquor licenses (just as there are valid laws to regulate pharmacies).
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