Punishing the innocent & the 'right' kind of cheap liquor
With Madison's transient population suddenly stabby, it's quite predictable that the city's liberal leaders would go after the true perpetrators of the problem: downtown liquor stores who sell cheap alcohol. As so often happens, when it's too hard to punish the guilty, the operators of the nanny state punish the innocent. Today it's liquor stores selling cheap beer, yesterday it was convenience stores selling over-the-counter cold medication and airline passengers daring to pack bottles of conditioner in their carry-on luggage. Who knows what it will be tomorrow, but rest assured that the result will be that you and I have less freedom and that the actual criminals will be virtually unaffected.
This isn’t a new story, but I did like an interesting question in the above linked article:
Not far from Downtown is the Trader Joe's grocery store on fancy Monroe Street. A popular item has been "Two Buck Chuck" — decent wine for less than $3.Will that have to be banned, too?
Madison’s Trader Joe’s is just 1.2 miles from where Joel Marino lived before he was murdered in January. Are we to believe that the same people living it up in nearby homeless haven Brittingham Park on 40 oz. bottles of Olde E will be somehow magically repelled by the fabulousness of Trader Joe’s?
Of course not. So why no call for a ban on Two Buck Chuck? Apparently, it’s okay to screw over college kids or commercial airline passengers, but it’s quite another thing to inconvenience other right (actually, I guess left, huh?)-thinking liberals. And plus, I mean obviously Trader Joe’s customers aren’t going to do anything irresponsible while getting liquored up on an inexpensive (don’t you dare say cheap) Shiraz. It’s kind of ironic to discover that the backbreaking efforts to not offend anyone by profiling actually results in just a different kind of profiling.
Posted by kris at May 27, 2008 08:29 PM
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| # May 27th, 2008 11:09 PM james |
| great post.
the efforts to not offend highlight the exact problem with modern liberalism; namely, these people don't care about fairness or rule of law - instead, they get a kick out of "taking action," no matter what that action (or its consequences, or logical implications) might be. for instance, 1. what, homeless people drink? and it's a problem? 2. hmm, we can't stop people from drinking if they want to drink... 3. so let's ban the liquor stores from selling alcohol to homeless people! oh, we can't do that? hmmm. ok. 4. can we just ban all liquor stores in that particular area? 5. wait, but that might be too much, since regular people still want beer 6. so we'll make the ban only apply to stores in a certain area 7. but wait, in that area other people buy liquor too. regular people 8. so let's make people get certified to buy liquor! they can go before a panel and prove that they're not homeless! if they are approved, they will get a special license. 9. oh, drat, unconstitutional, eh? ok. so then let's just make it expensive to buy liquor there. the people that should be drinking have money. 10. wait, you mean that we can't tell a store what it can charge for something? 11. like hell we can't! let's tax them! 12. apparently the students don't like paying that tax, and they're starting to complain. let's commission a study that proves that students should drink less anyway. 13. see, that $750,000 study paid off. students shouldn't be drinking. so no one is listening to them anymore. to buy their beer now, they have to get someone with a car to drive them to an out of zone store. that should help students, right? 14. oh great. now those stores are crying about losing customers. they say they can't afford to stay in business. what a bunch of crybabies. don't they see that we are doing GOOD here? let's grant them a tax rebate, so they get some of the money back. we'll help subsidize their rent, too. that should shut enough of them up. 15. wonderful. now all of the stores on state street are complaining that rents have gone up, across the board, because we subsidized the liquor stores. and on top of it, they've all got drunk homeless people begging in front of their storefronts for cab money, so they can get out to an affordable liquor store. hmm. let's build a home for the homeless people! that should solve the problem, right? ... ... ... ... and on and on, and on and on. rational, thinking people stopped at step 2. |
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