Riverwood Presbyterian Church

Politics

Carrie Nation in California

by Clay Staggs

I’d probably better stop posting on this topic, lest I be accused of being a lush, but it just burns me up.

According to sources quoted on Don Surber’s blog, the California Council on Alcohol Policy will be using federal grant money to convene at some posh resort in Mission Bay, CA, to educate other tax-exempt groups on how to lobby the California Legislature to increase taxes on beer and decrease its availability.

I don’t know what enrages me more, that they’re picking on beer or that they’re doing it with my federal tax money. Why is beer all of a sudden the whipping boy? I personally think that it’s because it’s something that the politician/bureaucrat types that propose this sort of nonsense don’t drink. I don’t hear any calls - especially in wine producing California - for doing the same with wine. Also, I doubt any politicians will be lining up to limit the availability of bourbon or scotch.

Would anyone care to wager whether this event will be dry? And if it is officially, I’m betting the attendees belly up to the bar after the seminar presentations are over. (And when they do, probably nobody is ordering Bud Light.)

Finally, the federal agency kicking in the sponsorship money is the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Why is it that so many government agencies who appear to have a genuine mission end up spending money on junkets like this, and advocating tax increases? Am I the only one who sees the obvious contradiction here? Yeesh.

The neo-prohibitionists inch forward…….