RALEIGH – Having written about North Carolina politics for nearly 15 years now, I have certainly my share of incoherent babbling. If consistency is, as Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, the “hobgoblin of small minds,” then the average politico is about as far removed from the ranks of hobgoblins as one can be.
The small-minds part still applies, though.
Case in point: there are local elected officials and political appointees across the state who are panicked about a legislative study commission approved last year to examine the issue of privatizing liquor sales. North Carolina is a so-called “control” state, meaning that only government-run Alcoholic Beverage Control stores can sell hard liquor. The proceeds of these liquor sales (after taxes to the state) primarily go to local governments. It’s a source of revenue that local leaders tend to hoard like pots of gold – even though the purported purpose of the government’s ABC monopoly is to discourage hard-liquor consumption.
Oh, now I get it. Inconsistent politicians are small-minded leprechauns, not hobgoblins.
The Perquimans Weekly of Hertford quoted one Cecil Winslow, chairman of the Hertford ABC Board, on the subject of privatization. He told the newspaper that selling off ABC stores to the private sector (which would, by the way, generate a significant one-time windfall) would hurt the community because there would be less “control” of alcoholic beverage sales.
Besides, he added, privatization would cost the local government in foregone annual revenues. “The current sales figures for the county’s ABC stores are the best we have ever had,” he bragged.
So which is it? Do we want to control liquor sales or increase them? Do we want ABC stores to succeed as businesses, by maximizing revenues and profits, or do we want them to succeed as regulators of liquor consumption, by dampening revenues and profits?
You know, it’s this kind of confused public policy that can drive one to drink.