State senator wants to privatize booze stores

State Senator Mark Obenshain has introduced legislation that would end Virginia's monopoly on liquor sales by selling off its so-called "ABC" stores, according to the Harrisonburg daily paper. Maybe he can next do something about the law that wineries can't deliver their own wine to local restaurants.

17 comments

Don't liquor stores bring in a lot of revenue for the state on a yearly basis?

Better idea keep the liquor stores and open medical marijuana stores.

As usual California is out front on this one: from the New Yorker Magazine

Dr. Kush
How medical marijuana is transforming the pot industry.
by David Samuels

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/28/080728fa_fact_samuels?curr...

my guess is "liquor license" sales would bring in more revenue... and being from CA, VA doesn't seem to have the climate necissary to support a 215 law, you still can't ship it in CA

What would happen to all the ABC store employees statewide feeding at the public trough? Think about the employees.... their retirement, their dental care, their life insurance, their health insurance? Surely we can't expect these people to get out and find a way to support themselves now in the current economy. We have an obligation to take care of them. And the taxpayers who are struggling to make ends meet now should seriously be looking for a way to give them at least a 5% to 10% cost of living raise!

I crack myself up! :)

Why give up such a profitable business and be forced to sell real estate of the stores at such low prices?

Yeah this is a big waste of time and effort. We need the money now. If the ABC stores are gone they will just have to raise your taxes

Tax Payer, i like your thinkin

Privatize them. Any business you can wrest from government's hand will run better.

Open medical weed stores? Are you crazy...pot is a bridge drug that leads to unwanted pregnancy (or "mistakes" in Obama's parlance), homosexual experimentation and more drug abuse. Didn't you ever watch Dragnet in the late 1960s?

The state already has a lottery to tax the poor. Now, we could open more liquor stores on Cherry Avenue so the folks from Tonsler Park could pay more sales tax. Plus, a liquor store in Ivy could stock lots of brandy and Chivas Regal; one in Diceville could be packed with Mad Dog and Boone's Farm. We would likely see a five-fold increase in liquor stores, giving the poor more access to the important stuff: wine and gambling.

I think it is a splendid idea, guv. Proceed one-two-three-skidoo with this! Send Tim Kaine a memo promptly.

More liquor stores on Cherry Avenue so the folks from Tonsler Park could pay more sales tax? Diceville could be packed with Mad Dog and Boone’s Farm? Why are you so racist?

I was once upon a time somewhat racist too. Until something personal took place in my life that really opened opened my eyes. I got over racism real quick when I suddenly realized why there were so many young indigent black males going to jail. They don't have the funds to hire competent attorneys and defend themselves from the charges "The Man" places against them. And God strike me dead right now if I am lying.... I heard the remark "One more (N word) off the streets!" come out of cop's mouths more often than I would like to recall. I's sickening! This has been an ongoing joke for the last 50 years! And there's no end in sight to this mentality.

Sorry, I meant to type "IT'S SICKENING" above.

My bad!! Fat typo fingers at work again! :)

Sick:
I am not racist. I just wish all blacks would endeavor to be like Doctor Huxtable or Mark (the man who pushed Ironside around in his wheelchair). Additionally, I am not sure of the assumption you put forth: I never saw race mentioned in my response above. Frankly, I would not know who is hanging in Tonsler Park on any given weekday while we are all at work, as--hot weather or cold--their hoodies obscure their faces. Finally, I find it hard to fathom police in a town as evolved as Charlottesville would be racist.

Speaking of racism, if you think this country is any better just because we elected a president of color, did you notice where they made him ride on the train from Philly to the inauguration? The BACK!

sick dog.. I noticed you said "indigent" black males going to jail not "innocent"

These people are guilty. The answer is not to waste money defending them but invest money convicting the white people who get off because they can afford a better lawyer to beat the system.

Letting guilty people walk is never good for society, and it is not racist to want them in jail because of their crime.

And whne cops say "one more ni**er off the street" they are not describing black people they are describing black trash. So maybe when they say "just another redneck piece of sh%t" off the streets they are not refferring to all whites. The word is now pollitically incorrect andf I am not advocating its use but context is everything.

Never Went To A Game, you're not kidding anybody when you say "more liquor stores on Cherry Avenue so the folks from Tonsler Park could pay more sales tax", "Diceville could be packed with Mad Dog and Boone’s Farm", and "hoodies obscure their faces". You prove nothing except the fact racism is still alive and well in Charlottesville. You're not real good at your game though, you forgot to toss in the infamous "baggy pants and long white t-shirts".

Yes Edgar, I guess you're right, every indigent black man arrested in Charlottesville is guilty. Just like the guy they arrested for rape, held in jail for 3 or 4 days without bond, and then DNA cleared him of all charges. And prior to that, all of the local black males subjected to DNA testing when they hadn't even been accused of a crime. I don't think I need to say anything further.

From article:
"She also says she would never call herself a racist."

In terms of the propaganda use of the word racist, it simply means a white Gentile who discriminates. (Why do you think it is used 99.99% of the time only against white Gentiles?)

Its primary use, though, is that of a racial slur. Calling a white Gentile a racist is akin to calling them a cracker or honky.

It is a term selectively given only to white Gentiles, is meant to be derogatory, and its use is racially motivated.

So, Strom is saying she doesn't consider herself a honky. She would rather be called a European-American, rather than the racial slur of racist.

As far as the government's so-called "case" against Strom, I learned at a very young age never to believe anything the government says and less than half of what I thought I saw them do...this is NOT the America our Founding Fathers gave us and, as a once free nation, America is now dead....I have a host of case law, both federal and other, in my files that holds that it is perfectly alright for law enforcement officials to bald facedly LIE on the witness stand and to present bogus "evidence" and if later found out, to be immune from prosecution or civil suit. Why do you think the currently ever so popular bumper sticker says, ORWELL WAS AN OPTIMIST?

Yes, it is possible, and sadly so, that Strom is in fact a practicing pedophile and therefore a disgrace to the White racialist cause for which he had become emblematic...but it is every bit as possible if not even more so that "kiddie porn", however fedgov defines the term from one minute to the next, was in fact remotely and digitally planted in his computer---don't you realize that fedgov now has the faculty for planting anything they want right on your PC in a dark, dank corner of your hard drive where you would never suspect it until they seize your computer and..."oh, lookee here what we found"? Food for thought, my fine feathered friends who persist, at this eleventh hour, to be terminally addicted to the mythology of the United States government's "infallibility".

I would inject at this point that back when John Trashcroft was the Peoples' Commissar for JU$T U$ under Bushbrat, he personally sought to have a young couple busted for trafficking in kiddie porn after they had sent a snapshot of their newly born on a bear skin rug...something people have been doing since the first daguerrotype...in this particular case, before the camera shutter had closed, the kid stirred a little...which showed a little. BUSTED!!!

I will believe what the tethered press says about Kevin Strom being a pedophile the day I see it proved beyond any reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty---in order for a bona fide crime to have been committed, there must be unity of deed and intent and furthermore the intent itself must be proven, again beyond any reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty, to have been malicious...otherwise no "crime".

Finally, to get this over with, I will state that I know personally that Strom had been, maybe a year or so ago, taken on by Dr. Edward Fields, long time and very well established editor of THE TRUTH AT LAST (nee THE THUNDERBOLT), one of the few, and I mean damned few that you could count on the fingers of one hand, news publications left in this country, as "executive editor", and that Strom was responsible for the new format of the paper...that was for one issue and one only...then I saw nothing about Strom after that and the paper changed to still another format. Strom had quite evidently met himself coming right back out the door of THE TRUTH AT LAST. Certainly suspicious...but that alone still didn't prove anything. There is undoubtedly more to this than is being revealed, and certainly by the Main Sewer Stream schmooze ridden American press.

i hope Mr. Strom can deal with any personal demons afflicting him, and move on. The white race needs him.

"The white race needs him." ???

You're out of your mind. Nobody needs a degenerate, pseudo-intellectual pervert. That guy has always been creepy. Case in point: Men of his age shouldn't have bangs.

Creeeepy.

Joe,

The dictionary has the best definition of the word 'racist'.

I'm sure that your Orwellian newspeak and other forms of white nationalist political correctness can be put to use in Whitemanistan.

I have met two self described "white nationalists" in my life. They were both uneducated, borderline alcoholics, and ignorant. One of them was of Belarusan descent but had a swastika tattoo. I didn't even bother saying anything to him about what the Nazi's did in Belarus to the non-Jewish Slavic population (his people). Ignorance is bliss.