This is What Plutocracy Looks Like

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

In our last State election cycle, Washington State liquor consumers got mightily screwed. Why? Our local-gone-international chain Costco wanted to sell booze, so it (for the second time) floated an initiative, got the signatures, and funded the beejezus out of the campaign to allow it to sell booze. In a nutshell, the promise of future profit defined the election.

This year, their old funding record has been beaten, and voting day isn't here yet.

Now, the No on I-522 Committee holds the title for most money raised by any initiative campaign in Washington state history, period.

Bankrolled by out-of-state biochemical giants and food-industry heavyweights, the campaign to defeat food-labeling Initiative 522 broke the $21.4 million mark in total contributions on Saturday, the latest campaign-finance records show.

The state’s old record — set in 2011 by Costco-backed supporters of the liquor privatizing Initiative 1183 — had been $20.1 million.

The end game is a bit different for Initiative 522. Instead of allowing huge profits for sales, the No campaign hopes to continue making huge profits from the unlabeled sale of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) sold as food. So, far from being a future revenue stream, the funders are hoping to thwart a threat to their current cash, er, corn field. (The initiative excludes labeling on meat from animals fed GMO content as fodder, so I had to modify the analogy a bit.)

I don't care to wade into the whole GMO as food debate here. Quite frankly, it proves beside the point. The point is that current GMOs are cheaper to raise for the manufacturers, and therefore any labeling would quite likely force manufacturers to lose a bit of market share to more expensive to raise non-GMO crops. This is, therefore, not an argument of what's safe, but rather what's profitable.

And reinforcing this trend of defending the business practices of the day, we have a Mayoral race here in Seattle. I just learned today that our big cable provider is helping to fund Hizzoner's opponent's race. Why?:

One of Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn's big policy initiatives has been expanding the quality and quantity of high-speed Internet access throughout the city. A public-private partnership plans to offer higher speeds at lower prices than most broadband providers currently offer. And incumbent providers, particularly Comcast, have invested heavily in defeating McGinn in Tuesday's mayoral election. While Comcast denies there is any connection between McGinn's broadband policies and their donations, the company has given thousands of dollars to PACs that have, in turn, given heavily to anti-McGinn groups.

Here's the clincher: I just got that heads-up today not from our indefatigable local reporters, but from the other Washington, the one on the East Coast (via a local "alternative" that a few years ago didn't bother with politics at all). From the telly news, the paper of "record" (which I quoted for the 522 stuff above)? Deafening silence.

I remember when media outlets used to be liberal and activist. I really do. Those days are as dead as the dodos, no matter how the threat of liberalism is thrown about like just another virgin into the volcano. That threat, though, does more than just appease non-existent magma gods. I keeps actual liberals on a leash:

Conservatives, lest we forget, are much more energetic and better-funded complainers about media bias than are liberals. They are extremely vocal and well-organized in their pressure tactics, and they've gone an impressive job over the years in convincing many people that any view that does not comport with a conservative ideological viewpoint is by definition "liberal." In a careful 1999 study published in the academic journal Communications Research, four scholars examined the use of the "liberal media" argument and discovered a four-fold increase in the number of Americans telling pollsters that they discerned a liberal bias in their news. But the evidence, collected and coded over a twelve-year period, offered no corroboration whatever for these view. The obvious conclusion: News consumers were responding to "increasing news coverage of liberal bias media claims, which have been increasingly emanating from Republican Party candidates and officials."

The right is working the refs.

(Eric Alterman, What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News, Basic Books, 2003, p. 12-13.)

"Working the refs" is a sports term. A team captain will badger a referee throughout the game, accusing him/her of favoring the other team. This often gets the ref a little rattled, which in turn causes the calls to favor the badgering team. 'Cause, you know, balance; even in situations where there is none, the myth of balance must be observed. Otherwise, it ain't fair and stuff.

So, after Costco, after people failed to read the fine print on the initiative, the State-run liquor stores in place since Prohibition was repealed were closed and booze prices spiked seriously. I mean seriously. I'm not a heavy booze hound myself; got a job to keep and all that. But I saved enough on a cross-border booze run to pay for the gas not just from no-sales-tax Oregon (I bought from a town about 300 miles away), but from southern California. And I was driving Mom's car, which only gets about 22-25 to the gallon. The promise that "market forces" would reduce our booze bills was a bunch of drunken blather. The state monopoly stores had better prices than any private outlet I've found. And I've looked.

Why? Sure, they taxed the booze, and those taxes are still in place; but the State ran a monopoly to serve the citizens, not just to enforce regulations in place since the '30s. We could get any booze available in the US. I haven't tried doing that special ordering trick in private places yet, simply because the price would be HOLY SHIT, you've got to be fucking kidding me!, and the Holy Shit price would no doubt rise with special orders. Unlike they did with the State.

Mayor McGinn's broadband, if installed, would do for the citizens what the State liquor stores did for us, serve us rather than simply exploit us. Broadband prices would drop. All broadband prices. Seriously, can anyone who explain to me why that would be a bad thing without resorting to silliness?

But as long as future and present profits can fund the outcome of elections through massive propaganda campaigns, and as long as the supposed watchdogs in media need to appease their advertiser puppet masters before they grab the notebook and cameras and snuffle for news truffles, the plutocracy will continue to expand in scope far beyond our wildest fears.

And, as usual, it will be funded with the difference between the inflated price we pay and the lower price we could be paying.

Comments

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

Well I feel you man, but this isn't going to make a dint on the ideologically inclined/defined. Conservatives hold to their principles out of principle, and no matter if things suck ass balls all the time, they'll just cling to them cuz "it's the right way" to do it, in some Platonic, philosophical, abstract and absolute sense of how "how things ought to be done regardless". Look, if everyone ends up making 2 bucks and hour living in tenement high-rise buildings and shitting in corners and throwing buckets of piss out the windows, they wouldn't see any need to change anything, since well, that's the way the ball bounces man, and who are we to go jiggering about with "the Rules of How It Ought To Be"?

[moonchylde.livejournal.com]

Huh, I haven't seen a big price hike myself - living in NoPo and work in Fisher's Landing near the BevMo - but I buy bottom-shelf....

[brother-dour.livejournal.com]

Not trying to argue against peristaltor, but prices are always more expensive in higher-income/ higher-traffic areas than elsewhere. Even in Houston, liquor stores near the Galleria in Uptown were way more expensive than, say, the huge Spec's retail center on the border of (allegedly 'hood) Third Ward and Fourth Ward on Smith Street.

[moonchylde.livejournal.com]

True, when we briefly lived downtown near a fancy area, the only local liquor store was priced for the condos. They didn't even keep the cheaper stuff sitting out, it was behind and under the counter.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

So, you live in Oregon, but buy in Washington?!? Why on ever for? Or did I get that wrong?

[moonchylde.livejournal.com]

I have dropped by the BevMo and looked at prices in the grocery store, but don't usually pick up anything other than groceries on the way home. I usually try and combine errands with my commute route and the Fred Meyers is handy to my office. I bought something a BevMo once but decided to stick with our local store since I don't really need the extra selection.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

I am curious about the Washington stores versus the Oregon after the taxes. The liquor tax, after all, adds 20% along with the sales tax, and there's the liter tax on top of all that. The list price in stores usually don't include those charges, so if you didn't add things up before you hit the register you get an unpleasant surprise.

[moonchylde.livejournal.com]

The base prices are a bit higher before taking into account sales taxes, but not considerably so for the cheaper stuff. However, the BevMo tends to only carry larger sizes of things like Potters and Brokers. Overall, usually higher then the prices at the shop in my neighborhood so I buy local, but if I lived in Washington and was deciding to drive to Oregon to get booze, the gas prices might make it more expensive to transport back than just paying a bit more down the street. And there is the "sales tax vs state tax" trade off.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

Buy enough and the gas pencils out. Like I said in the OP, I bought enough in Eugene to pay for the gas from LA.

[brother-dour.livejournal.com]

I'm still stunned by the idea of a state-run liquor store O_O

Somehwat off-topic, but I'm curious to compare liquor prices there with here (or anywhere else in the U.S.), though. It could be that the state stores (dear Lord, that sounds weird to a Texan) were selling much below retail, and CostCo is pretty much at retail?

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

Not below, no. They sold at pretty comparable prices relative to other states I've visited. I'm still waiting for prices to fall back to that level. I'm not holding my breath.

Costco is near the cheapest I've found, largely because they are about the only store that includes all the new taxes in the list price. Other stores? Grab a bottom shelf $10 bottle of cheap vodka for cleaning and disinfecting the counter tops (it works better than most cleaning products!), and at the register you're told you owe $20. Well, no, since I throw up my hands and vow never to return. Then the register jockey says I'll pay the same elsewhere. And I throw back, "Maybe in this state, but I have a car!" Then I leave.

I mean, really, an extra $50 difference on a $50 bottle of single malt? That's just silly.

So, back to your point: What is "retail"? It's a price some retail outlet wishes it to be. Costco will be cheap because they only charge 15% on anything. When the "retail" price is perceived to be greater than 15%, "retail" outlets simply find that price overage. The State stores probably held a similar percentage above cost policy, and were able to deliver good prices and pay good wages.

Really, there should have been an escape clause in that Initiative that said if the prices didn't fall below State Store prices, the State Stores would be able to keep their monopoly.

[brother-dour.livejournal.com]

Grab a bottom shelf $10 bottle of cheap vodka...at the register you're told you owe $20

WTH? Is that taxes? Why, there's your problem.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

The State collected as much in taxes with the state-run stores, though, and the prices were not so outrageous, not by far. That $10 bottle would have been about $10.95 at the register here in Seattle (only the sales tax was not listed and included in the final price, since that differs by location).

To give one example, the old State stores usually carried a .75 liter of Jim Beam for about $15 before sales tax. I have yet to see it listed in the private stores for less than $17 before all taxes (29.5% of list plus a fixed per-liter tax that adds at least a buck or more).

I blame retail gouging, stores taking advantage of the loophole that says they don't have to list the totality in taxes, so they rely upon unwary consumers grabbing a bottle with groceries and not bothering to itemize the receipt later.

[brother-dour.livejournal.com]

grabbing a bottle with groceries

Gadzooks. Another phrase that just boggles my mind. You mean you can buy hard liquor in the same store as staple groceries?! Madness!

BUt let's step back and analyze this for a second. 29.5% taxes on $15 versus 29.5% taxes on $17. Seems to me the state didn't want to keep the state-run stores, either. Reduce payroll AND increase tax revenue!

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

No, the $15 had the taxes in it already (at least the 20% and bottle charge). The $17 does not. Go to the register and the $15 got hit with 9.5%, the $17 gets hit with 29.5% + liter charge (just over a buck or two, IIRC). Therefore $15 goes to $16.43, and $17 goes to $23+ at the register.

Worse, the state stores paid their employees well and had bennies and retirement. Many of the private stores around here are union, but many others are not, meaning a small number of good jobs also evaporated.

[moonchylde.livejournal.com]

Which stores? I'd like to check that, I haven't seen that before.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

I mostly shop at QFC, Fred Meyer and Safeway. Neither include the new liquor taxes in the list price.