legislative malfeasance
there's a bill currently before the general court being touted as relief to "craft brewers" from 1970-era legislation that hamstrung breweries from changing distributors. at the time, such a law made sense, as brewing behemoths were screwing smaller distributors with the threat of taking their business elsewhere as a cudgel to coerce concession. today, with over three dozen craft brewers in the state, and far fewer distributors, and the shoe on the other foot, it makes sense to consider balancing things the other way around.
sounds reasonable, right?
the devil, as always, is in the details, and the fine print on this legislation duly defines "craft brewers" as anyone shipping fewer than 6 million barrels (83 million cases) of beer per year. doesn't take a rocket scientist to scan the shipments data to see that this line conveniently places sam adams (the nation's largest brewer) in the "craft" camp, and isolates their competitors (bud, miller, etc.) in comparative shackles on the other side. as such, this bill can be construed as a craven attempt by sam adams to put the screws to their distributors in a way that their competition can't--and to "sell" such to the public in such sheep's clothing is crossing my line into legislative malfeasance.
the information i'd dearly like to have would be the lobbying money invested by sam adams in the various state senators' campaigns who are now blathering this malarkey in our legislature. yes, craft brewers can surely use the right to fairly negotiate for the placement of their product. no, sam adams isn't by any stretch of the imagination such an outfit, no matter how folksy they try to portray themselves on tv. (and their beer sucks, imho, which makes it even worse). change the cutoff to less than a million barrels, (less than 15 million cases), and it might make better sense.
until then, support your local bar and your local brewery--order harpoon ipa wherever you go. that's my proposal.
sounds reasonable, right?
the devil, as always, is in the details, and the fine print on this legislation duly defines "craft brewers" as anyone shipping fewer than 6 million barrels (83 million cases) of beer per year. doesn't take a rocket scientist to scan the shipments data to see that this line conveniently places sam adams (the nation's largest brewer) in the "craft" camp, and isolates their competitors (bud, miller, etc.) in comparative shackles on the other side. as such, this bill can be construed as a craven attempt by sam adams to put the screws to their distributors in a way that their competition can't--and to "sell" such to the public in such sheep's clothing is crossing my line into legislative malfeasance.
the information i'd dearly like to have would be the lobbying money invested by sam adams in the various state senators' campaigns who are now blathering this malarkey in our legislature. yes, craft brewers can surely use the right to fairly negotiate for the placement of their product. no, sam adams isn't by any stretch of the imagination such an outfit, no matter how folksy they try to portray themselves on tv. (and their beer sucks, imho, which makes it even worse). change the cutoff to less than a million barrels, (less than 15 million cases), and it might make better sense.
until then, support your local bar and your local brewery--order harpoon ipa wherever you go. that's my proposal.
posted by kad barma at 1:11 PM
4 Comments:
reading your blog posts about peter lucas's wretched columns is the only good thing about peter lucas's wretched columns. don't make my morning reading a waste. he gave you easy and profoundly wretched material today. get to work.
If anything I've ever written has led you to read even one extra word of that profound worthlessness, then I do so sincerely apologize. Tell you what--open season: write your review, and I'll copy it verbatim into a top-line post. I'm quite sure a lot of folks here are quite possibly tired enough of me to very much prefer the change of pace. And, yeah, I can (not) think of all sorts of reasons why "enhanced interrogation", except to depose Alan Kazanjian, Regina Faticanti, and a few other local luminaries, has anything at all to do with everything I don't know about what's going on in Lowell today because the would-be authors weren't paid nor given the column space in favor of absolute tripe. Like saying, "because I used a hammer to loosen that jar lid, I couldn't possibly have dampened a kitchen cloth and tried loosening it another way because that would be crazy, and sorry about the mess".
i just thought the association with the supposed lenience on the black panthers was way out there. i mean, i know he doesn't write the headline. but the black panthers got one line in the column, with no context on how obama/holder went easy on them. very strange. and no, not too local. whatever. he's a douche. carry on.
I actually laughed when I got to that part, and the ridiculousness of comparing a couple yahoos in costumes at one local polling place to the ongoing and systematic (possible) abuse of our laws by our government. And, yeah, it's your fault I even paid that much attention, because as soon as I saw the headline I knew it was Barry's turn to the black whetstone of the day, and what followed would be less than worthless. (I guess Tuesday it'll be Devvy again).
"Douche" seems in the ballpark, though the word I generally think of is "tool", though thief also springs to mind when thinking about the misappropriation of newspaper resources paying this guy and not the actual reporters who are actually reporting about things in and relevant to the city.
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home