SCRANTON TIMES-TRIBUNE Editorial: Wielding everything but tambourines and axes, a parade of witnesses Tuesday warned the state Senate Law & Justice Committee that private-sector sales of alcoholic beverages will lead the commonwealth to perdition, even as most of them urged the state government to keep on selling the dangerous stuff to citizens.
The committee conducted a hearing on the House-passed bill that gradually would convert the state wine and spirits retail and wholesale monopoly into a free-market system, with the state government licensing and regulating the industry and enforcing relevant laws.
According to many witnesses, allowing private sector merchants rather than government clerks to sell wine and spirts will lead to increases in alcoholism, divorce, poverty, unemployment, crime, out-of-wedlock births, car crashes, teen drinking, teen pregnancy and mental illness… (more)
EDITOR: Given his fund raising history with Marcellus Shale interests who have been exempted from a state extraction tax and the long delayed Jerry Sanusky investigation, we fear that Tom Corbett will use privatization to line the pockets of his supporters an raise millions of campaign contribution for his 2014 campaign for re-election. Let’s wait another two years if indeed this is to be one.
