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+--- Thread: WHOLESALERS AT IT AGAIN (/thread-2898.html)
- Jerry D Mead - 07-23-1999
//The attached is excerpted from today's Wall St. Journal...it's a greeat editorial. Use its content as the basis for letters to you congressmen and senators asap. This is important stuff to all wine lovers. JDM//
>from today's Wall St. Journal....
>
>Review & Outlook
>Wine Wars
>
>The Congress shall have the power to regulate commerce with foreign
nations, and among the several states.
>· U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8
>
>There is a war on over wine. The combatants are wine makers, liquor
wholesalers, state attorneys general and Members of the Congress of the
United States. And oh yes, wine consumers. If nothing else, the wine wars
show us the wisdom of the Founding Fathers, who with a stroke created the
interstate commerce clause. Without this small piece of Constitutional good
sense, what is happening now to wine would happen to everything else.
>The war is being fought on several fronts, and we will offer a single
example to make clear what the game is. Ravenswood Vineyard is one of the
hottest wineries in California. With its motto of "No wimpy wines," it
concentrates on Zinfandel, the most American of wines. One of its big
promotional events is its "Designate Lottery"; it offers a mixed case of
bottles from its most prized individual vineyard, by drawing lots to see
whose orders to fill if demand exceeds supply. It has been a fun event for
vinophiles everywhere.
>But fewer and fewer states allow their citizens to play. The entry form
that Ravenswood makes available to participants (excerpted below) lists the
20 states to which they can ship: California (of course), Illinois, Oregon,
Colorado, Missouri, Washington, Idaho, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Alaska,
Montana, New Hampshire, Florida, Nebraska, Louisiana, Iowa, Nevada, West
Virginia and Minnesota. Everyone else, living in 30 states where lobbyists
for liquor wholesalers and distributors hold sway in the legislature, is
out of luck.
>This is nonsense. Which of course means Congress wants in. GOP Reps. Joe
Scarborough of Florida, James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin and Christopher
Cannon of Utah, abetted by Democrat William Dellahunt of Massachusetts, are
pushing some legislation with the ripe-for-ridicule title of "The 21st
Amendment Enforcement Act." That is, they want to enforce the repeal of
prohibition. And believe it or not, on Tuesday the House Judiciary
Committee spent three hours on the thing. Incidentally, Presidential
"candidate" Orrin Hatch, a big promoter of this offensive, attached a
Senate version of this to the juvenile justice act.
>
>
>The Ravenswood Vineyard
>Designate Lottery 1999 The Big Red Ones:
>Vintage '97
>The States
>. . . For Ravenswood to ship wine directly, you must be able to provide a
shipping address in one of the above named states. If you are a resident of
any of the states that prohibit alcoholic beverage shipments, and if you
value a competitive market and freedom of choice in this matter, we
encourage you to contact your state legislators. In addition, you might
consider supporting the legislative and judicial efforts of organizations
such as The Family Winemakers of California at 916-498-7500 or the
Coalition For Free Trade at 707-747-1556.
>
>
>The "21st Amendment" bill would give the state attorneys general federal
jurisdiction, with authority to enforce their restraint of trade in federal
courts. Imagine giving this expansive authority to state AGs, also known as
"governors in waiting," likely to be in need of contributions from local
wholesalers. Why, you ask, do they need federal authority, since they
already have succeeded in banning Ravenswood and others in 30 states?
Well, the state attorneys general and their allies know that if they tried
to prosecute Joe Sixpack's attempts to broaden his palate, it would lead to
publicity not beneficial to gubernatorial ambitions. So instead they want
the power to bring actions against the out-of-state wineries and distributors.
>This is precisely what the interstate commerce clause was designed to
preclude. Today wine, tomorrow any out-of-state competition that some local
interest with campaign money didn't want to deal with. Indeed, what the
21st Amendment actually did back in 1933, besides repeal prohibition, was
allow states to stay "dry" if they wanted. So it prohibited importation of
intoxicating liquors into any state "in violation of the laws thereof."
Surely no one had in mind repealing the interstate commerce clause, and
allowing states to set up favored private interests as intrastate
monopolies and force their citizens to buy only from
them. Setting aside the fatuous argument
> about protecting minors from pounding down cases of $15
wine on Dad's
> credit card, this is the heart of the dispute.
>
> This issue exists only because large state liquor
wholesalers and
> distributors--middlemen who largely control whose
products get into their
> states--want to retain their piece of the action. To
that end, they've spread
> political money around legislatures, campaigning
attorneys general and
> Congress. The result are laws jumping on Ravenswood's
lottery, or the
> amazing fact that it's now a felony for people in five
states to have a case
> of wine shipped to them from out of state.
>
> Shutting down shipments of $300 cases of wine is not a
reasonable
> regulation of intoxicating beverages; it is an obstacle
to interstate commerce
> of precisely the type the Founders intended to
prohibit. The idea that
> Congress would take up a bill in 1999 purporting to
"enforce" the repeal of
> prohibition is a good example of the pettiness that now
prevails in
> Washington. A responsible Congress would be using its
powers to protect
> interstate commerce, not to smash it.
>