OPINION & EDITORIAL
Big Brother is after your booze
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Also by Ben Patterson:
- Madison politics passionate but poorly informed (March 28, 2008)
- Stakes are high with Fidel gone (February 22, 2008)
- Snow seems to have clouded administration's judgement (February 8, 2008)
- House strikes out with hearings (January 25, 2008)
- Coal plan problems highlight lack of progressive action (December 5, 2007)
Related Stories:
- Mad at MADD (April 18, 2002)
- Chancellor Wiley throws down the gauntlet, again (April 30, 2002)
- Acceptable hypocrisy (May 2, 2002)
- Eat, drink and be merry (September 19, 2006)
- Coming of age, and respecting the law (January 31, 2002)
by Ben Patterson
Friday, April 11, 2008
Last time I drank a cheap beer at the bar I was pretty confident that it was legal for me to do so. However, as of late, the city of Madison seems to believe that drinking — at any cost — is a privilege that only they have the divine right to control.
Hopefully we can all agree that we live in a capitalist country in which the principles of supply and demand are able to reign freely. But recent events have led me to believe that the city of Madison controls alcohol consumption not unlike a fascist dictator. As the perfect example, City Council President Mike Verveer recently announced his intentions to curb the sale of cheap beer at Kelley’s Market on West Washington Avenue for reasons that might make him more popular in the short run but will only shift the problem he is intending to fix.
Complaints of transients loitering, begging and drinking in the nearby Brittingham Park shelter have come to the attention of Mr. Verveer. And now, for all intents and purposes, he intends to halt the renewal of Kelley’s Market’s alcohol license, simply because they have decided to sell cheap beer. Mr. Verveer seems to think that limiting the sale of beer in one area of town is going to minimize the city’s problem of drunken transients. Ignorance is bliss, I guess.
Limiting the availability of cheap alcohol in one area of town is going to do nothing more than entice transients to transfer their drinking habits to another part of town. The homeless are not going to decide that since their favorite spot to buy a beer has increased its prices that it’s time to skip town.
Madison has long used alcohol as the scapegoat for every problem a normal, mid-sized college city might have. It appears the city’s logic goes something like, “If we make alcohol more expensive downtown, students won’t drink. If we take away a cheap source of alcohol for the homeless, they will leave. If we blame all our crimes on alcohol, the public will excuse us.”
Wrong.
Alcohol, for better or worse, is a permanent fixture of our culture. It is always going to be available and will always be consumed in this city. The policies enacted and enforced by the Alcohol License Review Committee are nothing more than appeasements for the overly concerned. Madison’s true problems rest on its overwhelming ignorance of real social issues.
Instead of worrying about the transients’ drinking problems, why don’t we worry about the transients themselves? Madison’s homeless are coddled like nowhere else on earth. It is almost as though Madison has enacted a policy of institutionalized homelessness. I’m confused as to how a city can complain about drunken transients when they provide designated begging stations on State Street. I wonder what strict enforcement against panhandling might do for the city’s drunken homeless population?
I guess it’s too hard for the city to realize that the homeless are going to buy alcohol with the money they receive while begging at locations the city designates for them.
Madison has no right to infringe upon legal, capitalist businesses before they make intelligent attempts to fix the real problems at their core. Likewise, what right does any individual — City Council president or otherwise — have to target a business doing nothing more than competing in the free market? And unfortunately, it appears as though Mr. Verveer and his Prohibition era pals in City Hall will get their way, as Kelley’s and others have vowed to stop selling cheap four-packs as soon as their inventory runs out.
The city of Madison has a population of just under a quarter-million people and a relatively low crime rate for its size, yet the city and the ALRC seem to think that a mandate to curtail drinking will drastically reduce crime and turn Madison into Martha’s Vineyard. If we truly take a step back and look at what the city and the ALRC are attempting to do, we realize that the recent trend of policies is nothing more than an unwarranted band-aid for a larger problem. It will fix nothing in the long run.
Ben Patterson (bpatterson@wisc.edu) is a junior majoring in political science.
Anonymous (April 11, 2008 @ 8:57am):
CHEERS TO THAT!!!
Anonymous (April 11, 2008 @ 9:33am):
So tax the alcohol and use the money to run a palace for the homeless, then they won't be transients and the homeless won't be homeless anymore. Ta-da, problem solved!
No wait, homeless will come from all over to live at the palace - better hope a lot of alcohol gets sold.
Anonymous (April 11, 2008 @ 10:23am):
Prohibition-era pals? Unless he's chillin with the cast of "Leatherheads," I don't think City Councilman Verveer has any Prohibition-era pals. I also don't know where you live, but if you lived in the BD, or maybe if you were a woman, you'd get pretty irritated with drunken transients stroking your hair nonchalantly as they pass you on the sidewalk. Or peeing in front of your apartment and whispering obscenities as you walk by. Come on man, of course they're going to drink anyway, but ever since the cops have started cracking down on State Street, the BD has become a haven, and it's not just beggars anymore. It's aggressive, drunken strangers. And I agree with you on the free market talk, but maybe we should be questioning the competency of the MPD and the city's poor planning which has caused such a problem with transients, not City Councilman Verveer.
Peace.
Anonymous (April 11, 2008 @ 2:46pm):
Your main point is dead on - that the councilman's idea is not a solution at all. Howvere, I feel the need to point out something in your article that borders on hypocrisy. You denounce the council for taking away your "right" to cheap beer, or certainly the bar's right to operate freely, but you then suggest a better solution is to take away the personal freedoms of people who happen to be transients. They should have to obey the same laws as everyone else. Profiling and discriminating against someone because they are homeless is widely accepted in our society, but that doesn't make it right.
All that said, thank you for a great article - it's obviously an issue I have an opinion on.
TJ (April 11, 2008 @ 4:44pm):
"But recent events have led me to believe that the city of Madison controls alcohol consumption not unlike a fascist dictator."
Give yourself a pat on the back for slipping in a fascism reference before getting into the debate at hand.
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