No Margaritaville in Alabama...

[Darrell KSR]

Thank goodness! So glad government looks out for me.

http://www.al.com/opinion/index.ssf/2017/07/alabama_abc_says_no_to_margari.html

[PedroDaGr8]

Thank goodness! So glad government looks out for me.

http://www.al.com/opinion/index.ssf/2017/07/alabama_abc_says_no_to_margari.html

Yeesh, blue laws are absolutely absurd. I am truly thunderstruck at this. The solution of course is to serve it in one of those monster margarita glasses with four straws!

[dan_bgblue]

Thankfully they have not banned displaying cases of beer for sale right next to the shotgun shells for sale. I assume that is because the customer has the right to mix them himself, but it would be illegal for the retailer to do it for them.

[CitizenBBN]

Wow. And people wonder why I'm so cynical about bureaucracy. The booze may settle so they have to regulate that? Talk
about looking for an excuse to regulate for no reason.

[Darrell KSR]

If you didn't read the article, please read it. The reasoning given, which CBBN referenced, just slays me.

[dan_bgblue]

I read it earlier but could not figure out if they were trying to make sure everyone got their money's worth of the tequila, or if they were trying to make sure that someone did not inadvertently get too much and wind up too tipsy to drive or just passed out at the table.

[Darrell KSR]

You are trying to think logically. Stop that. It's government.

[dan_bgblue]

So they just saw something that was not being regulated and decided that was not good so they stepped in to save the day?

[Darrell KSR]

Closer.

[CitizenBBN]

Most likely reason is some of their cronies with licenses didn't like someone serving them, dealt with the competition the old fashioned way, getting the government to shut them out. Sounds like the traditional bars give more money to the right people than the Mexican restaurants.

Bureaucracies exist for the sole reason of existing and expanding, just like microbes. the best predictors of their behavior is to study them organically. They end up making up new regulations simply to justify and expand their existence. If they have a new rule to enforce they can ask for more budgets and more people, and be more powerful.

It's insane to suggest they need to regulate the pitcher so the person who gets the last pour doesn't get dangerously drunk, you know, on tequila he could also legally order in shot after shot. It's even more insane to suggest that the statute they cite in any way justifies that regulation.

Either they have a political reason, or they simply found a reason to justify putting their nose in something. Those are about the only two reasons bureaucracies do anything. The idea they're protecting the consumer rings hollow since it would be legal to serve a "deconstructed margarita pitcher" where you hand the table a pitcher of mix and a row of shots of tequila.

Which btw would be exactly what I do if I had such a place. I'd make a theme out of it, make it a feature.

[Darrell KSR]

Which btw would be exactly what I do if I had such a place. I'd make a theme out of it, make it a feature.

That's a great idea. Market it as anti-government, too, and you're sure to have packed crowds.

[CitizenBBN]

That's a great idea. Market it as anti-government, too, and you're sure to have packed crowds.

They've got a direct quote from ABC that it's legal, and absolutely play it up as sticking it to the overreaching big brother. I'd do it up with little flags and such. This has so many options.

[badrose]

Margaritas by the pitcher. I'm not a big drinker but I could see this as a weekly habit.

[Darrell KSR]

Friend of mine owned a bar for a short time. Lost his shirt (and his wife, but that's another story), but I pitched the idea to him if he was interested in getting back into it at any time.

[suncat05]

Hang a picture of our current POTUS in his thumbs up position over the bar with some kind of statement that he approved this message.........

[PedroDaGr8]

Alabama changed their mind:

http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2017/07/alabama_backs_off_ban_on_pitch.html

[CitizenBBN]

The fact that they reversed it just as quickly as they did it only proves the point about their nature and the nature of our modern government overall.

A room full of people who have never been elected by anyone, whose jobs are highly protected from loss and are thus barely answerable for their work decisions, have the power to, without any legislative or judicial action whatsoever, arbitrarily set and then remove these kinds of rules all on their own.

No change in the law. No debates, no public hearings, no process that resembles either democracy or the Constitutional separation of powers found in every state and the federal government, and they can just do crap like this any time they want.

Legislatures, in order to have WAY more laws and regs than they could possibly handle on their own even if they never left session to go run for re-election, have abrogated their responsibility by delegating it to people who Constitutionally have no authority to MAKE law, only to enforce the laws.

now, this looks like them trying to "enforce" the law, but when they can freely interpret the law as they choose, and in this case within a week actually interpret it in polar opposite ways and get away with it, the fact that the paper version and the reality version of modern government are very different. The truth is the administrative bureaucracy basically makes law. Only if their position is significant enough and unpopular enough with the people does the legislature step back in and change the law to address the creative license taken by the bureaucracy.

FWIW I don't blame the bureaucracy either. They get handed a law that says they will "promulgate the necessary regulations to enforce this legislation". that's the fault of the legislature, and the judiciary for not declaring it unconstitutional.

End rant. For now. :)