The Pennsylvania Liquor Board must be run by complete idiots. They’re recent ads talking about the potential dangers of date rape seem to blame the victims and the victims friends The ads have recently been pulled. While the PLCB for sure has some good intentions behind these ads… It seems to be a classic situation of “What I Meant To Say Was…” What about you? is the message being conveyed the right way? The Independent Store Union of Pennsylvania had this to say about the ads:
HARRISBURG, Pa., Dec. 11th, 2011- With the recent drumbeat of privatization resonating throughout the halls of the Capitol in Harrisburg, the Independent State Store Union finds it regrettable that the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PLCB)
has once again shown their innate ability to shoot themselves in the foot. CEO Joe Conti and his crack staff of free enterprise privateers have once again demonstrated their complete incompetence with the now pulled so called public service announcement (PSA) on date rape and drinking.
The latest attempt at advertising with the release of this PSA is further indication of their total ineptitude. They have made a mockery of the reality of the violence perpetrated on women and have bought into the concept of victimizing the victim. The victim’s friends are now the accomplices while the perpetrator is given a free ride.
This is the same management crew that has given the public the ill-conceived and laughable wine vending machines, a costly and totally deficient inventory replenishment system, a cumbersome and inadequate point-of-sale system, and significantly increased administrative expenses to support an expanded and bloated management staff — endorsed by a million dollar management study — while the wine and spirits shops are grossly understaffed.
And, in pursuit of their delusional effort as a wannabe “world class retailer,” they have also implemented multi-million dollar advertising campaigns for the promotion of alcohol sales.
The schizophrenic model of the current PLCB Board and management is anathema to reasonable control and responsible alcohol policy. It is high time that the PLCB return to their core function of focusing on encouraging responsible attitudes towards the promotion, sale and consumption of liquor.
The PLCB cannot continue their current zeal for marketing and promoting alcohol consumption without collateral damage yet they issue a PSA that blames the victims. It is illustrative of how out of touch the PLCB management is with real issues of alcohol harms.
Unfortunately, the Board and management have adopted an operational philosophy which appears to be an intentional, internal sabotage of the control system to facilitate privatization efforts. We believe this was the end game of the previous Chairman and it appears to continue under the current leadership.
We would encourage newly appointed Chairman Joseph “Skip” Brion, who we welcome with reservations considering his posture on privatization, to not merely act as a lapdog for the privatization privateers but to restore the agency to its legislatively mandated function — reasonable and responsible alcohol policy.
Absent any proactive involvement by the Chairman to clean house and restore the agency to its core mission of control and responsible alcohol policy, we would respectfully ask him to step down. If he feels the passion and philosophy of privatization, then he should do it as a private citizen, not as a public official responsible for oversight of this public service asset. The conflict of interest is obvious and begs an ethical question.
The persistent missteps by the PLCB Board and management have cast an unwarranted shadow over the current state store system — a system that has an illustrious record of protecting the public interest for over 77 years. Simply put, the system isn’t the problem, the management of the system is the problem.
Recognizing that the PLCB’s recent miscues are helping to fuel the call for privatization of the system, a former PLCB management employee compared the system to a thoroughbred that isn’t winning races and provided the following solution — “Don’t shoot the horse, change jockeys.”
For more, contact David Wanamaker at 1-800-692-ISSU.
