Tuesday, August 19, 2008

stinkin drinkin linkin

Once again the quest arises from the ashes and those of us who have been through it so many times before are bewildered by its ability to ressurect. The quest of course is package liqour sales iinside the city limits of Lubbock, which has already occurred by smoky room behind closed door dealing. The question then becomes why not the rest of town? The answer is of course multi faceted and fraught with emotion on both sides of the issue.

There are other political boundaries to consider-namely the county precincts decide their own fate on this issue, or has that changed? So if the majority of Lubbock voters voted to alow the sales in question. then the next question would be did the individual precincts vote for the issue. If they did then the advance of liqour sales throughout town would begin. However if none of the other precincts voted for the issue save, but a majority of voters in general, then package sales would advance into the rest of the precinct covered by Lubbock city code and law. Or some degree of the same depending on which county precincts within the city of Lubbock actually voted in favour of the sales. That's the physical and legal aspects of the issue without consideration of the further onus the code wamks of the city no doubt will feel obligated to impenge if and when the issue is actuated.

So then a second issue with the issue is the issue of taxation. As long as the package sales are relegated to the 'strip' then the Dallas based new owners of most of the strip pay most of the taxes--not! The people of Lubbock pay the taxes, it is covered in the price.

A third issue is the focus of money then going to the owners of the ackage stores will be determined by whether the issue is passed or not. If not,the the majority of the net profits end up in Dallas, and Lubbock is then an exporter of capital for what in return? drunkeness? If it is passed then the city codes peope can taylkor the location of package sales store to places which have the capacity to handle traffic and legalities and amy be more local in ownership whereby the net profits as well as the labor and advertising moneys will be spent here or for the most part warehoused here in Lubbodk and so Lubbock then is able to capitalize on that warehousing of seemingly tremendous amounts of funds.

The fourth issue is that of drunkeness and its effect on the population which participates and the effect on the population within the surrounding community.
The drunkeness quotient is already there, perhaps there would be less drinking and driving because of the reduced time to procure the booze. An Auxiliary issue might be the effect of daily or frequent exoposure to youngsters of the aspect of people buying those botteles in funny brown bags or large colorful cases in front of their very eyes. Would they be encouraged to purchase at a later more legally acceptabel age some of the same or might they discover that those people who are buying those items are often the ones you read about in the paper, or would they, horror of horrors, discover that some of those people are really nice guys and not at all irresponsible, and so be reencouraged to purchase those items at a later more legally accepptable age? I am not sure even time will be allowed to separate this chaff.

And a fifth apect of the package sales only at the strip or line reality is that it does serve to line the coffers of those entities in charge of such things as gasoline sales and the entities in charge of sales and excise taxes related to the sale of gasoline. So as a negative to the passing of the issue is the aspect of reduced gasoline sales profits and reduced tax moneys.