Opinion
OLCC: Fund Alcohol Education
“Challenging People to Shape
a Better Future Now”
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I
n 2011 Washington State
passed a liquor privatization
initiative, after a record-set-
ting $20 million campaign. Now
the grocery industry wants to
pass spirits sale privatization in
Oregon.
In 2011, Washington State pri-
vatized liquor sales after a
record-setting, $20 million-cam-
paign. Now the grocery indus-
try is looking to repeat that
success, with a liquor privatiza-
tion initiative that is destined to
hit the Oregon ballot box, in
2014.
Backers hope they can
expand into the profitable liquor
market by taking spirits sales
out of the hands of the Oregon
Liquor Commission. An Oregon
initiative likely would propose
increased funding for local law
enforcement, education and
human services, in an effort to
gain widespread support.
We don’t have any objection
to the idea in principle. Stores
already sell wine and beer. And
OLCC records show they most-
ly do it responsibly, avoiding
sales to minors and visibly
intoxicated people. Many of the
stores which want to expand
into spirits sales already are
members of the OLCC’s
Responsible Vendor program,
and committed to training their
staff to enforce the law. Cus-
EDITORIAL
The Skanner News
tomers would value the extra
convenience. So why shouldn’t
grocery stores sell bourbon or
vodka?
We can see no good reason
for the state to have a monop-
lower prices, the exact opposite
has happened. A visit to State-
line Liquor at Jantzen Beach
last week found that almost
every car in the parking lot has
Washington plates. Why? Spir-
its now cost far more in Wash-
ington than they did when the
Washington Liquor Control
Board managed the stores.
The Washington state initia-
tive added a 10 percent distri-
bution fee, and 17 percent retail
fee. That’s in addition to any
An Oregon initiative likely would
propose increased funding for local law
enforcement, education and human
services, in an effort to gain
widespread support
oly on selling spirits. The state
should get out of the business
of selling spirits and concen-
trate on enforcement, with its
efforts focused on troubled
licensees.
What voters should not sup-
port, however, is a repeat of the
Washington fee hikes that saw
the cost of spirits rise sharply
after the initiative passed.
Despite
promises
that
increased competition would
markups the grocers add inde-
pendently. Taxes stayed the
same.
Lobbyists for the grocers and
wholesalers say competition
will eventually bring costs
down. They say Washingtoni-
ans are just now starting to see
incremental decreases. Whole-
salers increased their prices as
soon as the law passed. And
because the initiative allowed
for bulk markdowns on wine
and spirits, the new law also
puts small, local wineries and
distillers at a disadvantage.
Oregon backers contend they
are well-aware of the pricing
issues. They say they are work-
ing to build efficiencies into an
Oregon initiative that will pre-
vent Washington-style price
increases. And in order to pre-
vent disadvantaging small dis-
tillers in Oregon, industry
advocates are considering cre-
ating a new specialty boutique
license that would allow
licensees to sell products from
Oregon distillers. That plan also
would provide funding for an
Oregon distillers board, similar
to the Oregon Wine Board.
Bottom line, The Skanner
News believes that this concept
appears solid in principle. How-
ever, backers should not forget
critical funding for programs
that support alcohol education
and treatment programs. Liquor
privatization must come with
increased and sustainable
funding to prevent and treat
alcohol abuse and addiction.
You can post your comments
on www.theskanner.com
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in October 1975, is a weekly publica-
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JFK and Civil Rights: Myth and Fact
T
here’s been as much myth as
fact regarding John F.
Kennedy’s civil rights lega-
cy in the more than fifty years
before, during and especially after
his assassination on November 22,
1963. In the days before he deliv-
ered his now famed presidential
inaugural address on Friday, Jan.
20, 1961, two of his principal
advisors Louis Martin and Harris
Wofford battled hard to get
Kennedy to add two words “at
home” to a pivotal sentence in his
speech that addressed human
rights. Kennedy meant the human
rights fight that the U.S. waged
internationally against Commu-
nism. The “at home” referred to
the battle for civil rights in Ameri-
ca. Kennedy reluctantly added the
words. That reluctance typified the
wariness that Kennedy had in
making civil rights a centerpiece
of his presidency.
The myth and fact about his civil
rights legacy came jarringly
together in the quip from his wife
and widow Jackie Kennedy on his
assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, “He
didn’t even have the satisfaction of
being killed for civil rights.” Jack-
ie in the national trauma after his
murder understood that Kennedy’s
place in history would be even
more firmly established if he was
seen as the civil rights president,
rather than a president who was
forced under extreme duress to
champion civil rights.
In the decade before he won the
White House, Kennedy said
almost nothing about civil rights.
In 1957, as a senator he voted
against the 1957 civil rights bill.
His opposition has been spun two
ways; one cynical, one charitable.
The cynical spin is he opposed it
Page 4 The Portland Skanner November 20, 2013
T HE L AST
W ORD
Earl Ofari
Hutchinson
to appease Southern Democrats
because he had an eye on a presi-
dential run in 1960. The charitable
spin is that he thought the bill was
too weak and ineffectual. Three
years later though he ignored the
angry shouts from Southern
Democrats and lobbied for a force-
ful civil rights plank in the Demo-
cratic Party’s 1960 platform.
During the presidential cam-
paign he publicly pledged to end
gress following his nail bite,
squeaky 1960 presidential election
win over Richard Nixon. But if he
had would he? The answer is prob-
ably a qualified no. His expertise,
passion, and focus then were on
foreign policy, more particularly,
trying to contain, if not best, the
Soviet Union on everything from
the nuclear arms race to influence
in emerging Third World nations.
The bloody desegregation clash-
es at the University of Mississippi
and the bloody assaults on free-
dom riders in Alabama, however,
could not be ignored. But even
here there was a hard political cal-
culus that struggled side by side
with the moral calculus. African-
American voters made a major dif-
ference in his narrow election win
In the decade before he won the
White House, Kennedy said almost
nothing about civil rights
segregation in federally subsidized
public housing “with the stroke of
a pen.” Despite a mass campaign
for him to keep his promise, he
foot dragged for months in signing
the order. This was not hypocrisy,
or racial faint heartedness. There
was a brutal political calculus at
work. In 1961, Southern Democ-
rats, all staunch segregationists,
had an iron grip on the House.
They held 11 of 19 committee
chairmanships and in the Senate
two-thirds of its standing commit-
tees. Kennedy did not have any-
thing near a governing mandate to
prod, cajole, and arm twist South-
ern racial obstructionists in Con-
over Nixon, aided in large part by
a massive black voter shift to him
in direct response to his famed
phone call to Dr. Martin Luther
King’s family following King’s
jailing in Georgia for contempt of
court stemming from a civil rights
protest. Kennedy had a keen eye
on the black vote and its potential
to be a crucial factor in future
national elections. That included
his almost certain reelection bid in
1964.
The tipping point was the spec-
tacle of women and children beat-
en, hosed, and gassed by brutal
white cops in Birmingham in
1963. The barbarous scenes were
beamed globally, that and the elo-
quent heart wrenching letter and
appeal by Dr. King from his Birm-
ingham jail cell propelled
Kennedy to do what he had long
been urged to do and deliver the
definitive statement on civil rights.
He did on June 11, 1963. He pig-
gybacked on the words and senti-
ments King expressed in his letter
about rights, justice, inequality,
and the moral and political shame
and disgrace to the nation of racial
bigotry. King and civil rights lead-
ers applauded Kennedy’s words.
But King also saw more political
pragmatism than moral outrage in
it. He quipped that he was “bat-
tling for the minds and the hearts
of men in Asia and Africa.” This
was probably true. Yet the equal
truth was that it didn’t much mat-
ter whether Kennedy was motivat-
ed by pragmatism or idealism,
crisis or conscience, he had spo-
ken, and this marked the major
turning point for the nation on
civil rights.
If Kennedy had lived would he
have fought hard for passage of
the 1964 landmark civil rights bill,
or been stonewalled by his party’s
racists, and forced to accept a
watered down bill? An assassin’s
bullet insured that that question
will remain forever unanswered.
Fifty years after that horrific
November day in Dallas,
Kennedy’s civil rights legacy is an
enduring and deserved fact,
despite the many myths surround-
ing it.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an
author and political analyst.