For many Libertarians, a desire to lighten the heavy load of government is what draws them to politics. But only a few make a living at this noble cause while simultaneously volunteering their time and energy to the party. One of these is LPSF Membership Chair Michael Denny.

Denny, a Richmond district resident and father of four, is in the alcoholic beverages industry. The company he founded in 1987, American Wine Distributors, is one of a growing number of firms which help distributors of wine, beer, and other spirits navigate the maze of government regulations, ultimately saving consumers of these beverages a ton of money.

On Tuesday May 1, Denny spoke to over 20 attendees at the LPSF's monthly Financial District event. This was not a "dry" business lecture. While discussing the onerous taxes and regulations on alcohol and ways sellers are learning to get around them, Denny generously passed out samples of several of the wines he distributes.

"The alcoholic beverage industry is regulated slightly less than atomic waste," Denny deadpanned at the start of his talk. "Separation of church and state" doesn't really exist, he continued. The law is heavily influenced by a religious morality which frowns on intoxication, and laws are designed to prevent the industry from "inducing people to drink" by making it difficult and expensive to put alcohol on the shelves. Although the Prohibition of alcohol at the federal level ended in 1933, there are still so-called "dry" counties in the U.S. where alcohol is locally restricted or prohibited, including some areas with significant numbers of people. The major metropolitan area of Evanston, Illinois, for example, he said is "not completely dry, but [it is] very difficult to buy alcohol." In the completely dry counties, even transporting beer through by truck without stopping is illegal. Georgia, Connecticut, Kansas, and Maine are among the worst states. And if all this seems incredible to us, it’s because "California is still the freest state in the country for alcoholic beverages." Denny cited a group called the Small Business Survival Committee <www.SBSC.org>, which rates business-friendly climates state by state.

Meanwhile, according to Denny, the feds have stepped up their taxation of alcohol. "In the beginning [just after Prohibition], the federal government took almost no revenue at all from alcoholic beverages," he said. "Now the federal government is one of the largest taxers of alcohol." Ten years ago, the federal tax on wine was increased by 1000 percent.

Regulation of beer, wine and spirits still occurs mostly at the state level, however. This has resulted in a crazy-quilt patchwork of regulations and requirements across the country, Denny said, with each state having its own complex rules and procedures. In some states, you have to register with the Secretary of State to get a permit of any kind. Others, like Connecticut, charge $100 per item that you’re selling into that state. In Pennsylvania, liquor is sold through state-run stores. "There’s almost as many options as there are states," he said.

That’s where his company steps in. "I liken what I do to a tax accountant," Denny explained. What might cost a distributor $60,000 a year to accomplish on its own, the head of American Wine Distributors said he can do for $20,000, partly through economies of scale. Like an accountant, Denny must know the laws and figure out which mechanisms to use and which to avoid. "It's just a matter of ... allowing buyers and sellers to trade as if these [laws] don't even exist," he said. According to a San Francisco Chronicle article in April 1993, his company handles "product storage, delivery, insurance, legal compliance and even administrative functions." The company currently has 17 employees.

Some entrepreneurs have more recently tried using the Internet to bypass expensive and confusing state laws and sell directly to consumers, but this effort mostly failed, Denny said. Wine.com went broke after ending up in lawsuits all over the country, Denny said, as did Wineshopper.com. Others, like E-Vineyard, have been more careful and are still in business.

It has been said that the Internet interprets regulation and censorship as bugs and routes around them. The same may be said for the free market in general. Denny believes that within 3 to 5 years, there will be "many, many options for suppliers and consumers to source products directly." He noted that the libertarian public-interest law firm Institute for Justice has been involved in lawsuits on behalf of those fighting anti-consumer regulations.

Unfortunately, alcoholic beverage wholesalers, whom Denny called the "fat cats" of the industry, are opposed to reform. Members of the Wine and Alcoholic Spirits Wholesalers Association, who coincidentally met in San Francisco around the time of Denny’s talk, "don't want any laws to change that would allow their customers to go around them," he said. The government, of course, likes the revenue. "The tax and political incentives are very strong to keep the system in place," Denny lamented. Leading the fight for the status quo is California’s notoriously anti-freedom Senator Dianne Feinstein, along with Orrin Hatch of Utah.

The costs, both direct and indirect, are horrendous. Some states—Denny mentioned Florida as being particularly bad—add almost $2 in taxes to each bottle of wine, even before sales tax. "To operate [as a distributor] in the United States, it costs over $8000 a year, just in permits," he said. Denny estimated that the total tax and regulatory burden placed on his industry bleeds $200 million from the economy annually.

None of these costs, happily, were borne by those who came to hear the Wine Man speak and got to try a sampling of his wares from France, Australia, and New Zealand. Four lucky individuals who won an impromptu raffle among the attendees each took home a free bottle. The wine was widely praised as delicious, and the benefits of free trade were toasted.

"I was into wine way before libertarianism," Denny admitted.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Samantha Liapes, Director of Bay Area PoliceWatch, spoke about her work at the Direct Action Forum on May 16. BAPW stages protests and works in other ways to publicize police abuse. It also offers legal and other assistance to victims of police abuse, helping them negotiate the bureaucracy of the justice system. It was founded in 1993 by Anthony "Van" Jones, fresh out of Yale Law School. Jones was protesting the acquittal of the cops involved in the Rodney King beating, and was depressed when fellow protesters began looting. BAPW was launched as a more constructive response to police abuse than stealing sneakers. Liapes has more personal experience with police abuse: Her father spent most of his life in prison, her brother is currently in prison, and her mother was incarcerated once. She knows too well the dehumanizing effects of the so-called justice system.

BAPW is one of several projects of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. INS· WATCH publicizes INS enforcement activities and abuses, and helps organize people to resist INS raids and avoid capture. The Third Eye Movement organizes young people, especially Blacks and Latinos, teaching them how to protect themselves from police abuse. TransAction targets police abuse of transgender persons. A New York City PoliceWatch has also been formed.

Ella Baker herself was a civil rights activist who was closely affiliated with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee of the ‘60s. She played, as it were, Don Gorman to Martin Luther King’s Harry Browne: She opposed King’s implicit "great leader" model of social change in favor of grass-roots empowerment of oppressed people.

The overall orientation of BAPW, and its sister organizations, is immediate and pragmatic, seeking redress of grievances within the current system. Libertarians, a shade more cynical, tend to be impatient with this "thumb-in-the-dike" approach; but people whose friends and relatives are being beaten or killed tend to be impatient with the rather remote and abstract call of libertarians for radical reform, like abolishing the INS (or the police as well, in the case of anarchist libertarians). One might think that the radicalness of our solution would still hold some appeal for those who are fed up with the system, but the educational challenge is an interesting one. Liapes’ thinking is typical of government advocates, liberal or conservative (or libertarian?): Abuses by government officials require oversight, entailing a still more powerful government body. Abuses at the local level call for state or federal intervention, depending on whether you’re conservative or liberal. The necessary assumption in any case is that those at the top of the power pyramid will always be good guys, who will come to our rescue. Periods when the disfavored party is in power must be dismissed as aberrations; witness the T-shirts insisting, futilely, "George Bush is not my President." The fantasy of a Good Guy ultimately in charge exerts an emotional pull that is as strong for secular as for religious authority.

Starchild put Liapes in touch with San Diego Libertarians for a protest that was being organized there. Liapes also agreed to put the LPSF on her mailing list, and to keep us apprised of situations where we might help.

The cry that people are going hungry in the United States is a recurrent theme among American leftists, particularly during Republican administrations. They note, correctly, that there is more than enough food to go around. Often overlooked in these criticisms, however, is the fact that a tremendous amount of waste in the food service industry is due to excessive government regulations which put inflated fears of public safety over common sense. Instead of feeding the poor, tons of perfectly good food feeds dumpsters and landfills.

A friend I’ll call Alberto works as a chef. Alberto was telling me that he used to work in the catering business, but quit. When I asked him why, he explained that he got depressed by the amount of food that is wasted. Having grown up in the Philippines, where hunger is much more common, he had a hard time getting used to some of the throwaway practices of American culture.

He started telling me about his experience as a caterer. "You go to a lot of these social events, and people are coked up–they don’t really want to eat," he said. "I did this party for the Honda corporation. It was a yearly event they do, on Treasure Island. Various catering companies were there to provide food." At the end of the event, everything left over was simply thrown away. "We wasted truckloads and truckloads of food," he told me.

But surely, I asked, these leftovers could have been saved and donated to the homeless? Groups like Food Not Bombs are more than willing to pick up food from local restaurants to distribute to the needy.

"Certain catering companies have done that over the years and lost everything," Alberto responded. "The FDA [Food and Drug Administration] [has] regulations on providing food that may be unsanitary, or hasn’t been properly heated or kept." It’s not only the FDA, Alberto added. There’s also the local Department of Health regulations. "You could get sued big time," if someone got sick after eating something you provided in a manner that didn’t conform to all the regulations, he said. Even if the food was not the cause of the illness.

Big government hurting the very people it is supposedly designed to help. What a sad, yet familiar story. I already knew about Food Not Bombs and the San Francisco Health Department. Members of the activist group have told me that many vehicles they’ve used to transport the food they give away have been confiscated by the city, and one activist, Keith McHenry, has been arrested at least 37 times.

Working as a chef, Alberto still sees perfectly good food wasted, though on a smaller scale. Many places don’t mind people discreetly taking extra food with them to give out, he said; they just don’t want it to be traceable to them. He himself has left food at U.N. Plaza on numerous occasions. "Whole turkeys, six turkeys I’ve left out there," he said. Unfortunately, he said, "You can only take so much with you."

Not wanting to get caught, of course, means that food abandoned by well-intentioned people like Alberto is more likely to become exposed to contamination than it would if they were allowed to give it out openly–another unintended consequence of safety regulations. Even so, we both agreed, this small risk is better than poor people simply going hungry because of government edicts. One hundred fifty-four homeless people died on the streets of San Francisco in 1996, according to the nonprofit Coalition on Homelessness. While the group does not mention anyone starving to death, the lack of a direct correlation is deceptive. When it comes to fatalities among the homeless, "All these factors play in," said Chance Martin, editor of the Street Sheet newspaper that many of the city’s itinerants peddle for donations. "Poor nourishment is a big factor in people’s overall health."

It is impossible to know how many of the hundreds of unfortunates whose bodies have been found in and on doorways, sidewalks, and park benches over the past decade might still be alive, if they’d had access to the kind of food that gets thrown daily away by restaurants like Alberto’s. Thus we can only guess at the amount of blood on the hands of the FDA, the Department of Health, and other government agencies that deny sustenance to the poor.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Dear Libertarians of San Francisco:

I wish to take a special note thanking everyone for the wonderful job we are doing. I think many of you do not realize the impact we are creating. Sometimes, because we are so caught up in the arduous task of fighting for liberty, it is hard to see. Well, your efforts ARE making a difference. They ARE noticed. I have enclosed a list of messages that are addressed to us. All of our hard work and dedication is starting to pay off. It is noticed around the Bay Area, around the state, and around the nation.

These particular messages reflect the excellent job we did with our Tax Day Protests; however, I have also received many phone calls over the last few months wondering what the heck we are doing right up here. Great job, LPSFers!

I would also like to specially thank our Executive Committee with their help in sparking our rapid growth. Thank you: Vice-Chair and Activities Chair Leilani Wright, Treasurer and Newsletter Chair Mike Acree, and Secretary Vince Grubbs. With your support, help and suggestions, we are taking the Libertarian Party of San Francisco to heights never seen before.

Yours in kicking Government butt,

David Molony

Chair, Libertarian Party of San Francisco

Here is [some of] what people are saying:

What's happening in San Francisco? Their membership is bursting with activism. Four events in one month and a successful tax protest that must be the envy of the entire state party. Heck, they even got the Hagan Daz Ice Cream Company to help sponsor the event. [Starr evidently missed Molony’s humor, and Molony misidentified the company.–Ed.] How is that for capitalism? Perhaps we can learn a thing or two from their chair, David Molony. Good job, folks. Keep up the good work.

Aaron Starr

Chair, Libertarian Party of California

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Juan C. Ros

Executive Director, Libertarian Party of California

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Elias Israel

Chair, Libertarian Party of Massachusetts

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Mark Hinkle

Former LPC Chair

John Howard

Free Sonoma Forum, Santa Rosa, CA, USA

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

[More letters to be published later. –Ed.]

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

LPSF Newsletter Editor and Treasurer Mike Acree was the honoree at the semiannual LPSF dinner on April 8, in the elegant banquet room at Opera Plaza Sushi. A dozen Libertarians came from as far away as Fairfax, and Chair David Molony delivered an encomium which was reportedly 6 hours in the making. Mike, an LP member for 28 years, was invited to reminisce about the early history of the Party. He offered a free sushi to anyone who could name Ed Clark’s rival for the nomination in 1979, but the prize went unclaimed. (Anybody?)

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

r Basic ($25) r Sustaining ($100) r Sponsor ($250) r Patron ($500) r Life Member ($1,000)

(Note: Joining the LP does not automatically make your voter registration Libertarian.) The Libertarian Party is the party of principle. To publicly affirm what we believe–and to ensure that our party never strays from our principles–we ask our members to proudly sign this statement:

Signature (required only for membership): _________________________________________________________________

r I wish to make a separate donation of $__________ to the Libertarian Party of San Francisco. (Membership dues go primarily to the national and state organizations.) Nonmembers who donate at least $15 will receive a one-year subscription to the Golden Gate Libertarian.

r I wish to volunteer to help with ______________________________________________________________________________________. (Please specify if you prefer to help with campaigns, computers, event plans, information tables, mailings, newsletters, phone calls, speeches, etc.)

Name:

Address:

Phone(s):

E-mail:

Total enclosed: $______________

Please make your check payable to the Libertarian Party and mail it with this form to 2215-R Market Street, PMB 170, San Francisco, CA 94114.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Tuesday, June 5: Financial District meeting, 6:30-7:30, 57 Post Street.

Saturday, June 9: Richmond District meeting, 3-6 p.m., Round Table Pizza, 5160 Geary.

Wednesday, June 20: Direct Action Forum, Thai House, 2200 Market, 7-10 p.m.

Sunday, June 24: Gay Freedom Day parade. Volunteers needed for parade and booth. Contact Mike Acree.

David Molony

chair@lpsf.org

(415) 820-3923

Leilani Wright

vice-chair@lpsf.org

(415) 786-5505

Vince Grubbs

secretary@lpsf.org

(415) 682-9482

Mike Acree

treasurer@lpsf.org

(415) 668-5794

Jerry Cullen

elections@lpsf.org

(415) 567-9642

Mike Denny

membership@lpsf.org

(415) 750-9340

Starchild

outreach@lpsf.org

(415) 626-3036

Jerry Pico

media@lpsf.org

(415) 885-5350

Chris Maden

fundraising@lpsf.org

(415) 504-8677

Opinions expressed in unsigned columns of the Golden Gate Libertarian do not necessarily represent those of anyone but the Editor. Submissions are encouraged. The deadline (including agenda and calendar items) is the penultimate Friday of the month.