It's Time!

Pretend the Windmill is the Wholesale
Beer Distributors of Texas, and Sir
Quixote is all the Texas brewers

Every two years, I ask my readers to contact the Texas Legislators and express support for a bill that would allow Breweries to sell a small amount of their product at their brewery, just like Texas Wineries can do.

This year, that is HB 602.

Scott Metzger, of Freetail Brewing in San Antonio, has been proposing a bill that would allow your local brewpub to sell their beer to distributors for sale in retail outlets.  That is HB 660.

Now it's time for you to write your Legislator, and tell them you would like them to support these bills. These folks have to take the Wholesalers Lobby seriously--if they offend them, they will support someone else in the next election, and no politician wants to be voted out of office.  So we have to make it clear that this is what We, The People, want.

Currently, the State of Texas is looking at a $27 billion dollar budget deficit.  Here are some points to mention about the bills:

HB 602 will

• allow breweries to create more jobs by helping fund brewery expansion
• create more tax revenue for the State of Texas

HB 606 

• Brewpubs in other states are allowed to sell their beer to distributors and then into retail outlets
• Texas consumer dollars are paying taxes and creating jobs in other states
• The bill will create more jobs
• The bill will create more tax revenue for the State of Texas

If history is any indication, the Wholesale Beer Distributors of Texas (WBDT) will oppose HB 602, claiming that only they can prevent sales of  of alcohol to minors! They will lose jobs! They will have less taxes to pay! Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!  Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes... The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!

They might oppose HB 606 on the grounds that they will lose sales, which will cost jobs and taxes.  I expect, that since most distributors are tied to one of the Big Three, they will be forced by A-B InBev and MillerCoors to oppose it to protect the big boys' share of market.  Yes, you read that right.  While WBDT controls the legislature, A-B InBev and SABMiller control WBDT.

Texas Beer Distributors won't lose money.  And remember, it was a Texas beer distributors house that was used in Steven Soderbergh's Oscar-winning movie Traffic.  It was a drug dealers house.