#primarily like mid 2014 across the board though

[gwensy]

hey guys heres more of stuff only i care about

[cutsliceddiced]

New top story from Time: COVID-19 Has Been ‘Apocalyptic’ for Public Transit. Will Congress Offer More Help?

While trying to get to work over the past few months, Brittany Williams, a Seattle home care worker, has often been passed by two or three buses before one stops to let her board. Buses in her area that once carried anywhere from about 50 to 100 passengers have been limited to between 12 and 18 to prevent overcrowding in response to coronavirus, and Williams’ commute, typically a half-hour ride, now takes more than double that time. Other Seattle transit riders have described budgeting as much as an extra hour per trip to account for the reduced capacity, eating into their time at work, school or with family.

Even with the ridership limits in place, Williams, 34, doesn’t feel safe on public transit. Some passengers don’t wear face coverings, and bus drivers sometimes ignore capacity limits, she says. On one ride with her seven-year-old son, she decided to get off at a stop far from her home after a driver allowed a crowd of people to board. “It’s very trying. I’ll put it in those terms,” Williams says. “These past couple months have been really hard.” (Seattle’s public transit operator, King County Metro, says it’s asking customers to allow for additional travel time, and that it has instructed drivers to call in more service on overcrowded routes.)

Adding more buses could help boost capacity while reducing overcrowding. But King Country Metro is in dire financial straits, making that next to impossible. System officials are projecting what they’re calling an “unprecedented loss” of more than a quarter of a billion dollars this year due to falling fare revenue and sales tax collections. While King County Metro received some federal aid for short-term survival, its prospects in the longer term are dismal, with the agency projecting more than $600 million in lost revenues through 2022. Last month, the agency announced fall service would be cut 15% from pre-coronavirus levels.

What’s happening to public transit in Seattle is happening across the country. Public transit use has plummeted nationwide as people work from home or avoid buses and subways for fear of contracting COVID-19, resulting in less revenue from fares. And as the economy cratered, so too have the tax revenues upon many which many transit systems rely. Philadelphia’s SEPTA is looking at upwards of $300 million in lost revenue through mid-2021. Maryland’s Transportation Trust Fund is contending with a $550 million shortfall in the fiscal year ending June 30, with similar losses expected next year. Los Angeles Metro is preparing for $1.8 billion in pandemic-related revenue losses. Chicago’s CTA is facing a half-billion dollar falloff in 2020. “I’ve been in this industry for over 30 years, and I have never experienced anything like what we’ve been dealing with in this pandemic,” says CTA President Dorval Carter, Jr. “There was no playbook for what we encountered.” In New York City, home to the largest transportation agency in the country, losses could add up to a staggering $8.5 billion in 2020. “‘Apocalyptic’ is a good description,” says Sarah Feinberg, who was appointed interim president of New York City Transit after the resignation of former president Andy Byford in January following repeated, high-profile clashes with New York governor Andrew Cuomo.

In these cities and more, public transit is the backbone of the local economy, and serves a wide swath of residents across socio-economic groups. If cities are to recover post-COVID, a thriving public transit system will surely have to be part of the mix.

Economically, U.S. public transit systems have endured a devastating one-two punch. Ridership rates have been decimated (subway ridership was down as much as 92% in New York at the height of the outbreak there) severely cutting into fare collections. And with the economy floundering more broadly, tax revenues that help subsidize transit systems have also taken a dramatic hit. But many transit systems’ costs are up as they engage in expensive cleaning campaigns meant to keep their buses and trains safe. Furthermore, many systems have been reluctant to cut service, which could result in dangerous overcrowding that could exacerbate viral spread.

David L. Ryan—The Boston Globe/Getty ImagesWearing a protective mask, Alejandra Ceja with S.J. Cleaning Services wipes down the window of a bus at the MBTA Charlestown bus garage during COVID-19 pandemic in Boston on May 15, 2020.

Some help has already pulled into the station. The CARES Act, a $2.2 trillion stimulus bill signed in March, included $25 billion for public transportation relief, which covered some of this year’s funding gaps. But as the COVID-19 crisis worsens in much of the country, it’s becoming clear that the nation’s transit systems will need more help from Congress. An independent analysis commissioned by the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), a non-profit advocacy group, found that, even after the CARES Act, public transit agencies nationwide still face a $23.8 billion shortfall through the end of 2021. “The CARES Act probably put a band-aid on the problem,” says Robert Puentes, president of the non-profit Eno Center for Transportation.

Another big issue with the CARES Act: the formula used to divvy out the funding gave enough money to smaller transit agencies to tide them over for a longer stretch of time, but left larger systems with only a few months of respite, according to an analysis by TransitCenter, a transit advocacy group. (That’s partially because larger transit systems tend to rely less on government funding, and more on fares and dedicated taxes, two income streams that the analysis projected would take a bigger hit during the pandemic.) Those major systems not only carry the most riders, some are also located in areas hardest-hit by COVID-19 early on, like New York and Seattle. For the 10 largest transit systems, the analysts estimated that the CARES Act funds would cover shortfalls for about five to eight months. In Seattle and New York City, which got 15% of the total CARES Act relief despite handling more than a third of national transit ridership, the funds were predicted to last less than six months.

More help from Washington could be on the way. Congress returned to work on July 20, and passing further COVID-related economic relief is top of mind for most lawmakers. But it’s unclear what the next major relief bill might look like. Back in May, House Democrats passed the $3 trillion HEROES Act, which included nearly $16 billion for public transit assistance, aimed primarily at the big systems that got relatively stiffed by the CARES Act. But Republicans called the bill a “liberal wishlist,” and the GOP-controlled Senate has refused to take it up. Republican leaders are expected to unveil their version of a relief bill as soon as this week. With August recess quickly approaching and plenty of political points on the line, it’s likely that Congress will pass some form of additional relief soon—what such a bill will ultimately include for buses, subways and rail is, at this point, anybody’s guess.

Not everybody is mourning the sorry state of American public transit. Some have long viewed it as a waste of government spending and resources, and say we’re better off letting it die. Transit opponents often point to data showing that national ridership had been slumping since 2014 as evidence that Americans were choosing other forms of transportation even before the pandemic, though the dropoff began to reverse last year.

“We had very strong trends before the pandemic that transit was becoming, outside of New York City, increasingly insignificant and irrelevant in America,” says Randal O’Toole, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. “What the pandemic has done is just underscored that and accelerated that and maybe in some places brought it to a final conclusion.”

But public transit’s defenders have a laundry list of reasons why it ought to be saved: it reduces the number of private vehicles on the road (generally meaning better air quality and less congestion); it results in fewer fatal car wrecks; and, when done well, makes urban mobility more accessible across socio-economic groups. “You can decry what you see as an inefficient system, but I don’t know how you have a functioning economy without people being able to get to their jobs,” says Beth Osborne, director of advocacy group Transportation for America.

For those who don’t rely on mass transit, heated debates over budget cuts, canceled routes and so on seem far afield. But transit is a lifeline for millions of Americans. Take, for example, the nearly half-million Chicago-area residents who live in “transit deserts.” Long before the pandemic, areas like the city’s Far South Side were starved for transit options, making it difficult for residents to get to work and access other essential resources. If Chicago’s CTA winds up reducing service even further because of COVID-related funding issues, advocates say, such a move could disproportionately affect people who’ve already been cut off from the rest of their city.

“If they cut service any more that would be a tragic thing for people who depend on transportation, not just to go to work but just to get to the grocery store,” says Andrea Reed, a transit advocate and co-chair of the Coalition for a Modern Metra Electric, a local advocacy group. “They can’t cut where people are already down and hurting.”

Christopher Dilts—Bloomberg/Getty ImagesA commuter wearing a protective mask looks at a mobile device while riding a Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) train in Chicago, Illinois, U.S., on Wednesday, June 3, 2020.

Any cuts in public transit service stand to disproportionately impact non-white Americans, who have already beared the brunt of the pandemic in so many other ways. People of color account for less than 40% of the U.S. population, but make up 60% of transit riders, according to the APTA. Further underscoring non-white Americans’ reliance on public transit, a CityLab analysis published in June found that, during a period at the height of the outbreak in New York, subway ridership dropped substantially more in whiter neighborhoods compared to less-white areas, perhaps because white New Yorkers were more likely to be able to work from home or afford alternate modes of transportation, like Uber rides. Furthermore, public transit has throughout the pandemic offered essential workers of color from doctors and nurses to kitchen staff a reliable way to get to their jobs; 67% of essential workers using transit are non-white, according to an April TransitCenter analysis.

With these disparities in mind, some transit agencies are trying to ensure equitable service amid the pandemic, despite the drain on their resources. Chicago’s CTA, for example, has been running at full service since the beginning of the outbreak in an effort to avoid overcrowding. “We had to make very tough operational decisions that were not necessarily in the financial best interests of the CTA, but were necessary because we recognize the importance of the people we were serving,” says Carter, the CTA president.

But good intentions don’t negate financial realities. “When the CARES Act money runs out, I don’t know what the system’s going to do,” says Stephen Schlickman, former executive director of the Regional Transportation Authority of Northeastern Illinois (RTA) which oversees the CTA. “This pandemic is clearly going to go into next year. The COVID money is expected to maybe stretch into early next year, so what happens after that? It’s a big unknown.”

Perhaps nowhere is public transit more vital, or the budget crisis more serious, than in New York City. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which oversees the city’s subways, busses and commuter rail lines, dwarfs other U.S. transit agencies in size, serving a colossal 40% of the nation’s total public transit users. Over the spring, New York City experienced what remains, for now, the worst coronavirus outbreak in the U.S.: more than 226,000 people have tested positive in the five boroughs as of July 20, and nearly 23,000 have died. Ridership in the city plummeted as people stayed home or sought out alternate modes of transportation they perceived to be safer. Furthermore, the city’s transit workers were hit particularly badly: more than 4,000 MTA employees have gotten sick so far, and 131 died. “It’s like being in a hospital, but without [personal protective equipment],” says MTA subway conductor William Mora, 50, who was out of work for a month with COVID-19; two coworkers he knew died of the virus.

The MTA received the most CARES Act money—$3.9 billion—of any public transit agency, but it was still shortchanged relative to its size, according to a TransitCenter analysis. The MTA, which anticipates a $10.3 billion loss through 2021, expects to burn through its CARES Act funds this month; it requested nearly $4 billion in more federal relief back in April.

“This is just the worst of all possible outcomes if we don’t get federal help,” says Andrew Albert, chair of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA (PCAC) which represents riders’ interests. He cites the possibility of layoffs, service cuts, fare hikes or even abandonment of transit lines. “I just don’t want to anticipate what could be happening,” Albert says.

The pandemic struck just as the MTA was turning a corner. Subway on-time performance had been deteriorating for years. Safety was becoming an issue, too, underscored by a 2017 subway derailment that left 34 people injured. But just before COVID-19 struck, reliability was improving, with weekday on-time performance hitting 83.3% in January, up from a dismal 58.1% two years prior. A massive $51.5 billion capital investment plan went into effect at the start of 2020, $15 billion of which was to be funded by a new congestion pricing plan wherein drivers would be charged when entering the heart of Manhattan. But the pandemic and ensuing chaos has left that plan facing about a year of delays due to holdups over a Federal Highway Administration environmental review. Transit insiders say the New York system now stands to lose its recent progress.

“Right now we’re seeing that the region is coming out of pause, but the MTA is going into pause as relates to its construction program, and that could have even more long-lasting, dire consequences, not just for riders but for the entire economy of the region,” says Lisa Daglian, the PCAC Executive Director.

Robert Nickelsberg—Getty ImagesA passenger wearing a surgical mask a daily newspaper while riding an uptown subway in New York City on March 18, 2020.

Public transit’s future is equally uncertain nationwide. While it’s likely many systems will receive at least some federal help, that probably will not be enough to get them off life support, at least until some degree of normality returns. Despite studies that show fears of COVID-19 infection on mass transit could be overblown, it may not be until a vaccine is widely available that riders who have a choice between private and public transportation will feel safe enough to once again pack into buses and subway cars. “People are expected to keep away from each other, and that just doesn’t work out for mass transportation,” says Schlickman, the former Illinois RTA boss.

Some transit advocates see opportunity in this crisis. In an effort to free up badly needed public space for safe enjoyment of the outdoors, many cities across the U.S. and worldwide have closed some streets or entire areas to car traffic. As residents saw first-hand the benefits of having fewer cars around—more space, safer streets, less air and noise pollution—some cities have moved to make those changes permanent. Seattle, for instance, closed 20 miles of streets to most cars in May. Other cities are building or revamping their cycling infrastructure, opening up yet another form of transportation for many residents. “If we use this as an opportunity to do a makeover of our transit systems, our transit funding, and our transit infrastructure itself, we could come out of this exceptionally strong,” says Alex Hudson, executive director of Seattle-based nonprofit Transportation Choices Coalition.

But in general, the mood among transportation officials and advocates is far from cheery. Large systems still await short-term relief, while a gigantic new infrastructure proposal has stalled in a deadlocked Congress. Transit planners have little to go on in guessing when the money, and riders, will return. If transit systems are left to die, some say, their cities will die along with them. “New York city is tied to their transit system,” says Philip Plotch, a professor of political science at Saint Peter’s University and author of Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City. “It’s like if you have a big hundred-story building and the elevators were having a problem.”

Plotch, who served as director of World Trade Center redevelopment and special projects at the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, has watched his city recover from a devastating crisis before, and he’s optimistic it can do so again. “It wasn’t clear in the days after 9/11 if anybody wanted to work in a skyscraper ever again,” he says. “The people who had that sort of dark outlook were totally wrong.” But even if transit systems recover in the long-term, the millions of Americans currently relying on mass transit to get to work are desperate for those buses and trains to keep running.

“We depend on [transit] not just to go to our clients, but to do their grocery shopping, pick up their medicine…go out and pay their bills,” says Williams, the Seattle home care worker. “It’s a very dangerous slope if they take transit away. It’s part of what I would call another signature on the death certificates of thousands of Americans.”

via https://cutslicedanddiced.wordpress.com/2018/01/24/how-to-prevent-food-from-going-to-waste

[shirlleycoyle]

Car Companies Want to Monitor Your Every Move With Emotion-Detecting AI

On February 18, executives from the technology firm Cerence rang the Nasdaq opening bell, then stepped into a meeting with their investors and representatives from some of the largest automakers in the world. Over several hours, they pitched a strategy designed to help double the company’s revenue in five years: Record every movement, every glance, every smile, frown, and wrinkled brow of drivers across the world—then sell the resulting data for a profit.

Over the last century, the car has been enshrined as a quintessential piece of Americana—a symbol of freedom and self-expression. It is a space where people share their first kisses, cry after work, and soothe restless babies to sleep, comforted by a sense of autonomy and control. But as the Cerence presentation laid bare, the car’s second century will be very different.

The Burlington, Mass. company is far from a household name, but its technology—including microphones, virtual assistants, and gaze-monitoring cameras—is already installed in more than 325 million vehicles, from which it uploads more than 100 million data transactions to the cloud every month, according to its investor documents. Very soon, Cerence announced, it plans to deepen that data mining operation with in-cabin cameras linked to emotion-detecting AI—algorithms that monitor minute changes in facial expression in order to determine a person’s emotional state at any given time. 

“This is data that I think is the untapped potential that Cerence has for the future,” Prateek Kathpal, the company’s chief technology officer, told investors. “What we’re looking at is sharing this data back with the [automakers] and helping them monetize it.”

Over the next two years, companies like Cerence, Affectiva, Xperi, and Eyeris plan to roll out emotion- and object-detecting systems for cars in partnership with many of the world’s largest automakers, according to company documents and interviews with executives. Their plans are bolstered by a European Union law mandating that all new cars be equipped with at least rudimentary driver-monitoring by mid-2022, and a similar bill recently introduced in the U.S. Senate.

To the public and to legislators, automakers market the systems as safety features. If a car can detect that a driver is angry or looking at their phone immediately before a crash, these companies reason, the onboard AI may be able to offer a warning the next time it senses similar behavior. Or, if it can determine how a child is positioned in the back seat, the car might deploy airbags more effectively in the event of a collision.

But safety is only one attraction of in-cabin monitoring. The systems also hold huge potential for harvesting the kind of behavioral data that Google, Facebook, and other surveillance capitalists have exploited to target ads and influence purchasing habits.

Automakers and advertisers have come to a “vast realization” that as cars become more autonomous and embedded with screens, “many passengers in your vehicle are kind of a captive audience in an entertainment context,” Gabi Zijderveld, Affectiva’s chief marketing officer, told Motherboard.

Affectiva spun off from the MIT Media Lab in 2009 and has been a pioneer in the often-controversial field of emotion-detecting AI. The company has its roots in marketing and consumer analytics and has been tapped by some of the country’s largest brands to measure focus group reactions to advertisements and entertainment. But over the last four years, it has devoted a significant amount of its attention to developing in-cabin monitoring and has worked with automakers including Kia, BMW, and Porsche. It has also pitched its technology to rideshare companies, suggesting in one product brochure that riders might be willing to be recorded and have their emotions analyzed in vehicles in exchange for free or discounted trips. “That data is tremendously valuable, from a monetization perspective, to the advertisers,” Zijderveld said.

Competitors Xperi and Eyeris are also looking at ways to capitalize, or help automakers capitalize, on the data their products gather.

Jeff Jury, the general manager of Xperi’s automotive group, told Motherboard that the company’s in-cabin monitoring system is a safety feature first, but added that Xperi is exploring ways to combine the system with the sophisticated entertainment recommendation engine it recently acquired through a merger with TiVo.

Eyeris CEO Modar Alaoui likewise told Motherboard that while his company’s technology is primarily designed to improve safety, “we do foresee at some point that [automakers] will try to leverage the data for several use cases, whether it be for advertising or [determining] insurance” premiums.

Inform and consent

Cerence, Affectiva, Xperi, and Eyeris officials all told Motherboard that their companies simply create products with many possible functions. It’s up to the car manufacturers, they said, to decide how the systems will be used, what data will be collected, how that data will be processed internally, to whom it can be sold, and whether to share any of that information with the customer.

With the exception of Volvo, all the automakers contacted for this story—including GM, Toyota, Honda, Volkswagen, and Kia—either did not respond to requests for comment or declined to answer questions about how they will inform drivers about the data collected from their vehicles. Volvo does not currently have plans to integrate systems that monitor passengers or use emotion recognition, a company official told Motherboard.

European Union regulators have prepared for the likelihood that automakers will want to use in-cabin monitoring systems as data vacuums. 

In January, the European Data Protection Board issued guidelines governing the use of data from connected cars. They mandate that, among other restrictions, no personally identifying information can leave the car without explicit driver or passenger consent, and that a car cannot collect any more data than is needed to operate its safety system or to perform another task for which the owner has given specific consent. As a result, it is shaping up to be very difficult for automakers to deploy the kinds of in-cabin monitoring systems in the EU that they are developing for American and Asian markets, Anne-Gabrielle Haie, a Belgium-based data protection attorney with DLA Piper, told Motherboard.

The U.S. is another matter. Several laws, ranging from the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) to the Federal Trade Commission Act (FTCA), provide limited mechanisms to prevent companies from egregiously and repeatedly misusing the kind of data an in-cabin monitoring system will collect. For example, under the FCRA, a car manufacturer would have to notify its customers before providing certain kinds of information to the driver’s insurance agency.

But the laws currently in place are insufficient to protect consumers from the technology that will soon be rolling off production lines, Maneesha Mithal, associate director of the FTC’s Division of Privacy and Identity Protection, told Motherboard. “That’s part of the reason why the majority of [FTC] commissioners have recommended the enactment of federal privacy legislation that would set up the rules of the road in this area,” she said.

In-cabin monitoring systems will also be highly attractive to police, who, as Forbes has documented in detail, have been demanding data from connected cars for years. In the U.S., there is nothing to stop police from going after that data, whereas the EU rules place special considerations on the circumstances under which law enforcement can access data that may evidence criminal activity, such as speeding.

The Georgia Supreme Court recently ruled that police must have a warrant before accessing car data, but the case law in this specific space is in its infancy, Chelsey Colbert, the policy counsel for mobility and location data at the Future of Privacy Forum, told Motherboard. “If car manufacturers are worried about law enforcement access, they should consider privacy and security by design, she said. “For example, they could use technologies that don’t collect or store identifiable data.”

On the edge of privacy

Twenty of the largest automakers have promised to self-govern their privacy practices for connected cars and, in 2014, signed on to an unenforceable, industry-created set of principles. There is ample evidence those guidelines won’t stop them from cashing in on driver data, though. GM, for example, is one of the signatories. But in 2018, the Detroit Free Press revealed that the company had collected data on the radio listening habits of more than 90,000 drivers in an attempt to find correlations between what people listened to in their cars and what products they purchased.

Affectiva, Xperi, and Eyeris say that their systems are all designed so that the most sensitive data, such as actual video recordings of passengers, can be processed in the car—known as edge processing—rather than uploaded to a cloud controlled by an automaker or rideshare company. 

But since the automakers are setting their own rules, they could, of course, decide they want that data after all. Cerence’s boasts about the amount of data it uploads to the cloud from vehicles each month suggest its partners—which, in addition to automakers, includes Microsoft, LG, and a number of other tech companies—have little interest in ensuring edge processing for privacy purposes.

“If they install sensors in the car, it’s going to go out of the car and be viewed by the car manufacturer,” Ben Volkow, the CEO of Otonomo, a car data brokerage based in Israel, told Motherboard. “[Automakers] need to get approval, and after you get approval you need to give the driver the opportunity to, at any point, say, ‘please erase my data.’ That’s supposed to be supported, but I’ll tell you in reality it’s definitely not supported.”

Car Companies Want to Monitor Your Every Move With Emotion-Detecting AI syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[mikemortgage]

Northleaf lands US$2.2B from abroad to pump into private equity

TORONTO — Private markets fund manager Northleaf Capital Partners has raised US$2.2 billion from new and existing institutional investors to bolster its global private equity program.

While the Toronto-based firm invests globally, this marks the first time funds were sought from institutional investors outside Canada for the private equity program. The new international investors are primarily pension plans and private banks based in northern Europe, according to Northleaf managing partner Stuart Waugh.

In an interview, he said Canada will remain the core market for raising investment funds for private equity, but added that the firm’s mid-market strategy and global investment track record “resonated” with the overseas investors.

“The last time we went out to the market and raised private equity capital would’ve been 2013-2014, and we raised in total about US$1.3 billion that time around, so it’s a significant step up (this time),” Waugh said.

“From the investor perspective, that really comes back to the track record, (and) how the team has continued to grow,” he said. “We’ve continued to expand the footprint and, you know, the deal flow has been strong, and returns have been pretty much as advertised.”

Northleaf, a unit of Toronto-Dominion Bank before a 2009 spinoff, now manages more than US$11 billion on behalf of institutional investors in three programs: private equity, private credit and infrastructure. The firm targets mid-market private investments through a combination of transactions including direct minority investments and co-investments, and secondary market transactions.

Waugh said Northleaf, whose team of 110 people is in seven offices spanning four countries, is able to attract money from a variety of institutional investors — including large pension funds — because it has specialized in a desirable segment of the market.

The firm is benefiting not only from its own track record but from a “broader shift across the global markets towards more exposure to privates,” he said, noting that some large pension funds are moving as much as 40 or even 50 per cent of their assets into private investments, rather than the public markets.

“What we’re seeing is that same thing now being applied at the mid-to-smaller institutional level, the family offices, the endowments, that same trend is taking hold and … we’re seeing that reflected in the fund raising,” he said.

“The private markets really have demonstrated, through the (2008 financial) crisis and beyond, their ability to, if you do it well, to really generate good returns.”

A significant portion of the funds managed by Northleaf come from the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, though it was not a participant in the latest capital raise, Waugh said.

“We’ve still got capital (from CPPIB) that we’re investing … it’s progressing well, but there’s still some dry powder there, so we’ll finish that up before we go back to them.”

While Northleaf isn’t on the hunt to raise more money for infrastructure investments, Waugh said the team is closely watching developments at the Canada Infrastructure Bank. The Crown corporation was created to use federal support to attract private sector and institutional investment to new, revenue-generating infrastructure projects.

“Our view is we’re supportive of anything that brings more well-structured essential assets to the private markets,” Waugh said, adding that Northleaf targets infrastructure deals between $75 million and $200 million.

“To the extent the (Infrastructure) Bank can help catalyze some of those or even package up portfolios … and put them into a size that somebody like us with a mid-market orientation can get organized around, that could be really beneficial,” he said.

from Financial Post https://ift.tt/2NmS4dU via IFTTT Blogger Mortgage Tumblr Mortgage Evernote Mortgage Wordpress Mortgage href="https://www.diigo.com/user/gelsi11">Diigo Mortgage

[ajewishamericandream-blog]

Research Paper on School Segregation

We’re All in This Together: Why Integrated Education is Necessary for the American Dream

          Although there are varying definitions of the American Dream, as diverse and unique as all of the individuals in the country that find themselves striving for it, almost every form of the Dream requires education. From being a participant of civil society, to attaining a reputable job and ample material success, to having a stable and caring family, education is the key to achieving personal goals. However, it is an unfortunate truth that not everybody in America has equal access to education. This problem is no more apparent than in examining the current state of the K-12 education system. Children from affluent families living in equally wealthy communities have access to the best quality public school, while the poorest children, tending to come from ethnic minority backgrounds, are doomed to attend inadequate schools, creating a vicious cycle in which the poor are unable to educate themselves and rise out of poverty. Even though deliberate segregation of schools has been officially outlawed, de facto segregation continues to exist, putting a multitude of students at a tremendous disadvantage. Rectifying unequal opportunities in schooling and taking steps to integrate public schools is necessary to keep the American Dream alive.

          The famous 1954 U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education was a unanimous ruling that the “separate but equal” doctrine, that allowed many states to divide white and black students into separate schools, was unconstitutional. As a result of the decision, all schools needed to be integrated as soon as possible by law.  As recently as 2015, however, “Brown’s promise is still lost in fantasyland” (Bond.) Children from disadvantaged backgrounds have historically not had equal access to quality education when compared to their richer and whiter counterparts, and this problem continues into today. The reason the Bond writes that the decision intended by the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education is in “fantasyland” is because, in many communities, children of disadvantaged backgrounds have been unable to reap the benefits of supposedly desegregated schools. Federal reports demonstrate that “the number of high-poverty schools serving primarily black and brown students more than doubled between 2001 and 2014” (Strauss). In other words, children from minority communities are getting the short end of the stick when it comes to education, being stuck in schools that have high poverty rates and low funding, and by extension little to no resources to provide for the education of students. The current state of segregation in schools is having a negative impact on students’ ability to achieve. Low quality schools fail to prepare students to meet the challenges of the real world, making the American Dream seem like a distant possibility to them. Schools serving as vast majority of African-American and Hispanic students usually tend to “have fewer resources and attract less experienced teachers, have high teacher turnover, and have higher dropout rates” (Quinlan). Furthermore, there exists a racial achievement gap, in which white students tend to outperform their minority counterparts in academic measures, which is exacerbated by white students usually having access to better quality schools due to living in more economically prosperous areas. America is a country that supposedly prides itself on providing an equal opportunity for all to succeed, regardless of their background. In order to preserve the idea of the American Dream, it is necessary that school segregation be eliminated, as it contributes to lower quality of learning for a significant number of students.

                      Lack of equal access to quality education, caused by segregation of minority and majority students, is a serious problem that requires complex steps to solve. In the past, efforts to desegregate schools have primarily focused on busing. Quinlan defines busing as a model of desegregation in which, “mostly black and Hispanic students are bused from their neighborhoods in low-income, urban areas to attend mostly white schools in more affluent, suburban areas.” This has proved to be unpopular in many communities, mainly because there is little evidence that the exorbitant costs are justified by meaningful gains in student achievement. Continually, busing fails to address the underlying problem that causes school segregation, and that is residential segregation. In neighborhoods all across America, it is an all too common thread to see members of certain ethnic or racial groups living in clustered communities. Residential segregation has most of its roots in racist public policy in the past. For example, in New York City, “when the federal government and city collaborated to build public housing in the mid-twentieth century, they built separate projects for whites” (Strauss). The persisting legacy of segregationist policy can be seen in the still-separate neighborhoods for whites and minorities in New York City, exemplified by places like Stuyvesant Town, Levittown, and the Williamsburg and Harlem River Houses. Therefore, a benevolent effort to desegregate schools will also require housing policies that promote integration. The American government can begin efforts to remedy this problem by reforming the Section 8 public housing system to ensure that diversity is maximized and areas are not being de facto segregated. In addition to fixing residential segregation, citizens have to take the difficult yet rewarding step to push their local school districts to desegregate. Although many school districts around the country have pending orders to integrate their schools, they are not taking meaningful steps to do so because the courts have failed to follow up and enforce their rulings (Quilan). Getting white families involved in this effort is especially difficult, for even though there is no evidence that integration of minority students into other schools hurts white students, stereotypes and misconceptions often prevail over facts (Bond). A combination of government efforts, community involvement, and education is key to fixing the segregation problem.

                      The impact that school desegregation will have on keeping the American Dream alive is one that cannot be understated. Integration of minority groups within mainstream American society is best when it starts at a young age, and there is no better place to do this than a public school. Minority groups fare better for themselves and contribute more to society when they feel included within America’s “melting pot.” For example, the 2001 National Jewish Population Survey reveals that most Jewish-Americans do not feel like outsiders in their community due to a combination of increased bonds within the Jewish community and feelings of belonging to a group outside of being Jewish (Alper & Olson). Because of their inclusion within the mainstream culture, American Jews have been great economic contributors and have bolstered America’s role as a booming economy. The Jewish community can be said to have reached the American Dream, but now it is turn for other communities to be able to say the same. Desegregation of schools has, on all fronts, contributed to both greater student achievement on standardized tests and a higher self-esteem among minority students (Quinlan). Although undoing decades of oppression and reversing patterns of segregation that have dominated society, taking the difficult steps to integrate young people of all backgrounds can make the American Dream a true reality.

Works Cited

Alper, Becka A. & Olson, Daniel V.A. “Do Jews Feel Like Outsiders In America? The Impact of Anti-Semitism, Friendships, and Religious Geography.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, vol. 50, no. 4, 2011, pp. 822-830.

Bond, Julian. “With All Deliberate Speed: Brown v. Board of Education.” Indiana Law Journal, vol. 90, no. 4, 2015, pp. 1671-1681.

Quinlan, Casey. “School Segregation Is Bad And Getting Worse, But It’s Supposed To Be Solved Voluntarily.” Think Progress, 23 Nov. 2015, https://thinkprogress.org/school-segregation-is-bad-and-getting-worse-but-its-supposed-to-be-solved-voluntarily-69409f507d1c.

Strauss, Valerie. “The reason America’s schools are so segregated - and the only way to fix it.” The Washington Post, 14 Dec. 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/12/14/the-reason-americas-schools-are-so-segregated-and-the-only-way-to-fix-it/.

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In Pennsylvania, Prohibition is Finally Losing Its Grip

For decades, Pennsylvania has had some of the strangest rules about where, and how, you could buy alcohol.

I knew them well. Having grown up in Pennsylvania and returned there for a few years after college, I got used to explaining those rules—”I know, I know, it’s crazy, but we have to stop here to get the beer, and then we have to drive across town to get the whiskey”—to out-of-staters who would come to visit. Every state has weird rules about liquor, but everyone could agree that Pennsylvania’s were the worst.

Beer was only available from distributors and you couldn’t get anything smaller than a full case (24 bottles or cans), unless you went to a bar that had a license to sell six-packs to-go and paid a hefty premium for the convenience. Wine and spirits were only available from one of the 600 or so state-owned-and-operated liquor stores. In rural parts of the state, that could mean driving half an hour or more out of the way, since the state stores are clustered in cities and suburbs.

That’s changing. In fact, the changes have come so quickly that someone who moved out of the state as recently as 2013—as I did—can be stunned when returning home to visit friends and family. Now, I’m the confused out-of-stater who needs an explanation about where you can go to buy which products.

Many of the state’s rules were legacies of Prohibition. But they began changing in the early 2010s, when a few large grocery stores began exploiting a loophole in state law that let them operate with a restaurant license and sell six-packs of beer. Unsurprisingly, the idea proved popular. Even as political efforts at broader booze reforms went nowhere in Harrisburg, the state capital, it became gradually easier to buy smaller quantities of beer. Other changes in the past few years made it legal for beer distributors to sell 12-packs, then six-packs. After a major political compromise in 2016, it’s now possible to buy beer and wine at grocery stores. A limited number of large convenience stores attached to gas stations can also sell beer to-go, after a longstanding prohibition on selling booze and gasoline at the same spot was lifted last year.

For all the changes, there are still two big, related problems.

First, liberalized rules for the purchasing of wine and beer are good, but the changes have ignored hard liquor, which accounts for 53 percent of all sales in Pennsylvania’s “Fine Wine and Good Spirits” shops. For whiskey, tequila, rum, and so on, the only option is taking a trip to a state-controlled liquor store and paying the state-determined price. The second problem is that it’s still impossible to buy all types of alcohol in a single location, because the state-run liquor stores can sell wine and spirits, but not beer, while beer distributors and grocery stores can sell suds and vino, but none of the hard stuff.

Special interests on both sides of the aisle—primarily the public-sector unions representing state liquor-store employees on the left, and on the right, the beer-selling businesses unwilling to give up their special privileges and anticompetitive markets—helped keep Pennsylvania’s awkward, anachronistic system in place for decades. But they’ve seen their influence wane, ever so slightly, in the past few years. A shifting political climate and an out-of-state grocery store chain fractured the delicate balance, and a Republican speaker of the state House and Democratic governor have done their part to liberalize the state’s alcohol regulations.

Finally, Pennsylvania might be on the brink of recovering from an 83-year hangover.

—

When Prohibition was shoveled into the ashbin of history in 1933, Pennsylvania Gov. Gifford Pinchot was not a fan. An outspoken teetotaler and progressive Republican who thought liquor contributed to political corruption, Pinchot believed that “Prohibition at its worst has been better than booze at its best,” and he wasn’t afraid to keep imposing his beliefs on the people of Pennsylvania.

There wasn’t political support for a continued state-level ban on alcohol after the passage of the 21st Amendment, so Pinchot negotiated what he saw as the next best thing: a state-run liquor system that would be both wholesaler and distributor. During a special session of the state legislature called by the governor after it became obvious Prohibition’s days were numbered, he convinced lawmakers to approve a state liquor system that would discourage the purchase of alcoholic beverages “by making it as inconvenient and expensive as possible.”

The 21st Amendment wasn’t officially ratified until December 5, 1933. Less than a week earlier, on November 28, the state Senate had taken the final vote on creating the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PLCB), approving it by 33–14. Pinchot signed the bill the very next day.

Pinchot left office in 1935. He died in 1946. His state-run liquor store monopoly would remain virtually unchallenged for another 30 years.

In 1974, Gov. Milton Shapp made the first serious effort at privatizing the system. Those reforms were blocked, as the Delaware County Daily Times reported at the time, by opposition from state store clerks, beer distributors, Philadelphia-based distilleries, and the heads of the PLCB.

Each of those groups had their own interests to protect, and those protectionist tendencies have changed little in the decades since. The workers in the state stores are members of public-sector unions that hold significant sway over policy making in Harrisburg and don’t like to see the number of their members reduced.

Beer distributors fear the loss of their own fenced-off market and greater competition if other private-sector retailers gain the right to sell booze. Pennsylvania-based liquor and wine manufacturers see the PLCB’s role as the sole liquor wholesaler in the state as advantageous, since it can limit competition from out-of-state wineries and distilleries. The bureaucrats running the PLCB don’t want to lose their jobs.

And then there’s the remaining influence of the temperance movement.

“Alcohol is a drug—a dangerous drug,” Rep. Stanley Kester, chairman of the House Liquor Control Committee at the time, told the Daily Times in 1974 after reviewing Shapp’s privatization plan. “The problem is that it’s here to stay, and if you support the governor’s proposal, you’re talking about increasing the amount of alcohol.”

That same combination of political self-interest and social paternalism sank subsequent efforts at privatization launched by Gov. Dick Thornburgh in the 1980s, by Gov. Tom Ridge in the 1990s, and by Gov. Tom Corbett in the early 2010s. Without sweeping reforms to how the state system worked, changes were as slow as you’d expect from a bureaucracy left to its own devices. It wasn’t until the late 1980s that the PLCB finally did away with its post office–style stores that required customers to order their alcohol at a counter and wait for an employee to fetch it from a back room. An ill-fated experiment with “wine vending machines” in the mid-2000s cost the state millions of dollars in the name of “modernizing” the liquor-buying experience.

And in 2014, in what might be the perfect illustration of how screwy Pennsylvania’s liquor laws could somtimes be, a judge in the state ordered more than 1,300 bottles of wine poured down the drain simply because they were illegally imported. Arthur Goldman, the Pennsylvania man behind the illegal scheme to circumvent the PLCB’s monopoly, offered to sell the wine and give the profits to a Chester County Hospital, but he was prohibited from doing so (though he did get to keep 1,000 bottles of his exclusive, and expensive, collection).

Until last year, Pennsylvania was one of only two places where the state government had total control over the retail sales of wine and spirits. (Utah is the other.)

“In my view, the principal roadblock to reform has traditionally been an odd coalition of state store employee unions, fundamentalist anti-alcohol groups and organizations such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving, all of which perceive that they have legitimate interests which are not susceptible to statewide budgetary considerations,” Thornburgh, the former governor who now works as an attorney in Washington, D.C., told the Harrisburg Patriot-News in 2009.

“It would take some courageous leadership to stare down this combination, something I do not see in the Commonwealth today,” he predicted.

—

As it turned out, it wasn’t political leaders who cracked the special interests’ hold on Pennsylvania’s weird liquor laws. It was clever retailers.

In 2009, a Rochester, New York, grocery store chain, which was expanding its presence in Pennsylvania, began exploiting a loophole in the state’s alcohol sales rules. By building separate entrances and check-out lines, along with offering hot food and on-location seating, Wegman’s was able to license part of its grocery stores as restaurants, thus allowing the sale of six-packs of beer.

“People have come in and said, ‘I’m in heaven,'” Kevin Russell, store manager at the Wegman’s location in Downingtown, told the Delaware County Daily Times shortly after the first Wegman’s opened there in 2009.

The special interests weren’t so enthusiastic. The Pennsylvania Malt Beverage Distributors Association, which represents beer distributors in the state, took the grocery chain to court in an effort to maintain its members’ monopoly on beer sales. The state Supreme Court eventually sided with Wegman’s, and soon other grocery stores were using the same tactic to sell six-packs of beer.

Wegman’s innovation coincided with a renewed push in the state legislature for writing better rules for booze in Pennsylvania. For the first time, the special interests defending the status quo were on the defensive.

Republicans swept into control of the state government after the 2010 elections, and newly elected Republican Gov. Tom Corbett and then–House Majority Leader Mike Turzai (R–Allegheny) put liquor privatization near the top of the agenda, promising to succeed where others had failed. During Corbett’s four years in office, there were annual efforts to rewrite the state’s liquor laws and divest state control over wholesale and retail liquor sales. They never got closer than in June 2013, when a full privatization plan fell just short of passing during that year’s budget negotiations.

Corbett lost re-election to a Democrat, current Gov. Tom Wolf, in 2014. That seemed to initially cool talk of privatizing the liquor system, since Democrats and their labor union allies generally oppose the idea. Instead, quite the opposite has happened. Wolf and Republican leaders in the state legislature have not seen eye-to-eye on much else (Pennsylvania went more than nine months without a budget during Wolf’s first year in office), but liquor has been the notable exception. While Wolf did veto a GOP-passed liquor privatization bill in 2015, the governor signed a different bill last year transforming the way Pennsylvanians buy booze.

That law, Act 39 of 2016, allows bars and restaurants (including those “restaurants” inside grocery stores) to sell wine to-go, allows convenience stores attached to gas stations to sell beer, and allows beer distributors to sell six-packs for the first time (earlier reforms approved by the Wolf administration had allowed the sale of 12-packs in addition to the traditional 24-packs).

“One huge plus is you don’t have to spend $70 to try out a new beer,” says Jordan Weikel, a Berks County resident, of the changes that let Pennsylvanians buy smaller quanties of beer than a 24-bottle case.

Even with the changes, the system is awkward and complicated. Purchasing beer or wine at a grocery store still requires using separate check-out lines for food and alcohol.

“When you are picking up a pizza and a beer for dinner, you have to wait in two different lines,” says Kate DiCicco, who lives in Philadelphia. “You have to strategize how to get warm-ish beer but a fresh cooked pizza or cold beer with the chance of knocking your warm gooey pizza during the Check-Out Biathlon.”

And if you want to get a bottle of tequila to go with that pizza—no, that’s actually not a bad combination at all—you still have to make another stop at one of the state-run liquor stores, because liquor was left out of last year’s reforms.

This year—maybe—that could finally change.

“The idea here is to increase consumer choice and convenience,” says state Rep. Mike Reece, a Republican lawmaker from the hilly Pittsburgh suburbs of Westmoreland County. He’s the lead sponsor on one of four major liquor reforms that cleared the state House this week. While each of the bills offer something to like, Reece’s proposal—H.B. 438—is the one that probably holds the most interest for consumers, because it would allow liquor to be sold alongside beer and wine in any of Pennsylvania’s grocery stores and beer distributors that pay for the license to do so.

At last, the dream of a one-stop-shop for all types of alcohol could be realized.

“I think most elected officials recognize that the people who elected us want this, they want to be able to get everything in the same place,” Reece tells Reason. “I think that’s the direction we’ve been moving for a few years.”

His proposal would open up private retail sales for liquor, but would keep the state as a monopolistic wholesaler. Retailers would have to purchase all liquor through the PLCB and would pay a 2 percent tax to the state on those purchases. That’s meant to respond to the argument that privatization would eliminate an important revenue stream for the state budget. According to the PLCB, liquor sales and taxes accounted for more than $600 million in last year’s state budget. That money funds enforcement activities run by the state police, along with drug and alcohol abuse treatment programs.

In theory, if all 10,000-plus newly eligible locations pony up the $2,000 for a permit to sell liquor, the state could make more than $21 million up front, Reece says.

—

“People in general have been for more privatization,” says Terry Madonna, a professor of political science at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster who conducts semiannual polls on Pennsylvanians’ political and policy preferences.

That’s probably because it’s so difficult to get liquor in Pennsylvania. According to data from the Distilled Spirits Council of America, which favors privatization in Pennsylvania, there are an average of 3.8 liquor retailers (meaning any place where it’s possible to buy a bottle of hard alcohol) per 10,000 people in the United States. In states where the government exercises control over liquor sales, either at the wholesale or at the retail level, there are about 1.76 outlets per 10,000 people.

In Pennsylvania, there are 0.67 liquor stores for every 10,000 people. The state would have to add more than 900 new liquor stores just to approach the national average.

That’s unlikely to happen without some form of privatization. If not by allowing grocery stores to sell liquor alongside beer and wine, it could happen by opening up so-called “agency shops”—privately run liquor stores allowed to compete with the state-run wine and spirit shops. That’s what several other states, including New Hampshire and Ohio, do.

Pennsylvania could join that group. Along with Reece’s bill, the state House this week also approved H.B. 991, which would allow the creation of privately owned retail liquor stores to compete with the state-run ones. The PLCB would maintain monopoly control over the wholesale level, but the retail monopoly would be gone. Consumers would enjoy greater convenience, the state’s economy could benefit from the creation of new jobs, and the state budget might even get a boost from additional tax revenue if liquor sales increase.

Two other bills, both sponsored by Turzai, the Republican speaker of the House, also cleared the lower chamber this week. One of them (H.B. 975) would allow wine retailers and importers to have greater flexibility over supply and pricing, effectively chipping away at the state’s wholesale monopoly, while the other (H.B. 1075) would completely abolish that monopoly by fully divesting the state’s wholesale control over wine and liquor sales to a private company.

Together, the package of bills are meant to give consumers and businesses greater freedom to buy and sell alcohol with less state control. But, to varying degrees, they would threaten the jobs of the 5,000 or so public union members who work at the PLCB and in the state-run liquor stores.

Wendell Young, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1776, which represents most of the state’s liquor-store employees, called the Republican proposals “a disappointing but expected effort” to “score a quick buck on new licenses.”

“The state system of liquor sales is already a successful model providing regular profits and good jobs,” Young said.

Massive Republican majorities in the state House and state Senate—the largest margins enjoyed by either party in more than 50 years in Pennsylvania—and the general rightward shift of the GOP have weakened union influence in Harrisburg, but it remains a significant factor. Wolf, the governor, took the lead on earlier reforms like allowing beer distributors to break up cases and sell six-packs, but those changes did not bring the former businessman into a direct confrontation with the labor unions. Supporting liquor reforms would.

That’s why “the difficulty for Wolf, in the long run, is with organized labor,” says Madonna.

Further complicating things is the prospect of a tough re-election fight in 2018—Wolf is the only Democratic governor of a state won by President Donald Trump. He’ll want support from the politically powerful labor unions.

Wolf says he’s against the proposed expansion of private liquor sales, and says the state needs more time to gauge whether last year’s privatization of wine sales is working.

“The governor does not support these bills,” J.J. Abbott, Wolf’s press secretary, tells Reason via email. “He is currently focused on allowing the consumer-centric reforms enacted last year to be fully implemented and ensuring the PLCB is working to maximize returns and consumer convenience.”

“I get that. I respect it,” Reece says. “I just disagree with the notion that the state should be in the business of selling alcohol.”

Even though it’s only April, all eyes in Harrisburg are already looking ahead to June, when the state budget gets negotiated. Major policy items usually rise or fall during those crucial weeks, and Reece is hopeful the Republican-controlled legislature will muster the votes for his liquor bill in order to give it a seat “at the table for discussion during the budget talks.

—

Ernest Hemingway observed that bankruptcy (or getting drunk, for that matter) is something that happens gradually, then all at once. The same, it seems, could be true of the collapse of privileges bestowed by government that run counter to the will of the people and common sense.

Pennsylvania’s state-run liquor system has survived more than a half-dozen attempts, by member of both parties, to kill it. Ironically, a system created by a governor who feared that easy access to alcohol would contribute to political corruption has endured in large part because of the power of special interests in the state government.

The system, and those special interests, may stave off the final blow this year, but something has changed—something that goes beyond the ability to buy a six-pack and a bottle of wine in a grocery store, though I’m not sure I’ve gotten over the wonder of being able to do that.

I asked Steve Miskin, who in his role as Turzai’s spokesman since 2010 has probably answered more questions from reporters about possible changes to Pennsylvania’s liquor laws than any single person in the history of the commonwealth, why the pace of reform has quickened in recent years. It’s the hard work of Republican members in the state House, who refused to let the issue drop even when a Democratic governor took over, he says, like any good spokesman should. Fine. But what else?

“The timing was right,” he says. “This is what the people want.”

Charlie Gerow, a Harrisburg-based Republican political consultant, says it wasn’t just an accident of history. The bizarre mix of “prohibitionism and socialism” survived previous privatization efforts despite public support for reform, he argues, because governors like Thornburgh and Ridge saw their privatization efforts fail and moved on to other issues. Turzai has not.

It’s true. Since becoming majority leader in 2010, Turzai has made liquor privatization his biggest issue year after year. When the liquor privatization bill was on the brink of passing in 2013, I glimpsed Turzai as he left the meeting where Corbett decided not to press the issue. The governor could have asked Senate leaders to try again; they were refusing to pass the liquor bill unless the state House voted for more spending on roads and bridges, and Turzai was unable to corrale the necessary votes to get it done. He was crushed. The next year, he could have moved on to something else. Instead, he was trying again.

That tenacity might be finally paying off.

“His dogged determination to get rid of the system is the single biggest factor in the successes that have already occurred,” Gerow says, “and of the ones yet to come.”

If Pinchot gets the blame for creating the liquor system, despite the fact that plenty of lawmakers went along with it, then Turzai probably deserves to be remembered in the same way when it all, eventually, inevitably, comes down. Give some credit to Wegman’s, too, for landing the first critical blow that weakened the left-right alliance of beer distributors and public sector unions.

It’s hard to say what will happen between now and the end of June. The state Senate has all four liquor bills and the state budget bill (which the state House passed earlier this month), and Wolf will get to have his say as well.

Still, there’s a better chance in 2017 than at any other time in the 83 years since the end of Prohibition. Even if Pennsylvania’s state-run liquor system probably isn’t going to hear last call anytime soon, it might at least get a bit more competition.

Madonna, who has closely followed state politics for decades in Pennsylvania, admits that the state has passed a tipping point in the reform of its arcane alcohol laws, though he admits he’s not sure what things will look like in a few years. One thing is fairly clear, though, he says: The state is finally putting the ghost of Gov. Gifford Pinchot to rest

“I think it’s virtually inevitable now,” Madonna says, “that Pennsylvania is moving towards the privatization of the retail sales of alcohol—all alcohol.”

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In Pennsylvania, Prohibition is Finally Losing Its Grip

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In Pennsylvania, Prohibition is Finally Losing Its Grip

For decades, Pennsylvania has had some of the strangest rules about where, and how, you could buy alcohol.

I knew them well. Having grown up in Pennsylvania and returned there for a few years after college, I got used to explaining those rules—”I know, I know, it’s crazy, but we have to stop here to get the beer, and then we have to drive across town to get the whiskey”—to out-of-staters who would come to visit. Every state has weird rules about liquor, but everyone could agree that Pennsylvania’s were the worst.

Beer was only available from distributors and you couldn’t get anything smaller than a full case (24 bottles or cans), unless you went to a bar that had a license to sell six-packs to-go and paid a hefty premium for the convenience. Wine and spirits were only available from one of the 600 or so state-owned-and-operated liquor stores. In rural parts of the state, that could mean driving half an hour or more out of the way, since the state stores are clustered in cities and suburbs.

That’s changing. In fact, the changes have come so quickly that someone who moved out of the state as recently as 2013—as I did—can be stunned when returning home to visit friends and family. Now, I’m the confused out-of-stater who needs an explanation about where you can go to buy which products.

Many of the state’s rules were legacies of Prohibition. But they began changing in the early 2010s, when a few large grocery stores began exploiting a loophole in state law that let them operate with a restaurant license and sell six-packs of beer. Unsurprisingly, the idea proved popular. Even as political efforts at broader booze reforms went nowhere in Harrisburg, the state capital, it became gradually easier to buy smaller quantities of beer. Other changes in the past few years made it legal for beer distributors to sell 12-packs, then six-packs. After a major political compromise in 2016, it’s now possible to buy beer and wine at grocery stores. A limited number of large convenience stores attached to gas stations can also sell beer to-go, after a longstanding prohibition on selling booze and gasoline at the same spot was lifted last year.

For all the changes, there are still two big, related problems.

First, liberalized rules for the purchasing of wine and beer are good, but the changes have ignored hard liquor, which accounts for 53 percent of all sales in Pennsylvania’s “Fine Wine and Good Spirits” shops. For whiskey, tequila, rum, and so on, the only option is taking a trip to a state-controlled liquor store and paying the state-determined price. The second problem is that it’s still impossible to buy all types of alcohol in a single location, because the state-run liquor stores can sell wine and spirits, but not beer, while beer distributors and grocery stores can sell suds and vino, but none of the hard stuff.

Special interests on both sides of the aisle—primarily the public-sector unions representing state liquor-store employees on the left, and on the right, the beer-selling businesses unwilling to give up their special privileges and anticompetitive markets—helped keep Pennsylvania’s awkward, anachronistic system in place for decades. But they’ve seen their influence wane, ever so slightly, in the past few years. A shifting political climate and an out-of-state grocery store chain fractured the delicate balance, and a Republican speaker of the state House and Democratic governor have done their part to liberalize the state’s alcohol regulations.

Finally, Pennsylvania might be on the brink of recovering from an 83-year hangover.

—

When Prohibition was shoveled into the ashbin of history in 1933, Pennsylvania Gov. Gifford Pinchot was not a fan. An outspoken teetotaler and progressive Republican who thought liquor contributed to political corruption, Pinchot believed that “Prohibition at its worst has been better than booze at its best,” and he wasn’t afraid to keep imposing his beliefs on the people of Pennsylvania.

There wasn’t political support for a continued state-level ban on alcohol after the passage of the 21st Amendment, so Pinchot negotiated what he saw as the next best thing: a state-run liquor system that would be both wholesaler and distributor. During a special session of the state legislature called by the governor after it became obvious Prohibition’s days were numbered, he convinced lawmakers to approve a state liquor system that would discourage the purchase of alcoholic beverages “by making it as inconvenient and expensive as possible.”

The 21st Amendment wasn’t officially ratified until December 5, 1933. Less than a week earlier, on November 28, the state Senate had taken the final vote on creating the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PLCB), approving it by 33–14. Pinchot signed the bill the very next day.

Pinchot left office in 1935. He died in 1946. His state-run liquor store monopoly would remain virtually unchallenged for another 30 years.

In 1974, Gov. Milton Shapp made the first serious effort at privatizing the system. Those reforms were blocked, as the Delaware County Daily Times reported at the time, by opposition from state store clerks, beer distributors, Philadelphia-based distilleries, and the heads of the PLCB.

Each of those groups had their own interests to protect, and those protectionist tendencies have changed little in the decades since. The workers in the state stores are members of public-sector unions that hold significant sway over policy making in Harrisburg and don’t like to see the number of their members reduced.

Beer distributors fear the loss of their own fenced-off market and greater competition if other private-sector retailers gain the right to sell booze. Pennsylvania-based liquor and wine manufacturers see the PLCB’s role as the sole liquor wholesaler in the state as advantageous, since it can limit competition from out-of-state wineries and distilleries. The bureaucrats running the PLCB don’t want to lose their jobs.

And then there’s the remaining influence of the temperance movement.

“Alcohol is a drug—a dangerous drug,” Rep. Stanley Kester, chairman of the House Liquor Control Committee at the time, told the Daily Times in 1974 after reviewing Shapp’s privatization plan. “The problem is that it’s here to stay, and if you support the governor’s proposal, you’re talking about increasing the amount of alcohol.”

That same combination of political self-interest and social paternalism sank subsequent efforts at privatization launched by Gov. Dick Thornburgh in the 1980s, by Gov. Tom Ridge in the 1990s, and by Gov. Tom Corbett in the early 2010s. Without sweeping reforms to how the state system worked, changes were as slow as you’d expect from a bureaucracy left to its own devices. It wasn’t until the late 1980s that the PLCB finally did away with its post office–style stores that required customers to order their alcohol at a counter and wait for an employee to fetch it from a back room. An ill-fated experiment with “wine vending machines” in the mid-2000s cost the state millions of dollars in the name of “modernizing” the liquor-buying experience.

And in 2014, in what might be the perfect illustration of how screwy Pennsylvania’s liquor laws could somtimes be, a judge in the state ordered more than 1,300 bottles of wine poured down the drain simply because they were illegally imported. Arthur Goldman, the Pennsylvania man behind the illegal scheme to circumvent the PLCB’s monopoly, offered to sell the wine and give the profits to a Chester County Hospital, but he was prohibited from doing so (though he did get to keep 1,000 bottles of his exclusive, and expensive, collection).

Until last year, Pennsylvania was one of only two places where the state government had total control over the retail sales of wine and spirits. (Utah is the other.)

“In my view, the principal roadblock to reform has traditionally been an odd coalition of state store employee unions, fundamentalist anti-alcohol groups and organizations such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving, all of which perceive that they have legitimate interests which are not susceptible to statewide budgetary considerations,” Thornburgh, the former governor who now works as an attorney in Washington, D.C., told the Harrisburg Patriot-News in 2009.

“It would take some courageous leadership to stare down this combination, something I do not see in the Commonwealth today,” he predicted.

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As it turned out, it wasn’t political leaders who cracked the special interests’ hold on Pennsylvania’s weird liquor laws. It was clever retailers.

In 2009, a Rochester, New York, grocery store chain, which was expanding its presence in Pennsylvania, began exploiting a loophole in the state’s alcohol sales rules. By building separate entrances and check-out lines, along with offering hot food and on-location seating, Wegman’s was able to license part of its grocery stores as restaurants, thus allowing the sale of six-packs of beer.

“People have come in and said, ‘I’m in heaven,'” Kevin Russell, store manager at the Wegman’s location in Downingtown, told the Delaware County Daily Times shortly after the first Wegman’s opened there in 2009.

The special interests weren’t so enthusiastic. The Pennsylvania Malt Beverage Distributors Association, which represents beer distributors in the state, took the grocery chain to court in an effort to maintain its members’ monopoly on beer sales. The state Supreme Court eventually sided with Wegman’s, and soon other grocery stores were using the same tactic to sell six-packs of beer.

Wegman’s innovation coincided with a renewed push in the state legislature for writing better rules for booze in Pennsylvania. For the first time, the special interests defending the status quo were on the defensive.

Republicans swept into control of the state government after the 2010 elections, and newly elected Republican Gov. Tom Corbett and then–House Majority Leader Mike Turzai (R–Allegheny) put liquor privatization near the top of the agenda, promising to succeed where others had failed. During Corbett’s four years in office, there were annual efforts to rewrite the state’s liquor laws and divest state control over wholesale and retail liquor sales. They never got closer than in June 2013, when a full privatization plan fell just short of passing during that year’s budget negotiations.

Corbett lost re-election to a Democrat, current Gov. Tom Wolf, in 2014. That seemed to initially cool talk of privatizing the liquor system, since Democrats and their labor union allies generally oppose the idea. Instead, quite the opposite has happened. Wolf and Republican leaders in the state legislature have not seen eye-to-eye on much else (Pennsylvania went more than nine months without a budget during Wolf’s first year in office), but liquor has been the notable exception. While Wolf did veto a GOP-passed liquor privatization bill in 2015, the governor signed a different bill last year transforming the way Pennsylvanians buy booze.

That law, Act 39 of 2016, allows bars and restaurants (including those “restaurants” inside grocery stores) to sell wine to-go, allows convenience stores attached to gas stations to sell beer, and allows beer distributors to sell six-packs for the first time (earlier reforms approved by the Wolf administration had allowed the sale of 12-packs in addition to the traditional 24-packs).

“One huge plus is you don’t have to spend $70 to try out a new beer,” says Jordan Weikel, a Berks County resident, of the changes that let Pennsylvanians buy smaller quanties of beer than a 24-bottle case.

Even with the changes, the system is awkward and complicated. Purchasing beer or wine at a grocery store still requires using separate check-out lines for food and alcohol.

“When you are picking up a pizza and a beer for dinner, you have to wait in two different lines,” says Kate DiCicco, who lives in Philadelphia. “You have to strategize how to get warm-ish beer but a fresh cooked pizza or cold beer with the chance of knocking your warm gooey pizza during the Check-Out Biathlon.”

And if you want to get a bottle of tequila to go with that pizza—no, that’s actually not a bad combination at all—you still have to make another stop at one of the state-run liquor stores, because liquor was left out of last year’s reforms.

This year—maybe—that could finally change.

“The idea here is to increase consumer choice and convenience,” says state Rep. Mike Reece, a Republican lawmaker from the hilly Pittsburgh suburbs of Westmoreland County. He’s the lead sponsor on one of four major liquor reforms that cleared the state House this week. While each of the bills offer something to like, Reece’s proposal—H.B. 438—is the one that probably holds the most interest for consumers, because it would allow liquor to be sold alongside beer and wine in any of Pennsylvania’s grocery stores and beer distributors that pay for the license to do so.

At last, the dream of a one-stop-shop for all types of alcohol could be realized.

“I think most elected officials recognize that the people who elected us want this, they want to be able to get everything in the same place,” Reece tells Reason. “I think that’s the direction we’ve been moving for a few years.”

His proposal would open up private retail sales for liquor, but would keep the state as a monopolistic wholesaler. Retailers would have to purchase all liquor through the PLCB and would pay a 2 percent tax to the state on those purchases. That’s meant to respond to the argument that privatization would eliminate an important revenue stream for the state budget. According to the PLCB, liquor sales and taxes accounted for more than $600 million in last year’s state budget. That money funds enforcement activities run by the state police, along with drug and alcohol abuse treatment programs.

In theory, if all 10,000-plus newly eligible locations pony up the $2,000 for a permit to sell liquor, the state could make more than $21 million up front, Reece says.

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“People in general have been for more privatization,” says Terry Madonna, a professor of political science at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster who conducts semiannual polls on Pennsylvanians’ political and policy preferences.

That’s probably because it’s so difficult to get liquor in Pennsylvania. According to data from the Distilled Spirits Council of America, which favors privatization in Pennsylvania, there are an average of 3.8 liquor retailers (meaning any place where it’s possible to buy a bottle of hard alcohol) per 10,000 people in the United States. In states where the government exercises control over liquor sales, either at the wholesale or at the retail level, there are about 1.76 outlets per 10,000 people.

In Pennsylvania, there are 0.67 liquor stores for every 10,000 people. The state would have to add more than 900 new liquor stores just to approach the national average.

That’s unlikely to happen without some form of privatization. If not by allowing grocery stores to sell liquor alongside beer and wine, it could happen by opening up so-called “agency shops”—privately run liquor stores allowed to compete with the state-run wine and spirit shops. That’s what several other states, including New Hampshire and Ohio, do.

Pennsylvania could join that group. Along with Reece’s bill, the state House this week also approved H.B. 991, which would allow the creation of privately owned retail liquor stores to compete with the state-run ones. The PLCB would maintain monopoly control over the wholesale level, but the retail monopoly would be gone. Consumers would enjoy greater convenience, the state’s economy could benefit from the creation of new jobs, and the state budget might even get a boost from additional tax revenue if liquor sales increase.

Two other bills, both sponsored by Turzai, the Republican speaker of the House, also cleared the lower chamber this week. One of them (H.B. 975) would allow wine retailers and importers to have greater flexibility over supply and pricing, effectively chipping away at the state’s wholesale monopoly, while the other (H.B. 1075) would completely abolish that monopoly by fully divesting the state’s wholesale control over wine and liquor sales to a private company.

Together, the package of bills are meant to give consumers and businesses greater freedom to buy and sell alcohol with less state control. But, to varying degrees, they would threaten the jobs of the 5,000 or so public union members who work at the PLCB and in the state-run liquor stores.

Wendell Young, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1776, which represents most of the state’s liquor-store employees, called the Republican proposals “a disappointing but expected effort” to “score a quick buck on new licenses.”

“The state system of liquor sales is already a successful model providing regular profits and good jobs,” Young said.

Massive Republican majorities in the state House and state Senate—the largest margins enjoyed by either party in more than 50 years in Pennsylvania—and the general rightward shift of the GOP have weakened union influence in Harrisburg, but it remains a significant factor. Wolf, the governor, took the lead on earlier reforms like allowing beer distributors to break up cases and sell six-packs, but those changes did not bring the former businessman into a direct confrontation with the labor unions. Supporting liquor reforms would.

That’s why “the difficulty for Wolf, in the long run, is with organized labor,” says Madonna.

Further complicating things is the prospect of a tough re-election fight in 2018—Wolf is the only Democratic governor of a state won by President Donald Trump. He’ll want support from the politically powerful labor unions.

Wolf says he’s against the proposed expansion of private liquor sales, and says the state needs more time to gauge whether last year’s privatization of wine sales is working.

“The governor does not support these bills,” J.J. Abbott, Wolf’s press secretary, tells Reason via email. “He is currently focused on allowing the consumer-centric reforms enacted last year to be fully implemented and ensuring the PLCB is working to maximize returns and consumer convenience.”

“I get that. I respect it,” Reece says. “I just disagree with the notion that the state should be in the business of selling alcohol.”

Even though it’s only April, all eyes in Harrisburg are already looking ahead to June, when the state budget gets negotiated. Major policy items usually rise or fall during those crucial weeks, and Reece is hopeful the Republican-controlled legislature will muster the votes for his liquor bill in order to give it a seat “at the table for discussion during the budget talks.

—

Ernest Hemingway observed that bankruptcy (or getting drunk, for that matter) is something that happens gradually, then all at once. The same, it seems, could be true of the collapse of privileges bestowed by government that run counter to the will of the people and common sense.

Pennsylvania’s state-run liquor system has survived more than a half-dozen attempts, by member of both parties, to kill it. Ironically, a system created by a governor who feared that easy access to alcohol would contribute to political corruption has endured in large part because of the power of special interests in the state government.

The system, and those special interests, may stave off the final blow this year, but something has changed—something that goes beyond the ability to buy a six-pack and a bottle of wine in a grocery store, though I’m not sure I’ve gotten over the wonder of being able to do that.

I asked Steve Miskin, who in his role as Turzai’s spokesman since 2010 has probably answered more questions from reporters about possible changes to Pennsylvania’s liquor laws than any single person in the history of the commonwealth, why the pace of reform has quickened in recent years. It’s the hard work of Republican members in the state House, who refused to let the issue drop even when a Democratic governor took over, he says, like any good spokesman should. Fine. But what else?

“The timing was right,” he says. “This is what the people want.”

Charlie Gerow, a Harrisburg-based Republican political consultant, says it wasn’t just an accident of history. The bizarre mix of “prohibitionism and socialism” survived previous privatization efforts despite public support for reform, he argues, because governors like Thornburgh and Ridge saw their privatization efforts fail and moved on to other issues. Turzai has not.

It’s true. Since becoming majority leader in 2010, Turzai has made liquor privatization his biggest issue year after year. When the liquor privatization bill was on the brink of passing in 2013, I glimpsed Turzai as he left the meeting where Corbett decided not to press the issue. The governor could have asked Senate leaders to try again; they were refusing to pass the liquor bill unless the state House voted for more spending on roads and bridges, and Turzai was unable to corrale the necessary votes to get it done. He was crushed. The next year, he could have moved on to something else. Instead, he was trying again.

That tenacity might be finally paying off.

“His dogged determination to get rid of the system is the single biggest factor in the successes that have already occurred,” Gerow says, “and of the ones yet to come.”

If Pinchot gets the blame for creating the liquor system, despite the fact that plenty of lawmakers went along with it, then Turzai probably deserves to be remembered in the same way when it all, eventually, inevitably, comes down. Give some credit to Wegman’s, too, for landing the first critical blow that weakened the left-right alliance of beer distributors and public sector unions.

It’s hard to say what will happen between now and the end of June. The state Senate has all four liquor bills and the state budget bill (which the state House passed earlier this month), and Wolf will get to have his say as well.

Still, there’s a better chance in 2017 than at any other time in the 83 years since the end of Prohibition. Even if Pennsylvania’s state-run liquor system probably isn’t going to hear last call anytime soon, it might at least get a bit more competition.

Madonna, who has closely followed state politics for decades in Pennsylvania, admits that the state has passed a tipping point in the reform of its arcane alcohol laws, though he admits he’s not sure what things will look like in a few years. One thing is fairly clear, though, he says: The state is finally putting the ghost of Gov. Gifford Pinchot to rest

“I think it’s virtually inevitable now,” Madonna says, “that Pennsylvania is moving towards the privatization of the retail sales of alcohol—all alcohol.”

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