Last week's guest spot on Coy Barefoot's WINA-AM radio show was so successful that I have been invited back to do the show again tomorrow (Thursday), September 2, during the 4:30 to 5:00 p.m. segment.
One way to measure success on talk radio is by counting the number of listeners who call in with a question or comment. A couple of months ago, I was on Coy's show and nobody called in, which was disappointing. But last week's appearance attracted five callers on the air, with two others waiting to talk when the show segment had to break for the news at the top of the hour.
So tune in tomorrow to "Charlottesville Right Now" on WINA (1070 AM) and feel free to call with questions, comments, or challenges. Both land-line and cell-phone calls are welcome.
A much broader study in Pennsylvania examined 36 years of data from 48 states with varying degrees of alcohol control. It found that private states have lower per-capita alcohol consumption and lower drunken-driving fatalities than states where government controls segments of the industry. It found no significant difference in underage drinking between the two models.
Like the recent Virginia report, it was funded by a foundation that advocates smaller government. But its author has submitted the findings to an academic journal for review, and he defended the results as unbiased.
"The fact is, we can play that game, who gets funded by whom," said Antony Davies, the Duquesne University economist who wrote the report.
"What happens is, we all have to go home, and nobody asks any questions at all. Everybody gets funded by someone," he said. "The better thing to do is to give researchers the benefit of the doubt that they're trying to find truth, and then look at the data and the studies."
Please note that, before the Post ever wrote about Antony Davies, I interviewed him for Examiner.com, and actually quoted him on the substance of his research, rather than about the game critics play about "who gets funded by whom."
“….advocates claim that the social goals of reducing alcohol consumption, underage drinking, and alcohol-related traffic deaths justify controlling wholesale and retail alcohol markets.
“Evidence from 48 states over time shows no link between market controls and these social goals.”
Dr. Davies said in the interview that “we’re not seeing any evidence that greater control leads to better social outcomes.”
There is an exception, however, that Davies pointed out over the telephone: “DUI fatalities are significantly higher in states with more control than states with less control.”
Other factors, however, are different, he said. “If you look at per capita alcohol consumption, there’s no difference as you move from full to moderate to light control.”
Underage Drinking
As to claims that state-owned liquor stores are a better protection against selling alcohol to minors and underage drinking, Davies explained that people think “at a gut level” that private businesses “have an incentive to sell to minors. We see that’s not the case.”
Why not? “If alcohol is sold in the private market, the owner of the store has a profit incentive not to sell to minors, because if he gets caught, he loses his license. He wants to protect his business.”
Davies, who is also a visiting scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Northern Virginia, concludes: “If you look at the data, there’s no clear pattern [that emerges showing] that imposing more control reduces underage drinking.”
Note, too, that I specifically name the Commonwealth Foundation while the Post refers to it vaguely as "a foundation that advocates smaller government" (as if that's a bad thing).
Helderman deserves credit for seeking out a free-market economist like Dr. Davies for her story. But you heard about him from me first -- just like Governor Bob McDonnell telling me that the Post got it wrong in reporting that he was leaning toward selling the ABC system to a single high bidder.
Disturbed by reports in the Washington Post and repeated by Josh Eboch on the Tertium Quids blog that Governor Bob McDonnell's plan to privatize the state-owned liquor monopoly could include selling the whole system to a single high bidder, I decided to find out for myself if this was true.
Governor McDonnell held the sixth of his eight planned town-hall meetings on government reform last night in Harrisonburg, on the campus of James Madison University. Afterwards, he took questions from reporters and I fired off the first one.
This is a complete transcript of our exchange:
Q: I’ll ask you a question. The Washington Post reported yesterday or the day before that the ABC privatization could include selling the whole kit and caboodle to one high bidder. Is that off the table?
A: Absolutely. We’re not going create a private monopoly to replace a government monopoly. That’s not going to happen.
Q: So the Washington Post was wrong?
A: I didn’t read that, and so I’ve never heard that.
You can see that Q&A, plus Governor McDonnell's answers to questions posed about job creation and immigration, in this video on YouTube:
By the way, my latest piece on ABC privatization, an interview with John Taylor of the Virginia Institute for Public Policy, is available for reading on Examiner.com.
During the segment from 4:30 to 5:00 p.m., Coy and I will discuss the 2010 election campaigns, primarily in Virginia's Fifth District, and other topics of interest.
No doubt some of the issues we talk about will be nabbed from my most recent posts on Examiner.com, based on one-on-one interviews with public officials, candidates, politicians, political activists, policy experts, and others from Virginia and beyond.
Yesterday the Senior Statesmen of Virginia sponsored a candidates' forum for those seeking to represent Virginia's Fifth Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.
All three candidates who qualified for the ballot were invited to participate, but only incumbent Democrat Tom Perriello and independent challenger Jeffrey Clark chose to attend. Republican nominee Robert Hurt decided to sit this one out, missing the opportunity to appear on C-SPAN, NPR, several local radio and TV stations, and in newspaper and blog reports about the debate.
I have written three articles on Examiner.com based on interviews conducted before and after the debate.
Before the event began, I chatted briefly with Jeff Clark, a Danville Tea Party activist who is running without party affiliation, a conscious decision on his part. Even though we only spoke for a few minutes, he gave me enough material for at least three articles -- though so far I have only written one of them.
After the debate ended, I had an even briefer time to speak with Congressman Perriello, who was not, as I had expected, besieged by reporters from other media outlets. He answered three questions from me, including one that is starting to get attention outside the Fifth District: How does he plan to earn the votes of self-identified libertarian voters in this election?
In his response, Perriello suggested that his vote on the comprehensive health care bill was motivated by libertarian concerns, although his explanation was thin, to say the least.
As an aside, I also recorded nearly the entire debate on video. Unfortunately, the battery on my camera expired just before Jeff Clark's closing remarks. I have posted one short excerpt on YouTube, in which the two candidates answer a question I posed (in writing via the moderator) about same-sex marriage and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). To my surprise, Clark gives the very libertarian answer that the best solution may be to get government out of the marriage business altogether. Perriello dodges the question about DOMA, both in the forum and when I asked him again later.
Here's the clip:
I did not, by the way, ask the question, "Do you believe that Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness includes gay marriage?" I wish I had. (Mine was the wonkier question recited by Coy Barefoot.)
Update 3: A second article based on my interview with Jeffrey Clark is now live on Examiner.com. In it, he discusses his support for Governor Bob McDonnell's proposals to privatize Virginia's liquor monopoly. Be sure to visitmy CafePress storefor gifts and novelty items! Read my blog on Kindle! Followmy tweetson Twitter! See my articles on Examiner.com!
"One of the smarter blogs is the libertarian-leaning collection of Charlottesville posts put up by Rick Sincere..." -- Bob Gibson, The Daily Progress, May 8, 2005
