Birthday wishes and booze in peril
Quick break from studying to give a quick shout out to Jess, Happy Birthday. And, in case I can't post tomorrow, Happy Birthday Stephen.
In some Baton Rouge news, the Campus Coalition for Community Change (or some shit, their abbreviation is CCCC) has submitted a proposal that all bars in East Baton Rouge parish be prohibited from offering special prices on drinks after 8 pm, so businessmen can get hammered for cheap and drive home, but not students, what a deal! The Metro Council yesterday (funny that it was scheduled yesterday, IN THE MIDDLE OF MIDTERM WEEK!) voted to postpone the vote, again, after doing so in December as well. They claim that by doing away with drink specials, they will lower the number of DUIs and related accidents. This is of course horse shit. People will either pay more to drink just as much, drink more at home before going out so they drive to and from bars drunk, or go out to Livingston or West Baton Rouge parish for bar specials, which already happens on Sundays, so they drive further while drunk. These people, who are a Christian-based group, have used pretty much all anecdotal, emotional, and correlative evidence instead of real, emperical data to make their case (this sounds a lot like the Evolution vs. Creationism/Intelligent Design arguement).
In the last version of the proposal, there was a section which made the sections of the law seperate and severable, which means each of the sections would have to be struck down individually. How is this not admitting that our law is unconstitutional? First and foremost, it is overreaching in terms of governing commerce. The burden of proof has always been on the government when it has tried to govern local commerce, to prove that there is a very large, vested public interest in the law. As said above, they've yet to come up with real data to show how this would help the public. Currently the CCCC and MADD are negotiating with representatives of the local bar owners to change some of the language of the proposal before the next metro council meeting in two weeks. Hopefully they come up with something fundamentally different, or the council comes to its senses and throws this shit out the window. Otherwise, we'll have a long fight in getting all this overturned in court.
posted by Matt @ 11:06 PM
8 comments
8 Comments:
go figure...is this the same group that determined a 2AM stop time for drinking as well?
I don't think so. They've come together rather recently, and the 2 AM drinking ordinance has been in place for as long as I know here, so chances are it originated with the council itself. While I'm not a huge fan of the 2 AM law, that's a bit different as it has a very large affect on public safety and isn't nearly as overreaching as the CCCC proposal. The fact that cities across the country have similar laws attests to the effectiveness and constitutionality of such measures. Though, New Orleans still kicks ass for not having one, among a myraid of other reasons.
I don't think the CCCC can get the bill passed. I think they've got minority support on the Metro Council, and they keep delaying it in the hopes of working something out. If they had the votes, it'd be done already. What they don't want to do is actually get rejected... so, they're trying to work out some compromise. I think the bars, students, and businesses aren't being very compromise friendly, frankly, because they don't need to be. They're both right and in the majority. Considering the A6/term limit mess, I don't think anyone on the MC is looking to make waves with the young 'uns. Those people are crazy enough to campaign against you, and in local races, that's worth a lot more than in a national race, where money is a bigger factor.
Oh, and just background on the CCCC: they're not the ones who pushed for the 2am cutoff... as far as I know, that's been around since LaSalle.
CCCC was founded in 1997 or 1998 after Benjamin Winn literally drank himself to death. LSU got a 750k, three-year grant to try to change drinking behavior, encourage responsible drinking, promote nonalcoholic events. For a while there, it was a good way for student orgs to get funding to throw parties, etc, on campus. Once the 3 years ran out, they kept going, finding money in other grants, foundations, etc. They don't claim to be prohibitionists, they claim to want to encourage responsible drinking... which more or less seems to mean not drinking, or not drinking enough to feel the effects. I don't think they worked with SG when SG got the drunk bus running, and I can't remember them ever sponsoring Designated driver or taxi services... so yeah, don't call 'em prohibitionist, but they walk like it, talk like it, and act like it.
See, this is why Chris is the real political brain among us and I'm a Constitutional hack at best.
Well, if they don't want to be called Prohibitionist, they maybe should pay more heed to individual responsibility. Through this little proposals of theirs, they are seeking to circumvent any notion of choice and instead coerce all of us into changing our habits. If I remember correctly, the 18th Amendment was all about that.
...and that's why i like science.
chris said "more or less"...he must die. now.
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