WASHINGTON – Oh, the horror! Miller time is just about over in Minnesota. Can you imagine a summer evening without cocktails? I’m sure many of you can, of course, but it’s a tough road for the hospitality industry. This is what a shutdown looks like.
Hundreds of bars, restaurants and stores across Minnesota are running out of beer and alcohol and others may soon run out of cigarettes — a subtle and largely unforeseen consequence of a state government shutdown.
In the days leading up to the shutdown, thousands of outlets scrambled to renew their state-issued liquor purchasing cards. Many of them did not make it.
Now, with no end in sight to the shutdown, they face a summer of fast-dwindling alcohol supplies and a bottom line that looks increasingly bleak.
“It’s going to cripple our industry,” said Frank Ball, executive director of the Minnesota Licensed Beverage Association, which represents thousands of liquor retailers in the state.
hmmm… A Mexican Martini sounds good about now.
I bet it does to Gov. Mark Dayton, too.
“Most of the money the state collects doesn’t go to a bureaucracy. It goes to the people of Minnesota, who need services — education, health care and the like. This is about the people of Minnesota, it’s not about state government.” – AP
Taylor Marsh is a Washington based political analyst, writer and commentator on national politics, foreign policy, and women in power. A veteran national politics writer, Taylor’s been writing on the web since 1996. She has reported from the White House, been profiled in the Washington Post, The New Republic, and has been seen on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, CNN, MSNBC, Al Jazeera English and Al Jazeera Arabic, as well as on radio across the dial and on satellite, including the BBC. Marsh lives in the Washington, D.C. area. Columns at TMV are cross posted from her blog.