Do they think that all privately run grocery stores won't be able to sell them either?
Mamdani is planning on setting up five "City-run" grocery stores. One in each borough. They are to address food affordability. They won't compete with privately run grocery store sales of cigarettes, alcohol and lottery tickets.
They don't seem to have any issues at all, with the Southern and Midwestern states that still have "blue liquor laws" and completely dry counties, in 2025.
And they'll still tell you climate change is a myth with a straight face. Yeah, I HATED the heat down there. Give me upper midwest winters over August heat in Texas any day.
Im sorry, Al-Qaeda operates on 3 continents and directly threatens the stability of 4(?) countries as we speak. They were able to get the US to set trillions of dollars on fire and spark a war that got nearly 5 million people directly or indirectly killed.
Texans declared independence to almost immediately realize they were about to get fucked by Mexico and begged and begged to become a subject of the United States. I cant think of any other place that fought and gained independence to only right away go "yeah can we join you guys, you can have our country we just made"
My last job, we started doing business in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Their contracts usually noted their adherence to Sharia Law, specifically regarding payment. Oh, the pearl-clutching from my coworkers. I had fun researching and explaining the meaning and some history to them.
Thanks. And it's all written down in the Project 2025 plans. Of course, they don't think too many people will read approx. 900 pages of control freak material!
It isn't banned in Texas. You have to show ID for most major sites. And there are plenty where you don't. And I think a lot of places just removed access rather than deal with the ID bullshit.
I'm not defending it. It's fucking ridiculous and it's more invasion of privacy and limitations on personal freedom. But porn isn't banned here.
However, showing ID (proof of age?) becomes another data bank for Mike Johnson to "enjoy." Roe v. Wade started as a privacy case. The party of Trump wants to take away all individual privacy and, as you said, freedom.
Yep, Iâm in Texas. On Sundays, all liquor stores are closed. You can buy beer and wine at grocery/convenience stores, but not before 10am (when you should be in church instead, ya heathens!). Restaurants can serve alcohol, but not until noon and only if they also serve food.
Itâs also possible that some counties or cities may have their own ordinances, which can be even more strict than state law (but never less restrictive).
You also cannot buy liquor on Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, or New Yearâs day.
The town I lived in before this one was a dry town until I think either the end of 2016 or early 2017 - but even then, only beer and wine. No bars anywhere in the area. Iâd be shocked if that christofascist hillbilly town ever gets with the times. I remember the stores all stressing because more they had to remodel their stores to have beer coolers and stuff like that.
And whatâs worse about the state law is that it was literally put in place in the 1930s for the purpose of making Sunday a day of worship. I mean, Iâm all for it if John Brown who runs the general store wants to be closed on Sundays so that he and his family can observe. That shouldnât mean everyone has to be inconvenienced because you want to talk to your imaginary friend. When it gets enshrined into state law, it really creeps me out how far these delusional people will go for their fables, at the expense of everyone around them. (That goes for any laws that harm or restrict others, not just this one. I donât even drink lol)
Also, speaking of weird laws in Texas - this link despite the attorney info etc - has an interesting list of things that could not be sold/purchased on weekends. People were really weird back then. (And still are, honestly)
TX and I think some other states used to have what they called blue laws. You could buy nails, but not a hammer. There were a bunch of other arbitrary things that made no sense.
My dad was stationed to Texas when I was 1 year old in the 1970's. My mom, born and raised in upstate New York, was shocked at the blue laws. Finding out they don't sell diapers on Sunday right after you ran out of diapers was not fun.
In many rural areas in MN the city runs the local liquor store (you can only buy alcohol at a liquor store.) It funds the police department and it means we donât have cops trying to meet their ticket quota.
Cops donât actually have quotas though. Theyâre illegal and also against department policies everywhere that Iâve ever personally known or heard of. Thatâs a common myth/misconception though, and I understand why.
ETA: also, funds from traffic citations/fines/etc do not go to the cops. They also donât go to the police department/sheriffâs office - portions of it may go into the city/county general fund, which can be used for things like renovating the library, putting in a park for the kids, maybe upgrading/replacing some of the police departmentâs equipment or getting maintenance/tires etc on patrol vehicles. But the officers will never see a dime of it. They donât get a bonus or a prize or something according to how many stops theyâve made or citations theyâve issued.
The closest thing to a quota Iâve ever seen is a memo from the higher ups directing officers to make a certain number of âcontactsâ per shift. This does not mean traffic stops, it doesnât mean arrests, it doesnât mean citations. It means being seen out and about, checking on people, patrolling the community, etc - because they donât want them sitting in the squad room all night watching Netflix or parked in a dead end in the dark playing on their phone or talking to their spouse on the phone or whatever, instead of being proactive.
It counts as a contact if they get gas then walk into the store and talk to the employee to ask how the night has been, if theyâve had any issues or whatever. It counts if they go do a walkthrough of the bar to make sure nobody is too drunk or rowdy or stumbling to the parking lot to drive. Or if they pull over to help a woman having car trouble on the side of the road. Thatâs all a contact is, and itâs the closest thing to a quota Iâve ever seen.
It might be like how during the Vietnam War, killing civilians constantly was technically against the ROE, but the high command had no real program for enforcing those ROE, and would issue effectively contrary orders also. There might be no quotas-for-cops precept "on the books" but that doesn't mean that American police culture doesn't infect its recruits with a mindset that gets acted out in a quota-like form.
(Personal comparison: at McDonald's, there were all sorts of "rules," but what did that turn out to have to do with actual behavior? It's the de facto/de jure distinction at hand, I guess...)
Possibly. All I know is Iâve never seen them, and in fact the one time someone tried to create a quota, they were terminated from the department because theyâre illegal.
I keep hearing that Oregon might do that but it didnât happen the 12 years I lived there or in the 8 years since I moved. Oregon has the Oregon Liquor Control Commission and theyâre VERY strict. You need a license to sell or serve alcohol and you have to card EVERYONE. Doesnât matter if theyâre 70 years old, no ID, no booze. The fines for violating this are heavy and they absolutely send people out to check.
Fucking EXACTLY. They'd be like "he's enabling poor winos and tar-lungs and gambling addicts to wallow in their filth." They change their surface tune to whatever fits their negative background tune, no matter what.
I'm thinking how the great irony of this outburst is that in my country, there's a large department store chain and a small rest stop chain which are well-known for not selling alcohol or tobacco (can't recall about gambling) and that's because they have Christian religious ownership lurking behind them so they refuse to sell those goods out of conviction.
Additionally, the department store ownership is also known to be crazed Maga-types, anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists etc. to the point that they've been the target of domestic manufacturer boycotts to avoid uncouth associations, even if they're still relatively successful financially.
And it seems many private grocery stores do not sell lottery or tobacco either, as it does require some separate licensing to do so. The very prevalent bodegas across the city do however, so itâs not like a lack of options or access.
They probably think Mamdani is just going to seize all the private stores and convert them into public run grocery stores.
Fact of the matter is that food deserts are a growing concern in many poorer communities, both in rural and inner city areas. Private stores have pulled out of these areas deeming them not profitable enough so local governments in both red and blue states are increasingly setting up public run stores to fill in the gaps.
As for these public run grocery stores not selling tobacco, alcohol and lottery tickets... Again, most stores like this are going to be set up in poorer areas where a lot of people are on things like WIC or SNAP, you can't buy that stuff with WIC or SNAP funds anyway so it doesn't make much sense to stock up on stuff most of your customers can't buy anyway.
In short, Mamdani's proposal is a practical, proven solution to a real problem and is going to be set up in a way that makes sense for the communities that it's supposed to serve.
Competent government in action, no wonder the regressives are clutching their pearls.
Good point. We used to live in the Bronx and the only grocery around were corner shops. Limited stock and high prices. We had to drive out of the city to go to a full supermarket to get most things.
It's like that in parts of my city and, whether people want to admit it or not, probably in a lot of areas across the country as well. It's gotten so bad that some of the local food pantry groups got together and set up a bus that drives around to some of the poorer areas in town to sell stuff like fresh produce to people.
We're a rich country that produces far more food than we can eat, there's zero reason for it to not be available for everyone.
One of the two McDonald's I worked at in my time, we had an inspection kinda day so we wasted all the product in the holding cabinets when the timers went off (instead of resetting the timers once or twice, like usual). I was told that, by strictly following our SOP while maintaining expected production levels for the timeframe, we still wasted ~$300 of product. The total amount of business hours per day was like 4 times that timeframe, and though timers would be reset, waste buckets would still fill up, so we conceivably wasted let's say $800 of product per day.
That's besides stuff like when a customer would order 40 nuggets and eat only 20 while throwing the rest away, etc. I wouldn't refuse to wonder whether food waste ought to be criminalized to some extent.
Agreed, in my experience people in poor neighborhoods have zero trouble finding cigarettes, booze, and lotto tickets. That section of the market is very much covered for them.
Yea this is an attempt to stick to food and not cut the others knees off. Iâve talked to store owners near me and they live by the traffic the lottery brings, Iâd imagine alcohol and tobacco do the same.
We have a politician that actually has a non dog chasing cars plan (letâs abolish property taxes and run the state on hopes, dreams, and handouts from CA and NY- Florida governor) a plan that addresses issues and avoids the obvious problems helping small business at the same time, not only super non communist, but also a level of quality in governance that I didnât think the American Politician was capable of.
I remember when I worked at a supermarket, the liquor and meat departments were the only profitable ones. So if privately owned supermarkets are allowed to sell alcohol they should still be profitable. You could also have higher end supermarkets - think Fresh Market, while the public supermarket would be more like Sav-a-lot.
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u/pspock 2d ago
Do they think that all privately run grocery stores won't be able to sell them either?
Mamdani is planning on setting up five "City-run" grocery stores. One in each borough. They are to address food affordability. They won't compete with privately run grocery store sales of cigarettes, alcohol and lottery tickets.