The big beer brewers often admonish us imbibers of their
products to "Drink Responsibly." Well, I say back to them: Lobby
Responsibly.
In particular, I point to a disgusting binge of besotted
lobbying by Anheuser-Busch and other beer barons this year in the Nebraska legislature. At
issue was the town of Whiteclay ,
smack dab on the Nebraska-South Dakota border.
Although only about 10 people live there, it's home to
four beer stores. Why?
Because right across the state line is the Pine Ridge
Indian Reservation of the Oglala Sioux tribe, which has a devastating problem
of alcohol addiction, combined with intractable poverty.
The sale of alcohol is
banned on the reservation.
Pine Ridge Reservation (International Indian Treaty Council) |
Whiteclay exists solely
so booze peddlers can profit from the Oglala tribe's miseries. They sell 4
million cans of beer a year to Pine Ridge residents, including high-alcohol
malt liquor.
So much for that "Drink Responsibly" slogan. One in four
children on the reservation is born with fetal alcohol birth defects. The life
expectancy of tribal members is less than 50 years.
Responding to this grotesque exploitation of an epidemic
illness, Nebraska
state senator LeRoy Louden introduced a bill that would designate Whiteclay as
an "alcohol impact zone." This legislation would allow authorities to
limit store hours and ban high-alcohol beers. Of course, Busch and its
responsible beer buddies backed it, right?
Not a chance. Like gators on a poodle, their lobbyists
leapt on the legislature, calling in chits from key lawmakers who'd taken
thousands of dollars in campaign cash from the industry.
The chair of the
senate committee considering the bill had pocketed $4,000 in beer money.
He
dutifully refused to let the bill even go to a vote during the state's recently
concluded 2012 legislative session. "We're not here to protect people from
themselves," he declared.
Surely
there's an especially hot bar stool in Hell reserved for these greedheads.
Jim Hightower is a radio commentator, writer, and
public speaker. He's also editor of the populist newsletter, The Hightower Lowdown.
Distributed via OtherWords (OtherWords.org)
Distributed via OtherWords (OtherWords.org)