Without any consent or feedback from the micro-brewers of Wisconsin, Governor Scott Walker slipped a provision into his budget, the same budget that saw the dismantling of public unions, which forces craft brewers into the same set of distribution rules as corporate beer producers such as MillerCoors.
Tucked into Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) much-discussed budget was a little-noticed provision to overhaul the state’s regulation of the beer industry. In a state long associated with beer, the provision will make it much more difficult for the Wisconsin’s burgeoning craft breweries to operate and expand their business by barring them from selling directly to restaurants and liquor stores, and preventing them from selling their own product onsite.
The new provision treats craft brewers — the 60 of whom make up just 5 percent of the beer market in Wisconsin — like corporate mega-brewers, forcing them to use a wholesale distributor to market their product. Under the provision, it would be illegal, for instance, for a small brewer located near a restaurant to walk next door to deliver a case of beer. They’ll have to hire a middle man to do it instead.
Well, so much for Republicans being pro-business. So much for being loyal only to the invisible-hand of the free market.
Of course we know they aren't really either of those things. A better way to describe their intentions would be pro-corporation and pro-corporate-welfare.
You can add pro-monopoly to the list as well as this provision that crawled through the doggy-door while no one was watching preserves the monopolizing power of MillerCoors' distribution business by forcing small brewers to utilize them as a middle-man. And this is all accomplished by abusing the power of the state government.
via ThinkProgress