The Colorado legislature killed a bill this week that would have allowed grocery stores to sell full strength beer. This is surprising, coming on the heels of a popular new law to allow liquor stores to open on Sundays. The ill informed rail against these Blue Laws on the grounds the laws enforce morality. However, as is always true, morality has little to do with politics. Blue Law supporters, mostly Republicans, are simply selling favoritism at the expense of prosperity.

If Blue Laws were ever based on a morality argument, that conceit was abandoned long ago. These laws’ real purpose has always been to prevent competition by forcing ambitious retailers from opening on Sundays, or by requiring unnecessary licensure for professions such as hair braiding. The Institute For Justice has fought the good fight since 1991 by attacking the overly cozy relationship between businesses and the pandering class.

Colorado State Rep. Ellen Roberts(R) epitomizes the protection racket. She claims that by allowing increased competition between liquor stores and grocery stores, certain small beer brewers will lose their jobs. Of course what she really fears is narrowing profit margins for her donor base. By protecting her donor base, she is actually forcing the rest of Colorado to pay more for beer and other protected goods. Whenever the government picks winners and losers, the consumer pays a price. On average, Blue Laws restrict trade, prosperity, and ultimately jobs. While it is easier to identify the Blue Laws’ beneficiaries than their victims, the net effect is harmful to the economy.

Democrats, who generally support Blue Law repeals, are on the right side of this issue, but not for noble reasons. Since Democrats are funded by labor unions, they see an upside to increasing sales at union controlled grocery chains. Hypocritically, when non-union stores threaten smaller businesses, Democrats have no problem reversing course to stifle competition, such as with Wall Mart. While they claim to protect small business jobs, they are really protecting unions against Wall Mart’s open shop efficiencies. No organization has done more to better the lives of the regular Americans, whom Democrats claim to represent, than Wall Mart. Democrats gladly hurt their constituents to protect the flow of union donations.

The average voter is unlikely to realize that the Blue Law debate is actually a reaction to the political protection racket – business to Republicans and unions to Democrats. Most people just scratch their heads and wonder how such a stupid law as the one outlawing beer sales in a grocery store is allowed to persist. Fortunately, most states allow the people to override the corruption of their lawmakers. The ballot initiative is ideally suited to correcting idiotic, unpopular laws that are solely a product of back-room corruption.

While the so called Stimulus Act will not create any jobs over the long term and will actually harm the economy, voters can do something to increase prosperity and employment: repeal protection racket laws. Given the size of the US workforce, simply removing these impediments to competition and innovation will easily eclipse the paltry dollar-a-day Obama rebates. As is always true, to create real job growth, the government simply needs to back off its choke hold on US innovation and risk taking.

The Federal Government has corporations on the ropes, and Obama is demanding change. Despite his young, hip persona, Obama has come out swinging against corporate junkets to the Super Bowl and Vegas. This from a man whose private jet is a Boeing 747. This from a man who signed the most wasteful spending bill ever. This from a man who supports over 8,000 earmarks in a partial year budget (but no more earmarks next year).

Anyway, these corporations took federal money, so they must have expected strings to be attached. After all, they aren’t libraries, NPR, or museums who claim civil rights violations at any conditions on their federal sugar. Still, taking advice on frugality from the most wasteful institution on the planet must sting. The executives who can no longer fly in private jets, hold conferences in Vegas, or entertain clients at sporting events should take solace knowing the government likes waste just fine, but only on their terms.

Obama has said that the US must spend its way out of the recession, and the stimulus package is certainly an amorphous pile of spending. The Obama position is that any spending, no matter how silly, is an economic stimulus. By his own logic, Obama should welcome banks that waste money on jets and junkets. The bank money is a loan, which might very well be repaid with interest. The spending bill is unrecoverable, except by higher taxes. If where the money is spent is irrelevant to Obama, how can he complain? The answer is quite obvious: when Obama wastes money on the likes of eco-friendly golf carts, he is helping the helpless. Obama doesn’t want someone else getting in on his compassion shtick, hence the phase out of tax deductions for charitable giving by rich people.

Also, Democrats just hate successful people, unless they are from Hollywood. Ted Kennedy’s taxes on yachts, airplanes, and expensive cars didn’t raise much money for the government, but they appeased the instincts of his party (these punitive taxes were part of George H.W. Bush’s tax betrayal that lead to his 1992 loss). Of course along the way, the tax killed off the yacht and small plane industries. If Obama’s Vegas comments drive that city’s tourist industry under, it would be a fair price to pay for spanking those evil corporations.

Of course, no industry has ever thrived without conventions, marketing, and schmoozing clients. Even the lie industry, A.K.A. politics, has obscenely wasteful conventions every four years. Vegas is actually a convenient, attractive, and cost effective convention town. By pooh-poohing practices as old as business itself, Obama proves himself to be just another left wing class warrior.

N.B.: The original posting of this blog gave Pres. Clinton the blame for the luxury tax, which is incorrect. In fact Clinton signed the bill that repealed these taxes and revived the yacht and small airplane industries.