Radley Balko has a fantastic article over in Reason about the government-created industry of alcohol distribution, and the general shadiness and protectionism of said industry.
Johnny Mac's sugar mama's fortune is apparently the result of a government and industry-backed monopoloy, supported by an army of (surprise!) lobbyists and interest groups.
Not that this should be a surprise to anyone familiar with how this industry has worked since the end of prohibition, but for those who aren't, there's some juicy excerpts after the break.....
Most states operate under a "three tier" system: producers, distributors, retailers.
There are some exceptions, but generally in three-tier states no one is allowed to buy directly from a producer. Everything must go through a distributor. And while it’s possible to envision a role for a beer or wine distributor in a freer market for alcohol, it’s clear that the industry wouldn’t be nearly as lucrative or prominent as it is today were it not for these protectionist laws.
But the best part is how how some states, Arizona included, have even more protectionist markets, basically establishing a state-sponsored monopoly.
But it gets worse. Many states have placed further restrictions within this already artificial market. Some states, for example, give wholesalers exclusive rights to distribute alcohol in a particular region, effectively creating government-enforced monopolies. Other states (including Arizona) have enacted “franchise termination laws,” which make it more difficult for retailers and/or producers to switch distributors once they’ve started doing business with one. Producers and/or retailers get locked in. If they feel their existing distributor is taking too much of a markup, isn’t offering a wide enough variety, or is otherwise performing poorly, there's little they can do. The effect is to squeeze out the upstarts and the competitors. According to Whitman, the number of alcohol wholesalers nationwide has shrunk by 90 percent since the 1950s.
It seems that Hensley, the McCain's company is one of the country's greatest benefactor of these state-sanctioned monopolies.
Hensley is the fourth largest beer distributor in the country, one of the largest privately-held companies in Arizona, and holds a 60 percent market share in the parts of Arizona it serves. It also distributes Anheuser-Busch products exclusively. Beer-producing giant Busch began an incentive campaign in the late 1990s aimed at getting distributors to drop the products produced by its competitors. In those parts of the country where a given distributor has a huge, government-abetted market share, such arrangements put the squeeze on the variety of options available to consumers (Anheuser-Bush’s national market share rose five percent during the campaign, to 50 percent nationally).
It seems that free-market loving Johnny Mac is really a dirty commie protectionist, dependent on government dictation and regulation for his and his wife's wealth.
Deregulation, my ass. Does the GOP's hypocrisy know no bounds?