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News-Sentinel.com Your Town. Your Voice.
Opening Arguments

Ru

It's election campaign season, which means we're hearing a lot of nonsense from candidates about how government needs to get out of the way of business, be more business friendly, and blah, blah, blah. I've lost count of how many officials and office seekers have told me in the last 30 years that, by God, they're going to do something about all that awful red tape! Haven't seen a lot of it actually eliminated, though.

People in government can't seem to stop themselves when it comes to overregulating business, and they fret and fume forever over whether to suspend the rules that are mucking things up.

Today's examples come from Mishawaka and ther state of Indiana. In Mishawaka, the City Council surprisingly got out of the way of a car dealership and voted 8-0 for a variance that will let it hold an off-site sale three times this summer. Other car dealerships objected, because, well, being off-site means not having to follow the rules:

Leep said that Gates would be able to post "15 or 20 yellow signs saying, 'sale sale sale,' which we can't do. That is a huge disadvantage to us." He was referring to city ordinances that restrict balloons and banners from car dealership lots.

Yeah, balloons and banners are so tacky; thank goodness there are alert fussbudgets to watch out for our delicate sensibilities.

Then there's the state's "beer ceiling." Among Indiana's 34 microbreweries are three that are reaching their limit:

A brewery that makes more than 20,000 barrels of beer a year exceeds limits of a 1993 state law that gives small breweries lower taxes and other benefits. The breweries want to raise the limit to 60,000 barrels.

If the microbreweries exceed the current limit, their state taxes would nearly double.

The story notes that the law was passed in 1993, when the state had only three small brew pubs making 1,000 barrels a year, "so the 20,000 ceiling seemed high." The writer doesn't feel the need to explain why the state thought it necessary to have a ceiling of any number. We're talking about government regulations -- no explanation needed; it's just what government does. Got to have rules, or how would they pass the time?

Comments

Harl Delos
Tue, 03/22/2011 - 10:00am

One might ask why the customers of microbreweries deserve to get welfare.

The state charges more sales tax on a $1000 Rolex watch than on a $10 Timex. Why should the state charge less tax on expensive microbrews than on the donkey urine produced by major breweries?

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