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Total Debacle

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So the company behind Maker’s Mark beat a quick retreat from their dilution plans. I’m sure the damage to their brand help them overcome whatever supply problems they were having.

Part of what stunk about the whole thing was the horrid disingenuousness of the whole thing. It all starts with the rampant shortages of a product that I had no problem finding. Fair enough, that’s just anecdotal. The other part was the ‘3%’ lowering of the alcohol content. This was a language play as the product deals in Percentages. The only way that the alcohol content could be lowered by this amount would be if it were 200 proof. If you had $45 and someone steals three, they didn’t steal 3% of your money, they stole nearly 7%. It’s not just semantics either; does anyone doubt that if they boosted the alcohol content from 45% to 48% that the company would be bragging about a 7% bump?

Confusing the issue is that unregulation has left the production of spirits in the hands of a few huge conglomerates. I’m sure the fact that the production company would more than likely pick up any dissatisfied Maker’s Mark customers factored into their decision (you can also picture some marketing clown declaring “win-win”!)

Government Gardening

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The Plain Dealer lays the headline on thick:
Ohio will share in $9 million USDA funds to promote farmers markets

Now I will admit that I have very mild soft spot for farmers markets (very), but if their greatness requires government gravy, then they must not be all that great.  Ohio will be getting $450,000 of the $9,000,000, but it largely won’t even be going to farmers markets at all:

$39,995 to Famicos Foundation, for a door-to-door and robo-call campaign to let people know food stamps can be used at many farmers markets.

This was an old post that I had tooling around in the draft bin, but I have to wonder: how much food, farmer’s market or otherwise, can be purchased for even $40,000.  If I spent $20 a day on food (which is A LOT) I come up with five and a half years worth of food.  Almost hard to believe our government is financially self-destructing…

Completely Unrelated

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On a completely incompetent judge that even her liberal peers say should be sacked:

I’ve detailed complaints about her before, in a 2009 story and 2011 column. In the latter, I urged voters to look past her political name and support her opponent in her re-election bid. I pointed out that Stokes had received a zero rating in the fall of 2011 from four separate legal groups, which go to great lengths to vet judges.
Stokes, on the bench since 1996, easily won another term.

On a (pointless) drive to make testing in Ohio public schools more difficult:

If the cut score were set where it’s expected to be, 77 percent of Rocky River eighth-graders — instead of 96 percent — would pass the math test. At the other extreme, 4 percent of East Cleveland eighth-graders — instead of 37 percent — would pass.

Even more fun in that last story is the high-to-low pass chart listing the school districts. Locals will immediately notice the demographic differences between the top and bottom, though everyone else can make a pretty good guess.