NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate is the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Saturday, March 26th, 2011

Costco to Washington State Legislature: “Have we got a deal for you…”

From: Costco
To: Mem­bers, Wash­ing­ton State Legislature
RE: Your finan­cial troubles

Dear law­mak­ers,

As one of Washington’s largest pub­licly-trad­ed com­pa­nies, Cost­co feels an oblig­a­tion to self­less­ly assist its state in weath­er­ing the ongo­ing fis­cal storm that has had such a dev­as­tat­ing impact on cit­i­zens and con­sumers alike.

Last year the vot­ers of our state reject­ed a pro­pos­al that would have allowed our stores to bet­ter serve our cus­tomers by sell­ing liquor. Like every­one, we believe in “the will of the peo­ple” and respect their decision.

How­ev­er…

After seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion, we’ve come up with an idea that we think would make every­one hap­py by achiev­ing sev­er­al goals simultaneously:

  1. Pro­vide the state with much-need­ed revenue
  2. Let Cost­co bet­ter serve our customers
  3. Lis­ten to what the vot­ers real­ly said last Novem­ber: they want eas­i­er access to liquor, but don’t want every cor­ner store in the state sell­ing liquor

Here’s the deal:

You allow pri­vate liquor sales, but lim­it it to stores over 9,000 square feet. In oth­er words, guys like us who peo­ple know and trust.

In return, we’ll kick back to you some­thing like 6 or 7 per­cent of our gross liquor receipts for five years or so – after that the state won’t need all that mon­ey and can get by with a flat annu­al fee to renew our license ($166 sounds reasonable).

It’s a win/win: you get a cash infu­sion and we get to bet­ter serve the peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton state.

Let us know what you think!

Sin­cere­ly,

Cost­co

CC: Ste­fan Sharkansky

Written by Steve :: 12:59 PM

Categories: Economic Security, Humor & Satire, Policy Topics

Tags: ,

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One Comment

  1. I can do the math, and I oppose any­thing that will reduce state income. The Cost­co pro­pos­al is in that category.

    I deem it to be against my inter­ests as a cit­i­zen who sup­ports all those gov­ern­ment pro­grams aimed at improv­ing life in our state, from edu­ca­tion to green ener­gy to health care to job cre­ation to pub­lic safe­ty and pub­lic trans­porta­tion, and all the oth­er areas for which we, through our gov­ern­ment, pool our resources for our mutu­al benefit.

    # by Math Lliterate :: March 26th, 2011 at 11:43 PM

5 Pings

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