Media
UnAPPetizing Waste Poured by PLCB…Again
Have you heard of the millionaire iPhone app? It’s called VIP Black and for $1,000 at the iTunes store you get a “premium lifestyle application” that guarantees “heightened experiences across the range of luxury partners.”
Good for those who can afford and benefit from this app (perhaps those who have luxury tasting rooms on other people’s dime), but I’m guessing most of us – let’s call us the Angry Birds crowd – could never imagine dropping that kind of coin on an app. But we already have. In fact, taxpayers had to foot the bill for an app that costs 100 times the millionaire app. 
The PLCB launched the Fine Wine & Good Sprits app back in January. This free download lets users scan the bar codes on wine and spirits and find out if PA’s Bordeaux Barons have granted Pennsylvanians the privilege of purchasing it and, if so, where they can find it and for how much. Unfortunately the app does not, as one message board comment lamented, offer the quickest directions to New Jersey or Delaware. The cost to taxpayers? $100,000. And this is just the latest example of PA’s monopoly of mediocrity burning through tax dollars in the name of “modernization;” let’s not forget the wine kiosk catastrophe and the $66 million failed inventory system.
It’s time for Pennsylvania to truly modernize and join the 48 other states that have moved beyond total state control over wine and liquor sales. Pennsylvanians want freedom, and we don’t need an app for that.