Thursday, April 30, 2009

Thursday night Quick Hits

Two very quick notes, one fun, and one extremely important.
- First the fun. May 11th through the 17th is Craft Beer appreciation Week. Of course this means that everyone should appreciate their favorite craft beer and Houston is lucky to have access to some great local brews. Gingerman specifically will be celebrating the week with special Flights of Craft beer. If I find out of other events going on that week I'll post those as I can.

- Secondly the important note. Ronnie Crocker of the Houston Chronicle has written an article detailing the latest news of HB 2094, the Texas Bill sponsored by State Rep Jessica Farrar. Its on the edge of not getting passed. There is one last ditch effort going on right now to get enough members together to vote it out of committee by May 14th so that it can be voted on by the time the Texas Senate shuts down on June 1. If it doesn't get passed now the next chance we'll have to get something like this passed will be 2011. Ms. Farrar thinks she has enough votes, but one can never be sure.
As a reminder this bill will allow those breweries who sell less than 250,000 barrels a year to sell a limited amount of their brew on site. The biggest opposition to this bill are the distributors who WRONGLY (and I can't say that strong enough) feel that this bill will hurt them. IT WILL NOT! (see Cal, Colorado, and many other's, there is NO damage to the distributors and to say other wise is either disingenuous or out and out lying). Therefore I ask everyone that reads this blog to write everyone that you can in the committee and ask them to pass this bill. Especially the two below. Let them know how much this would mean to Texas economy. It boggles my mine that at a time of economic downturn the politicians would turn down a bill that will actually help. If this bill fails it proves nothing less than all the politicians care about is lining their own pockets with Beer Distributors money and NOT helping this state.

Representative Mike "Tuffy" Hamilton from Southeast Texas ( http://www.house.state.tx.us/membe ... ilton.php) and
Representative Charlie Geren from NW Tarrant County ( http://www.house.state.tx.us/membe ... eren.php).

1 comment:

rcrocker said...

I included several other links to legislators in the current Beer, TX post. Feel free to use them here.