MEMORANDUM

TO: Gov. Ed Rendell
FROM: Marx, Engels, Keynes & Krugman -- "Economists for a Better Tomorrow"
RE: Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board

Dear Ed:

It was great seeing you in Washington last month with all the other governors for President Barack Obama's "fiscal responsibility summit." We're sure you appreciated your placement just one seat away from the president's lectern (despite your outspoken support for Hillary Clinton in the primary).

We also know that you understand how important it is for America's Democratic governors to stay "on message" during this time of unprecedented economic crisis -- and unprecedented opportunity. That's why the president asked us to contact you behind the scenes, so to speak.

We're all very concerned by your spokesman's comments last week -- supposedly on your behalf -- that Pennsylvania's wine and spirits stores need to be "run like a business rather than a government agency."

Ed, we hardly need to point out to you that this comparison implies that private businesses function better than your state-run boutiques!

This is not the message that's coming out of Washington these days, and as we move to expand federal control of other historically private sectors of the economy, we don't need a Democratic governor conjuring images of Soviet-style efficiency and charm!

Next thing we know, someone will be asking whether the people who leave crates of bottled wine on sun-broiled loading docks for hours should be entrusted with moving transplant organs around the country!

Speaking of which, it seems many of your so-called "state stores" look a lot like operating rooms from the 1940s -- bare white walls and fluorescent lights. Maybe instead of paying a consultant $173,000 to teach state store employees to say, "Thank you" and "This is called red wine," you could have put that money into a few gallons of paint and a grape-leaf stencil.

(FYI -- the Department of the Interior can supply paint at the low government price of $52.97 per gallon. Beige only. ... Maybe tint it with some of that spoiled merlot?)

Anyway, a little research shows that your order to the PLCB to "run this place like a business, not a state bureaucracy" dates back to at least 2006. It was an election year for you, and a year in which (quasi-)free-market economics still seemed to be going gangbusters, so it's understandable that you would want to spin your state's Prohibition-era policies to fit the times.

But things are very different now, and radical change is afoot -- change that will make your state's liquor monopoly seem cutting edge. Please don't mess up our ambitious nationalizing efforts with pro-business rhetoric that tempts people to look fondly upon free enterprise!

Since the real estate bubble burst, triggering the economic meltdown, we've worked diligently to deflect attention away from Clinton-era mandates on lending standards and to pin responsibility for the disastrous economic fallout on the Bush administration.

In fact, we're finding that blaming Bush is just the gift that keeps on giving! (Did Bush ever visit a Pennsylvania state store? Sure, he's a teetotaler, but you might find an unexpected opening somewhere, an old campaign stop, anything ...)

As economists we're amused that we get to beat up on Bush for his ginormous deficits while blaming him for the need to create even bigger ones! (And yes, the numbers have gotten so incomprehensibly huge that even scholars like us are officially calling the projected deficit "ginormous." We find that if we make the public laugh, they don't pay as much attention to what we're doing.)

Back in 2006, during your last gubernatorial run, Pennsylvania state stores posted a record profit. We're sure there's no connection between your tenure and heavier drinking statewide.

Though state term limits will end your tenure in 2010, you're still a young man, Ed, and an ideal candidate to steal Arlen Specter's seat away from the Republicans. No promises from Mr. Obama, but your toeing the line on our restructuring of the American economy can only help you!

We hear that liquor sales are on track to set another record this year, despite your having closed many "inefficient" stores. As you tout this triumph, we trust that you will not make any connection between heavier drinking, the stock market's seemingly endless decline and the new administration. We'll be listening, Ed.