A common question I am asked when I am out and about is “when will the ABV bill come up for a vote again?”. The Alabama legislature is currently out of session, because the legislature in Alabama is a part-time body — they’re Constitutionally required to meet for no more than 30 “session days” a [...]
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Magic City Brewfest 2008 final thoughts
Danner has published a very long synopsis of the good things and the not so good things at the brewfest website which is well worth a read. We are totally committed to making the Magic City Brewfest an event which all of Alabama can be proud of, and we are doing that by listening to [...]
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Magic City Brewfest 2008
This is just a short post to say a huge THANK YOU to our event sponsors – the breweries and wholesalers, the food vendors – to the bands, and especially to our volunteers who gave up part of their weekend to come and work extremely hard to make sure every attendee had a great time. [...]
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We were failed by the senate
Last year the Gourmet Beer Bill was given the “Shroud Award” for the “deadest bill of the session”. This year members and supporters of Free the Hops rallied around magnificently and carried out a sustained effort of education on the issues, such that every single legislator in the Alabama Legislature heard about Gourmet Beer and [...]
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Monday May 19
For those who were listening in to the Senate audio last week, it will come as no surprise that we took the strategic decision to hold off on pressing the Gourmet Beer Bill. By the time the semi-filibuster was resolved, it was late in the evening and the Senators were all cranky, tired, and hungry. [...]
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It’s Never Easy
What a crazy day yesterday. Events took an unforeseen turn and forced us to change plans on the fly. Not uncommon in politics. To sum up, the first bill that the Senate addressed yesterday was the bill to remove the state sales tax on food and eliminate the state income tax deduction for federal income [...]
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Filibuster
The senate is engaged in a semi-filibuster. There have been mutterings about staying in session until midnight if necessary, but as things stand just now (5pm) the senate is only passing local House Bills, and is barely a third of the way through the list of local bills. All we can do is wait. And [...]
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HB196 in the senate this week!
Friends of Free The Hops, HB196, the Gourmet Beer Bill, is up for vote in the Senate this week, most likely on Tuesday May 6th. Now is the time to call your state senator and let him or her know that you want HB196 to pass! Because the Gourmet Beer Bill has already passed the [...]
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Hope
The word today from our lobbyist is that he is very confident he will be able to get the Gourmet Beer Bill on the Senate’s special order calendar sometime next week. Nothing is guaranteed in Alabama politics, of course. Although the Senate did a remarkable job passing a tremendous amount of legislation today and yesterday, [...]
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Filibuster ended: Senate passing bills
The Senate filibuster was ended abruptly this week, to some controversy. The senate has now started passing bills, but we have no date for either of our bills to get on the calendar. All we can do at present is hope that the rules committee will allow our bills on the floor.
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