Nobrainer’s Think Tank

I just happened to catch this over at the Market Correction blog.

Second, the EU position is far less principled than your account suggests, for you omit the interest groups behind the scare in Europe. Some European agricultural interests, the same ones feeding from the public trough under the Common Agricultural Policy, are engaged in what Clemson University economist Bruce Yandle refers to as a “bootleggers and Baptists” coalition. In the rural American south, bootleggers, seeking protection from competition from legal liquor stores, ally with Baptists, opposed to all sales of liquor, to promote laws forbidding the sale of alcohol on Sundays. The Baptists provided respectability to the campaign, the bootleggers the cash needed to help persuade politicians to see the light.