Draft Magazine swings and misses

Not to beat up on them, but Draft Magazine completely zoned out with this. How they followed this item and came up with New Jersey as the culprit is anyone's guess.

The NewJerseyNewsroom.com story is merely localizing a national story, and in this case, how a federal excise tax increase would hurt Garden State microbreweries, like other brewers nationwide. Sen. Bob Menendez was contacted for comment to further localize the issue and even said nothing is set in stone. Even a skim of the story would guide you to the conclusion of a national issue being localized.

Anyway this is our posted response to what Draft Magazine's Web editor wrote (FYI: We did minor style editing and fixes to our hasty writing on Draft's site):

Although we’re reluctant to defend politicians, we do have to take exception to this brief about the excise tax and reasons to avoid New Jersey.

Not to seem obnoxious correcting you, but it is the federal excise tax you are referring to. And while Sen. Bob Menendez of NJ is on the US Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus of Montana is the chairman. And so far it is only talk of raising excise taxes. Also, as an FYI, the soft drink industry could be asked to pony up, too. This is all connected to Congress’ plans to overhaul the US healthcare system, so it’s improbable that a single state would be behind it.

The folks at the Brewers Association put out an action alert on this.

But meanwhile, there is another bill that proposes halving the federal excise taxes on beer. You’ll find information about that on the Brewers Association site, too.

Perhaps you’re confusing the federal measure with the New Jersey Legislature’s increase in the state's tax on liquor and wine. That budget measure excluded beer, and Governor Jon Corzine’s administration, although a bit ham-handedly, stressed that beer was excluded from the increase.

And again, not to seem rude, but your space is better spent calling on beer enthusiasts to write their lawmakers and register their objections to a tax hike, and not singling out a particular state for blame, which, in this case, is completely erroneous.

Again, we're not trying to beat up on Draft Magazine (although they did disparage New Jersey for no discernible reason, other than the apparent cliche of making Jersey the butt of a joke). But their interpretation of things is just so hopelessly flawed, totally mangled.