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.

Rapid response ...

As in yours is needed. This missive from the Brewers Association tumbled into the email queue today.

Like we have said, the battle has been joined, and the Brewers Association is conscripting craft beer drinkers to act like a militia and speak out, state by state, against higher excise taxes by writing their lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

New Jersey's own Bob Menendez is on the Senate Finance Committee. One more time, here's his email. And the blue graphic shows addresses for his New Jersey and DC offices.

The best approach is a two-pronged one, meaning don't just email, but send the same comments via conventional mail as well. Also, when you write, cite. Pull information from the Brewers Association's arguments and point out that higher federal taxes will hurt New Jersey craft brewers, who are a source of jobs and state and local taxes, regardless of how many jobs or however much those taxes paid at home are.

It's also worth pointing out – as we have before – that beer, wine and liquor* have been paying Uncle Sam's bills for several decades. It would be unfair and too easy for Congress to tap that source again. But the unfortunate stigma that beer, wine and liquor have attached to them make them the easy – even vulnerable – target. DUI, underage drinking and alcoholism are not solved through higher taxes (nor should any thinking person accept those as reasons to fund healthcare reforms so long as cigarettes are a commercially available product in this country).

If you're over 45, you probably remember when soft drinks came, not in Big Gulps and 20-ounce containers, but in 12-ounce bottles (or even 6 and 10 ounces from vending machines!) and that fast food was a sometimes food, served in modest portions, and not an everyday food. And it should mean something to healthcare reformers, Capitol Hill and the Obama administration that five years ago McDonald's, to its credit, dumped its Super Size menu, thanks, in no small part, to blow-back from those outsized portions making outsized Americans. Oversized sodas and fatty, prepared or prepackaged foods own a piece of the erosion of the nation's overall health and their industries should be asked thusly to share a tax burden.



*Awhile back, Pennsylvania beer writer Lew Bryson put forth the idea that calling beer, wine and liquor alcoholic beverages is an unfortunate choice of words, unfairly tying them to negative connotations of alcoholics and alcoholism. (Lew didn't pontificate; he just pointed out his preference to not phrase references to the beverages in that way.) We share his point of view: Hence, beer, wine and liquor.

Here's to your health(care), Part 2

An update on the possibility of beer taxes going up to pay for an overhaul of the US healthcare system.

We've said it before: beer, wine and liquor – partly to assuage the temperance leagues and become legal again those 76 years ago – were turned into vehicles for taxes, and have been paying the freight for three generations hence. The sin taxes.

Granted the spotlight is on the beverage industry right now, but why is it outside the realm of reason to ask Burger King, in addition to Coke and Pepsi, or the owners of Ben & Jerry to pony up something for their contribution toward unhealthy living, however large or small?

Obesity can be, and is, as insidiously debilitating as alcoholism. Overeating just isn't defined as a social ill like drinking to excess is. And if you want to argue that it's presumptuous to think that high-fat foods or beverages with a lot of sugar will be overconsumed, then it's equally presumptuous to assume that beer, wine and liquor will be abused; that everyone who has a drink will drive with a load on; and that everyone under 21 will scheme to get his hands on a pint of Jack Daniel's or a sixpack of beer. (Funny how that's MADD's position.)

For the record, we're not in favor of higher taxes. We're just saying that what's good for the Grey Goose is good for Burger King, so long as BK thinks cheap, fatty, starchy food is good business and what America needs more of.

Anyway, looks like the battle has been joined. Add your voice: Here's the contact info for Sens. Frank Lautenberg and Bob Menendez. (Just remember that Lautenberg was the one who authored the federal .08% threshold for DUI – no, we don't endorse driving with a snootful – and the federal drinking age of 21, both of which were nothing more than Uncle Sam usurping states' authority by threatening to withhold highway funding if the states didn't sign on.)

Here's to your health(care)

Here’s a name right now that you need to know: Max Baucus.

Max is a Big Sky guy, a US senator from Montana. He’s also chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. And as we all know the country’s finances are as wobbly as a barstool with uneven legs.

Besides fixing the banks and the jobs scene, Congress and President Obama (who’s been known to enjoy a beer at courtside of an NBA game) are looking for the biggest Band-Aid ever to put on the healthcare system.

That’s why if you’re a beer drinker you need to know about Max (here’s his email). On Wednesday, a news report bubbled up about funding healthcare with higher taxes on beer, liquor and wine. (The current projection is 2 bucks more a case for the consumer; and a shout-out goes to PubScout Kurt Epps for pointing out this story.)

This was probably a train you could hear coming from a long way off: messed up economy – the worst since Big Band tunes were a fresh sound on radio; a messed up healthcare system; changing times; yet another pivotal moment in the nation’s existence. That a higher sin tax would get put on the table is predictable, indeed. (Yet cigarettes have never been pulled as an unsafe product.)

Collision course
But it’s interesting, too, because on Feb. 3, the bill H.R. 836 was introduced, proposing to reduce the $18 per barrel federal beer tax for the big brewers to $9, its pre-George H.W. Bush (Bush the Elder) level, and also halving the $7 tax for craft and pub brewers. (FYI: Jersey’s beer tax is $3.72 a gallon, and for now Gov. Corzine isn’t touching it.) A quick spin over to Beertown.org doesn’t indicate an update on the status of this bill, dubbed the Brewers Excise and Economic Relief Act of 2009 (yes, it forms the acronym BEER).

A little more about BEER: Predictably, it has some folks frowning in a variety of circles, fussing and thrashing about with some figures dropped at the doorstep of Congress: Loss of federal revenue, $1.5 billion; make worse a $200 billion annual toll for dealing with drinking-related health problems; fatten the wallets of foreign beverage companies that account for 90% of US beer production.

On the industry side, the numbers campaign goes like this: brewers, directly or indirectly, pump $190 billion annually into economy and provide more than 1.7 million jobs with wages and benefits of nearly $55 billion.

So with that floating around in the background, there’s the log of healthcare reform tossed onto the fire. This has the potential to become a huge, complex battle, because anyone who has enjoyed the runaround by HorizonBlue Cross knows healthcare needs fixing, and it’s going to take some major money and major reform, but the brewing industry (led by the A-B types) isn't going to just take it. Certainly not after pitching a tax cut.

Already, Coke and Pepsi have wet their pants over a proposal to tax soft drinks (which we support) as a way to kick in toward healthcare. It’s patently absurd to think that soft drinks deserve a pass because there’s no ethyl alcohol in them. When high fructose corn syrup replaced sugar in soft drinks – it’s cheaper than sugar, and corn enjoys some federal propping up via subsidy, about $40 billion worth since the 1990s – the standard size of a bottle of soda jumped a half pint; so now everyone was doing the Dew 20 ounces at a time, or burping from 7-Eleven’s quart-size Big Gulps and 1.5-liter Super Big Gulps. The overconsumption/obesity/diabetes argument applies.

But a higher tax on beer, liquor and wine to pay for healthcare? Well, OK, we understand trying to collect taxes from a number of revenue sources, and we've heard all the complaints about alcohol and health (funny, the wine industry's quick reaction to this was to highlight the health benefits of reds and demand a pass). But here’s one point to consider: Beer, wine and liquor have already paid their dues. In fact, it’s part of New Jersey history: Sea Girt, Aug. 27, 1932, FDR launches his campaign for the White House, vowing to fold the tent on that colossal failure called Prohibition, lift the economy out of the throes of the Great Depression with the help of excise taxes on beer, wine and liquor. You didn’t have to be alive in 1933 to know Prohibition was sent to history’s trash pile. And beer has been paying a lot of Uncle Sam’s bills ever since.

So, we argue that if Congress wants to tap beer for revenue again, the industry deserves something in exchange (and not something that makes just the big brewers happy). And look no further than the three-tier system under which beer became legal again. It’s a confounding collage of regulations that change state to state and has resulted in unfair treatment of small brewers and cozy relationships between distributors and the giant brewers. It has outlived its purpose. But taking on the three-tier sysem isn't going to go over too well, either.

Did we mention the battle is complex?