Friday Bullets For A Week Off In July

It’s been a weird week off. Chopped up. I even had to go to work but that was my fault. Didn’t check the schedule. Picked the wrong week. Assumed. But we carried on. A cold moved through but we carried on. Started in fine style at the Dinosaur BBQ, too. Vintage base ball coming up on Sunday. Spent the week being scared to hell by Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food. Still ate bacon and green onion cream cheese on bagels from Ithaca Bakery. But I knew it was wrong. And exactly how wrong: real wrong.

  • Construction paper 1930s Soviet arctic exploration art. Neato.
  • I don’t write that much about my town. I don’t write much about much come to think of it. But look at the video of Elton John at the rink. Where do rock bands play in towns without hockey teams?
  • Sox are 4-6 in July. Not pleased. Bought the lad Sox socks at Cooperstown and they play like this???
  • Still don’t know what to make of Obama. The Gulf oil crisis is his first crisis begun under his watch. If the oil has now actually been capped after 86 days, getting a 20 billion dollar fund mid-crisis is a pretty smooth move. No one is really talking about health care socialism anymore, either. He may pan out OK.

Gotta go get the car in for a tune up. That outta spice things up.

The Last Time Someone Else Won, They Were Whigs

That was the line of the night. Apparently, the last time portions of New York state’s 23rd district of the US Congress were not represented by Republicans, they were represented by Whigs. It was the equivalent of a by-election for the House of Commons. But it had a very different feel. While party affiliation is huge here, so is personal contact as well as local issues that might, in Canada, be handled by someone else. So, in the bar I was invited to attend, local candidates for positions like municipal clerk were applauded in victory or supported in sad defeat by others with far grander titles and offices. I talked with union leaders, insurgent college kids from other states here to get the vote out as well as a very genial county court criminal judge who was elected to a second ten year term in a landslide.

The big news was the Congressional win for the Democrats. But the story for me was how this had the look of a church supper in a way, with local people of all sorts doing what they could to try to play a role in improving their community. Sounds smarmy but when you are chatting with a member of the New York State legislature bouncing he newborn as you hold the corner with the good cold cuts tray, it sorta has that feeling. Follow the results on NCPR and WDT.

Excuse Me… But Are You The Man From Prague?

I got myself invited over the border for tomorrow night to witness the special election for the 23rd New York Congressional District… well, to witness the election night party actually. It was a tale of a three way race until the left-wing Republican dropped out Saturday and then on Sunday threw her support behind the right-wing Democrat all in an effort to keep out the “conservative” Independent who was first rejected by the Republicans but may now have to be reckoned with:

Her position in New York’s Republican Party seems in doubt: The state party chairman, Edward F. Cox, condemned Ms. Scozzafava’s move. “Dede Scozzafava’s endorsement today represents a betrayal of the people of the North Country and the people of her party,” Mr. Cox said, referring to the state’s northern reaches. Ms. Scozzafava had been under siege from conservative leaders because she supports gay rights and abortion rights and was considered too liberal on various fiscal issues. Democrats appeared emboldened by the endorsement, but the outcome of the race in this Republican-leaning district remains unpredictable. Neither candidate is taking anything for granted.

Why do I care? Well, frankly, as I am locally sworn to be a neutral voice in my professional calling it is a conduit to engage my unnatural interest in elections. Plus, I just find northern New York culture fascinating – so similar to and well aware of their Canadian neighbours but also so different, sitting in a construct of governance which is utterly alien constitutionally. You know, I only learned this morning from my cousin in Boston as well as a US soldier in Afghanistan (Facebook is weird somedays) that in the US to give out a bag of chips on Halloween is an insult. Then, you know, its an hour away so why not and, finally, I have to do some vintage baseball research on that big 1874 Watertown tournament not to mention good beer needs to be bought and am combining interests.

But what is my plan? I only learned yesterday that this story is now attracting the international press. Maybe I will get interviewed by the Czech press for the Canadian position. What would I say?

But Isn’t Taxing Beer The Third Oldest Profession?

It is interesting to follow beer fans in different jurisdictions in the US and the UK react to various plans to use beer as one way to cope with the global economic crisis. The British Beer and Pub Association backed by CAMRA and many brewers is running the Axe the Beer Tax campaign. States like Illinois are thinking about making changes while others like Wisconsin may leave them where they have been for forty years. Jay points out that the US Federal tax might be tripled from 18 to 45 bucks a barrel but is that really stupid or just reality in an economic collapse? Just as it makes no sense when a certain sort of politician advocates for lower tax on business income to get small businesses started – no sense because they have no profits to call income at that stage – similarly, in a downturn, you can’t raise taxes on the limp sectors of the economy economic activity. So, if there are going to be taxes – and, yes, there are going to be taxes – why should beer be exempt?

Amy Mittleman in Brewing Battles points out that modern taxation policy was largely created in the mid-1860s to react to the nation’s financial need to pay for the Civil War. Beer and brewing was the chosen conduit for the taxation as was follow existing European models with the aim of creating the greatest level of consumption and therefore the greatest revenue stream. She also points out that the Federal beer excise tax on beer was set at 9 dollars a barrel almost six decades ago under the Truman administration. The tax level now in after inflation dollars has simply not kept up given $100 in 1952 is now worth $798.87. Fully adjusted taxes would make for about $72 per barrel of Federal excise today at Truman’s rates. Obama’s Senate pals are considering $45. Jay quotes Jeff Becker of the Beer Institute as part of his argument:

In 2008, members of the beer industry paid more than $41 billion in taxes at all levels of government and provided jobs to 1.9 million Americans. Any proposed tax increase would severely offset this important economic contribution.’”

Really? Any tax will threaten it? Will “wipe out an industry”? Seems like the socialists do pretty well on the beer consumption scale. Look at it this way. In these tough economic times there are two western economies which are sort of standing out. Norway is booming and the Obama administration is looking to dull old Canada for banking regulatory lessons. Despite cursing it as we do, both Norway and Canada beer fans live in cultures with a pay-as-you-go mentality with high beer taxation. When I was a kid in Nova Scotia the beer cases even had “includes health tax” written on them right next to “union made” right on top. We paid the tax and were quite happy when the ER visit didn’t turn into a question about could we afford it. We also had no choice. Unlike today in the UK, there was no cheap booze alternative undermining the marketplace in the Maritimes. Well, except in PEI… but that is another matter.

Look, I am not going to say “oh, goodie goodie goodie, a new tax” but at the end of the day isn’t there an effort going on to somehow roll back the clock to about 1857 when shock and dismay is expressed over taxes on beer even in a time of economic recession?

Adam Dunn Apparently Does Not Suck So Much

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It was one of the best games I have ever attended in any sport. Bizarrely, this morning Canadian sports media are not covering it as their lead story. Had Bay hit the run and Canada gone on to win, the nation would have gloated for years. But the outcome was immaterial to the quality of the game. Perhaps Canadian sports fans can’t appreciate the glory of achievement even in a close loss. If so, that wouldn’t be the case for those who were there. Conversely, the New York Times appreciated the moment the US reliever Putz faced in the ninth: “From the start, though, Putz could tell this game would be different from any he had experienced in a decade of professional baseball. The Rogers Centre throbbed with noise — it was the loudest crowd Putz said he had ever heard.” That is the big moment up top in the ninth – a man on second, two outs and Jason Bay at the plate fighting off pitches only to fly out in the end. The place had been going crazy for an hour up to that point after Canada’s minor league relievers twice got out of bases loaded situations. Heroic moments.

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My children learned new words and new ways to use words. Many of those words were directed at USA right fielder Adam Dunn who spent the first half of the game parked in front of us before sending the game reeling with his three run homer. But I knew he did not suck as I saw him at Cooperstown in the home run derby in 2006 jack more than one out of the park. I have a deep belief that seeing sports live in a crowd is a very good thing and an important part of childhood. Fodder for character and an education that your classmate junior peewee “elite” soccer players are pretty much being led down a path.

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Seeing a fan of the other side slagged by your crowd mates and then seeing him turn on them victorious and finger pointing is a life lesson. Seeing ultimately good natured but rough talk between adults should be shocking spicy thing. Watching reactions to great achievements and huge disappointments provides a foundation for future personal experience.

The Session #22: What Does Repeal Mean to Me?

It seems like a very sad thing. As Mr. Beaumont has already pointed out, for a global beer blogging day, the very question asked is so provincial, so singularly parochial and limited to one nation of all the nations of the world that one has to take it either as an intentional insult or at least as an approach so laced with ignorance that one inevitably wonders whether to take up the challenge or not. That is no less the case when one considers that the question is being posed by a craft brewery that brands itself so closely in relation to the question of the US national repeal of prohibition, 21st Amendment Brewery of San Fransisco. Frankly, I feel as if I am writing their advertising copy for them which I trust was never ever the intention of The Session and should be a call (again) to get this day a month back on point…and that point being beer.

But having said all that (and keeping in mind I am extra cranky due to being off work sick) as the folk asking the question today are by all accounts a wonderful, witty and wise gang of malt jockies as ever there was – oh, what the hell. So, as any good legal counsel as I presume myself to be would, let us begin from the beginning. The full inquiry posed by 21AB is this:

What does the repeal of Prohibition mean to you? How will you celebrate your right to drink beer?

Well, the obvious answer to the first is absolutely nothing whatsoever. I wasn’t around then and pretty much anyone that was is dead and never met me. The second is really disconnected. As a right, it is something that is inherent to me as a human being and not something granted or retracted by the state. This is something neocons and, in the US, those called “originalists” get but really don’t get. A right cannot be defined by a constitution – it can only be observed to be present and acknowledged by the state through declaration and then respect. The wisest constitutions and constitutional thinkers realize that the observation and recognition of rights is not unlike the job of the tropicial ecological taxonomist: when a new species of bird is identified, it gets noted down, its characteristics observed and it is given a name. It is respected for what it is and also understood to have been pre-existing. So, too, with any observed right and the control of alcohol is a splendid example: in both the respect and disrespect implicit in regulation of booze-related rights. It is worth noting again that we have to separate right from regulation and thing about each separately and in their relation to one another. Notice also that I stated this in the present tense. We will reflect again on the question “what does the repeal of Prohibition mean to you?” As you will see, I argue that we are not done with it today.

More about law. We are discussing the “repeal” of a certain thing. That happened on a date. That it was not actually this date or that date in the US nor this date in many other dates in all the other places where a prohibition on alcohol was or has been in place is not important. In fact, in many places and in many ways it still exists. What is important is that the certain thing being “repealed” is a “prohibition” – the stopping of doing of an activity by action of law. That last bit that is important, too: “by action of law.” You see, prohibition by law is not actually the stopping. Murder and theft are illegal and happen, sadly, every day. If you think about it, those lucky enough to live in free states are in fact largely free, in a way, to do wrong but then are also subject to the sanction of law and the punishments imposed under those laws. So to understand what we are even talking about today, we need to understand two basic things: what is the right being discussed and what did the law do when it prohibited. Once we know that, we can discuss a third thing – what effect did the law actually have…because we all have to admit all laws are subject to their own inherent stengths and weaknesses as well as different rates of success.

First, then: what is the right. There is a principle in the Canadian constitution that I explored in my chapter on our relgulation of beer found in the book “Beer and Philosophy” which came out just last year (and so still makes an excellent stocking stuffer.) That principle states:

“everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.”

The first thing you will see as that this is a set of rights and it is not a statement of the grant of the rights but an acknowledgement. It is also a balancing. The right not to be deprived is conditional on “the exercise of the principles of fundamental justice”. The meaning and elaboration of these right have been explored many times by many courts and, in 2003, an aspect of the right to liberty – which we can call the sub-right of “autonomy” or the right to be left alone – was discussed by the Supreme Court of Canada in the case R. v. Clay in relation to marijuana use. The court, illogically as I suggested at the time, stated that:

…the liberty right within s. 7 is thought to touch the core of what it means to be an autonomous human being blessed with dignity and independence in “matters that can properly be characterized as fundamentally or inherently personal” With respect, there is nothing “inherently personal” or “inherently private” about smoking marihuana for recreation. The appellant says that users almost always smoke in the privacy of their homes, but that is a function of lifestyle preference and is not “inherent” in the activity of smoking itself. Indeed, as the appellant together with Malmo-Levine and Caine set out in their Joint Statement of Legislative Facts, cannabis “is used predominantly as a social activity engaged in with friends and partners during evenings, weekends, and other leisure time” (para. 18). The trial judge was impressed by the view expressed by the defence expert, Dr. J. P. Morgan, that marihuana is largely used for occasional recreation.

What boggles my mind about this ruling is the idea that one’s private pleasures in life – which are often the things which one actually takes most joy from in life and most makes oneself known and identifiable to oneself – are not protected. I think this is wrong. The court confuses “fundamentally or inherently personal” with matters which are objectively or, worse, collectively accepted as serious. Put it this way, a fan of craft beer who spends a large measure of income on the interest and is fascinated enough by the subject to, you know, blog about it pretty much every day and even write chapters in books about its regulation likely also considers it “fundamentally or inherently personal”. I will not digress further on this point but to note the case was not on booze and if it was on the issue relating to a lawyer’s wine cellar, the court might have had other sympathies – and the difference between wine and marijuana might well justify such a difference. Suffice it to say, however, that this is a reasonable example and description of the underlying human right as against the state that is at play when we are talking about Prohibition in this context. And, if we thing of our tropical ecological taxonomist above, the name of that right is “autonomy.” So, having established the nature of the right, we can now move on to the question of the nature of what is “prohibition”.

I am going to take a break now, go take more meds, have a nap and a think, and pick up from here later today.

Later that day: That’s better. So where were we? Yes, prohibition. So if we have a right and then we have a prohibition and then we have a repeal, where are we? Back with the right, right? But we are not. We do not live in relation to alcohol as we did before the beginning of prohibition are we. And when was that anyway? Well, if by prohibition we mean an total ban on all activity related to the trade, transportation, manufacture, possession and consumption of alcohol that never happened in Canada. The US introduced an amendment in 1919 to its constitution that imposed the following:

After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.

Canada, by comparison, had a national referendum in 1898 under which, although 51.3% approved prohibition only 44% of the population voted according to Craig Heron at page 172 of his highly recommended book Booze which I quoted from back in March. Heron describes the difference between the US and Canada’s approach in this way:

Defeat at the national level set Canada’s prohibition movement on a different course from its US counterpart. South of the border, as state prohibition experiments were failing and the Supreme Court reinforced federal powers to intervene on this issue as an aspect of federally controlled interstate commerce, prohibitionists looked to Congress for action and then, in 1913, decided to seek and anti-booze amendment to the Constitution. In contrast the Canadian movement turned decisively back to the provinces, where members would concentrate their energies for the most part of the next three decades. Canada’s highest court helped shape that strategic direction with its 1896 and 1901 declarations that prohibiting the sale of booze within the boundaries of one province was a solidly provincial responsibility.

So up here, each province charted its own course. People certainly were arrested and beer barrels put to the axe. Little PEI imposed the strictest ban in 1901 that lasted until 1948 – which triggered a continuing fine but entirely illegal moonshine trade as well as the blind pigs of bootlegging bars, a dirty open secret that was tacitly accepted right up until just a few years ago after a man died at the bar in one of these establishments…and no one noticed for a while. Other provinces took other actions over the early decades of the 1900s, none of which entirely banned personal possession and none of which was in line with the others. A patchwork was created under which alcohol was more or less available if you wanted it. There were some reasons for this.

  • Canada then as now simply does not have a constitution in one document. One hundred years ago it was still subject to British Parliamentary approval for major changes which would be the equivalent of a US constitutional amendment. As a result, the approach was more local and regulatory because that was the available law.
  • Quebec voted heavily against prohibition in 1898. A whopping 81.2% of the electorate voted against it. Canadian politics being what it is, any prohibition against booze had to take that into account.
  • After WWI, there was a social change in Canada whereby the rights and dignity of the worker was raised in the consciousness of the land. General strikes ending in deaths of strikers placed veteran against veteran. And having had a longer war than the US, there was no doubt greater Canadian exposure to freer social drinking from 1914-1918 in Europe.
  • Practices like continued access to 2.5% beer in taverns, medical prescriptions and drug store slips for medicinal alcohol and inter-provincial shipments from “wholesalers” were openly abused throughout the “prohibition” period.

There is another thing. Frankly, we Canucks were and, to be fair, still are a nation of loop hole seekers. Our relationship to the state is less fundamental in most of Canada than in America. We do not pledge allegiance to the flag so much as answer questions posed by police officers and other officials with our fingers crossed behind our backs. This national characteristic is accentuated by legal patchworks and common access to other jurisdictions where the law is different than where each of us lives.

The patchwork of rules and access to other jurisdictions continues. In a real way we never had prohibition, just degrees of regulation. Plenty of that makes sense. No one wants ten year old children standing in the liquor store line-ups and no one wants people to clean of a case of beer and then drive away from the party. There will always be regulation of some aspects of the booze trade. But there are plenty of laws that people not only flout but that officials do not enforce and sometimes do not even know exist. We are like that. Just consider that certain comic books still are prohibited under our national Criminal Code…a provision that is never enforced.

No, still today vast provincial bureaucracies exist, like Ontario’s LCBO, which impose costly regulation, which no one really cares about and which do not real describable good other than perpetuate a vision of a society in need of protection from demon rum. There is plenty of booze for all under these systems of oversight but also plenty of rules continued directly from the “prohibition” period. When I was in university, it was still illegal in PEI to stand in a bar and be holding a beer at the same time. All drinking was to be seated. Here in Ontario and elsewhere, importation is restricted on craft beer and other alcohols even though I can drive into the US and buy the stuff myself and bring it back within hours. Labels on bottles must be in line with regulations that only apply here, causing needless delay and cost. Due to lab testing and other requirements, I have a hard time saying that most beers in the LCBO system could be considered fresh – except those of small local brewers who, as I learned late last winter, control deliveries themselves like Beau’s All Natural here in eastern Ontario, as so romantically illustrated to the right.

As a result, I also have a hard time saying that repeal means anything to me because there has never been a repeal of the program of regulation that was imposed during the period of regulation. I can’t buy a beer in a corner store in Ontario – though I can drive two hours to Quebec or an hour into New York state if I want to. I cannot buy a beer here which is not inflated in price due to taxation, minimum pricing rules, duties and state monopolistic practices. So in answer to the questions above, repeal means nothing as it never really happened and to celebrate my right to drink beer, I will drink the beer that I am allowed to have by my bureaucratic betters. Whoop-dee-doo.

Pick A Date, Any Date, For The End Of Prohibition

Some of our US cousins are all happy happy over celebrating the 7th of April as some sort of anniversary of the repeal of prohibition despite strong evidence otherwise reviewed last year. While it is hard to pin point the actual date that celebrating should begin down south – and who really cares – imagine the situation in Canada where prohibition was, other than during WWI, a matter regulated by the provinces:

Québec rejected it as early as 1919 and became known as the “sinkhole” of North America, but tourists flocked to “historic old Québec” and the provincial government reaped huge profits from the sale of booze. In 1920 BC voted “wet” and by the following year some alcoholic beverages were legally sold there and in the Yukon through government stores. Manitoba inaugurated a system of government sale and control in 1923, followed by Alberta and Saskatchewan in 1924, Newfoundland in 1925, Ontario and New Brunswick in 1927, and Nova Scotia in 1930. The last bastion, Prince Edward Island, finally gave up “the noble experiment” in 1948, though pockets of dryness under local option still exist throughout the land.

Just a couple of decades ago it was illegal in PEI to stand up in a bar while holding a beer so these things do hang on.

The real point, however, for we Canadians is that the end of prohibition in the US led to a economic crisis in Canada due to the end of our monopoly on legal brewing in North America. In Craig Heron’s excellent book Booze: A Distilled History, it is shown that one St.John, New Brunswick taxi driver could make $1,600 bucks per bootlegging run into Maine in 1923. That is a real economic benefit to a hard-pressed part of this land. And, at pages 249-250, he quotes the following statement of proud Canadian brewing autonomy:

We have no knowledge or interest in the prohibitory laws of the United States,” the vice-president of Windsor’s British-American Brewery Company told a writer for Ladies Home Journal in 1923. “We believe we are privileged to fill orders for shipments of beer to the United States, even if it is illegal for citizens of the United States to have beer.

Huzzah, says I. So, I think it is fair to say, that any celebration on 7 April is also a rejection of good Canadian monopolistic illegal moonshine and beery goodness…and I think, frankly, that is a pity that our feelings are being treated so thoughtlessly in all this southerly happy making.

Group Project: Karl Rove

Here is an easy one for the dog days of summer: was Karl Rove a force for good or evil? Remember – on his way out he called you all “the mob” as in he was not going to leave at a time dictated by the mob. When was the last time a public official in a democracy could call the people “the mob”? Anyway, to stoke the question, here is a clip from the editorial from The New York Times:

Mr. Rove has stonewalled Congress’s legitimate efforts to investigate. Some of his key e-mail messages on the United States attorneys matter appear to have mysteriously disappeared, while others are being withheld with baseless claims of executive privilege. As for defying that Senate subpoena, some subjects might have been protected by privilege, but Mr. Rove’s refusal to show up at all is outrageous — although totally in keeping with his and his boss’s disdain for the separation of powers.Mr. Rove failed his own party, as well as the American people, when he counseled President Bush to turn every serious policy debate — Social Security, the war in Iraq, even terrorism — into one more political dogfight. Today, despite Mr. Rove’s claims of invincibility, both houses of Congress are back in Democratic hands, Mr. Bush’s approval ratings are around 30 percent and many Republican presidential candidates are running as fast as they can away from the Bush legacy.

Can anyone find a similarly sourced opinion that actually supports what the guy did? Isolated crackpot rural libertarian bloggers do not count, by the way.

Me? I agree with the disgusting politicization stuff. Thankfully we have had a degree of protection from that in recent years by the wonder that is minority government. People will say that the bureaucracy here is socialist Liberal but that really has not been the case since the Federal cuts began back in the mid-80s under Mulroney with the trains and post office, continued under Chretien with his slash and burn and continues with the present unFederalizing policy – though, granted, the Food Mail Program still exists. But this is not about me. It is about Karl and you.

By the way…you ever notice he has the same first name as Karl Marx? What the hell was wrong with Carl anyway?

GP rules apply. More here.

Why Don’t They Study Slam Dancing And Health Anymore?

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Another day, another bunch of odd academic studies from lab coated laboratorians or policy documents from lobbyist trying to tell us all what beer does with you or what you do when you are with your beer. From France we learn, first, that “when the music gets loud, we tend to drain our mug of brew faster”:

Researchers staked out two bars in the west of France and observed drinking habits of 40 patrons. With permission from bartenders, the scientists pumped up the volume of a Top 40 station from 72 to 88 pounding decibels. In this earsplitting din of pop-music, patrons drank more in less time.

Is it possible that people who like to drink slowly and have quieter habits do not patronize places where Top 40 stations are played at 72 to 88 pounding decibels? Or maybe are they drinking to numb the pain? This article from here in Canada, next, seems to suggest that university age female drinking is new:

“You’re just an amateur if you can’t drink as much [as the guys] … you’re kind of like a sissy,” says Smith. “It’s not even always how much you’re drinking but what you’re drinking. Like, if a girl is drinking a stereotypical man-drink like whisky or dark rum or beer, it’s like guys are attracted to her or that it’s more impressive.

If they are suggesting this is new, well, that would be news to everyone I know in the mid-50s to early-40s bracket who were at college in Maritime Canada 25 to 30 years ago, who roamed in packs earning nicknames like “The Girls Who Said Woo”. Sure there were dumb, sad or bad incidents to all sorts of kids but risks and dangers were mitigated by group dynamics and common sense – designated drivers, not inviting jerks along and people just watched out for each other, like the time one evening’s overeager drinking buddy was stitched up by last night’s one from the med frat. Heck, on any given evening large lads like me were pointed at by a few gals as they said I was their boyfriend while I scowled a bit. If that does not still occur, that would have nothing to do with the drink so much as a sad loss of good manners.

Finally, US College basketball executives are considering an end to beer advertising during the “March Madness” national championship basketball tournament. Currently:

The NCAA’s advertising policy on its face…specifically prohibits ads for cigarettes, sports wagering, gambling, nightclubs, firearms and weapons, athletic recruitment services, and depictions of any student-athlete group in a degrading, demeaning or disrespectful manner. “Impermissible” ads also include NC-17-rated motion pictures, television programming or interactive games, and alcoholic beverages. But, ads for malt beverages, beer, and wine products that do not exceed six percent alcohol by volume are excepted, with limitations.

This is no small business as we are told that two beer marketers — Anheuser-Busch and Miller Brewing — spent nearly $30 million to advertise during the 2007 NCAA national basketball championships. But are these breweries advertising to the young or the old glory-days guys who pretend to themselves that they were as good back in the day?

I don’t pretend that there is not some degree of common sense or academic value in clever people noting these sorts of things but I am not going to join the new dries anytime soon, either. Sometimes in these matters we only hear of the sort of common sense that sees only one side of the matter and not the kids who like to sweaty slam dance to loud music, the gang of kids looking for safe dumb fun or the sofa surfers who just like to watch those ads for Bud with speaking frogs or with the guys who say “Wazzup?” How much money has A-B or Miller given to higher education through these ads or even otherwise? How many noisy slam-dancers just had a good time – again – and got home safe? How many of my pals met their spouses over pitchers of beer and now have nice, slightly Oldie Olson lives with quite faithful marriages?

Too bad there is no well-funded “Institute for the Realistic Contextualization of Studies and Statistics” which could help with those questions.

Book Review: The US Brewing Industry by Tremblay and Tremblay

tntLike any member of the bar, I think a lot of myself. I think there are not too many documents I cannot wade through and conquer. I think I have met my match, not because it is too complex or on a topic that I cannot grasp but that it is in a language I have never come across before – economic analysis. The book’s full title in fact is The U.S. Brewing Industry: Data and Economic Analysis so I should have know. It’s that last word that gets me. You are trucking along in a chapter and, whammo!, mathematical formulae. It’s never the gaant charts or the flow charts or the pie charts or the multi-coloured graphs that get me – it’s the algebra. I think that makes what is called beeronomics econometrics. Click in the picture below and you will see what I mean.

tnt1But of course it is more than math that escapes me. Conversely, both authors are professors of economics at Oregon State University [Ed.: Go State!] and they explain their book in this way:

Victor and Carol Tremblay have authored a book The U.S. Brewing Industry: Data and Economic Analysis, MIT Press, 2005. This represents the culmination of almost 25 years of research in which they analyze the important economic issues facing the brewing industry, 1950-2002. These include changes in demand and cost conditions, the causes and consequences of rising concentration, price, advertising, and other firm strategies, and the impact of advertising, excise taxes, and antitrust regulations on the economic performance of the industry. They focus on the macro or mass-producing brewers but also discuss the microbrewery and import sectors of the market. A unique feature of the book is that it provides a comprehensive dataset, including annual industry data on demand and cost variables (1950-2002), annual financial data from the 25 leading brewers (1950-2002), and annual production data from the leading 100 brewers (1947-2003).

For careful readers, you will appreciate this means the statistics pre-date the current craft brewing boom. Craft brewing is described but, as is concisely pointed out in the Introduction, we have to admit craft beer in 2001 accounted for 3% of total consumption – half a percent behind “ice beer”. No, this is not a book by boosters by boosters but the cold hearted results of 25 years of economic study brought together in one handy to describe the causes of industry concentration, basic cost issues, pricing and advertising strategies as well as public policy issues. That means it is a great over-view of the whole of the industry and could provide insight to craft brewers whose work now, by my reasonable guesstimate (not a concept in econometrics), now sits at about 4% to 5% of total beer consumption, eclipsing ice beer to stand maybe at half the importance of imports. I say guesstimate because I have not been able to find relative statistics in all the recent press about 31.5% growth in US craft beer sales over the three years ’04 to ’06. Nice to have access to a discussion of the economics of the industry that is made up of more than press releases.

So, am I glad I have this book? Definitely? Can I read it in one sitting? Not a chance. I think this is a book to get through gradually, to immerse myself in over a while – and also one to return to as a reference over and over. I expect it could serve anyone well, to give guidance both in relation to key elements of the industry as a base line for data…unless you happen to be an econometrician in which case you can zip through it during your next flight or maybe a lunch break.