It was really fun and challenging to write five posts in a row last week and I hope to do more of that in the future. The buzz in the blogosphere around Repeal Day was very interesting. Many posts commented on our current drug laws and made comparision to the Prohibition Era. I will write about this but in about ten days I will have a brand new wordpress blog. I am hoping this will make blogging much easier and then I can do it more often. I am going to wait until the new blog is up to write on my reaction to the discussion of drug laws as well as my opinion on how Barack is doing. Stay tuned.
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The Session # 22: The Repeal of Prohibition
December 5 2008
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The 21st Amendment, a brewery in San Francisco is hosting this session and had posed the following questions:
What does the repeal of Prohibition mean to you? How will you celebrate your right to drink beer?
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Today is the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Repeal of Prohibition. On December 5 1933 the 21st amendment to the Cosntitution was ratified; the production, distribution, and sale of alcoholic beverages was legal again. On a personal level this anniversary has a lot of meaning for me since most of my career as a professional historian and author is bound up with these historical events. I am old enough hat I was able to have my first drink at the age of eighteen. I am approaching the one year anniversary of the publication of Brewing Battles so today has even more meaning.
One way I am celebrating is by writng this posting as well as the others I have written this past week. I do not have a beer every day but it is certain possible that I will have one today.
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The Road From Repeal:The Future
Prohibition happened because of deep ambivalence in American society over the use and abuse of alcohol. In 1920 the solution to these problems appeared to be the cessation of the production, distribution, and sale of alcohol. Thirteen years later Americans decided they had been wrong and allowed, once again, alcohol to be legally made and sold.
Repeal as a historical moment does not represent the solidification of a negative societal view of alcohol. Rather it represents a turning point in American views of social behavior and habits. Since 1933 Prohibition has served as a negative reference point for any attempts to regulate or control problematic or unhealthy behavior. Reformers seeking legalization of other psychoactive substances such as marijuana use the nation’s experience with Prohibition to underscore the lack of wisdom in prohibiting other drugs.
Prohibition and Repeal did not eradicate our nation’s ambivalence about alcohol. As a country we are not alone in this ambivalence. Most modern states have a similarly complicated relationship with alcoholic beverages. Most governments receive some revenue benefits from taxing liquor while they must also deal with the health, safety, and public disorder problems that result from the misuse of alcohol.
From the liquor industry’s stand point the history of Prohibition and Repeal is a mixed blessing. They are always able to refer to Prohibition as the undesired end point of any attempts to increase regulation of the industry. They have been able to resume their role as financial partners in the federal government, an activity that continues to give them respectability. However they are ever vigilant in resisting any further sacrifices in the form of increased taxes. They are obviously aware, both from their own experiences as well as the experiences of the tobacco industry, that they are not invulnerable to another prohibition.
American responses to alcohol use and abuse have come in waves or cycles. From 1933 until the early 1970s American society increasingly saw alcohol consumption as a normal part of middle class social life. The low consumption rates that persisted until baby boomers became old enough to drink may have encouraged this benign view of liquor. The liquor industry as well as the medical field and academics all participated in the individualization and medicalization of alcohol problems.
In the 1970s alcohol consumption levels rose and a more public health approach to alcohol problems emerged. We are still living in this era. Public health advocates along with neo-prohibitionists had several successes including warning labels, the increase in the minimum drinking age, and a tax increase for beer. However they have not really moved forward in their attempts to restrict television advertising and drunk driving rates have not decreased for several years.
What remains to be seen is whether the pendulum will swing more severely one way or the other? Will bad economic times lead to increased or decreased drinking? Globally as the world’s population ages there seems to be a decrease in drinking. Less drinking usually leads to less negative consequences for society which in turn can lead to looser attitudes about drinking. However, at least in America, the baby boomlet could certainly impact consumption levels which might swing the pendulum towards stricter regulations and greater societal concern. The liquor industry is much better organized to withstand a regulatory or prohibitory onslaught than they were 88 years ago.
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December 4 2008
The Road from Reform: The Three Tier System
Prior to Prohibition distribution and sales of beer took place in variety of ways. Many brewers owned saloons which functioned as retail operations. The brewers supplied their beer to the saloonkeeper. Shipping brewers who operated on a national level maintained distribution outlets at various railroad stops. Although there were different federal fees for wholesale and retail dealers as well as excise taxes on brewers, there was a lot of blurring of the lines between these different areas of the beer industry. Brewer ownership of saloons was the most pronblematic example.
As the federal government contemplated the return of legal liquor in 1932 and early 1933, alcohol control advocates argued for a very distinct separation of production, wholesale distribution, and retail sale of alcoholic beverages. Thus they established the three tier system. Under federal law a brewer can not be the wholesale distributor of their product or the retail seller. Some aspects of this 1933 legislation had to be altered to allow the opening of brew pubs.
One outcome of this legislation was the development of a large group of beer wholesalers. Since 1938 they have had a national organization, the National Beer Wholesalers Association (NBWA). There are 2,750 wholesalers. This year the focus of the organization has been celebrating the 75th anniversary of Repeal as well as continuing to pursue permanent repeal of the estate tax, a rollback of beer excise taxes, prevent alcoholic equivalency labeling, and avoid paying for public service announcements against under-age drinking. In the past leaders of the NBWA have advocated a reduction in the minimum drinking age.
Cindy McCain, wife of recent presidential candidate John McCain, is heir to one of the largest beer distributors in the country. A New York Times article in August 2008 examined the role of her family business in Arizona politics. Hensley & Company is the third largest Budweiser distributorship in the country. The mega breweries, Anheuser-Busch, Miller, and Coors, have all achieved their dominance partly through creating deep and wide spread distribution networks. Budweiser’s are the deepest of course. It is this distribution capacity and its resulting shelf space that InBev desired to purchase. It will be interesting to see if they use it to continue to sell Bud or to attempt to place some of their other beers on the same shelves.
Cindy McCain is an absentee owner and does not directly run any aspect of Hensley & Company. All of her children hold shares in the company. Her stepson, Andy McCain is a top executive and also president of the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce. Hensley & Company makes significant contributions to local politicians and contributes money to fight any potential increases in state excise taxes. The last increase was in 1984, only the third increase since Prohibition and, at sixteen cents a gallon is below the national median of nineteen cents. Hensley & Company, of course, belongs to the NBWA and supports its federal legislative agenda. Thus some observers wondered if John McCain as president would be able to be neutral on issues that related to the beer industry. Luckily we will never have to find out. As a senator he has received more money form the beer lobby than almost any other politician.
On the state level Hensley & Company have been successful in preventing taxes increase even when they have been proposed to help finance early childhood education or pediatric hospitals. The company is now supporting legislation that would make any tax increase more difficult to enact because passage would require a majority of all registered voters not just those who vote.*
The role that Hensley and Company plays in Arizona as well as the role the NBWA plays on the national scene illustrates the changed political landscape for the brewing industry in the past seventy-five years. As the brewing industry consolidated there were fewer and fewer brewers and the larger numbers of wholesalers began to play a larger role in politics. There are many more wholesalers than there are brewers, even counting craft brewers, so they are likely to be a larger political force.
* For more information on beer and Arizona politics see the Phoenix Business Journal.
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December 4 2008
Citizenship
Someone told me today that the Supreme Court was going to be taking up a case regarding whether Barack Obama is a citizen or not. I was astounded and appalled by this piece of information. This is a link to a story in the
Chicago Tribune about the various lawsuits. From the story it seems unlikely that the Supreme Court will actually heard any of the lawsuits.
This is a link to Obama's birth certificate. It is from Obama's website, Fight the Smears.
This is from the Constitution:
No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen years a resident within the United States.
This is from an article on the website Constitution Online:
Natural-born citizen
Who is a natural-born citizen? Who, in other words, is a citizen at birth, such that that person can be a President someday?
The 14th Amendment defines citizenship this way: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." But even this does not get specific enough. As usual, the Constitution provides the framework for the law, but it is the law that fills in the gaps.
Currently, Title 8 of the U.S. Code fills in those gaps. Section 1401 defines the following as people who are "citizens of the United States at birth:"
- Anyone born inside the United States
- Any Indian or Eskimo born in the United States, provided being a citizen of the U.S. does not impair the person's status as a citizen of the tribe
- Any one born outside the United States, both of whose parents are citizens of the U.S., as long as one parent has lived in the U.S.
- Any one born outside the United States, if one parent is a citizen and lived in the U.S. for at least one year and the other parent is a U.S. national
- Any one born in a U.S. possession, if one parent is a citizen and lived in the U.S. for at least one year
- Any one found in the U.S. under the age of five, whose parentage cannot be determined, as long as proof of non-citizenship is not provided by age 21
- Any one born outside the United States, if one parent is an alien and as long as the other parent is a citizen of the U.S. who lived in the U.S. for at least five years (with military and diplomatic service included in this time)
- A final, historical condition: a person born before 5/24/1934 of an alien father and a U.S. citizen mother who has lived in the U.S.
Anyone falling into these categories is considered natural-born, and is eligible to run for President or Vice President. These provisions allow the children of military families to be considered natural-born, for example.
I am sure beyond a shadow of a doubt the Barack Hussein Obama is a natural-born citizen of the United States and more than completely qualified to be President. The various people who are pursuing these lawsuits seem unable to wrap their minds around the fact that someone who looks like Obama and has his name could actually be a United States citizen. John McCain being born in Panama apparently did not present a similar problem.
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December 4 2008
How Many Calories are in a Beer?
Alan, of A Good Beer Blog, provides a link to a British site that will calculate the number of calories in an alcoholic drink and then compare the number to equivalent amounts of food. As I mentioned two days ago American beers do not contain ingredient or caloric information. The site, Radio 1 & 1Xtra's Alcohol Experiment is fun and the food items that they use as comparisons are not American food so that is interesting. I don't know what a jaffa cake is although the picture looks like a chocolate glazed doughnut. Beer seems to be the highest in calories with a mixed drink being a close second.
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December 3 2008
A Drink Is A Drink Is A Drink
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Maureen Ogle, in her blog points out that DISCUS (The Distilled Spirits Council) has a website devoted to Repeal. No one should be surprised that the distilled spirits industry would wish to mark the seventy-fifth anniversary of the end of Prohibition. Dec. 5 1933 marked the real end of Prohibition not April 7 which only applied to beer. Brewers have always sought to distinguish themselves from the other branches of the alcoholic beverages industry. This is still true today. Distillers obviously have always felt differently.
Although Brewing Battles is about the history of the brewing industry, my original work was on both beer and distilled spirits. Although tax and advertising policies have supported brewers’ view of themselves as distinct, to fully understood the role of alcohol in American society you have to analyze all branches. The DISCUS home page has a picture of “a drink is a drink is a drink” which supports distillers contention that all alcoholic beverages are the same. Science supports this point of view as well. Beer, wine, whiskey, caffeine, and nicotine are all psychoactive substances which affect behavior. This is not the perception of beer that brewers wish to promote. Distillers are more willing to promote such a view because they feel at a disadvantage relative to beer.
The above is a bit of a detour from The Road From Repeal which will resume tomorrow. A further piece of information about yesterday’s post and the image of the woman; apparently if you zoom in, her thigh says” You can twist anything into a swimsuit." Mark of Sportsbiz thinks the image was originally from Sports Illustrated.
One reason for the detour is that today Karin Zeitvogel of Agence France-Presse, the oldest wire service in the world, interviewed me. I‘ll post the story when it becomes available.
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December 2 2008
The Road From Reform: Labels and Advertising
I wanted to write about aspects of beer advertising in the seventy-five years since Repeal but I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to say. I also wanted to touch on labels since they became a regulatory issue in the late twentieth century. While thinking about the topic I came across an excellent article about beer labels in All About Beer. Dave Gausepohl, a breweriana collector, examines the history of labels and describes the information labels contain.
Currently all beer bottles and cans contain a government warning about the dangers of alcohol use and abuse. Post-Prohibition, as beer consumption shifted from on-premises to off-premises, primarily the home, the packaging of beer became more important. Ultimately what the container looked like was an integral part of the product's advertising and marketing.
Beer labels have a UPC code, dating information, the government warning and in some cases, alcohol content, but they do not list ingredients. Brewers, unlike most other producers of edible, consumable products, do not have to disclose what they have used to make the beer. They also do not have to say anything about how many calories the beer has.
What the beer bottle or can looks like is part of advertising but since Prohibition the major emphasis for beer marketing has been radio and television. Brewers gained an immediate and lasting advantage over distillers who, until recently have lived under a voluntary ban against advertising on television. Despite this free gift, post-Prohibition brewers were circumspect in their marketing because they feared a return of Prohibition. This self-restraint lasted to a good degree until the 1970's and the onset of the "beer wars". The intense competition among the top tier brewers fueled by the influx of advertising dollars from Miller Brewing and its parent company Philip Morris led to a decrease in the propriety of beer television ads.
Prohibitionists never went away and one of their ongoing battles has been to limit brewers access to advertising. The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a self-styled consumer and public health advocacy organization, has a Alcohol Priorities Project which seeks to "promote a comprehensive, prevention-oriented approach to the role of alcohol in society by addressing alcohol advertising, excise taxes, changes in product labeling, and other population-based policy reforms." In August, the Center sent a petition "signed by 60 Division I presidents, 240 athletic directors and 101 football and basketball coaches" urging the NCAA to prohibit beer advertising during college games. The NCAA declined to change its policies. George Hacker, director of the Alcohol Policies Project, was extremely disappointed and commented, "In contrast, the NCAA rejects advertising for distilled spirits, most wine, sports wagering, gambling, nightclubs, firearms and weapons, and NC-17-rated motion pictures, among others." Mr. Hacker also co-chairs the Coalition for the Prevention of Alcohol Problems, a coalition of temperance groups.
Sports Biz, a blog, noted "The Mountain West Conference does not carry beer commercials on its network, the mtn. (MountainWest Sports Network) It also doesn't carry commercials for Viagra and similar products, which is a blessing for those few people who actually can receive the mtn. Declining Viagra and Cialis commercials would be a public service that I recommend that the Big Ten Network and the WWLS adopt immediately. Football and basketball fans would be forever grateful."
It is doubtful that the labels at the top of this posting would have played a role in the ongoing controversy over beer advertising. The image at the bottom however is a different story.
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December 1 2008
The Road From Repeal: Drunk Driving and the Minimum Drinking Age
I realized after I wrote the first two postings that a better title for this series was Road from Repeal so that will be it for the remainder of the postings.
On Friday the New York Times ran a story entitled "Rift on Indiana Campus After Student Dies." An eighteen year old freshman at Wabash College died as a result of serve alcohol intoxication. He was the member of one fraternity and died while at another. The college administration suspended the fraternity where the student died and they see the situation as emblematic of binge drinking. The nationwide increase in binge drinking prompted 130 college presidents, last summer, to call for a decrease in the minimum drinking age. The administrators involved in this "Amethyst Initiative" feel that the current drinking age of twenty-one leads to a situation where "students lock themselves in dorm rooms and do shots." Wabash's president disagrees and stated that this tragedy at his college shows that eighteen year olds lack the maturity to drink responsibly.
Both the Wabash tragedy and the Amethyst Initiative reveal societal ambivalence about late adolescence and drinking. Although the situation at Wabash did not involve driving, the prevalence of cars in American society only serves to deepen this ambivalence.
Seventy-five years ago when the country repealed Prohibition was drunk driving an issue? Cars were already a fact of American life and brewers in 1933 were aware of the potential dangers of drinking and driving. However, public drinking, as embodied by the saloon, was the negative behavior that alcohol control and Repeal advocates wished to eradicate. Drunk driving became a significant issue during the 1970's when most states lowered the drinking age to eighteen, partly to match the recently changed voting age.
In 1984 Congress enacted the Federal Uniform Age Act which set the drinking age at twenty-one. A drinking age of twenty-one creates a mixed population on college campuses and obviously causes a lot of problems for administrators. However it is unclear how the age being dropped to 18 would automatically prevent students from drinking "shots" alone in their room. The Amethyst Imitative generated a lot of media attention and energized MADD and public health advocates in response. Any decrease in the drinking age would expand markets for brewers and distillers, but in general industry spokespersons remain neutral on the topic.
The college presidents might have generated less buzz but more thoughtful discussion if they merely questioned the wisdom of the drinking age being twenty-one rather than declaring it should be unilaterally decreased to eighteen. It is unclear whether in the current economic climate the issue will continue to garner much attention. There is some evidence that people behave in a healthier manner during bad times which could mean there will be less drinking. Ironically less drinking could lead to fewer restrictions on drinking including a decrease in the minimum drinking age. The baby boomlet and the increase in the drinking age population could lead to greater drinking and more restrictions. As a historian I can not predict the future; I can only describe various trends.
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| Wabash College has closed the Delta Tau Delta fraternity, where an 18-year-old freshman died last month while drunk. |
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November 25 2008
The Road to Repeal: Taxes
The federal government began taxing alcoholic beverages to help finance the Civil War. This established a relationship to the industry that continues in the present.
"From 1862 on, the liquor industry had been a primary support of the budget of the federal government. The nation's experience with expanding income taxes during World War I, coupled with a progressive impulse to shape the moral character of the country, led officials to allow the cutting off of a vital source of revenue - liquor production and distribution. The prosperous 1920s validated this decision, yet in 1933 the country again turned to the liquor industry in an hour of need. For many years the liquor industry had persistently asked, 'Who will pay the tax?' The answer turned out to be themselves.
Repeal proponents had touted increased revenue as a benefit which made liquor taxes inevitable. Amazingly, a week after beer became legal, legislators passed a tax bill. Echoing their Civil War predecessors, Congressmen sought the highest possible rate from the beer tax that would not cause fraud and corruption. They settled on a rate for legal brewers of $5 a barrel plus a $1,000 annual license fee for each brewery."[1] (Brewing Battles: A History of American Beer (Algora, 2007)
[1] Carl Miller, ?We Want Beer: Prohibition and the Will to Imbibe,? Beerhistory.com http://www.beerhistory.com/library/holdings/prohibition_2.shtml (accessed January 20, 2006).
The brewing industry experienced several more tax increases during World War II and the Korean War. 1951. By 1951 the rate was $9 a barrel; this stayed the same for forty years. In 1991 brewers faced a potential doubling of the tax; once again economic necessity led the government ot seek revenue from the industry. The $18 a barrel tax enacted in 1991 is still the rate. Since 1976 small brewers, producing under 2 million barrels, pay a reduced rate. Many of the country's over 1,000 craft brewers pay this rate.
Although there has been no discussion of yet of excise tax increases, it is likely that the government will consider this as an option to help pay for the vast sums of money that will be spent to stimulate the economy. Henry Waxman has recently been elected Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee in the House. In the past Waxman supported greater regulation and restriction of tobacco advertising. Tobacco and liquor are separate products but public health reformers have often linked the two items and used similar tactics around issues of advertising and restriction of access. Waxman is replacing John Dingell (D. Michigan) who was not a advocate for health or sumptuary legislation. His father was supportive of tax decreases in the 1950s.
The brewing industry will certainly respond to any call for tax increases with a spirited defense of the economic contribution the industry makes to the national economy. Public heath advocates and neo-prohibitionists support higher liquor taxes as a way to recover the costs of alcohol abuse. Since health care reform is a high priority for President-elect Obama, we can expect discussions about healthy behavior and the societal costs of unhealthy behavior. However the bad economic climate may provide a mitigating effect against greater scrutiny of personal behavior as well as a decrease in the incidence of unhealthy behavior because of reduced spending. The catch twenty-two is that reduced spending could ultimately be worse for the brewing industry than a tax increase.
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November 24 2008The Road to Repeal
In twelve days it will be the seventy-fifth anniversary of repea1 of the Eighteenth Amendment. December 5 1933 was the day that all alcoholic beverages became legal after thirteen years of Prohibition. Prohibition and Repeal are both unique events in American history. No other industry has been banned and then restored. Both the myths and realities of Prohibition are often cited as a guide for current policies towards alcohol and other psychoactive substances. In the coming days I will look at the present day state of the liquor industry, particularly beer and how it has changed over the last seventy-five years. Topics to be covered include taxes, the three tier system of production, distribution and sale - this is a direct result of Repeal legislation -, drunk driving and the minimum drinking age, labels, advertising, growth and consolidation, domestically and globally and what the future might hold. Stay tuned.
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| Childe Hassam "Allies Day May 1917" |
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November 23 2008
Patriotism
This is a copy of a letter I wrote to the Amherst Bulletin. I loved the way the flags looked that day and it reminded me of a Childe Hassam painting. Hassam was one of my mothers favorite painters. I think it is very unfortunate that patriotism has become the province of the right. People of all political persuasions can be patriotic.
Nov. 10, 2008
To The Editor,
I know that the flying of the American flag in downtown Amherst has been a controversial subject; I confess that I have not paid that much attention to the issue. Today, Monday November 10th, I drove into town and was struck by the beauty of all the flags flying to commemorate Veterans Day on November 11th. The sight filled me with pride and love for my country which has just achieved the amazing feat of electing Barack Hussein Obama president. Our country is an ongoing endeavor but on November 4 we progressed further than I would ever have thought possible. Let us hope, pray, and work for such progress to continue throughout the - hopefully - eight years of the Obama administration.
Sincerely,
Amy Mittelman
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November 18, 2008
The New Administration
It is interesting that President-Elect Obama is reading Abraham Lincoln since there are many parallels between Lincoln's first term and Obama's. Lincoln was the first Republican president; he faced the mammoth task of financing the Civil War as well as staffing all of the departments and agencies of the government. Many loyal Republicans sought rewards for their support of the party and the President.
Here is an excerpt from Brewing Battles: A History of American Beer about the issues the new government faced.
From the moment Southern troops fired on Fort Sumter the Federal government required large sums of money to finance the Civil War. A Special Session of the Thirty-Seventh Congress (July?August 1861) attempted to meet this need by increasing certain customs duties, imposing a direct tax of $20 million on the States, and instituting an income tax.[1]
It soon became clear that these measures alone could not relieve the country's financial burdens. Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase was hoping to raise $85 million and sent a bill to the Thirty-Seventh Congress. Congress, which reconvened on December 2, 1861, reviewed his request for a small increase in the income tax and excise taxes on manufactured goods. Distilled spirits, malt liquors, cotton, tobacco, carriages, yachts, billiard tables, gross receipts of railroads, steam boats and ferries, and playing cards all became taxable items. Signed by President Lincoln July 1, 1862, the measure became effective the following month.[2] By the 1870s Congress had repealed most of the excise taxes; the liquor tax, however, has remained in effect until today. The Internal Revenue Act of 1862 marked the entrance of the federal government into the affairs of the liquor industry; it has never left.
On July 22, 1862, President Lincoln appointed George Boutwell to be the first Commissioner of Internal Revenue. A two-time Governor of Massachusetts, Boutwell had been a Whig and a moderate anti-slavery man. This work plus political alliances with the Governor of Massachusetts, John A. Andrew, and Senator Charles Sumner led Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase to give Boutwell the job.[3]
Staffing and organizing the Bureau preoccupied Boutwell, who had almost four thousand jobs at his disposal. The size of the Federal Government expanded tremendously during the Civil War; the Treasury Department was no exception. The endless patronage possibilities caused both Boutwell and Secretary Chase to devote the first year of Internal Revenue's existence to staffing. They paid little attention to other administrative or regulatory concerns. On August 7, 1862 Chase complained that he had "very little accomplished as yet, though much, I hope, in the train of accomplishment. Engaged nearly all day on selections for recommendation of Collectors and Assessors."[4]
Six months after Boutwell took office, he had the department organized, at least nominally. The majority of employees were in the field. There were 366 collectors and assessors, 898 deputy collectors, and 2,558 assistant assessors. The Washington office consisted of the Commissioner, fifty-one male clerks and eight female clerks. The law authorized the establishment of collection districts which corresponded roughly to congressional districts. There were 185 districts in the loyal states.[5]
[1] U.S. Department, Internal Revenue Service, History of the Internal Revenue Service 1791-1929, prepared under the direction of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, (Washington, D.C.: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1930), 2.
[2] Ibid., 3; Charles A. Jellison, Fessenden of Maine: Civil War Senator (Syracuse, N.Y: Syracuse University Press, 1962), 149; Leonard P. Curry, Blueprint for Modern America: Non-Military Legislation of the First Civil War Congress (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1968), 149?181; Bray Hammond, Sovereignty and an Empty Purse: Banks and Politics in the Civil War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), 52; Charles Estee, The Excise Tax Law (New York: Fitch, Estee, 1863), passim.
[3] Thomas H. Brown, ?George Sewall Boutwell: Public Servant 1818?1905? (Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1979), 53, 56, 59, 110.
[4] Salmon P. Chase, Inside Lincoln?s Cabinet: The Civil War Diaries of Salmon P. Chase, ed. David Donald (New York, 1954), 110-111.
[5] History of Internal Revenue, 4; Schmeckebier and Eble, Bureau of Internal Revenue 8; Estee, Excise Tax Law, 310.
©
Copyright, Algora Publishing, 2007.
A few points about this history: It makes clear the large burden of setting up a new presidential administration especially during a crisis. It is also clear that in times of financial need the federal government often turns to the liquor industry and taxes for help. It is entirely possible that the Obama administration will eventually look at excise taxes for help with financing projects and reducing the deficit. State governments will probably follow suit.
Jay Brooks at Brookston Beer Bulletin has been writing a fair amount about taxes recently and nicely cited Brewing Battles as a source. One slight correction however- Jay maintains that the taxes stayed after the Civil War due to pressure from temperance advocates and prohibitionists. It is more accurate that the taxes remained because they developed into a steady, secure source of revenue for the federal government. It was not until a new source, the income tax, developed in the early twentieth century that the federal government could contemplate losing the money from liquor taxes. The prohibition movement had an ambivalent relationship to the federal liquor tax. They often decried the legitimacy the tax provided to the industry.
Of course when the federal government, in the depths of the Great Depression, needed a quick source of revenue, the 18th amendment was repealed. The liquor industry and the liquor tax became legal on December 5, 1933, seventy-five years ago. I will be writing more on the subject of Repeal in the coming days.
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November 14, 2008
Redemption
The biblical aspects of the election are striking. African-American slaves relied on the Old Testament for support, solace, and hope during their many travails. Obama's election is truly Mosaic in its message of redemption and deliverance. Michelle Obama is completely a product of our country's history of slavery and freedom while her husband is not. On January 20, 2009 Barack, Michelle, Malia, and Sasha will stand on the Capitol steps; they were built with slave labor. It will be a striking symbol of our country's giant step toward redemption from the original sin of slavery.
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| United States Capitol |
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November 10, 2008
As the wonderful reality of an Obama presidency continues to sink in, many historical comparisons have come to mind, particularly Franklin Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. However there is really no exact historical precedent for this extraordinary event. People dancing in the street and singing the national anthem following the announcement of a presidential election result has never happened before. The closest international parallel is Nelson Mandela, his release from prison and his subsequent election to the presidency of South Africa. Although systemic, state sponsored segregation in the United States ended in this country over forty years ago, Obama's election symbolizes liberation from the long lasting cultural and societal effects of both slavery and segregation. In that way the 2008 election is functioning as an entirely peaceful, orderly revolution.
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Rosa sat so Martin could walk.
Martin walked so Obama could run.
Obama ran so our children can fly.
Go Obama!
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| We Won |
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