I suppose libertarian readers agree that the wrong side won the Whiskey Rebellion, and just maybe they'll suggest that a new one -- about beer this time -- would not be amiss.
It's that durn gummint shutdown, again. Bad enough that most of the "essential workers" still on the job seem to be the ones carrying guns and given the power to haul your sorry hooligan butt off to jail for taking an unsupervised -- and therefore illegal -- walk in the woods.
But now they're screwing around with your constitutional right to an on-demand growler of gooseberry ale touched by a dash of dandelion pollen and a smidgen of Gatorade. That is, "craft" beer hustlers are facing their own barricades. Because there's evidently only one employee left in the TTB, a surly sort whose job it is to tell reporters it's closed and slam down the receiver.
The TTB? I'd never been very aware of it either. Thanks to the shutdown I learn it is the special Treasury Department bureaucracy in charge of giving permission to make beer, including stupid beer marketed to gushing neo-hippies who think a handful of sugar-steeped nettle leaves might improve a pint of Harp.
You will have gathered that I am less than thrilled with berry beer and all other variations which might be devised by Rachael Ray, but I will defend to the death Brucie's right to brew it and your right to drink it, even when the TTB agents of Eric Holder and Barack Obama are taking a paid vacation and therefore can't issue permission slips.
The job of the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau is detailed here, and you may be amused to learn your congress has given it the powers -- among many others -- to deny a boutique beer license if it doesn't like the label attached to the bottle.
If someone will endorse taking a Claymore to this tentacle of our squid government, I shall editorialize in favor.
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