I long for a goose neck

August 2018

The Daily Press ran a story with concern to aluminum tariffs and beer cans. A nice one-sided article but left me thinking of my youth. As a republican rural raised child of the sixties, I remember my Mom packing up the soda bottles for a return to the market.  As I turned 18 and started drinking beer, there were the gooseneck beer bottles. Some might have called them long necks. I have to say there is no better beer, than a beer that comes from a gooseneck bottle. In my day we shunned aluminum cans as the beer just did not taste quite as good and, not as cold. Today, I will take a draft beer in a glass over a canned beer any day. I want to forget where that draft beer came from and that is another bigger can! Drinking canned beer is like eating canned meat. It's editable in a pinch, but certainly not fresh or better than a deer steak cut fresh from a week old kill, hanging in the cellar.

Yet, we are now a throwaway society. 

I think regional craft brewers should look at the use of returnables for their customers. After all, if a millennial is willing to pay $5.00 or more for a beer then what is another dollar to save the environment? Just a side note here but, I find very few craft beers made today, drinkable. 

Recyclable bottles may be an inconvenience but, this old idea helps the environment and my taste buds. Reducing our dependency on Chinese aluminum is needed today until we have free and fair trade with no tariffs on both sides. 

Today's Democrats et alii, use these tariffs to attack the POTUS. Trade imbalances be damned, intellectual property stolen and who cares as long as they can attack! Democrats and the liberal media conveniently forget the use of cheap labor in other countries to make cheap goods for American imports. They soon forget the drywall made with formaldehyde, sickening 100's of Americans. They soon forget the lead paint used in our children's toys, they forget dangerous tires, antifreeze in toothpaste, the list goes on but, hey as long as it is cheap right?  

Most may not remember but, The United States had banned trade with China up until the early 1970s. A historic visit by Nixon made it possible to be friends. China was actually an importer of American goods and we ran a surplus with China until the normalization of trade in 1979. Once the trade was normalized and China has given favorable trade status the flow of goods and technology, flowed to China and the trade deficit began. Factories began to close in the 1990s and by 2006 left thousands without jobs all across America. You can thank Bill Clinton for that my friends. 

POTUS is simply caring for problems created long ago and it was not like, we were not warned by billionaire Ross Perot. He said " You will hear a giant sucking sound of jobs out of America." and that is just what happens. George H.W. Bush brokered the NAFTA deal and Bill Clinton signed the death warrant of the midwest. America sought normalized relations with China to counter Russia's influence. In the end, we let China take advantage of us, and now, we have a POTUS willing to set the record straight. I like fighters for America.