Mayor Pushing Boycott of Sam Adams Over Pro-Trump Owner Gets Wake-Up Call from the Public
When one Massachusetts mayor decided to take on the owner of Samuel Adams beer, he was soon reminded of the spirit of public indignation that made Adams one of the first Americans calling for the colonial swamp to be drained.
The beer named for one of patriotism’s finest instigators, who led the early campaign to harass the British in Boston in the final days of Britain’s ownership its American colonies, is owned by the Boston Beer Company. The company’s co-founder, Jim Koch, last week praised President Donald Trump’s tax cut in widely circulated remarks.
“When I started Sam Adams, American beer was a joke, and it pissed me off,” Koch said at the time, according to The Boston Globe. “And now, American brewers make the best beer in the world. And the tax reform was a very big deal for all of us, because 85 percent of the beer made in the United States is owned by foreign companies.”
“I mean, Americans — I’m the largest American-owned brewery at 2 percent market share. We were paying 38 percent taxes,” he said, adding that Boston Beer was competing “against people who were paying 20. And now we have a level playing field, and we’re going to kick their ass.”
Trump chimed in and said, “That’s good. We’ve done that. That was a very unfair situation.”
But Somerville, Massachusetts, Mayor Joseph Curtatone took issue with Koch’s praise of Trump, Fox Business Network reported. First, he issued a tweet vowing never to drink Sam Adams beer again.
Then he took a shot at the company.
“We need to hold these complicit profiteers of Trump’s white nationalist agenda accountable !” he tweeted.
We need to hold these complicit profiteers of Trump's white nationalist agenda accountable ! https://t.co/UCywb9I7xE
— Joseph A. Curtatone (@JoeCurtatone) August 12, 2018
Curtatone, whose community is a sanctuary city in which immigration laws are not enforced, had one more criticism to launch.
“Hey Jim Koch! While you were thanking Trump for your tax break, did you happen to express any concern for the families separated under his cruel and inhumane immigration enforcement policy?”
Hey Jim Koch! While you were thanking Trump for your tax break, did you happen to express any concern for the families separated under his cruel and inhumane immigration enforcement policy? @SamuelAdamsBeer https://t.co/UCywb9I7xE
— Joseph A. Curtatone (@JoeCurtatone) August 12, 2018
But Curtatone faced a froth of resentment on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/Hammie1285/status/1029309404116598784
https://twitter.com/EdB_SP/status/1029353002740711427
https://twitter.com/kirkbuggy/status/1029102381554839552
The company has not commented on the matter as of Tuesday morning.
Adams himself had very fixed views on taxes. In 1764, he shared these thoughts with Massachusetts legislators after an early British attempt to enforce taxation without representation.
“If Taxes are laid upon us in any shape without our having a legal Representation where they are laid, are we not reduced from the Character of free Subjects to the miserable State of tributary Slaves?” he said, according to the Samuel Adams Heritage Society.
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