BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Citizen journalist Michael Moeller uncovers a craft beer con man named Stephen Foster.

Local beer scribe Michael Moeller smashed a home run earlier this week with this piece about an infamous namesake.

The (Other) Stephen Foster Story: Kentucky’s Craft Beer Con Man, by Michael Moeller (Kentucky Sports Radio)

This is the story of a craft beer con man who traveled across the United States and abroad – a man who knew how to exploit the shared weakness of most small businesses – talk a big enough game and a background check won’t be required. Talk an even bigger game and even fool business partners and investors.

In the beginning there were exploding bottles, infected batches, and angry customers from across the Commonwealth of Kentucky. The longer the brewery stayed open, the more rumors and complaints piled up within the beer community.

Despite the many issues, St. Arnulf Alery, a new brewery in Cadiz, Kentucky, announced on social media that a beer garden was under construction in late September 2018.

And then nothing.

Without explanation or warning, the beer stopped flowing. Distribution stopped. Contact ceased.

With somewhere around 7,000 breweries in America, apparently there are numerous opportunities to fleece unsuspecting sheep. It's an incredible tale.

Based on conversations with former colleagues of Foster’s, in addition to what Foster told others, here’s a timeline:

• Pre- 2007: Foster is allegedly receiving brewing education in Germany and later employed in beverage jobs in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic
• 2007- 2008: Bowling Green Brewing Co. (KY)
• Pre-2011: Boston Breweries + Unnamed brewery (Cape Town, South Africa)
• 2011: Nimbus Brewing (AZ)
• 2011 – 2013: Four Horsemen Brewing Co. (IN)
• 2014 – 2015: Knoxville Saw Works / South College (TN)
• 2015: Sevier Ale House project (Gatlinburg, TN)
• 2015: Wyndridge Farm (PA)
• 2016: 81Bay Brewing (FL)
• 2017-2018: St. Arnulf Alery

Since researching this story, I have learned that Foster occasionally goes by his first name of ‘Scott’ and sometimes takes the last name of ‘Sala.’ As of January 2019, colleagues of Foster believe he is residing with his family in Illinois.

The takeaway for small business owners, of breweries or otherwise – take the time to interview and check references. Know who you’re allowing to become an ambassador for your brand and your name, and especially those who you might be entrusting with investment dollars.

Paste's Jim Vorel picked up Moeller's story and did some musing of his own. How has Foster avoided fraud or embezzlement charges, and "why would a guy like this travel the country, uprooting his family once a year on average, in order to attempt to pass himself off as an experienced brewmaster?"

Perhaps it's because in the overall scheme of things amid corporate America's daily shakedowns and shysterings, Foster's cons are small beer, and mostly off the media radar. He's defrauding family-owned indie businesses, which (a) suffer a degree of self-effacing embarrassment after being ripped off, and (b) figure they don't have the resources to mount a pursuit.

Then again ... can Foster actually be charged with anything substantive?

How many handshakes were involved, as opposed to formal contracts? It's not any less scandalous, but it isn't clear to me whether Foster has done anything explicitly illegal. The lawyers can weigh in on this, and I'm sure they will.

As a supporter of citizen journalism, lots of kudos to Moeller for writing. It seems to me this is something the Brewers Association would pick up -- that is, whenever the BA is finished canonizing Charlie Papazian.

The Unbelievable Story of Stephen Foster, Craft Beer Con Man, by Jim Vorel (Paste)

I’ve heard some strange stories about brewery employees over the years, but it’s 100 percent accurate to say that I’ve never heard a story like this one before. Dogfish Head’s Sam Calagione once described the craft beer industry as 99 percent asshole-free, but if the years since have taught us anything, it’s that he was being very generous in his estimation. Especially in a world where the likes of Stephen Foster continue to exist, trailing brewery closures in their wake.

We should note: Information regarding this story is still pretty scarce. Most of what we know comes from a Kentucky Sports Radio story first published yesterday, wherein the tale of Stephen Foster is brought to light, but there are some supporting anecdotes to be found around the web. Some of this stuff may have to be taken with a grain of salt, but there are enough corroborating breweries to say this with some degree of certainty: A man named Stephen Foster has been conning American craft breweries for more than a decade, at the very least. It’s like the beer world’s equivalent of Frank Abagnale in Catch Me If You Can, except much less sophisticated.

Credit where credit is due: Writer Michael Moeller did a bang-up job of diving into the seedy history of this craft beer bogeyman in his KSR story, and you should really go read it in its entirety.

Martin Luther "prefigured modern-day evangelicalism, and a look back at his life can help explain why so many evangelicals support Trump today."

In 1989 during my month's stay in East Germany, three of us skipped work one day and took the train to Lutherstadt Wittenberg on the Elbe River to the southwest of Berlin.

Wittenberg is where Martin Luther may have posted his 95 theses on the cathedral door (this isn't definitively known), but it's definitely where he kicked off the Protestant Reformation. Soon I'm hoping to begin digitizing the slides from the trip, and maybe after seeing the photos I'll remember a bit more about the day apart from buying bottles of beer and drinking all the way back to base camp.

All I knew about Donald Trump in 1989 is what I'd read while abstracting magazine articles at the long defunct UMI-Data Courier. It wasn't a favorable appraisal, and my impression cannot be said to have improved.

Trump's more vinegar than vintage wine ... but when it comes to the sweet taste of exposing the breathtaking fraudulence of white American evangelicals, I've got to hand it to the kitschmeister. It may be the only mission he's accomplished as president, but I cannot think of a more important one.

How Martin Luther Paved the Way for Donald Trump, by Michael Massing (The Nation)

To understand why evangelicals support the president, look to the first Protestant.

 ... The verdict is clear: In supporting this thrice-married, coarse, boastful, divisive, and xenophobic president, evangelicals are betraying the true nature of Christianity. In making such charges, however, these commentators are championing their own particular definition of Christianity. It is the Christianity of the Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus blesses the meek, disdains the rich, welcomes the stranger, counsels humility, and encourages charity. “Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also,” he declares—a most un-Trumpian sentiment.

Yet this irenic message is just one strain in the New Testament. There’s another, more bellicose one. In Matthew, for instance, Jesus says, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace but a sword”—to “set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.” In John, he declares, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” and “no one comes to the Father except through me”—a statement long used to declare Christianity the one true path to salvation. The Book of Revelation describes with apocalyptic fury the locusts, scorpions, hail, fire, and other plagues that God will visit upon the earth to wipe out the unbelievers and prepare the way for the Messiah.

From the earliest days of the faith, this militant strand has coexisted with the more pacific one. And it was the former that stirred the founder of Protestantism, Martin Luther. In his fierce ideas, vehement language, and combative intellectual style, Luther prefigured modern-day evangelicalism, and a look back at his life can help explain why so many evangelicals support Trump today.

In defending the cause of Christ, Luther was uncompromising. No one, he wrote, should think that the Gospel “can be advanced without tumult, offense and sedition.” The “Word of God is a sword, it is war and ruin and offense and perdition and poison.” In Luther’s famous dispute with Erasmus of Rotterdam over free will and predestination, the renowned Dutch humanist suggested that the two of them debate the matter civilly, given that both were God-fearing Christians and that the Bible was far from clear on the subject. Exploding in fury, Luther insisted that predestination was a core Christian doctrine on which he could not yield and that Erasmus’s idea that they agree to disagree showed he was not a true Christian ...

Thanks, Pence: That letter you received about back taxes? It's fraudulent.

The News and Tribune ran an AP account of this story, but the one from The Journal Gazette (Ft. Wayne) is better and provides missing context.

In short, the state of Indiana engaged Navient, a Virginia-based "contractor," to be the official collections agency for its plan to harvest tax amnesty dollars. Left to its own devices, the contractor, which stands to benefit in proportion to the proceeds, clumsily "fished" Hoosier taxpayers with a letter implying they owed back taxes -- but didn't.

I knew it was garbage when I received it, a judgment affirmed by several on-line tax preparers and accountants.

It's a characteristically shabby episode in our saga of life in Pence World, and yet there's another angle to it, namely the volume of tax amnesty proceeds. After all, these are slated to fund the Regional Cities Initiative program.

Can we apply eminent domain to Navient?

State halts tax amnesty letter sent by contractor, by Niki Kelly

INDIANAPOLIS - The Indiana Department of Revenue has halted a letter sent by a state contractor that mischaracterizes 150,000 Hoosiers as owing back taxes.

The letter essentially was fishing for people to participate in the state's tax amnesty program and resulted in numerous complaints.

With only a few days left the amnesty program has brought in $54.8 million in cash payments - well below the projected totals ...

 ... The Indiana legislature authorized the amnesty at the request of Gov. Mike Pence. The first $84 million of the program is set to fund a regional cities economic development initiative. And the next $6 million goes to the Hoosier State Rail Line.

Do you know this man? Let me know if you do.

Some time around the 31st of October, this man cashed a forged NABC paycheck at a Main Source Bank location in New Albany. This is the surveillance photo from the bank, via the NAPD. He tried it a second time but was unsuccessful, perhaps because the amount was way higher than even the owners make (that's attempted humor). The name and address on the check proved to be the result of stolen identity (the address was the Wayside Mission in Louisville).

If you know the perp, contact me. Thanks.

One Southern Indiana does not speak for me or this local business. Repeat.

It is true that I didn't vote for Todd Young, although it didn't stop me from having a beer with him last year. The important thing about it is that I voted. There was an election, and he won. So be it.

Young: We have the leverage to push tax reform; Congressman says blocking health care funds won’t stop law, by Daniel Suddeath (News and Tribune)

NEW ALBANY — U.S. Rep. Todd Young believes the public has the appetite to deal with the kind of debates that led to deadline fiscal deals in the past if it brings about change in Washington.

Young, R-Ind., met with local business owners at One Southern Indiana on Wednesday about tax reform. He said it’s an issue the House and Republican lawmakers could hold leverage over the White House on with a Sept. 30 federal government funding deadline approaching.

When I read this article, it took me a moment to grasp the part of it that galled me so tremendously. In retrospect, it can be narrowed down to the final three sentences.

As for tax reform, 1si CEO Wendy Dant Chesser said the Chamber’s members were especially interested in simplifying the tax code.

Local businesses also support changes in the tax code as a way to boost economic growth, she continued.

“I sensed an optimism as [Young] gave his presentation and they pitched their questions,” Chesser said.

Yeah, THAT's it, for sure. Let's be blunt.

The non-elected oligarch's benevolent society otherwise known as One Southern Indiana does not speak for local business in the broader sense, and it does not speak for NABC in any sense at all -- whether on the topic of managed health care, or tax reform, or the unconscionable boondoggle of the Ohio River Bridges Project.

I'll take dissonance from Todd Young, because whether I voted for him or not, at least there was an election. But I don't and won't accept it from Wendy Dant Chesser, who was selected by a cadre of elites, not elected by persons or businesses.

The problem? It isn't so much her as the ones doing the selecting.

Today's Tribune column: "Quoth the Raven: “S’pose so.”

I also advocate the Espresso Machined Degenerates, as opposed to the Tea Party Patriots.

BAYLOR: Quoth the Raven: “S’pose so.”

... My fundamental position with respect to politics in the United States is that of a conscientious objector. In my view, the two-party system is completely and utterly fraudulent. However, in spite of my antipathy, it remains political reality, and until I “move to France if I don’t like it,” compromises are necessary. If someone hands me a lemon, the least I can do is squeeze it into my adversary’s face.