My Opinion
Abraham Lincoln and cheap Mexican beer - why not?

Cheap beer and Abraham Lincoln. The two go together like an accident and a scumball lawyer, especially if you're going to Cancun, Mexico for spring break.

Yes, partying Penn Staters who find themselves in the land of ol will discover that the grand old American dollar will buy much more cerveza than it used to. And as sunburned drunks hold up mugs of Corona, they will ask, why, oh why is this beer so cheap?

Like I said -- you can thank Abraham Lincoln.

Back in the old days, honest Abe won a presidential election which really peeved the slave states of the South. Rather than work in the system, they decided to go their own way, and whamo, welcome to the American Civil War.

So the North decides to blockade the Southern ports. This blockade was a royal pain in the rump for the Confederate States of America, but it also posed a problem for England. With the South cut off from the world economy, England could not get the cotton needed to run their economic dynamo.

But the English are smart --heck -- they're almost Americans. So they look elsewhere for cotton, and their search leads them to Egypt. Due to the irrigation projects off the Nile, Egypt can really grow that there cotton. So they start making some big bucks selling it to England.

Well, Egypt gets a little carried away and they take loans out based on their perception that they will forever be able to sell tons of cotton to England. The only problem was that the Civil War only lasted four years, and eventually, Egyptian revenues fell, leaving them with a huge debt and little means of paying it off.

So Egypt first sells off about half of the Suez canal to English interests to raise revenues, but it still is not enough. Eventually, England, fearing it will never get its money back, takes over Egypt to administer its economy.

So now England is running Egypt. Think about it, back in 1776 we got tired of those bloody Brits, and Egypt was no different. Anti-English sentiments grew until anti-British riots in the early 1950s led to the coup d'etat (one of the coolest phrases known to man) led by General Nasser.

Nasser led a group of generals, and later when he died, one of his "buddies" took over. History knows him as Unwar Sadat. Having a name like Unwar, you'd think this guy would be for peace, but don't tell the Isrealis that. In 1973, Arab nations attacked Isreal, led by Sadat's Egypt.

In a show of solidarity, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries staged its first oil boycott, and the West let out one resounding grunt. Oil prices shot up alongside inflation, and Americans got to visit with their neighbors in gas lines.

OPEC now knew it had some power. So in 1979, it launched its second oil whammee, and the results raised inflation and really hurt President Jimmy Carter politically. Carter, looking like he was losing American power overseas, was defeated by Ronald Reagan in the presidential race.

Well, Reagan chose George Bush as his running mate. After two terms, Reagan gave way to Bush who defeated Dukakis in 1988. Bush chose Dick Thornburgh, former Pennsylvania governor, to be his attorney general. When Sen. John Heinz died, Thornburgh figured he could win that seat based on his position of power in the Bush administration.

But no, he did not win. Actually, Harris Wofford defeated Thornburgh by campaigning for national health care reform. Later, in the 1992 presidential election, an Arkansas governor, Bill Clinton, ran on a ticket dominated by the promise of health care reform. As you all know, he won.

But one of the first things that Clinton did was to push North American Free Trade Agreement through the Congress, showing a flair for political deals that led to the legislative victory. The agreement opened trade between Mexico and the United States.

Recently, the Mexican peso collapsed, and many economists feel the collapse was due to the NAFTA agreement. Because of the NAFTA-inspired collapse, the peso has lost much of its value against the Yanqui dollar.

This means our dollar buys more stuff in Mexico. So if you find yourself down in Mexico for spring break, your beer dollars will go further.

So instead of toasting Mexico this spring break, you should do the right thing. As you raise your beers, toast the man who made the beer cheaper. Toast Abraham Lincoln.

Man, I've got to get out more.