We’ve praised Sen. Claire McCaskill repeatedly on this blog, but her comments about the InBev deal deserve some response:

“I was very upfront,” McCaskill said of her discussion with [InBev's CEO Carlos] Brito. After offering him a Budweiser and sipping one herself, she told him she would “do everything I could to stop this sale from going through … It’s a bad idea. I don’t want you to buy it. The people of Missouri don’t want you to buy it.”

Politicians never seem to understand how capitalism works. The InBev deal is not the government’s decision or the people of Missouri’s decision. It is the decision of the shareholders of Anheuser-Busch. If shareholders reject the InBev deal, AB stock will plummet. But that is the shareholders’ decision, not ours.

More from the article:

Speaking to reporters after, McCaskill blasted the proposal as a “premium profit for hedge fund investors” and said A-B is a strong company that has provided thousands of good middle class American jobs.

Anheuser-Busch displaced thousands of good middle class American jobs last year when it bought out Pennsylvania’s Rolling Rock. And despite a website that looks very familiar to another local website, there was no outcry (or even a tear) from Missouri public officials.

“We do not have a ‘For Sale’ sign on our front lawn in America,” she said.

Well, then maybe the government shouldn’t have gotten to the point where the American people owe $9.2 trillion dollars (of which about a third was accumulated under President Clinton, and another third under President Bush). If I owed trillions of dollars in debt, I might have to sell off a few possessions, too.

The Post-Dispatch (surprisingly) ran a pretty good reality check on the AB deal. And yours truly did, too.