Iconic American Beer Brand Discontinued After 177 Years
Schlitz Premium, the storied lager once billed as “the beer that made Milwaukee famous,” is heading into retirement. Pabst Brewing Co. confirmed this week it is placing the brand on indefinite hiatus, ending production of the nearly two-century-old beer label founded in Milwaukee in 1849 that grew into one of America’s most iconic brews.
The decision, driven by rising storage and shipping costs amid softening demand for the value-priced brand, marks the latest chapter in a turbulent corporate saga. Wisconsin Brewing Co. in Verona will produce a final 80-barrel batch on May 23, with limited release scheduled for June 27. Pre-orders open this week.
"Unfortunately, we have seen continued increases in our costs to store and ship certain products and have had to make the tough choice to place Schlitz Premium on hiatus," Pabst brand manager Zac Nadile told Milwaukee Magazine. "Any brand or packaging configuration that is put on hiatus is still a cherished part of our history and hopefully our future. We continually look for opportunities to bring back beloved brands, and customer feedback is important in shaping those discussions."
Brewmaster Kirby Nelson of Wisconsin Brewing Co. said the brewery was intent on providing the brand with a proper goodbye.
"We decided that, Schlitz being what Schlitz was, it deserved a proper sendoff. One with dignity and respect," Nelson said.
"Leftists can’t name & blame specific individuals for the 2024 loss because they’re an undifferentiated blob who function unconsciously according to enmeshed group think."
- Aimee Therese on X
In all the chatter about the Democratic Party’s 2024 election “autopsy” report you might have missed one little important detail: autopsies are generally performed on the dead. Stephen Colbert’s final week on CBS’s Late Night Show was the funeral. It was like the zombies’ ball. Poster-boy old Bruce Springsteen plugged a self-parody song about “King Trump” that might have been a rare case of career suicide on live TV.
Kings, indeed. These showbiz cretins actually have it better than kings — they have all the money, glitz, and adoration, but none of the onerous duties of real royalty. They amount to a weird court of effete elitists endlessly congratulating each other on their moral superiority, and that’s where it begins and ends: a Cluster-B hall of mirrors.
Of the common good, the know absolutely nothing. Nobody believes their tired buzzwords anymore: “Our democracy” . . . “conspiracy theories” . . . “baseless” this and that. . . their foolish vaccine worship. . . their avatars, the guffawing baboon Kamala Harris, the erstwhile phantom “Joe Biden,” and, most of all, their good sportsmanship trophy, Barack Obama, last seen confabbing with Canada’s Mark Carney, Globalism’s paladin of the last resort.
The Lefty-left’s heroes are on-the-run, but tripping over each other badly as they scatter into the thickets to re-group for the midterm elections — which they are suddenly and seemingly likely to lose now that SCOTUS erased about a dozen race-based congressional districts . . . and then Virginia’s Supreme Court tossed Governor Spanberger’s ballot ploy to make the Old Dominion a one-party state (like back in slavery days).
The corpse of the Democratic Party might be dead, but not a few of its agents, cells, and parasitical organisms are ‘out there’ still twitching and plotting. The decade-long coup abides. The lawfare ninjas — Norm Eisen, Mary McCord, Marc Elias, et al. — still plot tirelessly behind the scenes, rigging up evermore legalistic chicanery disguised as legality, and they are rolling in dough from Soros, the Tides Foundation, Neville Roy Singham, and countless NGOs dedicated to overthrowing the republic.
The coup abides for two reasons:
1) its players are desperate to evade prosecution for their vast and various crimes of the past ten years (and prosecution is coming at them down the track like the old Union Pacific US-4 “Daylight” locomotive); and
2) the Democratic Party is desperate to preserve the revenue flows that support all its racketeering operations. Without its rackets, the money funnel to pay off its countless “oppressed” client-constituent-victims, there is no party. That’s all it was in its final stage of life.
Minnesota, of course, is the case-study for that kind of corruption and now the DOJ is going after the place hard, announcing fifteen new prosecutions this week for $90-million in Medicaid fraud, “just the beginning,” the lead US attorney, Colin McDonald, said. California, Illinois, New York, Maine, and many more states await the same treatment under the president’s new National Fraud Enforcement Division. The Democrats will go into the midterms revealed to be nothing more than a looting operation.
It’s happening in real time. Just yesterday, one particular public benefits entrepreneur, Aimee Bock, was sentenced to forty years in prison for running a Minneapolis scam called Feeding Our Future that made off with $243-million in taxpayer money. At sentencing, Aimee Bock was ordered to pay roughly $243 million in restitution. That’s a hoot, isn’t it? Federal inmates (Bureau of Prisons) are paid from 12-cents to $1.15 per hour wages for assigned work, depending on the type of job. Forty years might not be enough to git’er done.
Many more will be going down in the months ahead for similar shenanigans, and the voting public might notice as it rolls out. But fraudsters such as Aimee Bock are mere lumpen foot-soldiers in the regime. The more spectacular action will be the Democratic Party’s field marshals getting nailed, and that’s hardly begun. Coup Central is the Southern District of Florida where a “grand conspiracy” case, or possibly many cases and sub-cases, are already in the grand jury stage — meaning probable cause has been established en route to indictments. Many political celebrities labored hard since 2017 to overthrow the executive branch of the government. Hair is on fire everywhere you look.
One small fish was reeled in this week: one Carmen Mercedes Lineberger, a senior supervisory US attorney, indicted on two felony counts of mishandling evidence from “special prosecutor” Jack Smith’s botched Mar-a-Lago documents case. She labeled the purloined docs in her personal computer as dessert recipes (e.g., “bundt cake”) en route to leaking them. Lineberger has pleaded innocent. Don’t doubt that a negotiated plea deal is in play with her, and that Jack Smith will be sweating the outcome of that as Lineberger flips and talks.
But the odious Jack Smith will only be one of many bigger fish turning up in the Fort Pierce dragnet, probably including the whale, Barack Obama, the president who foolishly tried to destroy his successor-in-office. You may know that the DOJ observes an unwritten custom of not issuing indictments inside sixty days of an election (a custom that Jack Smith violated in 2024 when he issued a superseding indictment against candidate Donald Trump). So, there are 105 days remaining within the current window before the 2026 midterms for formal charges to be lodged against the coupsters.
So, now everyone’s expecting a hairy-scary summer of Democratic Party inspired mayhem, a ratcheted-up “No Kings” orgy of riots, the last remaining gambit to goad Mr. Trump into emergency action so they can holler, “Look: king!”
It’s only a question of what might spark it off. I’ll venture to predict that spark will be the indictment of Barack Obama. If you think the Lefty-left is crazy now, wait until that happens.
At least Stephen Colbert won’t be around to turn it into a song-and-dance act.
Congressional Democrats are moving to shut down President Donald Trump’s proposed $1.776 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund, escalating a political fight over compensation for Americans who say they were targeted by politically motivated prosecutions and federal lawfare.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, is introducing legislation aimed at preventing any federal money from being used to create or distribute payments through the fund.
According to a copy of the bill shared with Axios, the legislation states that “no Federal funds may be used to create or make payments” tied to the Trump administration’s Anti-Weaponization Fund.
The fund emerged from a settlement between Trump and the Internal Revenue Service after the president sued the agency over the leaking of his confidential tax returns during his first term.
Under the settlement framework, individuals claiming they were victims of politically motivated prosecutions or government abuse would be able to seek compensation.
Potential applicants could include January 6 defendants and others who were unfairly targeted by federal authorities.
Raskin is reportedly considering using a discharge petition to force a House vote if Republican leadership blocks the measure from reaching the floor.
At the same time, some establishment Republicans are also voicing opposition to the fund. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick told reporters Wednesday that he would “try to kill” the program.
“We’re going to write a letter to the [attorney general] to start, but we’re considering a legislative option,” Fitzpatrick said.
Supporters of the fund argue it represents a long-overdue effort to compensate Americans harmed by politically driven prosecutions and abuses of government power.
Critics, meanwhile, claim the program would improperly use taxpayer money to compensate individuals tied to controversial investigations, including those connected to the January 6 Capitol protest.
Two law enforcement officers who were present at the Capitol on Jan. 6 have already filed a lawsuit seeking to dissolve the fund entirely.
Lowe's CEO Warns Housing Market "Most Difficult" Since Financial Crisis As DIY Project Demand Crumbles
Home improvement retailers such as Home Depot and Lowe's warned this week that consumers remain reluctant to splurge on big-ticket home improvement items, as elevated mortgage rates, high home prices, energy inflation, weakening sentiment, and broader macroeconomic uncertainty weigh on demand.
Let's begin with Home Depot, which on Wednesday reported mixed first-quarter results. At the same time, management said on the conference call that it is not expecting a "marked improvement in underlying demand."
Bernstein analyst Zhihan Ma pointed out that Home Depot's foot traffic has been negative for five straight quarters, underscoring the persistent downturn in the home improvement space.
Ma maintained a "cautious outlook" and expects a "gradual path to a home improvement market rebound," as high mortgage rates and inflation in material costs do not help the "affordability hurdle for homeowners to engage with big-ticket discretionary projects."
Fast forward to Wednesday morning, and Lowe's reiterated its full-year forecasts but warned that households are dialing back big-ticket do-it-yourself projects.
What caught our attention was Lowe's CEO Marvin Ellison, who warned analysts on an earnings call earlier that:
I think overall this has been the most difficult housing market that I've faced in this business since the financial crisis. And as Brandon mentioned, it's almost exclusively or disproportionately on the DIY customer.
That's the majority of where our revenue comes from. And so I look at it from this perspective, you know, we've delivered four quarters of positive comps in an environment where the DIY has faced more economic pressure than I've ever seen before.
DIY softness comes as U.S. housing turnover sits at historic lows because of affordability woes, some of the worst in a generation, and elevated mortgage rates.
Housing affordability for first-time homebuyers remains at a four-decade low.
This, of course, means fewer home sales, which typically translate into fewer move-in renovations, remodels, flooring upgrades, kitchen projects, and other big-ticket home improvement purchases.
At the start of the week, Wayfair CFO Kate Gulliver issued a similar warning at JPMorgan's conference, signaling that demand for big-ticket home items is unlikely to recover this year.
What’s the main goal of your 401(k)? Well, my dear Watson, it’s to provide for your retirement. Specifically, it’s a long-term investment that benefits from compound interest. But for a record number of Americans, the “long term” is taking a back seat to immediate financial struggles.
In 2025, 6 percent of Vanguard 401(k) plan members took hardship withdrawals. That’s a big jump from 4.8 percent in 2024 and much higher than the roughly 2 percent annual rate we saw before the pandemic.
This trend, highlighted by the World Economic Forum and MarketWatch, paints an alarming picture of the American workforce’s financial health. Costs are rising, stress is growing, and well-intentioned regulatory changes are having unintended consequences.
That said, now is the time to investigate why this is happening and to identify the hidden costs. And, most importantly, you need realistic ways to avoid making your retirement nest egg an emergency fund.
The Breakdown: What’s Driving the Surge?
It’s not a coincidence that hardship withdrawals are at an all-time high. This is the result of several powerful economic forces colliding:
A Squeeze of Rising Costs and Financial Stress
It’s not a secret that life has gotten more expensive. Even though some metrics indicate a slowdown in inflation, the cumulative effect of price hikes in groceries, housing, and other essentials over the last few years has significantly reduced consumer purchasing power. As an example, consumer prices are approximately 25 percent higher than they were in January 2020.
As such, a small unexpected expense can trigger a crisis for many families with little to no financial buffer. In fact, according to a Bankrate survey, just 47 percent of Americans have sufficient liquidity or access to funds to cover a $1,000 emergency expense.
The Urgent Nature of the Withdrawals
These withdrawals aren’t for vacations or new cars. According to Vanguard, the median withdrawal amount in 2025 was $1,900. And, among the reasons people tapped their 401(k)s, these were the most common:
Avoiding foreclosure or eviction (36 percent)
Medical expenses (31 percent)
Tuition (13 percent)
Primary residence repairs (11 percent)
Primary residence purchase (5 percent)
Ultimately, withdrawals represent a broader challenge: Americans have relatively few retirement savings at their disposal.
Lowered Hurdles Have a Positive Impact
Ironically, some recent regulatory changes intended to ease the burden may be contributing to the rise. As a result of legislation such as the SECURE Act 2.0 (SECURE refers to Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement.) and legislation from the pandemic era, it’s now significantly easier to access funds in a 401(k). Depending on the situation, the rules now allow withdrawals of up to a defined amount (like $1,000) without penalty for “unforeseeable or immediate financial needs.”
As important as this flexibility is in a real catastrophe, it also lowers the psychological and logistical bar to leveraging these funds. The result, though, is that your retirement account looks more like a savings account, which is a very dangerous mentality.
The True Cost of ‘Easy Money’
When you’re facing eviction or a huge medical bill, $5,000 from your 401(k) can seem like a lifeline. But that lifeline comes at a heavy price, one that is often overlooked in times of crisis, such as the following.
Immediate Tax Consequences
Unlike a 401(k) loan that you repay with after-tax funds, a hardship withdrawal is permanent. Therefore, the withdrawal amount is generally taxable as ordinary income. When you take out $10,000, for example, and are in the 22 percent tax bracket, you’ll immediately owe $2,200 in federal taxes, which reduces your actual relief to $7,800.
Potential Penalties
If you’re under 59 ½ years old, you will likely face an additional 10 percent early withdrawal penalty on top of income tax. That’s another $1,000 gone from your $10,000 withdrawal, bringing the total cost of immediate access to 32 percent.
The Devastating Sacrifice of Compound Growth
Obviously, this is the highest and most invisible cost. Imagine if the $10,000 you withdrew had been left to grow for another 20 years. With an average annual return of 7 percent, that money would have grown to about $38,700. By taking out that money now, you are not only borrowing $10,000 from your future self; you’re erasing almost $39,000 from your retirement account.
This is a magic trick. That’s the power of compound interest. Knowing this sooner will help you realize that 401(k) withdrawals aren’t “easy money”—they’re incredibly expensive loans.
The Irony: A Healthy System With Struggling Participants
An astounding contradiction can be found within the same 2025 data: even though record numbers of people are tapping into their 401(k)s for emergencies, the average 401(k) balance actually grew by 13 percent since 2024.
In addition, more recent analysis from Fidelity shows average 401(k) balances climbed more than 11 percent, indicating that nest eggs have rebounded after recent swings in the markets.
Although this may seem confusing, it indicates a widening gap. While many workers contribute consistently and benefit from employer matches, consistent contributions, and strong market conditions. Their wealth is growing.
Meanwhile, the 6 percent of participants who resort to hardship withdrawals constitute a vulnerable segment of the population. Although the retirement system appears healthy on the surface, they’re suffering the brunt of the affordability crisis. This is a powerful reminder that “average” statistics can mask serious underlying problems.
Realistic Strategies to Keep Your 401(k) Locked
If recent data tells us anything, it’s that relying on your 401(k) as a backup checking account is a high-stakes gamble. To ensure your retirement fund remains dedicated to your future, you need a proactive defense. Here are realistic, actionable options to keep that vault closed.
Re-Evaluate and Automate Your Budget
This is the foundational work that makes everything else possible. If you don’t track your spending, you can’t control it. Before you can build momentum, you have to stop the bleeding by identifying exactly where your cash is going.
Audit your “leaks.” For one month, track every cent. You’ll likely find “ghost” expenses, like unused subscriptions, frequent small convenience purchases, or delivery fees, that are quietly draining your ability to save.
Establish a “needs vs. wants” hierarchy. Be ruthless. Shelter, utilities, groceries, and minimum debt payments are non-negotiable needs. Everything else is a want. If your financial foundation feels shaky, wants must be the first thing to go.
Use the right tools. Modern technology makes this much less painful. Using financial apps, such as WalletHub or Monarch Money, can put you in total control. By linking your accounts, your expenses are automatically categorized, allowing you to see your spending patterns in real-time. These tools also allow you to effortlessly manage and cancel subscriptions in one place, ensuring you aren’t paying for services you no longer use.
Build a ‘Firewall’ Emergency Fund
An emergency fund is the only thing standing between a flat tire and a raided retirement account.
Start with a mini-goal. Don’t let the “six months’ expenses” rule overwhelm you. Start with a small target you can afford, whether it’s $300 or $1,000. That single amount covers the vast majority of common shocks, from a basic car repair to an urgent medical copay.
Make it invisible. Set up a recurring transfer from your checking account to a separate high-yield savings account on the day you get paid. Even $25 or $50 per pay period builds a psychological and financial buffer. If the money never hits your main account, you won’t miss it.
Explore Smarter Alternatives for Fast Cash
Before you touch your 401(k), exhaust every other avenue. Retirement should be the last door you open.
Low-interest personal loans. You can manage debt or major expenses with a low-interest personal loan from a credit union or bank without incurring heavy taxes or losing compounding interest. For well-qualified borrowers, fixed-rate loans offer predictable, manageable monthly payments with rates as low as 10 percent.
0 percent APR balance transfers. If high-interest credit card debt is the primary stressor, a zero percent introductory APR card can give you a 12-to-18-month window to pay down the principal without accruing more interest.
Community and state programs. Local and federal organizations assist with housing and utility crises, such as 2-1-1, HUD, and the Homeowner Assistance Fund (HAF). Before sacrificing your future security, take advantage of these programs designed to prevent eviction and foreclosure.
A Final Safety Valve: The 401(k) Loan
If you have truly exhausted every other option and are facing an immediate crisis, such as eviction, a 401(k) loan is generally a better choice than a hardship withdrawal.
Why is it better? Essentially, you’re borrowing money from yourself and paying the interest back to yourself. In addition, it does not trigger the 10 percent early withdrawal penalty or immediate income tax.
The critical caveat. You must repay it, typically within five years, via payroll deduction. Be aware that if you leave your job, the remaining balance is often due immediately. If you can’t pay it back, it defaults into a withdrawal—triggering the exact taxes and penalties you were trying to avoid at a time when you may be least able to afford them.
Conclusion: Protecting Your Future, One Day at a Time
Vanguard’s 2025 data is alarming. Americans are increasingly financially vulnerable to the point that their primary tool for future security is being wiped out by today’s pressures. This is not a sustainable path.
The first step is to understand the “why” behind this trend, which is rooted in financial stress, urgent needs, and simplified rules. The second step is to acknowledge the true, exorbitant cost of this immediate relief.
In the end, building a financial infrastructure that can withstand storms is the key to preventing your 401(k) from being a go-to ATM. Start with a real budget and an emergency fund, no matter how small. Even when today’s demands seem overwhelming, you must discipline yourself and put your future first.
Remember, your 401(k) shouldn’t be viewed as a piggy bank but as a tool to ensure you’ll have the lifestyle you want in your golden years. Don’t risk your retirement for a temporary fix. The costs are simply too high.
By John Rampton
The views and opinions expressed are those of the authors. They are meant for general informational purposes only and should not be construed or interpreted as a recommendation or solicitation. The Epoch Times does not provide investment, tax, legal, financial planning, estate planning, or any other personal finance advice. The Epoch Times holds no liability for the accuracy or timeliness of the information provided.
