Update to the Update August 31th: A Gibson competitor, Martin Guitars, the CEO of which is a Democratic donor, uses the same wood as Gibson and was NOT, that’s right, NOT raided. That doesn’t mean party affiliation is the reason, but it needs to be looked into since the Gibson CEO leans more right when he makes donations. Then there is the environmental extremism – is that the problem? Then there is the fact that Gibson is non-union and some of his “not-raided” competitors are unionized, though some are not, so I don’t know that unionization plays into this. Personally, I think it is about ceding U.S. sovereignty to a global view by enforcing other countries laws and ALL the aforementioned.
Is this raid the result of an out-of-control government bureaucracy with a fool in charge (that would be Holder). These government blockheads think they own us. Wake up people! Something is very wrong. Why are 20 armed fish and game (yes, fish and game) agents raiding 3 guitar factories (yes, guitar, not drug den) with guns drawn. Did they think the men on the assembly line would smack them with a fretboard? If Gibson is vulnerable, just think about how vulnerable you are. And don’t forget what this administration is doing to Boeing.
The Gibson CEO is trying to get a case heard on his transporting of Madagascar wood, but the DOJ is preventing it from reaching the courts. In 2009, Gibson was raided because of their use of Madagascar wood, even though the CEO has letters from high-up officials in Madagascar and an independent board saying it is legal.
In the current case, the government said even if India says Gibson is not violating their laws, our government has interpreted it as a violation of their laws. That’s right, Guitar CEO’s have to know the laws of every country AND whether or not our country will agree that their law was violated or not.
Every musician in this country should be up in arms – where are all of you? I poured through the papers and listened to the radio, yet I heard nothing about this case except on Mark Levin’s show. Where is the media? Read here: Why are some immune and Gibson is not?
Original Story: The latest outrage from the Obama administration is aimed at the U.S. Gibson guitar company.The Feds raided the Gibson Guitar company factories and offices this week. They want to destroy GIBSON Guitar company.
The Fish and Wildlife Service said they were looking for banned Madagascar ebony (in the past, it was used for fretboards). This is banned under The Lacey Act of 1900 – that’s what I said, 1900. While The Lacey Act has been updated over the years and it’s an obscure, little-used law.
Then the Feds said they were looking to see if the wood from India that Gibson uses meets every petty regulatory everything. In other words, the Feds are investigating whether or not Gibson violated Indian laws, not U.S. laws, Indian laws.
Now musicians and guitar makers live in fear. Make no mistake, this President is deliberately destroying U.S. business, unless they are unionized of course.Gibson is NOT unionized.
“…Federal agents swooped in on Gibson Guitar Wednesday, raiding factories and offices in Memphis and Nashville, seizing several pallets of wood, electronic files and guitars. The Feds are keeping mum, but in a statement yesterday Gibson’s chairman and CEO, Henry Juszkiewicz, defended his company’s manufacturing policies, accusing the Justice Department of bullying the company. “The wood the government seized Wednesday is from a Forest Stewardship Council certified supplier,” he said, suggesting the Feds are using the aggressive enforcement of overly broad laws to make the company cry uncle…” WSJ reports on attack on Gibson Guitar company.
Henry E. Juszkiewicz, Gibson Raid Press Conference, Aug. 25, 2011
The legislation that lead to Fish and Wildlife conducting this bogus raid for importation of PRODUCTS (tapered and prepared fingerboards) was enacted in 2008. It was signed into law by George W. Bush. Enforcement was postponed at the original passage until 2009 for importers of musical wood products and until 2010 for musical instruments.
Good point. Bush did update this Antiquities law in May 2008. The law had been updated several times previous to Bush. No one has used it as Obama has used it. I doubt Bush would have used it to launch this type of attack on Gibson Guitars or would have worried about enforcing India’s laws. however, if had he done so, he’d be just as wrong as Obama. It doesn’t matter in any case, because Bush is gone, and Obama is the one translating and enforcing it in an extreme overreach.
Two things people need to know about this law is that the Feds are demanding production be shut down at the Gibson factory. The following quote from the CEO illustrates: “What is more troubling is that the Justice Department’s position is that any guitar that we ship out of this facility is potentially obstruction of justice and will be followed with criminal charges,” said Juszkiewicz, who added later that he plans to defy the government and resume operations. “I have taken personal responsibility. I have instructed our staff to continue building product.”
The second outrage is that Gibson is allowed to ship products finished by Indian workers but they cannot ship partially finished products to be completed by U.S. workers. Again the Gibson CEO said: “Over the last two years, we have hired 580 American workers,” he said. “We are one company that is manufacturing in the United States, that is hiring people … and yet the government is spending millions of dollars on this issue.”
Read here: http://www.tennessean.com/article/20110826/NEWS01/308260088/Gibson-Guitar-chief-denies-wrongdoing-after-raids
We (The People) should be terrified by this. The Lacey Act is vague, far reaching, punishes people for things they could not possibly know, while Customs, Fish and Wildlife, APHIS, and Homeland Security (yes, I have seen they have jurisdiction over some obscure part of this mess) have to take no responsibility whatsoever in teaching companies or musicians how to be in compliance with the legislation. No one, not even they, know how exactly to be in compliance.
Under this law, for which enforcement was handily kicked two years down the road, Ikea, for example, has to account for every splinter in their pressboard products by common name, species name, country of origin in gram weight. The same holds true for toilet paper.
As a matter of convenience, it was decided that the only plant product for which there was no paperwork needed would be for labels on products (and the documents that must accompany every shipment).
While this was being rolled out. it suddenly came to the attention of guitar makers everywhere that those 2mm dots on the side of the guitar neck also require a whole different kind of permitting if they are made of traditional shell. It’s not that the products are illegal. The products are 100 percent legal. Plus that, they are 100 percent moral, they are commercially farmed.
Violation of this law merely requires failing to fill out the required forms and properly marking boxes. Private citizens are also required to know and obey this law. FedEx and UPS have admitted cluelessness in how to handle even interstate shipments, which also includes eBay purchases of that guitar your son forgot to play. Yes. I said INTERSTATE. By the rules in this mess, you cannot cross a state line with the credenza your granny left you unless you can account for where the wood came from. Of course, slowly there is some back pedaling, but only in the guidelines about how it will be enforced, never in the language used in the law.
And this part deserved a post of its own. I do not believe Pres. Obama has any idea this stuff is going down. This is the work of the governmental equivalent of middle managers creating work to keep themselves in a job while upper management is busy keeping the lights on.
Thank you for all the information. Whenever my power comes back, I will post more on this, with your information included. This is a good example of the very serious problems we are creating for ourselves. While we sell our secrets to the Chinese, we make it more and more difficult for our U.S. businesses to function. I don’t know what President Obama knows personally, but the buck stops with him. He must know what is happening to Boeing and Gibson, yet he does nothing. He appointed the people who are implementing this law.
It is unacceptable that Bush signed this law without any clear direction.
Sorry to hear you are caught up in the weather problems, Sara. At least that’s the assumption I’m making. I’m thankful today that Irene didn’t live up to her potential. Thanks for the chat. It’s been fun.
I am grateful it isn’t worse also. This was only a Tropical Storm by the time it hit us and it still caused a lot of damage. I had to travel towards the hurricane Thursday and then traveled back with it yesterday. I felt like a reluctant hurricane hunter.
I enjoyed reading your posts and appreciate the information.
Irene has caused me to go into computer withdrawal and I guess I will catch up on my reading.
I don’t know enough about what Bush should have done or not have done. I know laws are left broad all the time and then the details are left to the next layer to regulate or define.
Bottom line, if this isn’t addressed, we will force more and more companies overseas.
The Gibson CEO is a man of courage and he is a real leader.
Not to hit you while you’re busy being disconnected, but while I’m thinking about it (obsessing actually) here is a horrifying example from 2002, long before Obama’s time. My point is let’s not politicize this thing. It’s too scary to let it be a “this guy is worse than this guy” or “us against them” fight.
The nutshell of US VS Diane Huang
http://www.uniset.ca/other/cs3/2002WL32595266.html
More official docs
http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/rightsandfreedoms/a/alobsterstail.htm
These three were all recently appointed, it is true, but the impact of Lacey has been decimating lives for over a decade. The omnibus Farm Bill of 2008 merely added plants and plant products including trees and tree products to the many crimes a person can commit.
http://www.fws.gov/director/dan-ashe/dan.cfm?reint=1
http://www.aphis.usda.gov/about_aphis/leadership_bios/parham_bio.shtml
http://www.justice.gov/ag/
Please notice that in all cases like this, it is being on the receiving end of what someone ships you, at the mercy of whether or not they filled out the paperwork to Joe Custom’s liking.
I can’t open your links right now but I will look at them when they’re accessible. All I can do on the site is log my own comments.
Whether it is this administration or the previous or both, the core problem is the government gone wild.
I understand your concern. Making it political causes divisiveness and some people will miss the message, which they would otherwise have heard.
The abuses resulting from this law are the tip of the iceberg and there is a political ideology behind it, The ideology is even more concerning.
Here is the beginning (as I understand it) of the Lacey Act being used to create black holes for fish and animal product importers. It was signed into law under Ronald Reagan in 1981. It is only in the latest revision that tree products (including paper) have been put in orbit around the black hole from which nothing can escape.
http://www.fws.gov/laws/lawsdigest/lacey.html
The Lacey Act has been around since 1900. I know it’s been updated by both parties, but I don’t know the detailed history so I will try to review this soon. I am in an Internet cafe and they don’t want people to hang out here too long.
Now I can only comment from my phone. I can’t really research like this. Why did Reagan sign this? Maybe he was having a senior moment. He hated big government. Without knowing the reasoning, it’s hard to judge. It doesn’t change the fact that this administration is trying to close Gibson. Why doesn’t Holder go after the Black Panthers? Holder is God awful.
This admin is resurrecting laws and using them to overreach. How about Carter’s Community Reinvestment Act as a prime example.
I looked up the horrendous Huang case you mentioned – you are right – it’s bad. The McNab-Huang case is one of the things I am clamoring about, however, and that is the overreach of government. When the government takes a law that has good intent and over-criminalizes it, that is a political travesty.
The Huang/McNab/Schoenwetter/Blanford case began in February, 1999 and the convictions were handed down in 2001, under Clinton. It was based on an anonymous message and an invalid Honduran law.
The government used a 1993 regulation promulgated pursuant to a 1973 statute about shipping in boxes, not plastic bags. Secondly, it was based on a regulation which mandates 5.5 inch lobster tails as the minimum (only 3% were under 5.5% as it turned out). The prosecution of this case was undertaken by overzealous and foolhardy government prosecutors against four business people.
The three men were sentenced to 8 years in prison and the woman, Ms. Huang, received two years in jail. They didn’t murder anyone or kill off the fishing industry. Basically, these four people were convicted because they shipped lobsters in clear plastic bags instead of boxes.The prosecutors glorified themselves through false media hype as having stopped a massive smuggling operation.
This tells me that there are great risks in federalizing criminal law, which is normally a state function.
I am convinced more than ever that this is indeed political and that the Feds need to be shrunk. This case is most important for its political roots and consequences. The courts, the prosecutors, the mid-level bureaucrats all had a hand, but the root problem was the power of the Feds in this faux criminal matter.
I can’t wait until these same bureaucrats are in charge of healthcare and start arresting people for some perceived violation. The same with the Dodd-Frank bill – CEO’s can go to jail for making a mistake on their quarterly report. From what I am reading about the abuse of this Lacey act, I would say CEO’s should live in fear.
I don’t have a problem with banning the import of rare and endangered wood species. I don’t have a problem with The Lacey Act. I have a problem with the abuse of the law and the fact that the Feds are getting too big and have too much power.
You’ve hit the crux of it, Sara.
“I don’t have a problem with banning the import of rare and endangered wood species. I don’t have a problem with The Lacey Act. I have a problem with the abuse of the law and the fact that the Feds are getting too big and have too much power.”
What Gibson imported was 100 percent legal plus 100 percent moral.
I hope that people stand up for Gibson. I haven’t heard anything about this on the news, however, and that’s not a good sign.
Support Gibson! Buy a new US-built Les Paul!
I bought a Martin and I regret it. I hope people write, email, call the DOJ to complain about this assault on Gibson.
http://www.justice.gov/contact-us.html
Better make that an Indian rosewood acoustic with an ebony fingerboard, or a Hummingbird with an Indian rosewood fingerboard, the same guitar that was perfectly legal last year when our First Lady gave France’s First Lady a truly American gift.
It’s time to stop blogging, “Like”ing, and whining. It’s time to write to our congress people and explain to all your non-guitar friends that they came for us one day, there will be a reason to come after you another. They’re guitars for crying out loud! Just guitars. They use less than 1 percent of the wood in the world.
I agree. I sent an email to the DOJ.
I’m going to contact Darrel Issa and ask him to investigate the DOJ and Fish and Game Department raids on Gibson. Issa’s number is 202-225-3906
Gibson has released a petition, but it is all about Gibson, not at all about small custom makers and the millions of people affected by this law. There will be a concise statement from the small artisan shops very soon and a petition to go with it.
It is my sincere hope that we can all get through this without making it a polarizing issue. I return to my very first comment to this board. This is about middle management run wild. This mess of a law has been added to by both parties, and the wider implications are an erosion of our 200 plus year rule of law on this continent. This is a guilty until proven innocent law for which there is no “proving” and no “innocence.”
I hope that I can enlist help from people around here – from every political bent – to help circulate when the time comes.
It does transcend political persuasion in so many ways and I do agree this has been an evolving problem. This law could affect more than even custom makers if we continue along this path. What about wood floors? This insanity has to be stopped. I hope that we all can unite on this issue. Send the petitions along – I have a large email list of people who do care.