Sour notes for a classic American company.
Federal authorities are pressuring Nashville-based Gibson Guitar to hand over an additional 25 bundles of Indian wood that the company allegedly planned to use in its famous guitars.
The complaint was filed today in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee and mirrors a 2010 action that sought official forfeiture of wood obtained in a 2009 raid of Gibson facilities. The latter of those cases has been stayed, pending the outcome of the most recent suit.
As has been the case in previous allegations, at issue is the classification of certain wood imported to the United States from India. Namely, a June shipment of 1,250 sawn logs was classified as “finished parts of musical instruments,” which is allowed under Indian law. In reality, according to the sworn affidavit of Fish and Wildlife Service agent Kevin Seiler, the wood was unfinished – a violation of the Lacey Act.
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The affidavit also outlines allegations that Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz understands the violations, as evidenced by the staunch defense of his company in a press conference and subsequent political fights around the Lacey Act.
“It is clear that Gibson understands the purpose of the Lacey Act, and understands that … fingerboard blanks are not finished fingerboards and thus Gibson is aware that its order for fingerboard blanks was an order for contraband ebony wood or ebony wood which is illegal to possess,” Seiler wrote.
Note that last part. On its face, it reads as if it’s intended to intimidate Henry Juszkiewicz into silence. Before this is over, he may be in jail for defending his company and workers, and hundreds of American non-union jobs may be shipped of to India.
Elsewhere, Fish and Wildlife is busy trying to kill the West Texas oil boom. Perhaps it’s time to kill off the Fish and Wildlife Department instead.
A finished fingerboard isn’t a finished guitar either. Maybe the entire operation needs to be moved to India….
Perhaps it’s time to kill off the Fish and Wildlife Department instead.
No we just need to start prosecuting the out of control Obama appointees before they completely destroy our country in the name of socialism.
Did you ever wonder why exactly the Republicans never do what your proposing? It is because they know in the end, they are just as vulnerable to the same actions. It is similar to mutually assured destruction, with the Democrats having a near impenetrable defensive shield that not only stops the Republican attacks, but reverse them such that they end up actually blowing up in the Republican lands.
This crap didn’t come to town with Obama it’s been here for decades. DoJ both DoEs, Fish and Wildlife, Dept of Interior and the EPA are thoroughly invested with Reds and Watermelons and assorted econuts. These agencies and Departments must be abolished. It may be necessary to replace some components of them but all the current employees must go and not be allowed to work for the federal government ever again.
Amen.
To get a job at these places, one must be a true believer. You must have some kind of eco-regulation degree, so by definition, the lunatics are running the asylum. Where are the checks and balances our Founders worked so hard to ensure? They certainly were clear eyed about their fellow men. Most of them didn’t even like or trust one another.
In order to have anything like balance, we’d have to employ someone with veto power at the EPA who wanted to truly destroy and rape the environment, not just be reasonable. Someone who is as vehemently against wildlife in all its forms as the econuts are for it. Someone who wanted to start forest fires and nuke prairie dog populations. And there’s the rub: no such person exists, which means, once again, the liberal ratchet just keeps cranking away, along with our hopes and dreams.
They’ve all got to go. Every last one. When and if we ever feel we want to do something like that again, every single regulation and rule must be individually voted on by Congress, and every law must have an expiration date, when it must die or be reauthorized. Otherwise, we are doomed.
Obama is a Third World dictator. Like Robert Mugabe et. al., he won’t be happy until the US permanently takes its place at the bottom of the Third World.
To the best of my knowledge, U.S. Fish & Wildlife is not listed on the endangered species act or otherwise protected. Culling the herd seems a logical strategy for such a rabid, dangerous specie. Other possibility is to relocate them–as they do with bears, for example–to say, some uninhabited island in the Arctic, North Sea or perhaps better, somewhere below 40 degrees south latitude?
Excellent idea, Jack.
To ensure the hapless US Fish & Wildlife folks aren’t subjected to adverse ecological impacts from the presence of all that unmonitored and unregulated open air, the EPA should first be culled then shipped along with FiWi.
I guess Gibson only has one option. They must move away from these overbearing, self-important communist bureaucrats and go to a place that rewards free enterprise like Red China.
This case stinks of prosecutorial and investigatory abuse. It’s been ratcheted up into an inquisition designed to break a business and businessman who fight back against strained, overwrought, oppressive regulation. But since everything is stacked in favor of the US Attorney and F&W Service. I advise sending lawyers, lobbyists and campaign cash to DC post-haste and cranking up congressional inquiries and other oversight of Lacey Act enforcements. Turn the heat on the service and maybe the service will settle. That’s your only hope.
In Congress, July 4, 1776.
A Declaration
By the Representatives of the
United states of America,
In general Congress assembled.
. . . We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness—-That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.
thousands of illegal weapons, paid for by tax $$$, are secretely handed off to mexical drug cartels (among others) by our government with the predictable resultant outcome of hundreds of dead mexicans and at least one dead American, and hardly a word of honest reporting of it, or of the attempts by high government officials to cover it up. yet they find the time to spend huge amounts of resources chasing down and prosecuting a famous American guitar company for some painted/unpainted wood? or try to stop a top American aerospace company from growing and hiring thousands in a tragic economy, or do everything possible to shut down the American energy industry, and on and on and on.
imho, this is purposeful folks. it is intended to do irreparable harm to our country by fraudulently appointed government officials. it has a name. i also do not believe these people have any intention of having an honest election, or any election.
what was that obi said he needed to fully implement his agenda? wasn’t it a militia as fully armed and trained as our own military? he probably won’t need as big an army to crush us if ours is off fighting multiple useless wars thousands of miles away. this is really looking bad folks. 50 cal sniper rifles (that walked across the border) are highly prized in trying to pick off key enemy personnel. remember, if they will do this sort of criminal activity that we accidentally found out about, wonder what is really being done behind the scenes?
just something to ponder.