Environmental Enforcement Agents Targeting Guitars

tetrahedrassface writes "According to the Wall Street Journal, Federal agents again raided guitar maker Gibson this past week, seizing several pallets of wood and computer documents. At the heart of the issue is the wood that is being used in guitars and whether or not it comes from sustainable sources. The company insists it is being harassed and made to 'cry uncle' to the government's enforcement laws. The article notes that exotic fret and tone woods are protected in order to prevent the equivalent of 'blood diamond like trade,' but the ramifications now extend to guitar owners. If you play a vintage guitar, or a hand-built guitar made of old stock woods that were legally obtained years ago, you better not fly with it. John Thomas, a law professor at Quinnipiac University and a blues and ragtime guitarist, says, 'there's a lot of anxiety, and it's well justified.' Once upon a time, he would have taken one of his vintage guitars on his travels. Now, 'I don't go out of the country with a wooden guitar.'"

Wait a minute....

[Nidi62]

So, are you telling me it's now easier to fly with a firearm than it is with an acoustic guitar?

The Economic Stupidity of (Some) Environmentalists

[geoffrobinson]

Let's ignore for a second that the government cares about how an Indian government interprets and Indian law for an American domestic manufacturer. Here's the utter stupidity...

If you have something like ivory or some rare wood, if you make the value of it next to nothing, legitimate businesses will have no incentive to have that resource conserved.

Let's say you are in some rainforest and you have this really rare tree that is valuable for its wood. If legitimate businesses can use it and it has value, you can find a way to harvest it and make sure more grows. If it has no value, you plow the thing over and grow some crops.

The same goes for different animal species as well.

Do you think elephants will stop being hunted because of ivory bans? If you allow a certain percentage of elephants to be culled, I'm pretty sure a group of people will make sure there are plenty of elephants.

Re:It's about time

[INT_QRK]

As the number of laws and regulations continue to grow exponentially, at some point we will all become violators of something. When we reach that critical mass it will become impossible to enforce everything without bringing society to a standstill. At that point, government authorities will be compelled to focus on deciding what to enforce and when, based primarily on perceived need to reign in those "loose cannons" who either make too much of a fuss, fail to tow the line, or beg to be made an example. If this seems just a tad paranoid, maybe it just because I'm feeling a little stabby today. No worries.

Some things to consider

[EmagGeek]

CF Martin IV, a well-known contributor to Obama and the DNC, also makes guitars from Indian Rosewood, and is one of Gibson's main competitors in the acoustic guitar space.

The CEO of Gibson is a vocal republican running a non-union shop.

Gibson is being targeted. CF Martin is not.

You do the math.

Re:Guilty until proven innocent

[MinistryOfTruthiness]

Lagging behind? The issue here is a law that's two years old, stating that importers must abide by all of the laws of the country from which they are sourcing the materials. Sounds like a good idea on the face of it, but unfortunately, it's very much open to interpretation.

There are several problems here:

1. The government has confiscated over $1M of materials, *and not given a reason for it*
2. The government did the same thing two years ago re: Madagascar woods, and the trial is still dragging on due to government dragging its feet, missing deadlines, requesting stays, etc.
3. The government has claimed that *any* guitar sold by Gibson can be construed as obstruction of justice, and that this can be applied to the BUYER and the RETAILER. So, in other words, they've threatened criminal charges against anyone who buys a Gibson guitar. Because they have not stated a specific infraction, Gibson does not know which guitars this may apply to, and so must assume *all* of them.
4. Gibson assumes that this has to do with an Indian law stating that if any finishing work is done in India, that ALL finishing work must be done in India. Gibson buys half-finished fingerboard blanks from their Indian suppliers, but has all of the proper sign-offs and paperwork to show that this was approved by the government.
5. The government raided a factory using fully-armed SWAT team. This alone is a disturbing trend that must be stopped. They weren't raiding a pot house or a meth lab, they're raiding a guitar factory. Suits, pens and clipboards were much more appropriate than kevlar and automatic weapons.

Here's a video of the CEO talking about the raid. It's a bit long, but the guy seems genuinely baffled as to what could be the cause of the raid:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_-taqM5Sk0 [youtube.com]

Re:I love hearing right-wingers complain about EPA

[halivar]

Price and wage controls, economic planning, progressive taxation, ceding individual property rights to the central government, no right to bear arms, comprehensive social welfare.

These some of the original cornerstones of fascist ideology. I fail to see how they square with the American right-wing (note that militarism, nationalism and etho-centrism, the other pillars of fascism, plague communist and socialist countries, also). In any event, early fascists called themselves both anti-marxist, anti-capitalist, and anti-clerical. That claim seems accurate; making most modern uses of "fascist" as an epithet ridiculous.

Re:It's about time

[ravenshrike]

Or, in the case of Gibson, their politics. Martin uses the exact same wood through the exact same supplier but since they donate to the Democrat party they remain unraided.