What are the big lessons of this story?
The Department of Justice is under fire for taking the bold step of sending armed agents into the factories of Gibson Guitar in Nashville and Memphis to seize what it believes to be illegal wood.
Via press release from Gibson: “The Federal Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. has suggested that the use of wood from India that is not finished by Indian workers is illegal, not because of U.S. law, but because it is the Justice Department’s interpretation of a law in India. (If the same wood from the same tree was finished by Indian workers, the material would be legal.) This action was taken without the support and consent of the government in India.”
The story – by Ben Howe at RedState – notes that this isn’t the first time Gibson has been raided by “federal agents with automatic weapons” over abstruse definitions of what wood is legal.
Bear in mind that the wood in question in both raids was certified legal by an industry self-regulation group. No matter; in come the automatic weapons and the pencil-necked Assistant US Attorneys.
So the lessons are what?
- We Have Too Many Regulations: Our bureaucracy has metastasized far beyond any level needed to ensure health and safety and adherence to rational laws. It exists, like most Campaign Finance Boards and gun laws, to create criminals where there were none before. This seems to be the case here; the Feds haven’t proved their case from the last raid, a few years back, whose results are still being knocked around in federal court. This raid seems, to Howe, to be a way of stalling a defeat in the first case.
- We Have Too Many Regulators: They have to justify their existence somehow. More than that, they need to guard their turf; the wood industry, especially as re the music industry, has been regulating itself; how many customer bases are as PC as musicians (outside country-western, anyway)?
- The Feds Have Too Many Gun and SWAT Teams: They sent a SWAT team to raid a guitar factory. Not a crack house. Not a Zeta stronghold in the Arizona mountains (perish the freaking though). This is not a surprise, really; ever since the Clinton Administration, the federal government has been arming the bureaucracy; where once the Feds would depend on local SWAT teams to provide the armed muscle for the rare events it was needed, today that Feds have thousands of armed agents outside the FBI and the Marshalls, to say nothing of the military. Where once the FBI might have something akin to a SWAT team, today the Department of Customs, the Marshalls, even the Department of Education have their own heavily-armed paramilitary units. I would joke that the National Endowment for the Humanities has a SWAT team – but I’m afraid that someone would chime in with a link to a story about NEH commandos fast-roping in from a helicopter to serve a no-knock summons.
Actually, I believe Gibson was raided because they put an inlay on the first fret of some of their models. If that’s the reason for the raid, I find it to be entirely reasonable.
Oh and those fricking trapezoids are annoying too.
It’s nice to know Eric Holder’s Injustice Dept. is so keen on enforcing Indian law. I just with he had as much interest in enforcing American law. But then, knowing what a bunch of flaming morons these people are, Holder might have thought it was American Indian wood.
Our Department of Justice has time and resources to enforce their own interpretation of Indian law, which the Indian government has not requested assistance with, but does not have the time and resources to enforce immigration law and deportation proceedings, as cited by the President during his vacation?
No, they have so much time and resources that they are now going to adjudicate illegals on a case by case basis. What could go wrong?
We Have Too Many Regulations
Every single one of which was dreamt up to solve a so-called Big Problem. There is a direct line from illegal weapons and illegal drugs (Coca-cola used to actually contain a tiny amount of cocaine) through the OSHA regs and now to illegal wood fragments. Just curious, how far back do you want to cut these regulations?
“The Feds Have Too Many Gun and SWAT Teams”
We’re paying for far too many door kickers!!
I am soooooo relieved the government has taken action to protect its citizens from illegal wood at guitar factories. I know we will all sleep better at night knowing we are protected from this evil and dangerous threat to our liberty.
Yes, I’m sure that they needed them to raid a legendary guitar factory, because many people there are armed with dangerous wood working tools! Hell, one of them may have cut their finger poking around the wood pile! Maybe it’s time for Gibson to hide some Indian cobras in there to discourage future raids!
There is some stuff going on with natural gas recovery right now. Didn’t read the whole article, but it sounds like the fed’l gov’t is fishing for ways to go after energy companies.
Word out there is that Gibson owners are Republican donars, their competitor uses the same wood, but was not raided. They are Democrat donars.
More on Monday.
Could Obama and his thugs be that stupid?
Bureaucracies are living organisms not unlike insects. They often get in places where they don’t belong. And I think that too much bureaucratic action flys under the RADAR – regardless of the party in power in the WhiteHouse. We have a strong anti-big-government majority in the House of Representatives. I suspect that the liberal left in the Senate would have problems with many of these “gulag” behaviors as well. There might actually be elements of agreement here.
So, Congress, get some “bureau” spray and start stomping!
I view them as more of a bacteria/virus. They can do some good but if left unchecked long enough they will kill the host