Guitar maker's CEO vows fight, says feds' raids went too far
TheTennissean.com
A) I have been posting and following up on this story in other sites around the Internet, exactly because it needs to have visibility. This allegedly pro-jobs administration has unfairly singled out a job provider, who happens to be a supporter of republican causes, when the core issue behind the Lacey Act is American jobs versus foreign jobs (read the article for the explanation of that). If it walks like a wolverine and talks like a duck, it isn't a duck.Eleven days ago, Gibson Guitar CEO Henry Juszkiewicz was getting ready for work when he got a phone call at home from his assistant, whose voice sounded panicky.
Half a dozen armed federal agents with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service were searching the Gibson executive suite. Two of the company’s South Nashville guitar factories also had just been raided, along with one in Memphis.
By the time Juszkiewicz (pronounced Juss-ka-witz) reached his office, agents were forensically imaging his computer and carting out boxes of paperwork and company hard drives. At the factories, agents were loading trucks with pallets of rosewood and ebony, guitars, guitar necks, computers and shipping documents.
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In recent days, Gibson’s CEO has gone on a counterattack, telling various talk radio and TV news programs that the raids are an “outrageous abuse of federal power” that have unfairly singled out his company, perhaps for political reasons.
“There’s no doubt we’re being persecuted,” Juszkiewicz said. “But while I was sitting in my conference room, while agents blocked the door to my office, I decided two things. One, we were going to try and fight this in court. Secondly, we were going to give this issue visibility.”
B) My next guitar purchase will be a Gibson. Not a Martin (which company's CEO is a big democrat supporter and has been spared what is happening to Gibson even though they buy the same woods from the same source). Not a Taylor (Bob Taylor is an OK dude, but why isn't he speaking up when his industry is under attack, when he buys his woods from the same sources?). Not a L'Arrivée (my primary guitar is a L'Arrivée and they make some of the finest guitars in the world, but Jean L'Arrivée has remained as silent as Bob Taylor............and they use the same wood sources as the others).
C) What about violin manufacturers? They use the same woods as guitars: http://www.theviolinsite.com/violin_mak ... _wood.html. How long before they come under fire if they support republican causes like Juszkiewicz does? And then what about makers of violas, stand-up bass, cellos, etc? ALL of these instruments mean AMERICAN jobs filled by skilled craftsmen. They use imported ebony woods in the fingerboards, just like guitar makers do. They use rosewood in the necks and bodies just like guitar makers do.
Guitars are not unique to this country. They weren't invented here. But there is no stringed instrument that is so quintessentially American as a guitar. When guitar makers are selectively persecuted based on their political affiliations by a democrat government for allegedly violating a law that protects foreign labor ahead of American labor, there is something that stinks like dead bodies in DC.
I hate this kind of crap.
