With military precision, the federal officers surrounded the building, donned flak jackets and helmets, readied their weapons, burst in, and forced terrified employees out at gunpoint. Officers ransacked the facility, seizing computers, papers, and materials.
It was the second raid in three years by the Fish and Wildlife Serviceon Gibson, maker of the famous Les Paul guitar. The situation would be laughable, if the consequences for Gibson weren’t so dire.
The law that Gibson allegedly violated is the Lacey Act, which bars importation of wildlife or plants if it breaks the laws of the country of origin. It was intended to stop poachers. The ebony and rosewood that Gibson imported was harvested legally, and the Indian government approved the shipment of the wood. But Fish and Wildlife bureaucrats claim that, because the wood was not finished by Indian workers, it broke Indian law. In other words, a U.S. agency is enforcing foreign labor laws that the foreign government doesn’t even think were violated.
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“In two cases we had a SWAT team, treating us like drug guys, come in and shut us down with no notice,” lamented Gibson chairman and CEO Henry Juszkiewicz. “That’s just wrong. We’re a business. We’re making guitars.” Juszkiewicz says the raid, seizures, and resulting plant closure cost Gibson more than $1 million.
This abusive treatment of a legitimate business like Gibson is not an isolated incident. Small businesses have been similarly raided, and their officers imprisoned, for such minor offenses as importing lobster tails in plastic rather than cardboard (three men were given eight-year prison sentences) and sloppy labeling on imported orchids (the accused was given a 17-month sentence).
The Gibson assaults are further evidence that America’s criminal-justice system has strayed far from its central purpose: stopping the bad guys from harming us. SWAT-team raids were designed to arrest notoriously violent gangsters, and stop them from destroying evidence. Now, the police powers of the state are being used to attack businesses. (Were the feds afraid that the Gibson workers would flush the guitars down the toilet?)
It is time to get the criminal law back to basics. Fighting terrorism, drug cartels, rapists, and murderers is enough to keep law enforcement busy. To expand that fight to include such esoteric social causes as protecting Indian workers dilutes the resources needed to fight real crime. Why do we care who finishes the wood on guitars? And why are we applying the power of the state in its rawest form to enforce Indian labor laws?
Prosecutors who are looking for an easy “win” know that businesses roll over. A public raid on its offices, or an indictment of its officers, can destroy a business’s reputation and viability. That makes the owners easy to intimidate into a plea bargain.
If they choose to fight, they face the full wrath and fury of the feds. In the Gibson raids, the SWAT teams were deployed even though Gibson had offered its full cooperation to investigators. Such raids are increasingly used to intimidate citizens under suspicion. The orchid importer, a 65-year-old with Parkinson’s, was shoved against a wall by armed officers in flak jackets, frisked, and forced into a chair without explanation while his home was searched.
Where are the defense lawyers? What happened to appeals?
Are the lobstermen and the 65-year-old orchid importer in prison?
Please give instances in which the possible abuses you cite have occurred.
PS: The first raid on Gibson Guitar occurred November 17, 2009.
There are more general problems with the Lacey Act: It's so broadly written that importing instruments manufactured a century ago, made from woods not endangered at the time, would still be regarded as contraband smuggling.
As a practical matter, it's difficult to source woods used even decades ago and some species are so diverse even experts struggle to accurately identify them.
I empathise with the idea of preserving and nurturing endangered wood species, but the current law was written by individuals who don't understand its ramifications.
A big problem is that the Lacey Act was originally written to protect endangered animals and was amended to include plants relatively recently (~1972 IIRC). It's easy to answer "where did this elephant tusk come from," but not as easy to answer "where did this wood come from?"
If after the year 2012 we don't see the governments at every level brought into control by the people then what happened in the "Arab Spring" of 2011 will look like a walk in the park in light of the American Spring of 2013.
The line against an over-intrusive government should start being drawn here. Gibson is a perfect company for this. Virtually everybody has heard of the company and everyone dreamed of being a rock star at some point. Rock music is filled with alliterations of peace and street protest against the government. How ironic to put that into the courtroom and truly protest against the government.
It should also be noted that Gibson Guitar is not unionized while some of it's direct competition hires union employees.
The union shops were somehow exempted from this tyranny which was inflicted using U.S. Fish & Wildlife SWAT teams. Apparently the Dept of Education is not the only innocent sounding federal entity with mercenaries.
Nolan is right on in his use of the word "immoral". At the root the problem is the legal profession on both sides of the bench. Does the legal profession have anything analogous to the Hippocratic Oath in the medical profession, to do no harm? Not that I've heard of, but I'd love to be corrected. If they do it's paid lip-service.
People often come out of law school with the wrong ambitions: to get rich, to make a name for oneself, to accumulate power. But how make to uphold truth? How about to seek justice? Instead we have a profession that by and large sees itself as pool of mercenaries who's only metric is "wins". Have a conversation with a criminal lawyer sometime, you'll stomach will turn.
This situation smacks of Elliot Spitzerism. I'm sure the lawyers on the prosecution team would be just as comfortable on the side of the defense if helped their careers along.
Is this just an instance of the over-criminalization of America or is it yet another instance of environmental wacko-ism by the cult of "Progressivism"?
Tell me whether you think it is probable or not that these Federal agents are made all the more zealous having been brought up on a diet of Cultural Marxism, which is the predominant new worldview and nearly unavoidable for those having attended college. It is the worldview that teaches that American businesses are imperialist exploiters of innocent third world peoples and, well, Eden.
An interesting article, however, it missed the real political implications after brushing up against them when mentioning the non-union connection.
Unmentioned is that Gibson's owner has donated to Republicans and conservative causes, which, in my opinion, is the real reason for the gov't. misusing it's authority and OUR money in this case.
Respectfully, Gibson has two owners, Henry Juszkiewicz (CEO) and David Berryman (President). Henry J. is brash, bigger than life, and very much like the Ted Turner of the guitar industry. If Gibson does it, Juszkiewicz approved it. He's a famous micromanager.
Juszkiewicz is a long-standing liberal and an opportunist. Most of his political contributions have been to the Consumer Electronics Association. He rarely donates to candidates. As Fox News correspondent John Roberts first wrote Juszkiewicz "has contributed to Republican candidates as well as some Democratic candidates." As the story progressed, the contributions to Democrats were left out of the story. Juszkiewicz's most recent contribution was $2,000 to Congressman Jim Cooper (D).
Juszkiewicz is close to the Clintons. When Clinton was President and the Lincoln Bedroom and every coat closet and alcove had a price tag on it, Gibson rented the White House for its 100th Anniversary, performing for the Clintons. Gibson was a early member of the Clinton Global Initiative. Gibson has been involved in the MTV Rock the Vote Awards and, in 2005, when Bill Clinton received a "Lifetime Achievement Award," Juszkiewicz was a Rock the Vote presenter. (Barack Obama also received an award in 2005).
Juszkiewicz helped found the Rainforest Alliance, which believed in man-caused "climate change" (that's the current PC for global warming). He stepped down from the Board of Directors after Gibson was accused of illegally importing Madagascar ebony in 2009, but stayed a member.
Juszkiewicz has aligned Gibson with Greenpeace, and with the We Are Family Foundation, which emphasizes 'diversity and tolerance." Among its programs are Mattie's Poetry Slam (poetry to promote diversity and tolerance) and support for the United Nations' International Day for Tolerance.
Gibson's sponsoring the John Lennon Educational Bus Tour.
Except for Juszkiewicz's work with leukemia groups, I don't know of any conservative connections.
There are reasons for concern about an armed raid of a U.S. business - but Juszkiewicz's status as a Republic (he's not) or a conservative (he's not) isn't one of them. As a guitar collector for four decades, I've witnesses Juszkiewicz's triumphs and failures. Within the music/guitar industry, if we referred to Juszkiewicz as a conservative, people would laugh - even while being concerned about the raids for other reasons.
This reminds me of the police in Ventura County. They've beat and threatened to beat me on several occasions while throwing the book at me for jaywalking, kicking a cop car or saying mean things to one of their personal friends...
But you're quite the ignorant romantic if you think policing in this country is about justice for anyone. The cops are like those teachers who messed up the capitol in Wisconsin only we give them guns too!
"High school diploma? PTSD from Afghanistan? HERE, TAKE A GUN!!"
And here's a real one from a judge:
"he would NEVER ruin a twenty year career to tell you he was going to take you around the corner and f you up! I won't believe it for a moment even if you say it's on the cop recorder"
Yea, because cops with twenty years service never beat bums to death or commit other horrible crimes!!
But they know I'm a scumbag and they're the good guys so whatever I say is evil like the emperor in star wars. Seriously this is what happens when you give idiots guns and more power than someone with an education could properly handle.
The use of aggressive, military-style tactics to enforce regulatory issues has gone to frightening extremes. For more examples, read Harvey Silverglate's Three Felonies a Day and One Nation Under Arrest, edited by Paul Rosenzweig and Brian Walsh.
Will any candidate have the guts to say that if elected, his Department of Justice will actually focus on justice rather than terrorizing harmless individuals for news clips? How about telling the next Attorney General, "Prevent this kind of thing or you're out"?
Liberals used to care about these abuses, but about the only one who speaks out today is Nat Hentoff.
When the government no longer carries out its duty to enforce the law against true criminals, which was the original purpose that humans created government to begin with, but instead criminalizes the law abiding citizen simply because it can, then the usefulness of that government ceases to exist for a free people. At that time the citizenry must rise up and either overthrow or reorganize that government. We are at that crossroads now. If we don't win the next election and Republican elected officials don't finally start making substantive reductions to the scope and power of the federal government, then either we will lose all our freedoms or be forced to fight for them. No more just going to work everyday for a paycheck while watching the world fall apart around us. Sadly, I have little faith that Boehner and Co. (i.e., the Republican Establishment) have the stomach to do what it will take to really reign in government if we do win in 2012. They're too afraid of the what the Washington media might say about them. So, it's most likely it will be left up to us to do something about it the hard way.
Now I know what Elizabeth Warren meant when she talked about those "marauding bands" that were going to take our businesses. I just wish she'd also told us that it was our tax dollars that were funding those marauding bands.
I can not believe that not a single NRO reader has recognized the agent in the raid photo as none other than the same agent in the Elian "drop the chalupa" Gonzalez raid photo. C'mon NRO, photoshop, really?
