I concur with websurfer.

Ivan, thanks for your your well-written explanation here. I tend to look at things more from a philosophical point of view and believe that one should question things. It's only through this way that we learn.

Matt "tha Kat" Lentz
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websurfer wrote:

Seems to me this will come down to an interpretation of the Lacey Act
and whether Gibson knowingly understood and violated it.

"Knowingly" probably won't matter according to this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904060604576570801651620000.html

Fady

El Mirage @ ReverbNation

Last edited: Sep 30, 2011 18:11:13

The Wall Street Journal
THE WEEKEND INTERVIEW
NOVEMBER 12, 2011

The Government and the Guitar Man
The guitar maker for the stars talks about making instruments, why audio equipment isn't dead, and watching federal agents storm his office.

By NANCY DEWOLF SMITH

On Aug. 24, federal agents descended on three factories and the Nashville corporate headquarters of the Gibson Guitar Corp. Accompanied by armored SWAT teams with automatic weapons, agents from the Fish and Wildlife Service swarmed the factories, threatening bewildered luthiers, or guitar craftsman, and other frightened employees. A smaller horde invaded the office of CEO Henry Juszkiewicz, pawing through it all day while an armed man stood in the door to block his way.

"I was pretty upset," Mr. Juszkiewicz says now, sitting outside that same office. "But you can only do so much when there's a gun in your face and it's the federal government." When the chaos subsided, the feds (with a warrant issued under a conservation law called the Lacey Act) had stripped Gibson of almost all of its imported Indian rosewood and some other materials crucial to guitar making.

The incident attracted national attention and outrage. Like Boeing—whose plans to locate new production in South Carolina are opposed by the National Labor Relations Board—here was an iconic American brand under seemingly senseless federal fire.

Gibson vigorously asserts that it has broken no laws. Last month Rep. Jim Cooper (D., Tenn.) and two co-sponsors introduced legislation to modify the Lacey Act with the so-called Relief Act—which could indemnify many guitar makers and performers who now fear being arrested because their instruments were made with imported wood or exotic materials. But the new bill won't apply to anyone who's already wriggling on the government's hook for alleged Lacey violations. So Gibson, a big fish for Justice Department prosecutors and environmental activists looking to make their bones, is on its own.

As serious as the federal threat may be to one of America's oldest and most illustrious guitar companies, it isn't easy to concentrate on that subject while talking to Mr. Juszkiewicz, who bought Gibson for a reported $5 million in 1986 with two former Harvard Business School classmates. This is partly because he's full of ideas for expanding the company and is joyfully in thrall to its cool and controversial new electric guitar, the Firebird X (or 10).

It's also difficult to focus on legal matters because 117-year-old Gibson is all about making music, and so the walk to Mr. Juszkiewicz's office, in a modest industrial-park building near the Nashville airport, is a trail of musical history. On the wall of an internal staircase, a photograph of The Who's guitar wizard (and smasher) Pete Townshend induces an anticipatory shiver.

Then a metal door swings open to reveal the corporate inner sanctum, and a kind of rock 'n' roll fever sets in. Ahead is an entire glass wall of iconic Gibson instruments, beckoning to be seen and touched and coveted. First, though, there's a display of pictures featuring famous Gibson owners—from blues man B.B. King to ZZ Top rocker Billy Gibbons, from Neil Diamond to Sting. A photo of Prince Charles, posed with a Gibson, briefly kills the buzz. But another Englishman gets it going again: Jimmy Page, standing alone on a spotlit stage with the double-necked guitar that gave us the intro to "Stairway to Heaven."

There is a photo of Slash, the Guns N' Roses lead guitarist, with Mr. Juszkiewicz playing beside him. More poignant is the shot of Gibson's CEO with the late Les Paul, who gave his name in 1952 to the solid-body electric guitar that is the company's best-seller even today. In another pic taken at a Rock the Vote event in Washington a few years back, Mr. Juszkiewicz looks on as a beaming then-Sen. Barack Obama clutches a big Gibson.

After the August raids, Mr. Juszkiewicz thought of contacting the president. Gibson, which employs about 1,200 people in the U.S. alone, is in an impossible situation, after all. To this day, no charges have been filed against it over last summer's raids or a 2009 raid involving ebony from Madagascar.

At issue is not endangered wood, but technical interpretations of laws in foreign countries. Gibson says it got permits and followed foreign laws on exports of finished products, such as the prepared slats of Indian rosewood used on guitar fingerboards. The U.S. government claims the products weren't finished enough. And now Gibson has millions either tied up in seized products or committed to legal fees. "The travesty is first that we have not been charged, so there is no due process here," Mr. Juszkiewicz says.

The company and its CEO have long been active in conservation efforts—with the Rainforest Alliance, the Music Wood Coalition and other groups. Mr. Juszkiewicz still supports the Lacey Act, and keeps promoting sustainable resource practices in the industry. The fact that Gibson was singled out when other guitar makers use the same woods has fed speculation that the company was targeted—because it is not unionized, perhaps, or didn't donate enough to the Democratic Party.

"I don't think it's a political issue," Mr. Juszkiewicz says, shaking his head. "But I will say this: I wrote a letter to President Obama. I spelled out what happened. I said: You know, we got raided and here are the facts, I think it's unfair. What do you think we should do? No response."

Maybe the president is not a music lover? "He knows who we are," Mr. Juszkiewicz says. "His daughters have a couple of Gibsons. [Mrs. Obama] gave a guitar to [the French president's singer-songwriter wife] Mrs. Sarkozy. And we called up to make sure that he saw the letter, and he did. No response."

Legal travails aside, he says the company—which now includes Baldwin pianos, Fingerland drums, Wurlitzer jukeboxes and vending electronics and more—is thriving. "We have really good financial results and we've been accruing market share, so from a business perspective we look great," Mr. Juszkiewicz says.

As for the future, it's about expanding and improving the brand. "Consumer electronics is a big target of ours because it's a much bigger market than the M. I. [musical instrument] industry. . . . Right now we have a brand that people recognize and value. But only 5% of those people can buy something with the Gibson brand. . . In order to buy a guitar you actually have to play guitar. . . . You may say, 'Wow that's pretty cool to do,' but . . . it's like learning Greek. It's not intuitive to sit down and start playing rock and roll. So guitar players reflect one in 20 consumers. But high-fi speakers [can be used by] 20 out of 20, so it's a much larger market."

Who would have guessed that listening to good music on great audio equipment isn't obsolete? "The iPod is a brilliant device and it's not going away, but it is an isolationist tool. Music ultimately is social and it's lost a lot of that," the CEO says. "But if you have ever listened to a great set of speakers and a great set-up, it is an awesome experience. It's not for everyone . . . but there are a lot of people who would really love that experience who aren't getting it. In fact, the average consumer is buying nine speakers for their big-screen TV that they paid thousands of dollars for, and they paid like 300 bucks for these cheap plastic speakers going on the walls."

As for branding Gibson, Mr. Juszkiewicz says he takes inspiration from a company like Nike. "If you go to a Niketown [superstore], they are absolutely beautiful, beautiful. They treat athletic shoes like jewelry."

Raised in Rochester, N.Y., Mr. Juszkiewicz earned an engineering degree at the General Motors Institute, worked for the company's Delco division, and then got a GM scholarship to Harvard Business School, graduating in 1979. He and two friends bought a small tech company, made that profitable in a month, then in 1986 bought a failing Gibson and made that profitable in 30 days too. His secret: "hard work" before the purchase, including 10 months he spent in the factory.

What is Mr. Juszkiewicz's biggest risk these days? "Probably this DoJ incident" he says. "It's another case where our attorneys are saying: 'Look, you better shut up. Don't talk to the press, lay low, let this process work its way and things will go a lot smoother if you just be quiet.'"

But "factually, that hasn't been the case," he continues. "If you study other Lacey [Act] cases, you know there is not a lot of good history of Lacey prosecutions. And you know people went to jail." Perhaps he thinks of the 2000 felony case in which four people were sentenced to up to eight years in federal prison for importing lobster tails without the cardboard container specified in a Honduran law—a law that Honduran officials testified was defunct. "They played the game and they got nailed. There was no compassion. There was total aggressive kill."

But back to happier topics: the ultra high-tech Firebird X guitar, Mr. Juszkiewicz's other recent preoccupation. Self-tuning and equipped with Bluetooth, it can deliver some 2,000 combinations of analog sound and effects—from mellow jazz to acoustic electric to distorted rock and everything between and beyond. It's a beauty and, at about $5,500, roughly the melt-down value of a nice 18k gold necklace. Naturally, many traditionalists hate the Firebird X. But Mr. Juszkiewicz says even loathing is a welcome reflection of people's passionate interest in the Gibson brand.

I can't pin down the normally talkative CEO, a guitarist himself, on one burning question, about his favorite player or playing style. "It's like great wine," he scoffs politely. "There is no the great wine, there's a lot of great wines. There's all the pairings: Are you having fish or are you having meat? So I actually like all kinds of music—blues, jazz, classical. And how can I compare a Segovia to B.B. King?"

Though it helps if they played a Gibson. Talking about the guitar business over the last century, Mr. Juszkiewicz points out an uptick related to tough times: "We did really well in the Great Depression." Because everybody wanted to be like Woody Guthrie? "No, I would guess not," comes the reply. "He did play our guitar, though."

Ms. Smith is a member of the Journal's editorial board.

Ivan
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"The fact that Gibson was singled out when other guitar makers use the same woods has fed speculation that the company was targeted—because it is not unionized, perhaps, or didn't donate enough to the Democratic Party."

I, too, was wondering if Gibson was being singled out. Perhaps it is because Gibson has a big name and is serving as a warning for all of the other guitar makers. In a way, it isn't fair because it rewards industry leaders by making them a target.

If it ain't broke, fix it until it is.

Here's an article discussing some of the issues connected to the Gibson case (which is mentioned in the article):

The Wall Street Journal
LAW
DECEMBER 17, 2011

Federal Offenses
Federal Police Ranks Swell to Enforce a Widening Array of Criminal Laws
By LOUISE RADNOFSKY, GARY FIELDS and JOHN R. EMSHWILLER

For years, the public face of federal law enforcement has been the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Today, for many people, the knock on the door is increasingly likely to come from a dizzying array of other police forces tucked away inside lesser-known crime-fighting agencies.

They could be from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Labor or Education departments, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the agency known for its weather forecasts.

Agents from NOAA, in fact, along with the Fish and Wildlife Service, raided the Miami business of Morgan Mok in 2008, seeking evidence she had broken the Endangered Species Act trading in coral.

The agents had assault rifles with them, and the case documents indicated her house and business records had been under surveillance over a six-month period, says Ms. Mok. Under the 1973 law, the departments of Interior and Commerce (home to NOAA) must write regulations to define what is endangered and how it must be protected. One of those regulations specifies coral.

"I felt like I was being busted for drugs, instead of coral," Ms. Mok says. "It was crazy."

Ms. Mok says she showed that her coral had been properly obtained. She paid a $500 fine and served one year of probation for failing to complete paperwork for an otherwise legal transaction.

Adam Fetcher of the Department of the Interior, which includes Fish and Wildlife, says the department and its bureaus "follow priorities in line with other federal law-enforcement agencies. We work within the resources appropriated by Congress to effectively follow up and investigate criminal and civil violations."

Government agencies of all stripes have become the front-line enforcers for many of the laws Congress has written the past four decades. Not only do the agencies enforce these laws, they also write the voluminous regulations needed to put the laws into effect and govern federal programs.

Often, Congress makes it a criminal offense to violate any part of a law it passes—including these regulations. As a result, as more criminal laws are passed, the number of regulations that can ensnare people grows as well.

It is hard to pin down precisely how many regulations could result in criminal penalties. Of dozens of federal agencies contacted by The Wall Street Journal, none could say how many of their regulations were connected to criminal statutes. Legal experts have put this number at anywhere between 10,000 and 300,000.

In 1970, the Code of Federal Regulations had 54,000 pages. Today it runs to 165,000 pages and takes 27 feet of shelf space when printed and bound.

The growing rule book has kept enforcement teams busy. Last year, criminal cases pursued chiefly by smaller government agencies led to 10,122 convictions, an 84% increase from 15 years ago. Also up sharply: the numbers of prosecutions and investigators.

In the latest survey, by the Government Accountability Office in 2006, there were 25,000 sworn officers in the smaller government agencies (which excludes departments more commonly associated with crime fighting: Treasury, Justice, Defense and what is now Homeland Security). That number includes police, inspectors, security guards and rangers, as well as criminal investigators.

Across all government agencies, there were about 138,000 federal law-enforcement officers that year, GAO figures show. The Justice Department accounted for more than 40% of that total.

Among the smaller agencies, currently there are 3,812 criminal investigators, up from 507 in 1973, the first year for which records are available from the Office of Personnel Management. The EPA received its first two criminal investigators in 1977. It now has 265.

Even critics of the system say it is important to uphold the law and that criminal sanctions are sometimes necessary. "There are cases that should and can be made," says Roger Marzulla, a Justice Department official in the Reagan administration who oversaw environmental-crime prosecutions. Enforcing regulations also ensures that rule-breakers don't have an unfair advantage over competitors, he says.

An August raid on Gibson Guitar Corp. has drawn heavy criticism from both sides of the political aisle. In that raid, Fish and Wildlife Service agents swarmed the Nashville company to seize rosewood and ebony the agency suspected had been illegally imported from India. The company says its wood was obtained legally and that no charges have been filed.

"Why is it we're treating what is essentially a violation of rules and regulations in a criminal manner?" says Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group.

Steven Benjamin, president-elect of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, which tends to be more liberal, says: "Enforcing over-criminalization has put us at war with ourselves."

Skeptics also say some of these smaller departments tend to wield their powers indiscriminately, even for seemingly minor infractions, in ways that seem self-justifying.

"When you start making innocuous actions crimes, you multiply the number of people who are enforcing" the laws and regulations, says Ronald Gainer, a former Justice Department official for Democratic and Republican administrations who has cautioned for years against the proliferation of federal law. "You multiply the number of people who have to enforce criminal laws and they all want guns."

Congress provides relatively little oversight, particularly in comparison to the FBI, whose officials are regularly brought before hearings. Committees overseeing federal departments not traditionally associated with crime-fighting pay less attention to their law-enforcement units.

Often, it is the agencies' own internal inspectors-general who blow the whistle on problems with other officers in the department. In a stinging 2010 report, the inspector general for the Commerce Department focused on widespread complaints from fishermen in Massachusetts, North Carolina and Florida that criminal investigators from NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service's Office of Law Enforcement were being heavy-handed, even in civil cases.

The report detailed a 2006 case where a warrant affidavit for a fish dealer's records contained false information, and another case where an agent gained unauthorized access to a facility, then opened another door to let other officers in.

"The reality is that if you hire a cadre of criminal investigators, they're going to carry out their work like criminal investigators—and that's what they did," says inspector general Todd Zinser.

NOAA officials say the agency has improved its enforcement program since the report, with new leadership and more scrutiny of charging decisions. It has also frozen hiring for criminal investigators and employed more officers to help fishermen with compliance.

"I think that we agreed that there was a need for a more balanced perspective in the makeup of our work force," says Eric Schwaab, Assistant Administrator for Fisheries.

Christopher Kortlander met two dozen agents from several different federal agencies when they burst into the tiny Custer Battlefield Museum he founded in Garryowen, Mont., in 2005.

Mr. Kortlander has said in court filings protesting his treatment that "24 or more federal agents, armed and brandishing automatic weapons" participated in the raid. In an interview, he said he counted agents from the Bureau of Land Management, FBI, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service and several other forces. One of Mr. Kortlander's interns was pushed to the ground in the raid, he says.

The agents sought artifacts they said were being sold online under false pretenses as historical items found at Little Bighorn, scene of the bloody 1876 battle between Indians and the U.S. Army. No charges were brought against Mr. Kortlander. But agents returned in 2008, that time alleging Mr. Kortlander was in illegal possession of eagle feathers.

Again, no charges were filed. Mr. Kortlander denies wrongdoing. In 2009, federal prosecutors took the rare step of notifying Mr. Kortlander's attorney in writing that it wouldn't be pursuing charges in connection with either raid.

Mr. Kortlander is suing the government in federal court to recover some Cheyenne bonnets taken by the Bureau of Land Management during the second raid.

"They raid these people like they're Scarface," says Penelope Strong, Mr. Kortlander's attorney. Using force to go after drug dealers or violent criminals is understandable, Ms. Strong says. "But somebody in a hot, sultry part of Montana, in a trading post where people are wandering around buying blankets? Come on."

The agencies referred inquiries about the case to the U.S. attorney's office in Montana. A spokesman declined to comment, citing the lawsuit.

Postal inspectors, customs and other revenue agents were some of the first federal law-enforcement officers in the years after the Revolution. In the 19th century, Congress created forces to guard federal buildings and to police the expanding American West. After the Civil War, the federal government set up the Department of Justice and stepped up controls of immigration, alcohol and drugs.

The Department of the Interior and the Forest Service received new responsibilities under the environmental legislation sought by President Theodore Roosevelt in the early 20th century. But the foundation for the current growth of federal enforcement agencies was laid in the 1960s and 1970s when smaller departments started having inspectors general whose task was to police the government. Lawmakers writing sweeping environmental laws in that era also granted additional resources to the agencies administering those laws. That, in turn, created new enforcement teams.

Lawmakers and traditional law-enforcement agencies, in particular the FBI, resisted extending the power to carry firearms, execute warrants and make arrests to other agencies, says Jeffrey Bumgarner, a professor of government at Minnesota State University who has written a history of federal law enforcement. But agencies chipped away at that opposition, he says.

EPA agents were given police powers in 1988. The U.S. Marshals Service started issuing annual blanket authorizations in 1995 to some agencies that didn't have them.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when the FBI's attention shifted to terrorism matters, Congress gave permanent powers to inspectors general in more than two dozen agencies.

All of the officers are trained at one of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center facilities now run by the Department of Homeland Security. About 90 federal agencies send their personnel to the centers for training in everything from criminal investigations to cyber terrorism and land-management police training.

In the mid-1990s, many agencies tried to scale back their vigor in pursuing criminal prosecutions amid concern among members of Congress about aggressive tactics. An influential 1994 memo by Earl Devaney, then head of the Environmental Protection Agency's criminal-enforcement program, suggested applying criminal sanctions to only "the most significant and egregious violators."

Mr. Devaney's advice didn't stick, and the numbers are rising. In 2010 there were 12,606 prosecutions from cases investigated chiefly by agencies other than Justice, Treasury, Defense and Homeland Security. That was a 50% increase from 15 years ago.

In September, former oil-refinery manager Hubert Vidrine Jr. was awarded $1.67 million from a malicious-prosecution lawsuit he filed against the EPA. The judge said she would have made it higher if not limited by federal law. Mr. Vidrine's troubles began in September 1996, when the agency's criminal-investigation division led nearly two-dozen armed federal and state authorities on Canal Refining Co., an oil refinery in Church Point, La.

Mr. Vidrine described in an interview a scene of guns, police dogs, flashing lights and roadblocks. At one point, according to court documents filed in the lawsuit, agents refused to allow female employees to use the bathroom and prevented them from phoning their homes or child-care providers to make arrangements for their children.

The plant, which employed about 260 people, shut down refining operations the following year and is idle now.

Mr. Vidrine was charged in 1999 with "knowingly" storing hazardous waste, which later turned out to be used refined oil not covered by federal regulations. The potential penalty was five years and a $50,000 fine for each day of the violation. The case was dismissed in 2003, by which time Mr. Vidrine had spent more than $120,000 in legal fees maintaining his innocence, according to a statement by the judge.

The lead EPA agent in the case pleaded guilty Oct. 3 to charges he lied under oath and obstructed justice. A few days earlier, federal judge Rebecca Doherty sided with Mr. Vidrine in his lawsuit.

The EPA declined to comment, citing potential further action by the Justice Department. In recent weeks the Justice Department filed a notice that it plans to appeal the case to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals—promising to push a case that began in 1996 into 2012.

The regulations that spurred the raid were so complex they had led to disagreements among EPA personnel, as well as state environmental quality personnel, the judge noted in her opinion. She called the regulations a "morass."

Judge Doherty wrote that, "Given the egregious conduct displayed by an agent of the government and the devastation wrought on otherwise law-abiding citizens," she would have given Mr. Vidrine more than $1.67 million, if federal law allowed punitive damages against the government, "in the hope of deterring such reckless and damaging conduct and abuse of power in the future."
—Kris Maher contributed to this article.

Write to Louise Radnofsky at louise.radnofsky@wsj.com, Gary Fields at gary.fields@wsj.com and John R. Emshwiller at john.emshwiller@wsj.com

Ivan
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A new video by libertarian Reason magazine. Some attempt at balance, showing a representative of an environmental protection group defending the federal govt.'s actions, too. Six minutes long.

BTW, I got a new Sweetwater catalog a couple of days ago, and saw that Gibson is now making a new line of Les Pauls with maple fretboards! I'm sure that was the result of this raid, which must have left them quite short of rosewood and ebony.

Ivan
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Last edited: Feb 24, 2012 11:25:11

Oh, boy, here we go again...

Feds threaten to disrupt summer concerts

Sean

never mind....

Download (for free!) "Overhead At Darrington"--fiddle tunes arranged for surf-style electric mandolin--by Bruce Harvie and The Sandfleas here...

Last edited: May 19, 2012 09:19:52

JakeDobner wrote:

vintagesurfdude wrote:

Hey, I may be old school, but what the heck is the US govt. doing enforcing foreign laws. Have we no sovereignty, have THEY no soveriegnty?

The US enforces foreign laws that it agrees with. Things that make us better neighbors and ensures our planet for future generations.

Can you imagine how angry you would be if a foreign company came to our country and cut down our old growth and old trees and then didn't replant them? That is what US companies do in South America/Central America. Its kind of a dick thing to do.

Poorer countries do not have the governance to enforce sustainability laws like the US is able to enforce in our country. Tree harvesting in the US is strictly controlled, if you cut a tree down you must replant a new tree. And there are limits so that trees get old enough before they are harvested.

Using your analogy, the problem here is that someone from the foreign country did not cut down our trees. People in "your" own country cut down the trees, and sold them to the foreign country company as legally harvested trees with documentation. Who should be punished? You really need to read the law to see how convoluted the actual law is. It literally makes it impossible to know for sure if you are actually breaking a law somewhere in the world. IMHO it IS the other country's responsibility to enforce their own laws. No where can you find documentation the would show that Gibson sent harvesters to another country to steal trees. These laws actually have the possibility if enforced in total, of having NO trees utilized for you fav. instrument, and the trees dieing of old age and rotting in the forest. Typical of government over reach.

If this is true? ..... ARRRRRGH!

http://www.ijreview.com/2012/05/5881-out-of-control-feds-ready-to-seize-more-guitars-at-concerts/?utm_source=EmailElect&utm_medium=Email&utm_content=Subscriber#30089&utm_campaign=05-21-2012+IJ+Review

Bob