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How do you turn guitar players into tea partiers?

Discussion in 'Tilted Philosophy, Politics, and Economics' started by samcol, Aug 30, 2011.

  1. samcol

    samcol Getting Tilted

    Location:
    indiana
    this seems to be the newest trend in government. everyday i see lemonade stands being shut down, organic farms and markets, raw milk sellers, gold and silver sellers, and now gibson guitars with no due process.

    this is very problematic as there are no warrants and no charges. they just run in with full swat gear and confiscate things. the ceo of gibson said they came in and confiscated a million dollars in rosewood and interrogated their 'floor workers' without lawyers.

    are they even allowed to know why they are being raided or what law they are breaking before they feds swarm in and take things?

     
  2. Zen

    Zen Very Tilted

    Location:
    London
    Well, I can't add anything to the points you've marked out, samcol. It's in-our-faces egregious, and I am shocked.
     
  3. Not defending the actions, samcol, but the article states there were four search warrants. That would indicate that some judge was convinced that there was some probable cause. Does not prove validation... political expediency can grease the skids. I'd prefer the government be more forthcoming.
     
  4. roachboy

    roachboy Very Tilted

    but it's possible that there was something illegal here. the fact that the people at gibson didn't know what the warrant was about--which seems a bit unlikely, but it's possible--and an impulse toward damage control could easily have converged in the press release that triggered this article. i can imagine irregularities in the paperwork on international shipments...i can imagine it pretty easily as systematic and a problem that could easily have involved negligene or ineptness on the part of a broker that the company hired to deal with it. or i can imagine a charge of importing illegal wood. there are a lot of types of wood that are great for instrument building that are endangered---for example, my step-family made recorders for about 50 years. when my step-father died, there was a barn with a large amount of cocobolo that had been curing there for about 30 years that my step-siblings---who arent real bright---sold for a LOT of money (despite themselves, really) because traffic in that wood has been illegal for around 30 years and it's a great wood for making wind instruments. but that's only relevant as a way to imagine that endangered woods that have the proper qualities can and are bought and sold illegally all the time (its nice to think my step-siblings committed a felony, but i dont think they did because of the age of the wood--it moved before the trade was outlawed). but i dont know if theres any need for such wood in making guitars. i think harder woods like cocobolo are prefered for wind instruments for resonance and because they dont respond much to humidity changes--and people blow into the instruments, so that's a good thing. the point is that it's not at all obvious that nothing is up here. and it seems surreal--or damage control for whatever reason---to assume its arbitrary simply because you, as someone at the factory--dont know what's going on. my suspicion is that there's a broker involved with this and that the broker got and ignored the paperwork or is simply a fuck up. and this without knowing any more about the situation than is in the article.

    you have to be pretty heavily predisposed to some rightwing mythology about the state to imagine that this was simply arbitrary, and then use that in a pubic statement as a jump-off point for whining about what a victim you are.

    there's something else going on here that is not in this article. i'll be interested to see how things play out.
     
  5. samcol

    samcol Getting Tilted

    Location:
    indiana
    yeah i see that now, i was listening to an interview with him that was apparently not recent and was scrambling to find a relevant article on it. at the time he said he had no idea why or what was going on and assumed it was the rosewood issue.

    he expressed deep concern in regards to how his shop employees were treated and talked about how the feds didn't address the people who would even be responsible. he also said the company is working on helping his employees with the legal fees.
     
  6. samcol

    samcol Getting Tilted

    Location:
    indiana
    they may very well be guilty of illegal importing of off limits woods. my problem is the attitude towards some of these issues. ya ok perhaps a lemonade stand doesn't have food permits, or pay taxes. i'm sure there's a dozen things you could shut down a lemonade stand for. farmer's markets and these type of things are in their essence american. for them to be handled they way i've been seeing is atrocious. these aren't hardcore murdering drug dealing criminals. these are 'paper's please' crimes and are selectively and/or overly enforced.

    threatening shop employees with imprisonment if they don't talk while being armed like storm troopers isn't how you handle issues like this. you do it in business suits and clearly present warrants. there's no need for this extreme intimidation and harassment of a guitar shop. no one is going to 'attack' the feds.



    they still haven't been charged from a raid 2 years ago, and still haven't received their stolen goods back. now a new raid steals another million in wood with no charges filed yet.
     
  7. Baraka_Guru

    Baraka_Guru Möderätor Staff Member

    Location:
    Toronto
    If Gibson was raided about illegal rosewood from Madagascar in the past, you'd think they'd take precautions about the rosewood they source in the future. I haven't read much about this recent raid. I suppose any investigation forthcoming might reveal more information if they have, in fact, sourced illegal wood. Though whether they're complicit is another story.

    Regardless, there is nothing wrong in the raid/warrants in themselves. If there is fault in the process or conduct, then that's an issue. Hopefully time will tell whether Gibson is guilty of any wrongdoing.
     
  8. samcol

    samcol Getting Tilted

    Location:
    indiana
    i would understand what you're saying if they had even been charged with anything from the past raid, which they haven't. it has been 2 years.

    frankly i've never seen a ceo talk so openly and candidly in one of these types of interviews. he's just going off the cuff instead of reading an internal statement written by dozens of lawyers. i really believe they have no idea what's going on here and why they are being singled out, and the evidence so far supports that.

    you find nothing wrong with swat teaming places like this? it's disgusting doing this with guns and battle gear instead of suits.
     
  9. Baraka_Guru

    Baraka_Guru Möderätor Staff Member

    Location:
    Toronto
    That would be why I suggested they might not be complicit. Let's say the wood is illegal. The feds need to confirm how it was sourced and the nature of the distribution channels through which it was obtained to determine whether Gibson was complicit or not.

    I'm not sure about the raid from two years ago, but the same applies. It's one thing to know the wood is illegal; it's another to know who broke the law and who didn't.
     
  10. roachboy

    roachboy Very Tilted

    i am not about to defend the way in which, say, customs people or doj people conduct the raids that they make. but there's a difference between that and the assumption that the raid was arbitrary. in my past, i worked for a customs broker. i know how things go in that world. there is an assumption of intent that animates the actions. that may not always be warranted. at the same time, think about it...customs is charged with a lot of tasks. the most surreal and important of them, really, is trying to prevent insects that have no natural preditors in the u.s. from entering. there's something fucked up about blasting a container of freight with methyl bromide because of its country of origin..but at the same time, the consequences of not doing something to prevent the migration of these bugs from other ecosystems can be quite dire. so it's a balance. insofar as the possibilities of importing wood that's been banned from international traffic goes, a parallel logic is in place. because this is an interconnected world, and because there are norms concerning biodiversity that are in place, and because they are generally agreed upon, its difficult to object to the fact of enforcement. but it's still possible to object about the way in which it is carried out. but that is a different matter. and that matter has no contact with the one-dimensional right-wing anarchism that's characteristic of the tea party

    btw under conservative administrations since the reagan period, customs has routinely been subjected to cuts. at this point, inspection of containers is a minimal risk. the number of containers inspected is determined at random. if part of the idea behind what customs does is to prevent to the greatest possible extent the crossing of biota from one space to another, then this is a Problem. and i doubt seriously any tea party person would want to have the united states plagued with insects of considerable destructive capabilities here because they have no balances, no predators. but maybe they dont think that much about what these aspect of the evil states actually do. more's the pity, really. for all of us.
     
  11. ASU2003

    ASU2003 Very Tilted

    Location:
    Where ever I roam
    I wouldn't be so sure. If you said, you could pay $20 in taxes and inspect and stop the containers with bugs, or get the $20 in untaxed cash. Those Tea people would take the cash. It would be very interesting if a group of them were sat down and went through line by line what they would pay for and want the consequences of cutting funding would be. That would be a big mess and the country wouldn't survive it.

    As for the rare wood, they need to make sure they check off every box in the process and use legitimate wood. But it is kind of crazy that they would get raided like this, unless the government thought that they were importing wood that isn't what they claimed it was.
     
  12. roachboy

    roachboy Very Tilted

    i keep thinking they must have subcontracted out the paper-work to a broker somewhere. it's really dull work, and a lot of surreal errors happen because of that. once i lost a 150,000 lb red rubber ball on a flatbed rail car. the file went somewhere else in the food chain and disappeared there, so some paperwork to do with the contract didn't get filed correctly. the company got an enormous fine---they violated a federal contract for a dock fender (for an unimaginably large ship). and the company had no idea about any of it. they hadn't done anything, really. the file just wandered away into a bureaucratic maze (a private one---anyone who really believes private bureaucracies are more efficient than public doesnt know what they're talking about) it was kind of a fiasco as i remember.
     
  13. ASU2003

    ASU2003 Very Tilted

    Location:
    Where ever I roam
    I know about that kind of paperwork...foreign customs forms and fees are a reoccuring nightmare I have.

    The big problem with regulations aren't the ideals behind the regulation, it is the lack of assistance in meeting the regulation. I have often said that it would take less time for me to drive into Canada and ship a package from there than to deal with all of the customs forms, brokers, harmonized tariff numbers (that aren't), tax id numbers, and fees that need to get taken care of before you can ship something. The system is setup for people shipping a whole container of one single item, not thousands of different parts made in lots of different countries, and with no record of how much we paid for them. Lots of good that NAFTA agreement did...
     
  14. samcol

    samcol Getting Tilted

    Location:
    indiana
    the ceo is claiming the government is enforcing its interpretation of the lacey act. the governments of madagascar and india have found no fault in their importation of the woods and gibson STILL has yet to be charged with anything. this is insane. furthermore the governments stance is this would all just go away if they produced guitars in madagascar.

    i don't think there's much question that the us governments policy over the last few decades has been to ship as many jobs overseas as possible.

     
  15. roachboy

    roachboy Very Tilted

    apparently...not.

    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903895904576542942027859286.html
     
  16. samcol

    samcol Getting Tilted

    Location:
    indiana
    they are forcing jobs overseas by hook or crook. if you were gibson why not just move overseas and use slave labor than put up with this bullshit. then you can complain about the evil ceos and board members acting selfishly and only for themselves. this is what happens with a lot businesses in the united states. they get pushed around and around until they just up and leave. not to mention the government basically gives them financial incentives through trade agreements to do so.

    it has nothing to do with 'environmentalism' or saving some trees. it's about oppressing and making it impossible to do business here. they could be in madagascar and produce these fingerboards with no problems and it would likely be much cheaper.

    you don't have a problem with our federal government enforcing the laws of a FOREIGN country? they haven't been charged with anything. is the government trying to set a precedent and build a case to charge a us company with a foreign countries law?

    hey the law is the law and government is just doing its job, might as well ship their 1200 jobs overseas and be done with it.
     
  17. roachboy

    roachboy Very Tilted

    i'm not sure how you're managing to keep going with the same arguments that the you put into motion in the op given the article from the wsj that outlines (a) what the charges are (b) that gibson has a history of flirting with the edges of them and (c) that there are labeling requirements that gibson is accused to messing about with in order to acquire wood in conditions that are banned legally.

    that there are rules governing international commodity traffic at all seems a problem to you. if i understand the situation in the 2009 case involving madagascar, the problem was that traffic in unfinished timber is illegal. i don't know why that would be the case, as madagascar is far away, but i would expect it had to do with the broader efforts mentioned in the article to transfer the trade in ebony and other hard woods away from rain forests and into tree farms...i can imagine pretty easily that the idea was to include a further stage in processing associated with tree farming as a disincentive to people who imagined that they could just wander out into the forest, whack down an ebony tree and sell it. it also appears that gibson's requirements of ebony for fingerboards (seriously? why not another wood?) outstrip the supply capacities of these farms and so they've been known--apparently---to try to acquire wood from the "gray" areas that would traffic in wood that dude x with the correct equipment might chop down in a rainforest. i don't think this is hard to understand. it certainly has nothing to do with gibson's manufacturing processes or with any attempt to "force" anyone, as part of some bizarre-o conspiracy theory that substitutes the government as an explantion for outsourcing of jobs (something corporations that think only about profit margins have managed to do quite efficiently on their own) to ship jobs overseas.

    what is also happening is that gibson appears to be appealing to some rightwing political sentiment as a form of damage control for itself (as i suspected from jump)...but the article talks about how, previously, they were also aligning themselves with all kinds of rain forest preservation groups for the same purposes, even as they were sometimes buying---allegedly---illegally exported wood.

    so they got bagged. as i speculated above, the culprit in this is likely some broker.

    so none of this has anything to do with the tea party spin it was given from the start of the thread.

    btw: the Problem is not the "enforcement of foreign laws"---which i don't personally care about one way or another, as i am not interested in the collective mental disorder that is nationalism or the obsolete model of political organization called the nation-state particularly---the Problem is fraudulent labelling. **that's** what seems to lay at the center of this little tempest that gibson finds itself in.