SPEW
ALERT!
Posted on 08/26/2011 9:26:29 AM PDT by yoe
Federal agents swooped in on Gibson Guitar Wednesday, raiding factories and offices in Memphis and Nashville, seizing several pallets of wood, electronic files and guitars. The Feds are keeping mum, but in a statement yesterday Gibson's chairman and CEO, Henry Juszkiewicz, defended his company's manufacturing policies, accusing the Justice Department of bullying the company. "The wood the government seized Wednesday is from a Forest Stewardship Council certified supplier," he said, suggesting the Feds are using the aggressive enforcement of overly broad laws to make the company cry uncle.
It isn't the first time that agents of the Fish and Wildlife Service have come knocking at the storied maker of such iconic instruments as the Les Paul electric guitar, the J-160E acoustic-electric John Lennon played, and essential jazz-boxes such as Charlie Christian's ES-150. In 2009 the Feds seized several guitars and pallets of wood from a Gibson factory, and both sides have been wrangling over the goods in a case with the delightful name "United States of America v. Ebony Wood in Various Forms."
[snip] It isn't just Gibson that is sweating. Musicians who play vintage guitars and other instruments made of environmentally protected materials are worried the authorities may be coming for them next.
[snip] If you are the lucky owner of a 1920s Martin guitar, it may well be made, in part, of Brazilian rosewood.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Ebony... and Ivory...
Used to sit together on my piano keys
Till the EPA came and set them free!
The Feds are silent, but in a statement yesterday Gibson’s chairman and CEO, Henry Juszkiewicz, defended his company’s manufacturing policies, accusing the Justice Department of bullying the company. “The wood the government seized Wednesday is from a Forest Stewardship Council certified supplier,” he said, suggesting the Feds are using the aggressive enforcement of overly broad laws to make the company cry uncle. This time the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service assholes claim Gibson violated an India law covering wood exports. WTF??? We enforce other country’s laws??? This raid was pure U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service theft. Juszkiewicz claims the shut down of the factories cost Gibson $1 million in lost production on top of whatever was seized.
Juszkiewicz and Berryman bought the failing Michagan company in 1986 for $5 million. It had sales that year of $5 million. Over the years the company has expanded its product lines by purchasing other companies. For example: Gibson owns Baldwin. Current sales are near $500 million and half of those sales are exports. Obama and his Marxist buddies must be pissed over this Capitalist success.
There is something else that is very fishy too. Last year Gibson was rated by Glassdoor.com as the #1 worst employer in the nation. ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/21/worst-companies-to-work-f_n_397565.html?&slideshow#comments ) This is BS. No CEO in his right mind would want to piss off the experienced artisan instrument makers the company needs. Auto Zone was #4. I’m a Auto Zone customer and I’m certain the very helpful employees here are not unhappy. In addition, Juszkiewicz has raved about the help and cooperation he got from employees after the Nashville plant was flooded last year.
In 2009 the Feds seized several guitars and pallets of wood from a Gibson factory, and both sides have been wrangling over the goods in the case “United States of America v. Ebony Wood in Various Forms.” Juszkiewicz says the wood is worth a million dollars. There has been NO civil or criminal case filed by the Justice Dept.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service picked a fight with the wrong guy. He won’t roll over and play dead... He enrolled at the General Motors Institute in Flint, MI, a five year co-op engineering college. Sponsored by GM’s Delco division, he gained experience in a variety of different jobs at Delco’s 6,000-employee electronic components plant in Rochester. Putting his musical skills to work, he worked his way through school playing guitar - a Gibson, of course - in various rock bands playing for parties and weddings.
After graduating with honors, he worked at Delco Products for two years as product manager while studying for an MBA in night school at the University of Rochester. He completed his MBA at Harvard University on a General Motors Fellowship.
Juszkiewicz then joined the New York firm of Neiderhoffer, Cross and Zeckhauser, Inc., a pioneer in the area of middle-market deals, where he rose to the position of executive vice president of mergers and acquisitions. He left the firm in 1981 and, with two former Harvard classmates (David Berryman and Gary Zebrowski), acquired Phi Technologies of Oklahoma City. Within one month he turned the struggling technology firm into a highly profitable company.
You can sleep good tonight knowing the feds are on the J-O-B making sure America is protected from evil guitar manufacturers. I wouldn’t be surprised if Gibson just said screw this and moved their operation to China.
Obama, no job is safe.
I work in the environmental cleanup field and have seen how ridiculous the original laws were (and expensively wasteful of taxpayers money). They were finally revised to some degree of sanity.
However, the laws the USF&WL people are operating under are totally nuts and so are the people who enforce them to the 99th dot of the text of the law.
These people are on legal drugs and nothing except a new Republican-controlled Congress and president will change it.
The nuts are running the asylum (and the good people who work under them are afraid to speak up for fear of losing their jobs - the typical Obama regime response to whistle-blowers and honest investigators).
We need a complete overhaul of all our environmental laws, from NEPA/EPA to the Endangers Species List and importing of endangered woods. A grandfather clause with teeth must be included in any revision in order to protect innocent guitar/instruments owners.
I loved my old $15.00 Stella guitar. You could knock a house down with it (we tried too and nearly succeeded), but it still sounded good afterwards.
When is this environmental extremism going to end? How many Americans are going to be put out of work by the environmental fascists before this issue is fixed?
Nov. 2012 can’t come soon enough for me.
“It seems a disproportionate number of musicians are liberals, and it might be entertaining (pun intended) to see how they put themselves into a self-contradictory pickle, however a stalwart few use their axes for conservative purposes. “
Music is an abstract in many ways and that is how libs think. Most conservatives are “black and white” type of thinkers who take a “just the facts” approach to things. Great for politics and issues of right and wrong. Not so great for creativity.
That is NOT to say that Conservatives aren’t creative. Far from the case. Just that the lib mindset is geared more to thinking in a less structured ‘outside the box’ way. Then there’s the drugs and groupies...
And yes, I know some will misinterpret what I meant ;)
Normie
Conservative wannabee musician.
Job killing POS in the Oval Office and all of his administration. Here is your change America.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ind3MaJ7gw
Time to shed some weight.
Don’t worry: Musicians and Rock Stars will keep voting/supporting Obama. :)
Ebony keys? Report them to the Department of Racist Instruments
I just searched FR under guitar in titles and did a public placement of all six articles in order from latest article on first to earliest article on last. All the musical people need to know who isnt their friend.
What do you mean, "especially" if they're a liberal?? Who would knowingly unleash something like this on a normal person?
Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner!
Juszkiewicz is a Republican campaign contributor. Martin, an acoustic guitar maker who uses the same woods and contributes Democrat, was NOT raided, plus you'll note Gibson's troubles only started during the reign of The Won (2009).
Yeah, a lot of times those best places/worst places to live/work/raise children/retire, etc. are a bunch of BS. You read the criteria and it's all stuff only libs would value, while for conservatives they're somewhere between neutral and repugnant. That's fine, they're entitled to compile and publish whatever lists they want, but they should title them "10 Best (and Worst) Places for Liberals to Live" or whatever.
Libs do not think. They emote. Any actual thinking that may take place is limited to merely justifying the emoting.
Ted Nugent was indeed onto something.
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