Posted on 09/01/2011 10:10:47 AM PDT by Sarajevo
The Gibson Guitar saga has taken a sinister turn.
It seems that the Department of Justice wasn’t satisfied with merely raiding the law abiding factories of Gibson Guitar with armed agents, shutting down their operation costing them millions, and leaving the American company in the dark as to how to proceed without going out of business.
Now, according to CEO Henry Juszkiewicz, agents of the United States government are bluntly informing them that they’d be better off shipping their manufacturing labor overseas.
In an interview with KMJ AM’s “The Chris Daniel Show,” Juszkiewicz revealed some startling information.
CHRIS DANIEL: Mr. Juszkiewicz, did an agent of the US government suggest to you that your problems would go away if you used Madagascar labor instead of American labor?
HENRY JUSZKIEWICZ: They actually wrote that in a pleading.
CHRIS DANIEL: Excuse me?
HENRY JUSKIEWICZ: They actually wrote that it a pleading.
CHRIS DANIEL: That your problems would go away if you used Madagascar labor instead of our labor?
HENRY JUSKIEWICZ: Yes
So the government attacked them in the first place by citing obscure regulations that probably weren’t violated about importation of wood. Now they are suggesting that all these problems would go away if they simply exported their labor.
Had it simply been said in passing by an agent, one could write it off as a lone sarcastic agent, trying to push buttons. But the fact that they actually wrote it in the pleading is a level of hubris that goes well beyond over zealous law enforcement officials and passes straight into what can easily be translated as an out of control and corrupt targeting of an American corporation.
When President Obama gives his jobs speech next week, let’s hope he has an answer for why our government would want to force and coerce corporations to send jobs overseas.
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Note: Audio at the link- S
Nothing is at it appears.
They need to start selling “save the Les Pauls” t-shirts.
Too bad we don’t have laws that protect U.S. jobs from going overseas like India does, although I’m guessing that would go over like a fart in church here too.
Don’t worry, if President Obama is re-elected, when Gibson finally does move production overseas (better to survive somewhere then die everywhere), we’ll have a contingent on FR denouncing Gibson as terrorists and sellouts and their CEO as a traitor...
The US Government is the number 1 reason we lose jobs. It was always “soft” pressure in the way laws and regulations and taxes were written, putting strong pressure on companies to move manufacturing jobs overseas or eliminate them here with ever-increasing levels of automation (replace the worker with foreign workers or machines).
Now it’s just gotten to be hard, explicit pressure to move out. Gibson will hold on for the 2012 elections, but I guarantee if President Obama is re-elected, they’ll move manufacturing overseas before the 2014 mid-terms.
My point exactly. I love Memphis and that’s why I find it sad that many of these people will STILL support B O just because he’s black......never mind that he’s giving them a royal screwing and not only in Memphis. That’s what 40 some-odd years of liberal brainwashing will do.
Gibsons suck anyway. I just hope Fender isn’t in the same boat.
You can't export raw Madagascar rosewood or ebony out of Madagascar except with a specific exception for that one shipment from the Minister of Madagascar.
However, the Madagascar government allows certain Madagascar tradesmen to make products out of ebony and rosewood if the fallen logs are recorded in the government records, such as those knocked down in a storm, or felled before a certain date (I think it's 2004, but I'd have to check on it). With the right paperwork, those handicrafts and manufactured products can be exported. But not the raw wood.
Gibson imported the raw wood to make its own fingerboards. The government's position - in response to an argument made by Gibson - was that there was a potential legal source for Madagascar ebony fingerboards. Gibson could buy fingerboards made in Madagascar by Madagascar labor. Because Madagascar could issue a permit for those to be exported. Gibson didn't want to play by those rules.
The government didn't ask Gibson to send its manufacturing to Madagascar. The government told Gibson that its only potential source for legal Madagascar Ebony fingerboards was to buy ones made in Madagascar.
That may still sound unreasonable, but not as unreasonable as how Juszkiewicz tried to spin it.
You can download the documents from the litigation (U.S. v. Ebony Wood in Various Forms, Case No. 3:10 CV 00747 (Middle District Tennessee)) at www.pacer.gov by searching under the Case No. or name of the case.
For those who are interested, here's the underlying affidavit that led to the recent raids on the Nashville and Memphis Gibson plants, and the Red Arrow Delivery Service Warehouse.
These recent raids started with containers that entered the U.S. at the customs port of Dallas (by air).
Thanks for that context.
I think this is what happened with India more recently. They actually had parts finished in India to let them have the jobs and then, after getting the parts shipped here, stripped them down and redid them here in the U.S. so they would be up to specifications. Apparently the DOJ didn’t like this. I think it’s simply a shakedown.
Still to avoid Ricky and Racky's Emperial entanglements, Gibson would HAVE TO EXPORT JOBS TO MADAGASCAR.
It don't matter how many candy layers you put on a cat turd, it's never gonna be a tootsie roll!
I’ve been watching this for the last week.
I’m calling BS on this until they produce evidence (e.g. DOJ confirms, or Gibson releases the pleading). There has to be something more that is not being reported.
It’s not that I don’t believe BO’s DOJ is capable of this, it’s just hard to believe that the DOJ is so politically inept.
If this is found to be true, every GOP presidential candidate will use this to crucify Obama - and the WH must know this.
Has any candidate picked up this story?
Our country is mutating into an Anglicized copy of Nazi Germany. We have seen public outbursts of racism by members of the government, and overt acts of Fascism in the control and strangulation of private businesses. The media is all but directly State controlled. How much longer before people start “disappearing”?
I think the East Indian Rosewood raids by the government were silly but, respectfully, what you suggested is not what happened.
Gibson bought unfinished blanks of East Indian Rosewood. Some were 510-530 by 75-70 by 10mm and some were 510-530 by 72-62 by 10mm. They were unfinished.
The ones that triggered the raid were shipped to the U.S. into Dallas in two containers without a Lacey Act declaration. Some import papers showed the ultimate consignee as Luthier's Mercantile (a small company in Californina) but had instructions to ship them to a warehouse in Nashville; some import papers left the ultimate consignee blank. The description on one container said it held veneer; the description on the other container said it contained finished products.
When the representative from Luthier's Mercantile was contacted, she filled out Lacey Act form and missing customs papers and stated that the ultimate consignee was really Gibson.
The government went to the address of the warehouse in Nashville and found another shipment of unfinished East Indian Rosewood fingerboard blanks that had come into U.S. customs through Canada, showing Luthier Mercantile as the ultimate consignee. However, the warehouse showed the feds an email from Luthier Mercantile stating that for customs purposes, Gibson was actually the ultimate consignee.
At this point, I think the government thought Gibson was involved in some kind of 'hide-the-ball' conspiracy stuff in getting the wood into the country and to Nashville.
From this . . . there were raids on Gibson.
I think the government's position is bad because everybody (and I mean everybody) uses East Indian Rosewood along with NON-Madigascar ebony as fingerboard wood on guitars (even Fender, which also uses maple). India may have Harmonized Tariff Schedule rules that prohibit the export of split or cut wood over 6mm in thickness (it does; India's HTS is online), but I don't think India's ever enforced that for fingerboard blanks.
Gibson made itself suspicious by using this proxy company and cloak-and-dagger stuff to get these shipments from Dallas and Canada.
Jonno, Henry Juszkiewicz is playing the media (the conservative media especially) like a fiddle.
The truth is almost certainly between what the government alleges and what Gibson is saying. Gibson's press releases are very carefully worded and leave out some key details. You'll notice that Gibson's first press release states that no criminal charges have been brought against Gibson or its executives and that Gibson has recently brought a civil action to regain the Madagascar ebony seized in the first raid.
From that, you would have no idea that the government brought a civil action more than a year ago, and that the civil action was sealed recently in preparation of criminal charges, would you?
Don't believe what the government says. But don't believe what Gibson says, either.
I linked a number of sources here,
I think there’s three possibilities:
1. Gibson is non-union
2. Their competitors donate more to the DNC than they do
3. Plain ‘ol stupidity on the part of Holder & co.
Now, if Fender gets raided, then I’m REALLY gonna get ticked off.
Bite your tongue!!
The black community will eventually get it right. That will be in another 25 years when the president is named Gutierez or such.
Now that’s weird. I’ve been a guitar geek for most of my life, and I’ve never heard of guitar fingerboards actually being MADE in Madagascar (or India, etc), or any legal requirement that they be so. They’ve always been made in-house, just like the rest of the guitar. Slotting, radiusing, fretting, etc.
And don’t all the guitar companies use the same woods for their fingerboards? So why the jihad against Gibson?
blackdog I hope and pray that the black community as a whole will see this shameful sham that has been played upon them for so long. It’s Jim Crow in a different way. Uncle Sams Plantation is more like it...and I think more and more are seeing it for what it is. If they finally see that the Sharptons and Jacksons and their ilk are not FOR them but playing AGAINST them with the Demonrats they’ll come around.
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