Some of the comments at the link are pretty good!
Economic terrorism .
NOT an exaggerated term.
Why aren’t the other guitar companies that use the SAME wood getting the SAME treatment?
Does the Obama Admin know that the people of Madagascar are not actually African American?
Somebody should let them know.
looks like 0bama really is focusing on jobs!
shipping US jobs out of the USA
If the law was so bad, Bush should have vetoed it in 08.
The doj should move to Madagascar
This needs to get wide, wide play.
I heard Glenn interviewing the CEO this morning and this is scary stuff. Holder and his minions in the DOJ are just as dangerous as the B O in the White House. We’ve GOT to get these people out next year......our country and our lives depend on it. I’m contacting my Rep and Senators about this.
Wow, more Repub. campaign material. It was just yesterday that The DOJ blocked the ATT, T-Mobile merger...a little known part of that merger was the repatriation of 5,000 call center support positions back from overseas. I guess The WH is more interested about punishing big business and US manufacturers than it is about jobs and job creation.
Obama has infested our government with communist appointees. After we boot his rear end out of office in 2012 we clean house of these vermin and prosecute accordingly.
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.
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).
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.
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”?