Good Grief: Feds Raid Gibson Guitars looking for Illegal Wood

That soft tyranny we live in via over-regulation? It's coalescing under Obama into a hard one.Via Red State: DOJ Raids Gibson Guitars looking for Illegal Wood. They refuse to enforce our immigration laws, and sue states to do the opposite, but somehow have time for this:

Via press release from Gibson:

The Federal Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. has suggested that the use of wood from India that is not finished by Indian workers is illegal, not because of U.S. law, but because it is the Justice Department’s interpretation of a law in India. (If the same wood from the same tree was finished by Indian workers, the material would be legal.) This action was taken without the support and consent of the government in India.

Unbelievably enough, this was not the first time that the Gibson factories have been raided for this same reason.

In 2009, more than a dozen agents with automatic weapons invaded the Gibson factory in Nashville. The Government seized guitars and a substantial amount of ebony fingerboard blanks from Madagascar. To date, 1 year and 9 months later, criminal charges have NOT been filed, yet the Government still holds Gibson’s property. Gibson has obtained sworn statements and documents from the Madagascar government and these materials, which have been filed in federal court, show that the wood seized in 2009 was legally exported under Madagascar law and that no law has been violated. Gibson is attempting to have its property returned in a civil proceeding that is pending in federal court.

Again, Holder refuses to enforce our laws but has time to enforce laws from other countries? Good grief. Related: Gibson Guitar Corp. Responds to Federal Raid

Henry Juszkiewicz, Chairman and CEO of Gibson Guitar Corp., has responded to the August 24 raid of Gibson facilities in Nashville and Memphis by the Federal Government. In a press release, Juszkiewicz said: "Gibson is innocent and will fight to protect its rights. Gibson has complied with foreign laws and believes it is innocent of ANY wrong doing. We will fight aggressively to prove our innocence."

UPDATE: Gibson Guitar CEO on Obama DOJ Raids: ‘We’re Being Persecuted’

UPDATE #2: More from the WSJ via memeorandum: Guitar Frets: Environmental Enforcement Leaves Musicians in Fear. More from Hot Air, Proof Positive, Right Wing News, Michelle Malkin and Don Surber. Plus, more regulatory overreach to kill businesses: Team Obama Regulates Goat Herders' Workplaces

The Obama administration is setting new workplace regulations to assist foreign workers who fill goat herding positions in the U.S. , including employee-paid cell phones and comfy beds.

These new special procedures issued by the Labor Department must be followed by employers who want to hire temporary agricultural foreign workers to perform sheep herding or goat herding activities. It describes strict rules for sleeping quarters, lighting, food storage, bathing, laundry, cooking and new rules for the counters where food is prepared.

“A separate sleeping unit shall be provided for each person, except in a family arrangement,” says the rules signed by Jane Oates, assistant secretary for employment and training administration at the Labor Department.

“Such a unit shall include a comfortable bed, cot or bunk, with a clean mattress,” the rules state.

Diane Katz, a research fellow in regulatory policy at The Heritage Foundation, unearthed the policy in the "Federal Register​," the massive daily journal of proposed regulations that Washington bureaucrats publish every day.

Under the Obama Administration, the nanny state has imposed 75 new major regulations with annual costs of $38 billion.

“This captures what is wrong with government,” Katz said. “I could not have made this up.”

Good grief...

UPDATE #3: Even more on Obama's War on Business: Regulators Gone Wild: Two lessons in how to kill an economy and ruin enterprise

Reason TV looks at the regulatory war being fought against residents of Antelope Valley, where the county of Los Angeles appears to be making a concerted effort to push residents out of their homes through harrassment — and armed raids:

The Antelope Valley is a vast patch of desert on the outskirts of Los Angeles County, and a segment of the few rugged individualists who live out there increasingly are finding themselves the targets of armed raids from local code enforcement agents, who’ve assembled into task forces called Nuisance Abatement Teams (NATs).

The plight of the Valley’s desert dwellers made regional headlines when county officials ordered the destruction of Phonehenge: a towering, colorful castle constructed out of telephone poles by retired phone technician Kim Fahey. Fahey was imprisoned and charged with several misdemeanors.

But Fahey is just one of many who’ve been targeted by the NATs, which were assembled at the request of County Supervisor Mike Antonovich in 2006. LA Weekly reporter Mars Melnicoff wrote an in-depth article in which she exposed the county’s tactic of badgering residents with minor, but costly, code violations until they face little choice but to vacate the land altogether.

“They’re picking on the the people who are the most defenseless and have the least resources,” says Melnicoff.

Reason.tv collaborated with Melnicoff to talk with some of the NAT’s targets, such as retired veteran Joey Gallo, who might face homelessness if he’s forced to leave his house, and local pastor Oscar Castaneda, who says he’s already given up the fight and is in the process of moving off the land he and his wife have lived on for 22 years. And, while Antonovich declined an interview, we did catch up with him at a public meeting in order to ask the big question at the center of all this: Why the sudden enforcement of these codes against people living in the middle of the desert, who seemingly are affecting no one?

If you had to destroy the US economy from the inside out, would you be doing anything different at this point than Obama?

UPDATE #4:Via Instapundit:

MORE ON THE GIBSON RAID: “Why would the government use armed agents to attack one of the few major manufacturers of anything remaining in the United States?” It’s like they don’t want to see the economy recover or something.

UPDATE: What a coincidence! CEO of Gibson Guitar a Republican Donor. And their Democratic-donating competitor, Martin, uses the same wood but wasn’t raided. Well, when you’ve got a President who jokes about tax audits as revenge for a personal slight, it’s hard not to be suspicious, isn’t it?

ANOTHER UPDATE: More here.