Tag Archives: SWAT

The Obama Administration Gave Them Lemons, They Made Lemonade

Posted on by

The American Thinker posted a follow-up story today about the government’s 2011 raid on Gibson Guitar Company.

The article reminds us of the details of the raid:

In 2011, the Department of Justice conducted raids on the Tennessee facilities of the famed Gibson Guitar company and confiscated large quantities of tonewood that had been imported from India and Madagascar.  The action included armed SWAT teams, with automatic weapons, who apparently feared being garroted with a guitar string by an enraged Gibson employee.  These raids were conducted due to the Lacey Act, which bans the importing of certain woods.  The issue at hand was not that the wood was endangered or illegally harvested, but that it was not of the proper thickness that would have meant that some labor had been performed on it by workers in India and Madagascar.  This was the law in Madagascar and India as a nod to the unions in those countries.  Gibson, who hand-makes its guitars, cannot guarantee the craftsmanship of its products if a portion of the work is done outside their facilities.

There were a number of problems with the justification for this raid. India and Madagascar, the countries involved, were not interested in pursuing the matter. The guitar manufacturers CF Martin and Company and Fender.use the same kind of wood, and they were not raided.

The article reports:

The principle difference seems to be that those companies contributed to Democratic candidates, while Henry Juszkiewicz, the CEO of Gibson, gives openly to Republicans, and Gibson has plants in a right-to-work state.

This is pretty much old news, but there is a new twist to the story. Gibson had a special use for the wood the government returned to it.

The article concludes:

Gibson took that wood and made it into the Government Series II Les Paul.  These special edition guitars are hot stamped in gold with the Government Series graphic, which is an American bald eagle holding a Gibson guitar neck.  It is an admirable statement of defiance of an abusive government and a refusal of a historic American company to be intimidated.

Score one for the good guys!

Enhanced by Zemanta

Alarming Stories The Press Seems To Have Ignored

Posted on by

The Accuracy in Media website posted a very disturbing article yesterday. It’s a rather long article consisting of stories of small businesses and private citizens who have been harassed by the federal government in the past few years.

The article expresses concern for the militarization of police forces and the seeming lack of regard for Constitutional rights of American citizens. The stories show a pattern of excessive force and SWAT- style tactics when a simple visit from a local police officer would have resolved a problem.

The article concludes:

The increased militarization of police forces and the associated use of SWAT teams for routine law enforcement are a dangerous trend. Given Obama’s seeming willingness to abuse the power of his office on so many fronts, it is reasonable to expect more, not less, of the kind of abusive police overreach described in this report, while police forces and capabilities will continue to grow.

Obama’s obvious hostility to gun owners is fueling legitimate fears of gun confiscation, furthering an atmosphere of mutual distrust and paranoia between police and civilians. This raises the specter of armed confrontations should there be attempts to confiscate firearms. As one law enforcement official said at a recent gun hearing, “Good people are going to die trying to take these guns and good people are going to die trying to keep them.”

Ironically, despite its professed commitment to stopping “gun violence,” the Obama Administration authorized gun-running to Mexican drug cartels and Jihadists in Libya and elsewhere in the Middle East. Some hearings and investigations have been held into these schemes but there has been little accountability for this “gun violence.”

If the disregard for the rights of American citizens is a pattern, it needs to be stopped quickly. A free country cannot survive four more years of total disregard for the rights of its citizens. At the very least, the press needs to be reporting the stories in this article and holding the officials responsible for the abuses or power responsible.

Enhanced by Zemanta