Overkill by the Feds!

  

I’ve been a Gibson guitar fan as far back as I can remember when I first picked up my first stringed instrument. I paid my way through law school strummin’ a Gibson banjo, and have had several fine Gibson guitars over the years. So you can imagine my surprise when I heard about the recent raid on the Gibson factory. Paul Craig Roberts a, former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has been reporting shocking cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. He outlines well the picayunish abuse by the feds in harassing the Gibson Company. Roberts asked what law did Gibson Guitar Corp break that caused federal agents to disrupt Gibson’s plants in Nashville and Memphis, seize guitars, cause layoffs, and cost the company $3 million from disrupted operations?
No US law was broken. The feds claim that Gibson broke a law that is on the books in India. India has not complained about Gibson or asked for the aid of the US government in enforcing its laws against Gibson. Instead, the feds have taken it upon themselves to both interpret and to enforce on US citizens the laws of India. The feds claim that Gibson’s use of wood from India in its guitars is illegal, because the wood was not finished by Indian workers.
This must not be India’s interpretation of the law as India allowed the unfinished wood to be exported. Perhaps the feds are trying to force more layoffs of US workers and their replacement by H-1B foreign workers. Gibson can solve its problem by firing its Tennessee work force and hiring Indian citizens on H-1B work visas. Typical overkill on the part of the justice department and the FBI.