Is the Obama Regime politicizing the music business?
If you live in Nashville, AKA Music City, as I do, any thing that affects the music industry is big news. The Feds have made a big splash recently in the music business. But, is politics behind this?
On August 24th, Federal Agents raided the Gibson Guitar facilities in both Nashville and Memphis. Gibson makes guitars and I am told very good ones. Since my musical efforts generally violate someone’s Eighth Amendment rights against cruel and unusual punishments, I simply take the word of musician friends that Gibson is a very good guitar.
This was the second raid in two years on Gibson. The issue is a violation of an obscure law called the Lacey Act. The Lacey act which dates from the 1900’s requires a person to declare every flora or fauna being brought into the country and you must fill out the paperwork correctly. This is one of the few applications of law that has what is called “strict liability.” In most instances, if you are accused of violating the law, there is a “Mens Rea” element. In plain, non-lawyer, English, that means you had to have a mental intent. If you think of premeditation in murder you are in the ballpark. With crimes that require a “Mens Rea” element, there are all kinds of defenses. In a strict liability crime such as this one, either the paper work is right or not. If it is wrong, you are on the hook, even if it was an innocent mistake.
The most recent raid seems to have been triggered by an alleged violation of an obscure Indian law about the exporting of non-finished wood. Gibson imported some of its wood from India and uses American workers to finish the wood. Yet the Obama regime’s interpretation of the export of unfinished wood as a violation of the laws of India seems to be the basis for this raid.
Interestingly enough, Martin Guitars (C.F. Martin & Company) uses some of the same wood that Gibson uses. How many times has Martin been raided? Zero.
That may be interesting but there are other facts that build a more interesting and sinister circumstantial case for politics being involved.
The CEO of Gibson is Henry Jusziewicz. Among other things, he gave $2,000 to Congressman Marsha Blackburn, (R-TN) and Lamar Alexander (R-TN) He as also donated to a Consumer Electronics Pac that favors Republicans over Democrats.
Chris Martin, of Martin Guitars, on the other hand is a long time Democrat. Over the last four years, he has given over $35,000 to Democratic Candidates and the DNC.
Given the blatant politicization of everything by the Obama regime and their habit of using government to support their friends and harass their opponents, it is perfectly plausible that someone in DOJ is helping a friend of BO.
When conservatives take over in 2013, there need to be a lot of investigations of the Obama regime and the people in it. The GOP has a bad habit of just letting bygones be bygones.
Not this time.
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