The democrat supporting guitar makers are not being targeted and they have the same suppliers....
This article is seriously disingenuous. It reads as if your guitar is clear cutting rain forests because gibson got raided. It also reads as the Feds being the noble protectors of the environment.
Except the wood in question is more or less FARMED in India. You can argue the details of if it is done so sustainably or not, but in the end it is legal to cut the wood, and to sell wood for export. The only issue is that there are laws in India to protect Indian labor under the guise of protecting the forests. Namely that the wood is legal for export only as a finished product. Gibson has before, and is now, getting raided because someone is playing politics with the question of whether or not a fingerboard sold as a part to build into a finished guitar is a finished part or not.
Just because the Lacey act was well intentioned does not mean that it doesn't have unintended consequences. It was obviously intended to enforce compliance with laws regarding forest conservation. That's generally regarded as good. However, what it ACTUALLY requires is compliance with every clause of every law of the land about a product regardless of it having to do with the actual nature of the law.
As for the further idiocy revolving around the politicizing of this incident, it's crap form all sides. This isn't an environmental issue, at least not in these specific cases. That it is being investigated is not some secret socialist plot. Pretty much every guitar maker has been investigated. Investigations are part of enforcing regulatory compliance. The left would like to play down the fact that the two manufacturers chiming in on this are Gibson and Martin, gibson contributes to republican politicians more, martin to democrats. Both have been investigated, but gibson has been investigated much more since Obama came into office.
Now what is really of interest in this for people concerned about freedom is the fact that the lacey act does something that a constitutionally valid law is not supposed to do, namely invoke an ex post facto law (prohibited by clause 3 of Article I, section 9 of the constitution). Simply grandfathering inventory documented as acquired before 2009 would have made that not an issue, but it doesn't. Additionally, the enforcement of the law hasn't exactly been on the up and up with regards to due process. Gibson got raided previously in 2009. They had wood confiscated, and have not received charges, fines, or any further information about the criminality of their inventory or if it was indeed legal. That's not how the law is supposed to work. Enforcement has only been under Obama, so he gets to bear the laurels or darts for what is done under that law.
steamed
I sincerely hope that the feds did not use this raid as an opportunity to scoop up any of the undocumented workers there. I know that liberal musicians will boycott Gibson over this and choose to use lower quality instruments, in the same way that patriotic Americans will choose to wait longer for health care so that all will have equally poor access to care.