What does one do when federal bureaucracies are out of control?
To address this issue is nothing new, particular with this most radical administration. It’s a sad commentary that the norm has become some ridiculous intrusion of private industry or obfuscation of the law by the many executive departments. We’re used to hearing the common occurrences of one EPA regulation after another chipping away at our country’s economic prosperity. In fact, the latest target of the EPA’s regulatory zeal is the U.S. coal industry (guess it's time to move past the air regulations and oil & gas moratoriums). However, I would like to address the latest among some of the other branches that are equally damaging towards both our economic viability and liberty itself.
Probably the newest story out there is the Gibson raids in Tennessee last week. This is a perfect example of out-of-control federal bureaucracies that raid and confiscate without the benefit of due process. As the Gateway Pundit reported:
It’s an Obama world…The Holder Justice Department raided Gibson Guitar facilities in Nashville and Memphis this week because the company is using unfinished wood from India and this violates Indian law… Not American law. Unreal.
Illegal aliens are pouring over our border, the Obama Administration circumvents existing law towards illegal entry, and our own government is even involved in a cover-up of illegal arms sales to the Mexican cartels, but who do our executive bureaucracies go after? That’s right…GIBSON GUITARS…wait, what?!
It should also be pointed out that these raids were executed as a coordinated effort between up to 3 different executive departments: the Dept. of the Interior (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) and the Dept. of Homeland Security (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) at the bequest of the DOJ. Seriously, who’s got hard wood now?!
Gibson’s CEO Henry Juszkiewicz made a statement on Thursday to set the record straight:
And here’s a clearer one-on-one interview with Mr. Juszkiewicz (IMHO, this one’s the more compelling):
As was reiterated in Gibson’s press release:
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.
Gibson went on to reveal the astonishing details of the first raid that took place two years prior:
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.
As RedState points out, apparently the DOJ believe they’re complying with the Lacey Act, specifically, this provision:
Anyone who imports into the United States, or exports out of the United States, illegally harvested plants or products made from illegally harvested plants, including timber, as well as anyone who exports, transports, sells, receives, acquires or purchases such products in the United States, may be prosecuted. In any prosecution under the Lacey Act, the burden of proof of a violation rests on the government.
The RedState piece concluded, it’s hard to believe the government would become so territorial with an American business that remains in compliance with a self-regulatory agency like the Forest Stewardship Council, which is an industry-recognized and independent, not-for-profit organization established to promote responsible management of the world’s forests. However, a Human Events article makes the case for the proverbial ‘why?’ (with a hint of sarcasm):
I can’t imagine why we have stagnant GDP growth and chronic high unemployment! The Obama Administration is actively at war with every business they don’t choose to subsidize.
And several of the commenters to the above videos (certainly, conservative Gibson fans) expressed this same sentiment. One commenter wrote, “Textbook example of the on-going destruction of U.S. manufacturing by the Federal government. Regulations like this have forced millions of our jobs overseas. Gibson USA is a national treasure and one of the last major USA guitar companies that does the majority of it's manufacturing in the USA.” Another wrote, “The Obama administration is suing Boeing to force them to move production from a new $750,000,000 plant in a non-union state back to a union factory in Seattle. Gibson is non-union. The Obama administration advocates policies that take from companies they don't like to give to the ones they do. The Obama administration adopted a policy of not conducting workplace raids related to immigration enforcement. Not a history that points to him being hands-off and laissez-faire.” Folks are definitely getting it out there!
So reflecting on the original question of what one does when federal bureaucracies are out of control, and looking in great detail at the above example of the heavy-handed bureaucratic action taken without the benefit of due process, why don’t we take a quick look at how these bureaucracies have scantily acted on a couple of more dire issues: Operation Fast & Furious and De Facto Amnesty.
In the case of Operation Fast & Furious, which perfectly illustrates the lack of bureaucratic accountability or the prosecution thereof, it’s been discovered that many more of these guns that were allowed to be illegally trafficked across the U.S. border into Mexico have been connected to at least 11 U.S. crime scenes, with other smaller cases possibly growing from the bigger ATF scandal. And while getting pertinent information out of Holder and top brass is like pulling teeth, the ATF recently decided to promote three of the supervisors who were intimately involved in devising the failed operation that’s resulted in many casualties on either side of the border, including one U.S. border patrol agent! And as if that weren’t enough, we’ve got sympathetic liberal media outlets, like the New York Slimes (hat-tip, Levin), practically libeling House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform chairman Darrell Issa for forging ahead in investigating this most serious matter, while reporting virtually nothing on the Fast & Furious scandal that should take center stage. A HotAir piece pegs the establishment media perfectly:
Given Big Media’s twin failures on the Great Recession and the debt bomb, perhaps it should be obvious that the NYT would be more interested in smearing Issa than covering Operation Fast & Furious. However, much of the history of the 21st Century is shaping up to be about the institutional failures of 20th Century progressivism — so-called Keynesian economics, the over-promising Ponzi schemes of the welfare state, and so on. In this sense, the decrepitude of establishment journalism is not simply another feature of the weather report, but part of a larger, more important story — a scandal establishment journalism inherently won’t cover.
It’s past time for answers on that scandal, but let’s quickly touch on another, one that exemplifies in its most simplest of terms of directly thwarting the Rule of Law.
Since last year we heard about the circulation of secret memos addressed to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, detailing strategies for the Obama Administration to simply avoid the deportation of illegal aliens, not through legislative means, but by executive fiat. And that de facto amnesty is just what the Dept. of Homeland Security served up with its recent announcement that many illegals who were facing deportation will be allowed to stay in the country and apply for work permits under DHS’s ‘new rules’. Repeating an American Thinker piece, “Ed Lasky puts it this way: "Obama decides what laws to enforce and what laws to ignore--and our jobless rate is sky-high."” And as Weasel Zippers make the case, “Could it be because he’s facing a brutal reelection effort and needs every vote he can muster?” Yes it could.
So, finally, I return to my original question, the same that Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz asks about his case, what does one do when federal bureaucracies are out of control?
Besides spreading the word, whether through the media we have or alternative outlets, and speaking out by continuing to expose these governmental power grabs through activism, our only finite course of action besides the ability to persuade Americans against statism, lies in exercising the privilege to vote; and in this case, that vote lies solely with the office that has the ability to install, rein in, or potentially dismantle, these regulators.
ADDENDUM: In the interim of replacing a statist Executive, the fall agenda released on Monday by the GOP leadership lends credence to ridding American business of over-burdensome regulations and much needed tax relief, which would absolutely benefit private sector job creation. This is a step in the right direction in stamping down the massive expansion of rule by executive fiat under the Obama Administration.
