Rosewood Bitters - Why We Have No Jobs

MICHAEL STANLEY BAND SINGS THE ROSEWOOD BITTERS

Here are more examples of regulations strangling American jobs. If these stories make you want to rant…they should. Welcome to :progressive" America.

1) The California Department of Fish and Game was on the losing end of a lawsuit filed by various environmental groups against it for failure to do environmental impact studies on fisheries, hatcheries and stocked ponds operated by the Department. While promulgating regulations for itself, the CDFG decided it would be a good idea if it would regulate private fisheries and ponds also. This was not required by the court order, and went way beyond the scope of the lawsuit. It is now proposing draconian restrictions on privately run hatcheries, private fishing lakes and ponds. The impact statements now foisted on private hatcheries and fisheries will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per company and require impact evaluations right down to the grass and weeds around the pond. Translate, there will be no trout stocking in California. If implemented, it will in effect end fishing in California, and cost thousands upon thousands of jobs. The private fisheries have banded together and have filed suit against another whack job agency with not enough to do in hopes of blocking these regulations. What a shame.

2) You have probably heard the story about Gibson Guitar Company, the largest guitar manufacturer in the United States. The Nashville based company uses rare woods in its products, specifically rosewood and ebony which it buys from India and Madagascar. Federal agents raided several of its facilities and seized millions of dollars of these imported woods. The Feds claim Gibson violated United States law claiming that Gibson cannot import wood from a foreign company that may have violated a foreign law. Huh?  Gibson, as well as just about every stringed instrument maker in the country, uses the same agents to purchase these woods as well as the same compliance agents. There is a debate as to weather a 2009 rosewood shipment was exported to the United States by an exporter that violated Madagascar law. The raw wood could not be exported legally, but Madagascar law states that a finished product can…and the wood was precut into specified lengths prior to shipment, and received the stamp of approval from the Madagascar government. But our crack Federal officers determined that it did violate Madagascar law notwithstanding what the Madagascar government said. Yes….you read that right. Funny thing, none of the other guitar companies were raided, all of whom did the same thing. Gibson, however, is a non-union shop, and its owners are Republicans who donate substantial sums of money to the Republican Party. What do you think? Mmmmmm?

Both of these stories would be funny if they weren’t so sad. This is how our country has degenerated…a bunch of bureaucratic thugs. In California, a pissed off agency who decides to take it out on private industry with NO authority. In Tennessee, the United States government has decided it can interpret Madagascar law better than Madagascar, and do a little political persecution at the same time.

And you wonder why we have no jobs.