Archive for June, 2014

Behind the Gibson Guitar raid, cont’d

They wouldn’t show him the warrant because it was sealed [Bill Frezza, Forbes]:

While 30 men in SWAT attire dispatched from Homeland Security and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service cart away about half a million dollars of wood and guitars, seven armed agents interrogate an employee without benefit of a lawyer. The next day [Gibson Guitar CEO Henry] Juszkiewicz receives a letter warning that he cannot touch any guitar left in the plant, under threat of being charged with a separate federal offense for each “violation,” punishable by a jail term.

Up until that point Gibson had not received so much as a postcard telling the company it might be doing something wrong….

Juszkiewicz alleges [federal prosecutors] were operating at the behest of lumber unions and environmental pressure groups seeking to kill the market for lumber imports. “This case was not about conservation,” he says. “It was basically protectionism.”

Earlier on the extraordinary Gibson case here.

Public employment roundup

  • What is pay? What is wealth? And who (if anyone) should be envying whom? [David Henderson]
  • LIRR disability scammer gets probation, will repay lost $294K at rate of $25/month [Lane Filler, Newsday]
  • Costly license plate frame can help buy your way into California speeders’ nomenklatura [Priceonomics]
  • Ohio school superintendent who illegally used public moneys to promote school tax hike won’t face discipline [Ohio Watchdog]
  • Last-in, first-out teacher dismissal sacrosanct in California [Larry Sand]
  • “Los Angeles Inspector Convicted of Bribery Keeps $72,000 Pension” [Scott Shackford]
  • Heart and lung presumption is an artificial construct that drives municipal budgets for uniformed services [Tampa Bay Times]