Who will take on Obama in 2012?

Before posting something from Fox News in a report that makes no attempt to be objective and doesn't even get the story straight, why didn't you try to look up the actual facts which are far different than what was presented in that clip?

Last week federal marshals raided the Gibson Guitar Corporation in Tennessee. It wasn't the first time. The government appears to be preparing to charge the famous builder of instruments with trafficking in illegally obtained wood. It's a rare collision of music and environmental regulation.
In the hottest part of an August Tennessee day last Thursday, Gibson Guitar CEO Henry Juszkiewicz stood out in the full sun for 30 minutes and vented to the press about the events of the day before.
"We had a raid," he said, "with federal marshals that were armed, that came in, evacuated our factory, shut down production, sent our employees home and confiscated wood."
The raids at two Nashville facilities and one in Memphis recalled a similar raid in Nashville in November 2009, when agents seized a shipment of ebony from Madagascar. They were enforcing the Lacey Act, a century-old endangered species law that was amended in 2008 to include plants as well as animals. But Juszkiewicz says the government won't tell him exactly how — or if — his company has violated that law.
"We're in this really incredible situation. We have been implicated in wrongdoing and we haven't been charged with anything," he says. "Our business has been injured to millions of dollars. And we don't even have a court we can go to and say, 'Look, here's our position.'"
The U.S. Justice Department won't comment about the case it's preparing, but a court motion filed in June asserts Gibson's Madagascar ebony was contraband. It quotes emails that seem to show Gibson taking steps to maintain a supply chain that's been connected to illegal timber harvests.

Andrea Johnson, director of forest programs for the Environmental Investigation Agency in Washington, says the Lacey Act requires end users of endangered wood to certify the legality of their supply chain all the way to the trees. EIA's independent investigations have concluded that Gibson knowingly imported tainted wood.
"Gibson clearly understood the risks involved," says Johnson. "Was on the ground in Madagascar getting a tour to understand whether they could possibly source illegally from that country. And made a decision in the end that they were going to source despite knowing that there was a ban on exports of ebony and rosewood."
Gibson vigorously denies these allegations, maintaining that all of its purchases from Madagascar have complied with U.S. and Malagasy law. A company attorney says Gibson has presented documents to support that claim and that the recent raid seized legally obtained wood from India. He adds that the company stopped importing wood from Madagascar in 2009.
Chris Martin, Chairman and CEO of the C.F. Martin Guitar Co. in Nazareth, Pa., says that when he first heard guitars built from Madagascar rosewood, he dreamed it might be the long-sought substitute for Brazilian rosewood, whose trade was banned in the 1990s due to over-harvest. Then the situation in Madagascar changed.
"There was a coup," Martin says. "What we heard was the international community has come to the conclusion that the coup created an illegitimate government. That's when we said, 'Okay, we can not buy any more of this wood.'"
And while some say the Lacey Act is burdensome, Martin supports it: "I think it's a wonderful thing. I think illegal logging is appalling. It should stop. And if this is what it takes unfortunately to stop unscrupulous operators, I'm all for it. It's tedious, but we're getting through it."
Others in the guitar world aren't so upbeat. Attorney Ronald Bienstock says the Gibson raids have aroused the guitar builders he represents because the Lacey Act is retroactive. He says they're worried they might be forced to prove the provenance of wood they acquired decades ago.

"There hasn't been that moment where people have quote tested the case. 'What is compliance? What is actual compliance? How have I complied?' We're lacking that."
He's even warned clients to be wary of traveling abroad with old guitars, because the law says owners can be asked to account for every wooden part of their guitars when re-entering the U.S. The law also covers the trade in vintage instruments.
Nashville's George Gruhn is one of the world's top dealers of old guitars, banjos and other rare stringed instruments. "It's a nightmare," he says. "I can't help it if they used Brazilian rosewood on almost every guitar made prior to 1970. I'm not contributing to cutting down Brazilian rosewood today."
Gruhn acknowledges that the government has tried to create exemptions to cover vintage instruments. But he says they are rife with delays and to play it safe he's nearly eliminated the 40% of his business that used to deal with overseas buyers. "This is a new normal," says the EIA's Andrea Johnson. "And it takes getting used to."


Johnson defends the Lacey Act and the government's efforts to enforce it. "Nobody here wants this law to founder on unintended consequences," she says. "Because ultimately everybody understands that the intent here is to reduce illegal logging and send a signal to the markets that you've got to be asking questions and sourcing wood in a responsible way."
What constitutes that responsible way may only become clear when the government finally charges Gibson and the company gets the day in court it says it wants so badly.





EDIT
The reporting of this on the web is apparently red meat biased tea party mantra with all the same biased information. Doing a little independent reading, I see the comparison to Martin leaves out something. There are three major guitar makers in the United States, not two, and the third, Taylor, is also a Republican Party contributor and has Rosewood Indian guitars in their catalog as all three companies do. Gibson is specifically being targeted because of email information and other facts that makes the Justice Department believe they were deliberately trying to illegally smuggle the wood into the country. If you dislike or like the law, at least don't lie about the facts. There is no evidence the Justice Department is selectively enforcing the law for partisan reasons and the CO in that clip is arguing interpetation of the law that differs from the Justice Department. Despite what he says, the Justice Department is claiming Gibson is violating the law of the United States, not a foreign country's law. That is Gibson lawyers' interpetation of the law, not that of the Justice Department.

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It reminds me of a toilet paper on the trees
- Paula

Okay, you're argument doesn't make any sense, first Perry's criticism is ideologically based, he considers Social Security, Medicare, and Civil Rights laws to be outside the constitutional bounds of government. You keep portraying it as a means of conservation, but Perry's not suggesting "reform," he wants to defund it entirely, you're the one missing this rather large point. Maybe, you see it as this, but that's not Perry's position. It's a strawman argument that we need to sacrifice now to save people later, which according to you is insolveant anyway, so really it's just splitting hairs, isn't it? The only way he sees to "fix" it is to just not fund it.

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...uh the post is up there...

And Rick Perry slashes the firefighting budget in Texas during record draught.

Could have been worse. Could have raised water rates.

(We have a STATE firefighting budget??? Wouldn't that imply a STATE fire department instead of the municipal and county fire departments I've always encountered at major fires I've covered over umpteen years of reporting such things? I can just picture big STATE firetrucks being dispersed from the STATE FIREHOUSE in Austin to a major conflagration in Houston. Don't think they would get here in time to even save the lot, much less the building that occupied it!)

Sorry, Will--I just find it funny that you worry more about what Perry is or isn't doing in Texas than I do having spent 65+ years here. Yeah, we're having a drought. But it's not the worse I've seen in Texas in my lifetime, and other states are having droughts as bad or worse than the one we have. Yeah, Perry's governor, but believe it or not, not the worse, dumbest, or even most dishonest govenor we've ever had--he'd have to compete with lots of our past Democrat govenors for that title. Not because Democrats are worse or dumber than Republicans but simply because we've had a hell of a lot more Democrats in the state house than we have Republicans, via the "Solid South" after the Democrats again seized political control of Texas at the end of Reconstruction.

"We have a STATE firefighting budget???"


You do have a state firefighting budget, rufnek, and Perry slashed it:




Of course Rick Perry doesn't want to see Texas burn, so it is rational of him to ignore his rhetorical distaste for the federal government and demand that they help. And Texas could use the help, because Perry and the Republicans who control all three branches of Texas government have severely slashed the budget of the Texas Forest Service.
Perry's fanatical opposition to raising revenue to close Texas' budget gap meant that his allies in the legislature had to find creative ways to cut costs, like cutting $34 million over the next two years from the agency that fights wildfires. The Forest Service is largely volunteer-based, and the cuts will largely affect the state's assistance grants to buy volunteer departments the tools they need to fight fires.
The Forest Service was appropriated $117.7 million for the 2010-2011 fiscal year. That is not enough to cover the expense of fighting the fires currently burning across the state. For the 2012-2013 fiscal year, which began this month, the agency was appropriated $83 million

No, he says it's outside of the Constitution's mandate, not outside of the "constitutional bounds of government." That's completely different, because the former means the government doesn't have to do it, and the latter implies it isn't even allowed to. And, technically speaking, he doesn't even think that, because he thinks this about the federal government, not the totality of government.

And far from me "missing" this point, I've already explicitly responded to it: you said the idea that the states should handle it is absurd, and I asked why in this post, and then I asked several follow-up questions. Both the response and the questions were ignored.

When the discussion has shifted away from Perry's position, it's been because your accusations have shifted from Perry, to conservatives, and then to me personally. If you want to stick to just one, that's fine, but I'm not the one who's been modifying the scope here. You've made a number of claims about the entitlements in general, myself, and the conservative ideology that have literally nothing to do with Perry.

Nope, the only way he sees to fix it is not to fund it federally. I'm not sure if I agree with that or not, but it's a lot closer to the truth (and reality) than the people who want to stick their heads in the ground and pretend we don't have to make major alterations one way or another.

And rufnek, as for all those Democratic Governors of Texas that were dumber and more crooked than Rick Perry, I don't remember which of them ran for president. Could the answer be... none of them?

Let me say up front that I like you and practically everyone in this and other email discussions has at some point misspelled or misused a word, but that doesn't necessarily negate the basic argument that person is expounding. Picking on spelling and word useage mistakes just to be picking also is rather rude. Now I don't mean to be rude or to appear to pick on or otherwise flame you over your favorite punching bag, Rick Perry.

But the irony of your statement above (emphasis added by me only to indicate more clearly to what I'm referring) is that Perry--and every other Republican candidate really are "making succession threats" in that "succession" in the political sense refers to a different candidate elected or otherwise authorized to succeed the person presently holding an contested political office. The term also would apply to any Democrat who might decide to challenge Obama for his party's presidential nomination in 2012. That's not the same as "threatening" secession, which means one political unit breaking off from another political unit. Don't mean doodly damn in the wrong one--I just thought it was funny (in the friendliest sense, of course) that you meant to blast Perry for one thing and correctly categorized him for something completely different. Don't think Jeff Davis himself got slammed as much for his position on secession as you have dumped on Perry for his one stupid statement.

Besides no one person can threaten secession--the only time it was attempted in this country was through elected assemblies and even then in several states--including Texas in 1861--it was submitted in a referendum for approval by qualified voters.

Anyway, I guess Perry and Peroit don't seem to be particularly odd political ducks to us Texans who can look next door to Louisiana for really strange politics. You oughta read up on Huey Long and his little brother Earl. The biggest difference between Perry and Huey is that Huey was actually a potential presidential candidate who could have been a winner.

All of us Texans who grew up in small towns are familar with municipal and county volunteer fire departments. But those are NOT part of the Texas Forest Service nor are they financed primarily through such a state agency; they are locally supported.

So too are state legislators, whether Democrat or the Republicans "who control all three branches of Texas government." It's not like the Republicans took over the state government by force--Texas voters elected them, and if they don't like what they do, Texas voters will vote them out. But so far I haven't heard a single Texas voter expressing concern over whether the state is spending enough to fight grass fires. I don't think $35 million more or less for the Texas Forest Service budget is gonna make that big a difference anyhow.

I suspect you really dislike Perry much, much more than you worry about
Texas wildfires. It's OK by me--I'm not a fan of his or any other living politician. But the things you drag up to beat him over the head with do strike me as funny, especially when I think he's the least likely president candidate in years.

The Texas governorship has NEVER been the political "launching pad," much less stepping stone, to the presidential nomination of either the Democrat or Republican party (as has the State House in Albany, NY). The only two Texas governors to become creditable contenders for president are George W. Bush and Perry. LBJ was never governor of Texas, but he was tarred his whole political career as allegedly having--with the aid of the local political boss--stolen his first major statewide election through the illegal manipulation of votes in Duval County. There were US residents who claimed LBJ was an international war criminal for pursuing the Vietnam War, and I recall reading somewhere that Bobby Kennedy suspected Johnson was somehow involved in the plot to murder Jack.

Sam Houston at one time was a leading potential contender for the Democratic presidential nominaton in the 1860 election, but that was when he was the Senator from Texas and before he suffered his first political defeat for siding with the Unionists against advocates for secession and before he was elected governor of this state.

But my point was that there have been dumber (Preston Smith) and truly dishonest ("Pa" Ferguson who was impeached and jailed) Texas governors than Perry (whether or not they sought the presidential nomination of any party) who just happened to be Democrats because there once was a long, long time that only Democrats were elected to office in Texas. But that tide truly turned when Gov. John Connally officially abandoned the Democrat party to become Republican (Connaly no doubt would have liked to be president; hence his change of party. But he was never nominated).

Another stellar Texas governor.

Ron Paul guys. Ron Paul.

Too bad he looks completely terrible at these debit things.

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"Loves them? They need them, like they need the air."

Yeah, I was disappointed with Ron's debate. The whole structure was garbage and no one watches them anyway. The networks put them on for the networks. Paul got in a really good last word, so...that's good...

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If I had a dollar for every existential crisis I've ever had, does money really even matter?

Aye, his last answer was killer. The idea that conservatism lacks compassion is a bizarre myth that lives on only because people so often value intentions over results. His answer on the fence was pretty good, too. The streak continues: three or four "yeah!" answers and a few others that just make me scratch my head (he's against air conditioning for the troops. ). Though fewer of the latter, since they didn't talk about foreign policy much.

Meanwhile, I thought it was pretty hilarious that Brian Williams had to keep asking questions about limited government, like he'd never heard of it before. "So, wait, like...the government wouldn't do that for us at all? Seriously?" Yes, Brian. It's not a new idea.

By the way, I've more or less come to the conclusion that, if Rick Perry gets the nomination and loses, but in the process forces Democrats to have an actual debate about the viability of entitlements and the benefits of states' rights as a mechanism for "laboratories of democracy," I think I might be okay with that. Or at least not terribly disappointed.

It's entirely possible that people still aren't ready to hear some of these things, but they definitely need to hear them, and that might mean someone like Perry takes one for the team and goes down spitting truth. It might not be much worse than electing a placating Republican who will muddy the ideological waters, because whether they fail or succeed casual voters often can't be bothered to determine which actual ideology failed or succeeded, and they tend to blame or praise whichever ideology the candidate typically identifies themselves with.

Hard to put a price on a) priming the electorate for some hard truths, and b) ideological clarity going forward.

Michelle Bachmann is done. Two man, er, candidate, race and Perry is in trouble because of his position on Social Security. Maybe VP for Bachmann if Romney is the nominee, but it would be a mistake for him. He doesn't need another Sarah Palin. And Sarah Palin herself is completely irrelevant now if she runs and that is highly doubtful. She is like those candidates who said they might run then you never heard from again becuse nobody cared if they ran or not.

No matter who the nominee is, smart money is on Rubio being the VP pick.

And I think it's equal parts hilarious and sad that pointing out that Social Security is in huge trouble is a disqualifying position for President now. Third rail, indeed.

Loser talk.

Maybe I felt that way back when George McGovern ran, but it sucks really because Perry might just not go down in defeat (and let's face, it it is now a Republican year for President unless Republicans are suicidal), but take down Republicans in Congress with him. And it won't be just for four years because the ecconomy will definitely improve four years from now and whoever is in the White House will get the credit for it. Your reminding the electorate of hard idelogicsl truth is meaningless because entitlemnts like Medicare and SS are not going anywhere even if there are entitlement cuts to reform it. Pollitics is a war of the middle and the party that abandons it loses.

Perry's problem isn't saying SS is in trouble. Romney concedes that. It is questioning its existence.

Except that what "the middle" is changes based on these things. It's called the Overton Window, guy.