And Now, A Rare mid-blog Update:
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Howdy Gang! A couple items of business here: First, concerning my last blog on "wood wars". I’m going to clarify something here. This topic is relevant and made it into my blog for two reasons: 1. it affects guitar players and, 2. it affects US manufacturing. It was not intended to be political; a few of you seem to have taken it that way. Please note that I did not mention that in 2008, when the Lacey Act was expanded to include plant species and Gibson was first raided, George Bush, a conservative Republican, was the president. I also did not mention that liberal democrat Barack Obama was in office at the time of the latest raid. These types of things, you see were not, and are not my focus.
Most folks, even if they had a political drum to beat on one side of the isle or the other, have been cordial; a few have not. I’m sad to report that a couple of comments were deleted because they contained vulgarity and/or curse words. As a diverse world-wide community united by our love of guitars, amps, and sweet tone, we are better than that.
Now, my second item of business: Last weeks T-shirt is still unclaimed! User "at9799" - you need to email me your address by the end of the day MONDAY, or I’ll need to pick another winner from last week. Tuesday I’ll be announcing this week’s winner ... or maybe TWO new winners. Oh, and remember that one of the three t-shirt winners will also win a new WGS speaker. For weekly winners, your odds of winning a speaker are one in three! How ya like them odds? :)
- VAUGHN SKOW's blog
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Politically, I'm like the guy who said "I'm so liberal I scare Liberals". I imagine it's my kind who have left the offensive comments. On behalf of all my fellow liberals, I apologize. I'm "old school" liberal, all for peace, love and tolerance. Some of these new kids who call themselves liberals are so mean-spirited they scare the heck out of us old hippies.
This issue has been used by the far right as a battle cry for more "conservative" politics. Thank you for keeping politics out of the debate and focusing on the impact to the guitar community. I don't care who enacted, enforces, or interprets this law; it's in bad need of repair. Oh, and please throw my name in the hat for a free t-shirt again. Thanks.
I buy American whenever I can. I buy American amps, American speakers (thanks WGS), American pickups and everything esle I can. However...we're seeing a whole lot of "poor Gibson is just trying to keep jobs in America" talk out there. Considering that millions of American jobs have been shipped out of the country for 30 years, I'm wondering where the outrage about jobs was prior to this incident with Gibson. This whole argument about Gibson wanting to "build American" just doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Ever hear of Epiphone? Gibson and its subsidiaries already build an enormous part of their product inventory in Asia--including parts on so-called American made products. So does Fender. So does PRS. So do the companies who build our cars, refrigerators and smart phones. So is all this talk about American jobs really part of a genuine concern for manufacturing loss...or is just fanning partisan political flames in an act of shameless opportunism?
If the Lacey Act and all the attendent legalities involved are bad laws then let's change them. But to do that, we first have to understand those laws and the cold hard facts concerning this particular situation with Gibson. Right now, there is a lot of misinformation out there, being wildly slung around by people who have political axes to grind. Everyone needs to take a deep breath and settle down and focus. Then we can proceed rationally toward the best course of action for all us, guitar manufacturers as well as guitar players.