We Should Have Listened to Jimmy Carter in 1977 on Illegal Aliens

Undocumented Aliens Message to the Congress. August 4, 1977

To the Congress of the United States:

I am proposing to Congress today a set of actions to help markedly reduce the increasing flow of undocumented aliens in this country and to regulate the presence of the millions of undocumented aliens already here.

These proposed actions are based on the results of a thorough Cabinet-level study and on the groundwork which has been laid, since the beginning of the decade, by Congressmen Rodino and Eilberg and Senators Eastland and Kennedy. These actions will:

• Make unlawful the hiring of undocumented aliens, with enforcement by the Justice Department against those employers who engage in a "pattern or practice" of such hiring. Penalties would be civil--injunctions and fines of $1000 per undocumented alien hired. Criminal penalties could be imposed by the courts against employers violating injunctions. Moreover, employers, and others, receiving compensation for knowingly assisting an undocumented alien obtain or retain a job would also be subject to criminal penalties.

• Increase significantly the enforcement of the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Federal Farm Labor Contractor Registration Act, targeted to areas where heavy undocumented alien hiring occur.

• Adjust the immigration status of undocumented aliens who have resided in the U.S. continuously from before January 1, 1970 to the present and who apply with the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) for permanent resident alien status; create a new immigration category of temporary resident alien for undocumented aliens who have resided in the U.S. continuously prior to January 1, 1977; make no status change and enforce the immigration law against those undocumented aliens entering the U.S. after January 1, 1977.

• Substantially increase resources available to control the Southern border, and other entry points, in order to prevent illegal immigration.

• Promote continued cooperation with the governments which are major sources of undocumented aliens, in an effort to improve their economies and their controls over alien smuggling rings.

Each of these actions will play a distinct, but closely related, role in helping to solve one of our most complex domestic problems: In the last several years, millions of undocumented aliens have illegally immigrated to the United States. They have breached our nation's immigration laws, displaced many American citizens from jobs, and placed an increased financial burden on many states and local governments.

The set of actions I am proposing cannot solve this enormous problem overnight, but they will signal the beginning of an effective Federal response. My Administration is strongly committed to aggressive and comprehensive steps toward resolving this problem, and I am therefore proposing the following actions:

EMPLOYER SANCTIONS

The principal attraction of the United States for undocumented aliens is economic--the opportunity to obtain a job paying considerably more than any available in their own countries. If that opportunity is severely restricted, I am convinced that far fewer aliens will attempt illegal entry.

I am therefore proposing that Congress make unlawful the hiring by any employer of any undocumented alien. This employment bar would be implemented in the following way:

• Enforcement would be sought against those employers who engage in a "pattern or practice" of hiring undocumented aliens, with the Justice Department setting priorities for enforcement.

• Penalties for violation of the employment bar would be both injunctive relief and stiff civil fines--a maximum of $1,000 for each undocumented alien hired by an employer. A violation of a court injunction would subject an employer to a potential criminal contempt citation and imprisonment.

• An employer would be entitled to defend any charge of hiring an undocumented alien by proving that a prospective employee's documentation of legal residence, as designated by the Attorney General in regulations, was seen prior to employment.

• The Social Security card would be designated as one of the authorized identification documents; and we will accelerate the steps already being taken to make certain that such cards are issued, as the law now mandates, only to legal residents. Those steps include requiring personal interviews of card applicants and making the cards more difficult to forge. But no steps would be taken to make the Social Security card, or any other card, a national identification document.

• To further restrict job opportunities, criminal sanctions would be imposed on those persons who receive compensation for knowingly assisting an undocumented alien obtain or retain employment, or who knowingly contract with such persons for the employment of undocumented aliens. These sanctions are directed at the substantial number of individuals who broker jobs for undocumented aliens or act as agents for alien smugglers. It is not directed at those who inadvertently refer an undocumented alien to a job, such as an employment agency or a union hiring hall.

To make certain that all of these new sanctions are uniformly applied, they would pre-empt any existing state sanctions.

In addition to the creation of these new sanctions, efforts to increase enforcement of existing sanctions will be significantly increased. The Fair Labor Standards Act, which mandates payment of the minimum wage and provides other employee protections, would not only be strictly enforced, but its existing civil and criminal penalties would be sought much more frequently by the government. To date, the inability of the government to enforce fully this Act, due in part to a lack of resources, has resulted in the hiring of undocumented aliens at sub-minimum wages, thereby often displacing American workers. Two hundred sixty new inspectors will be hired and targeted to areas of heavy undocumented alien employment. Similarly, the Federal Farm Labor Contractor Registration Act, which prohibits the recruiting and hiring of undocumented aliens for farm work, would be tightly enforced. The Departments of Justice and Labor will work closely in exchanging information developed in their separate enforcement activities.

While I believe that both the new and existing employer sanctions, and their strict enforcement, are required to control the employment of undocumented aliens, the possibility that these sanctions might lead employers to discriminate against Mexican-American citizens and legal residents, as well as other ethnic Americans, would be intolerable. The proposed employer sanctions have been designed, with their general reliance on civil penalties and "pattern or practice" enforcement, to minimize any cause for discrimination. However, to prevent any discriminatory hiring, the federal civil rights agencies will be charged with making much greater efforts to ensure that existing anti-discrimination laws are fully enforced.

BORDER ENFORCEMENT

The proposed employer sanctions will not, by themselves be enough to stop the entry of undocumented aliens. Measures must also be taken to significantly increase existing border enforcement efforts. While our borders cannot realistically be made impenetrable to illegal entry, greater enforcement efforts clearly are possible, consistent with preserving both the longest "open" borders in the world and our humanitarian traditions.

I am proposing to take the following increased enforcement measures, most of which will require Congressional approval for the necessary additional resources:

• Enforcement resources at the border will be increased substantially and will be reorganized to ensure greater effectiveness. The exact nature of the reorganization, as well as the amount of additional enforcement personnel, will be determined after the completion in September of our ongoing border enforcement studies. It is very likely, though, that a minimum of 2000 additional enforcement personnel will be placed on the Mexican border.

• INS will shift a significant number of enforcement personnel to border areas having the highest reported rates of undocumented alien entry.

• An anti-smuggling Task Force will be established in order to seek ways to reduce the number and effectiveness of the smuggling rings which, by obtaining forged documents and providing transportation, systematically smuggle a substantial percentage of the undocumented aliens entering the country. The U.S. Attorneys will be instructed to give high priority to prosecuting individuals involved in alien smuggling.

• The State Department will increase its visa issuance resources abroad to ensure that foreign citizens attempting to enter this country will be doing so within the requirements of the immigration laws.

• Passage will be sought of pending legislation to impose criminal sanctions on those who knowingly use false information to obtain identifiers issued by our Government, or who knowingly use fraudulent Government documents to obtain legitimate Government documents.

• The State Department will consult with countries which are the sources of significant numbers of undocumented aliens about cooperative border enforcement and anti-smuggling efforts.

COOPERATION WITH SOURCE COUNTRIES

The proposed employer sanctions and border enforcement will clearly discourage a significant percentage of those who would otherwise attempt to enter or remain in the U.S. illegally. However, as long as jobs are available here but not easily available in countries which have been the source of most undocumented aliens, many citizens of those countries will ignore whatever barriers to entry and employment we erect. An effective policy to control illegal immigration must include the development of a strong economy in each source country.

Unfortunately, this objective may be difficult to achieve within the near future. The economies of most of the source countries are still not sufficiently developed to produce, even with significant U.S. aid, enough jobs over the short-term to match their rapidly growing workforce.

Over the longer-term, however, I believe that marked improvements in source countries' economies are achievable by their own efforts with support from the United States. I welcome the economic development efforts now being made by the dynamic and competent leaders of Mexico. To further efforts such as those, the United States is committed to helping source countries obtain assistance appropriate to their own economic needs. I will explore with source countries means of providing such assistance. In some cases this will mean bilateral or multilateral economic assistance. In others, it will involve technical assistance, encouragement of private financing and enhanced trade, or population programs.

ADJUSTMENT OF STATUS

The fact that there are millions of undocumented aliens already residing in this country presents one of the most difficult questions surrounding the aliens phenomenon. These aliens entered the U.S. illegally and have willfully remained here in violation of the immigration laws. On the other hand, many of them have been law-abiding residents who are looking for a new life and are productive members of their communities.

I have concluded that an adjustment of status is necessary to avoid having a permanent "underclass" of millions of persons who have not been and cannot practicably be deported, and who would continue living here in perpetual fear of immigration authorities, the local police, employers and neighbors. Their entire existence would continue to be predicated on staying outside the reach of government authorities and the law's protections.

I therefore recommend the following adjustments of status:
First, I propose that permanent resident alien status be granted to all undocumented aliens who have resided continuously in the U.S. from before January 1, 1970 to the present. These aliens would have to apply for this status and provide normal documentary proof of continuous residency. If residency is maintained, U.S. citizenship could be sought five years after the granting of permanent status, as provided in existing immigration laws.

The permanent resident alien status would be granted through an update of the registry provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act. The registry statute has been updated three times since 1929, with the last update in 1965, when permanent resident alien status was granted to those who had resided here prior to 1948.

Second, all undocumented aliens, including those (other than exchange and student visitors) with expired visas, who were residing in the United States on or before January 1, 1977 will be eligible for a temporary resident alien status for five years.

Those eligible would be granted the temporary status only after registering with INS; registration would be permitted solely during a one-year period. Aliens granted temporary status would be entitled to reside legally in the United States for a five-year period.

The purpose of granting a temporary status is to preserve a decision on the final status of these undocumented aliens, until much more precise information about their number, location, family size and economic situation can be collected and reviewed. That information would be obtained through the registration process. A decision on their final status would be made sometime after the completion of the registration process and before the expiration of the five-year period.

Temporary resident aliens would not have the right to vote, to run for public office or to serve on juries; nor would they be entitled to bring members of their families into the U.S. But they could leave and re-enter this country, and they could seek employment, under the same rules as permanent resident aliens.

Unlike permanent resident aliens, temporary resident aliens would be ineligible to receive such Federal social services as Medicaid, Food Stamps, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, and Supplemental Security Income. However, the allocation formulas for Revenue Sharing, which are based on population, would be adjusted to reflect the presence of temporary resident aliens. The adjustment would compensate states and local communities for the fact that some of these residents--undocumented aliens-are currently not included in the Census Bureau's population counts. That undercount deprives certain states and communities of Revenue Sharing funds which, if Census figures were completely accurate, would be received and used to defray certain expenses caused by the presence of undocumented aliens. Those receiving adjustments of status through the actions I am proposing would be included in the 1980 Census, so that the allocation charges would have to be made only through 1980.

Third, for those undocumented aliens who entered the United States after January 1, 1977, there would be no adjustment of status. The immigration laws would still be enforced against these undocumented aliens. Similarly, those undocumented aliens, who are eligible for adjustment of status, but do not apply, would continue to have the immigration laws enforced against them.

In addition, the INS would expedite its handling of the substantial backlog of adjustment of status applications from those aliens entitled to an adjustment under existing law.

Finally, those persons who would be eligible for an adjustment of status under these proposals must not be ineligible under other provisions of the immigration laws.

TEMPORARY FOREIGN WORKERS

As part of these efforts to control the problem of undocumented aliens, I am asking the Secretary of Labor to conduct, in consultation with the Congress and other interested parties, a comprehensive review of the current temporary foreign worker (H-2) certification program. I believe it is possible to structure this program so that it responds to the legitimate needs of both employees, by protecting domestic employment opportunities, and of employers, by providing a needed workforce. However, I am not considering the reintroduction of a bracero-type program for the importation of temporary workers.

IMMIGRATION POLICY

Our present immigration statutes are in need of a comprehensive review. I am therefore directing the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, and the Secretary of Labor to begin a comprehensive interagency study of our existing immigration laws and policies.

In the interim, I am supporting pending legislation to increase the annual limitation on legal Mexican and Canadian immigration to a total of 50,000, allocated between them according to demand. This legislation will help provide an incentive to legal immigration.

I urge the Congress to consider promptly, and to pass, the legislation I will submit containing the proposals described in this Message.

JIMMY CARTER
The White House,
August 4, 1977.




Read more at the American Presidency Project: Jimmy Carter: Undocumented Aliens Message to the Congress.

Balanced Budget Stimulus

"The essential idea, again, would be to raise taxes and raise expenditures, simply for the duration necessary to push us out of our current bad equilibrium. For plenty of policymakers, the phrase “tax-and-spend” has become a four-letter word, but it might just offer the optimal solution to our present crisis."


TNR
There are two facts about our current economic situation that can no longer be denied: Our economy is in desperate need of government stimulus, and our political system won’t abide any increase in our national deficit.

Taken together, the two points seem to bode poorly for the United States. But we shouldn’t be too quick to assume a contradiction. Just because stimulus has traditionally been understood as a function of deficit-spending doesn’t mean that’s how it has to work.

We first have to come to grips with the fact that we need stimulus because we’re facing a problem of inadequate aggregate demand, a concept that we owe to the work of John Maynard Keynes. Keynes pointed out that a national economy can get stuck in a bad equilibrium—as it had in the Great Depression in 1930—where unemployed people really wish to supply their labor to some employer, but employers won’t hire them because they don’t think that the extra product they would make could be sold. Why not? Because of all the unemployed people trying unsuccessfully to supply their labor who can’t afford to buy anything. And why aren’t they working? Because no one will hire them.

That sounds circular, but that was exactly Keynes’ point. The whole depression situation is just an absurd circularity that we get stuck in from time to time, and can stay stuck in for a very long time. The core idea of Keynes’ theory is that there’s no fundamental reason to be in such a weak economy except the fact that we’re in it.

The problem is essentially one of communication: Somehow the unemployed have to communicate—not just in words but in the marketplace—their desire both to supply their labor and also to buy the excess of goods they would produce with the income from that labor. Part of Keynes’ idea, not always explained in the subsequent discussions of the theory, is that what has to be communicated is not any objective facts or information, but an intuition—a sense of confidence, a sense that the worst is over, a sense that the people’s animal spirits are back. If we think confidence is returning, then confidence will return.

The medium through which that communication largely needs to occur is collective action. We need to assert as a nation our will to get out of the bad equilibrium and get moving. And the way to do that is through government stimulus: We need to increase government expenditure for as long as it takes to break out of our rut. And there’s no use denying that those government expenditures will need to increase substantially in order to reduce the unemployment rate measurably.

That brings us to a critical fallacy that has crept into our thinking: We have become habituated to the idea that Keynesian fiscal stimulus has to take the form of deficit spending. After a credit downgrade by S&P, there’s a strong argument to make that the U.S. government is in no position to make a massive further increase in the national debt—but that's not an argument against stimulus as such. The fallacy is to think that stimulus necessarily needs to run up the national debt.

In reality, stimulus can easily take a balanced budget form: The government can simply raise taxes and raise expenditures by the same amount. The idea that balanced budget increases could save an economy stuck in a bad equilibrium goes back to the work of economists Walter Salant and Paul Samuelson in the 1940s, and it’s been taught in introductory economics courses ever since, though somehow it has been absent from public discussion of the current economic situation. Salant and Samuelson argued that in a very weak economy the balanced budget expenditure increases would translate into a one-for-one increase in national income.

In fact, the returns on a balanced budget stimulus are likely to be even greater than that. If the government raises taxes to hire the unemployed, then the unemployed who now get jobs will likely quickly spend all the money they earn on new consumption, since they have been strapped and now have jobs. The currently employed, who will see their taxes go up, will likely not cut their expenditures as much because they are habituated to their current level of consumption. And it is unlikely that a balanced budget stimulus would “crowd out” private expenditures on goods and services by pushing up interest rates. The Fed has already committed itself to keeping interest rates at zero until 2013.

The big problem with balanced budget stimulus is political, namely that there is a huge opposition to tax increases right now, primarily among Republicans. But their resistance might be softened if they were made aware that a balanced-budget stimulus would not lower average after-tax income: Every dollar of increased taxes could go toward giving someone extra income. (Though it's true that the people who would see their taxes increased the most are not likely to be the same people who would see their income increased.) Moreover, any public concerns about the high national debt should easily be allayed by the balanced budget stimulus, as it would probably lower the debt to GDP ratio by raising the denominator (GDP) without increasing the numerator (debt).

The balanced budget stimulus could also be designed in such a way as to avoid substantially increasing the size of the government. People often seem to think that government expenditures on stimulus means hiring people to sit at a desk at a government agency, or to clean up trash in the local national park. But that is not at all the way it has to be.

In enacting the stimulus, we could take as our model the National Science Foundation, through which the federal government sponsors scientific research. The government does not hire scientists directly through the NSF. Instead, it makes grants to individual scientists in universities and research facilities. The choice of who gets what grants are largely made by panels of non-government scientists who are called in to help the NSF evaluate the grant proposals. Those procedures could easily be extended beyond scientific research to other industrial areas.

Ultimately, if we did enact a balanced budget stimulus, we would still face the problem of how to find suitable projects to spend government money on. Designing and vetting projects takes time: A single construction project can demand years of planning and permitting. So the first step should be to immediately get going on the planning, even before we've gotten the resolve to do any additional stimulus.

(My colleague Martin Shubik, now an emeritus professor of economics at Yale, has proposed a sustainable solution to this latter problem—namely, a Federal Employment Reserve Authority, a permanent new government agency that would continually be in the business of creating a list of public works projects that are ready to go should there ever be a steep economic downturn. It would resemble a federal agency created in 1941, the Public Work Reserve, which was created to address the risk that the U.S. economy might fall into depression again after the economic stimulus of wartime spending was over.)

The essential idea, again, would be to raise taxes and raise expenditures, simply for the duration necessary to push us out of our current bad equilibrium. For plenty of policymakers, the phrase “tax-and-spend” has become a four-letter word, but it might just offer the optimal solution to our present crisis.

Treat the Bankers Like Crack Dealers

WALL STREET LENDERS WANT GET OUT OF JAIL FREE CARD

Kris Broughton on August 24, 2011, 9:41 AM Big Think

The Obama Administration continues to back our own domestic despots on Wall Street with the kind of zeal we used to use to support Middle Eastern dictators like Muammar Gaddhafi. What most Americans would truly appreciate is a “Wall Street Spring”, where one by one the executive suites of America’s money center banks are purged of their current C-level officers.

Robo-signing is a crime. Filing fraudulent loan documents in foreclosure proceedings is a crime. The settlements being proposed by Wall Street banks to make their mortgage loan problems go away should be problematic, because the crimes they committed were not accidental—they were premeditated. Attorney General Schneiderman is right to refuse to go along with this charade the banking industry and its regulators are trying put over on the American public once again. What makes all of this worse is that even as our money center bankers evince contrition and demand our forgiveness, their staffers are still performing the same illegal shortcuts that got them into this mess.

Some will say “but isn’t the American public complicit?” After all, it is true that they were willing to wink at Wall Street whenever it told them that 2+2=5, so long as it helped them to get what they wanted, even if they didn't have the money for it, or the cash flow to pay it off. It is true that they took every dollar we loaned them, interest rates be damned. But they took the money according to the rules of the game. It's the mortgage lenders who are breaking the law in their haste to get back money they probably shouldn't have loaned out in the first place. To add insult to injury, now that they've been caught red handed, they want full immunity from future claims as a part of any settlement. Immunity would be a corporate "get out of jail free" card for the industry, given that no one really knows how many loans were affected by these lender's illicit practices.

These overdressed weasels on Wall Street masquerading as men of substance should be walking the plank. Instead, they are about to buy their way out of documented loan fraud with another round of shareholder billions. When will the American public get it? When will the people who need to be outraged (this is your cue, Tea Party, but you are too god damned obsessed with your Negro President to care about the men in pinstripes who even now have their hands in your pockets) finally stand up, the way people have been standing up all spring in the Middle East, and run these criminals out of the country?

The obvious conclusion to be drawn from the move to kick the New York Attorney General off the foreclosure investigation committee would seem to be that our banking system is a house of cards. Which brings us to the sixty four thousand dollar question of the week—what do you do when if forcing our banking system to acknowledge the truth means certain financial ruin for much of the nation as we know it?

"American Interests" are not in the Interest of Americans.

Reagan fell in love with the Mujahideen (TALIBAN) in 1985. They were hosted in The White House. You could see them coming and going from Kennedy Airport. We armed them to the teeth and supplied them with every type of weapon. Haven't we had enough yet? No, we need to be there until 2024? We need to be in and out of Afghanistan for 40 years? 


Our Rulers and Masters, and their corporate financiers are a far worse threat to the interests of American Citizens than the Taliban. It is becoming increasingly clear that so called "American Interests" are not in the interest of Americans. Will we ever stop these bastards? And I am not talking about the Taliban.

________________________

The Daily Telegraph


US troops may stay in Afghanistan until 2024

America and Afghanistan are close to signing a strategic pact which would allow thousands of United States troops to remain in the country until at least 2024, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

The agreement would allow not only military trainers to stay to build up the Afghan army and police, but also American special forces soldiers and air power to remain. The prospect of such a deal has already been met with anger among Afghanistan’s neighbours including, publicly, Iran and, privately, Pakistan. It also risks being rejected by the Taliban and derailing any attempt to coax them to the negotiating table, according to one senior member of Hamid Karzai’s peace council. A withdrawal of American troops has already begun following an agreement to hand over security for the country to Kabul by the end of 2014. But Afghans wary of being abandoned are keen to lock America into a longer partnership after the deadline. Many analysts also believe the American military would like to retain a presence close to Pakistan, Iran and China.

Both Afghan and American officials said that they hoped to sign the pact before the Bonn Conference on Afghanistan in December. Barack Obama and Hamid Karzai agreed last week to escalate the negotiations and their national security advisers will meet in Washington in September.

Rangin Dadfar Spanta, Mr Karzai’s top security adviser, told The Daily Telegraph that “remarkable progress” had been made. US officials have said they would be disappointed if a deal could not be reached by December and that the majority of small print had been agreed.

Dr Spanta said a longer-term presence was crucial not only to build Afghan forces, but also to fight terrorism.

“If [the Americans] provide us weapons and equipment, they need facilities to bring that equipment,” he said. “If they train our police and soldiers, then those trainers will not be 10 or 20, they will be thousands.

“We know we will be confronted with international terrorists. 2014, is not the end of international terrorist networks and we have a common commitment to fight them. For this purpose also, the US needs facilities.”

Afghan forces would still need support from US fighter aircraft and helicopters, he predicted. In the past, Washington officials have estimated a total of 25,000 troops may be needed.

Dr Spanta added: “In the Afghan proposal we are talking about 10 years from 2014, but this is under discussion.” America would not be granted its own bases, and would be a guest on Afghan bases, he said. Pakistan and Iran were also deeply opposed to the deal.

Andrey Avetisyan, Russian ambassador to Kabul, said: “Afghanistan needs many other things apart from the permanent military presence of some countries. It needs economic help and it needs peace. Military bases are not a tool for peace.

“I don’t understand why such bases are needed. If the job is done, if terrorism is defeated and peace and stability is brought back, then why would you need bases?

“If the job is not done, then several thousand troops, even special forces, will not be able to do the job that 150,000 troops couldn’t do. It is not possible.”

A complete withdrawal of foreign troops has been a precondition for any Taliban negotiations with Mr Karzai’s government and the deal would wreck the currently distant prospect of a negotiated peace, Mr Avetisyan said.

Abdul Hakim Mujahid, deputy leader of the peace council set up by Mr Karzai to seek a settlement, said he suspected the Taliban had intensified their insurgency in response to the prospect of the pact. “They want to put pressure on the world community and Afghan government,” he said.

Federal Thugs Assault a Guitar Factory :: Just Another Example of Why Federal Agencies Need to be Dissolved

Agents of the Fish and Wildlife Service. 

WSJ
Federal agents swooped in on Gibson Guitar Wednesday, raiding factories and offices in Memphis and Nashville, seizing several pallets of wood, electronic files and guitars. The Feds are keeping mum, but in a statement yesterday Gibson's chairman and CEO, Henry Juszkiewicz, defended his company's manufacturing policies, accusing the Justice Department of bullying the company. "The wood the government seized Wednesday is from a Forest Stewardship Council certified supplier," he said, suggesting the Feds are using the aggressive enforcement of overly broad laws to make the company cry uncle.

It isn't the first time that agents of the Fish and Wildlife Service have come knocking at the storied maker of such iconic instruments as the Les Paul electric guitar, the J-160E acoustic-electric John Lennon played, and essential jazz-boxes such as Charlie Christian's ES-150. In 2009 the Feds seized several guitars and pallets of wood from a Gibson factory, and both sides have been wrangling over the goods in a case with the delightful name "United States of America v. Ebony Wood in Various Forms."

The question in the first raid seemed to be whether Gibson had been buying illegally harvested hardwoods from protected forests, such as the Madagascar ebony that makes for such lovely fretboards. And if Gibson did knowingly import illegally harvested ebony from Madagascar, that wouldn't be a negligible offense. Peter Lowry, ebony and rosewood expert at the Missouri Botanical Garden, calls the Madagascar wood trade the "equivalent of Africa's blood diamonds." But with the new raid, the government seems to be questioning whether some wood sourced from India met every regulatory jot and tittle.

It isn't just Gibson that is sweating. Musicians who play vintage guitars and other instruments made of environmentally protected materials are worried the authorities may be coming for them next.

If you are the lucky owner of a 1920s Martin guitar, it may well be made, in part, of Brazilian rosewood. Cross an international border with an instrument made of that now-restricted wood, and you better have correct and complete documentation proving the age of the instrument. Otherwise, you could lose it to a zealous customs agent—not to mention face fines and prosecution.

John Thomas, a law professor at Quinnipiac University and a blues and ragtime guitarist, says "there's a lot of anxiety, and it's well justified." Once upon a time, he would have taken one of his vintage guitars on his travels. Now, "I don't go out of the country with a wooden guitar."

The tangled intersection of international laws is enforced through a thicket of paperwork. Recent revisions to 1900's Lacey Act require that anyone crossing the U.S. border declare every bit of flora or fauna being brought into the country. One is under "strict liability" to fill out the paperwork—and without any mistakes.

It's not enough to know that the body of your old guitar is made of spruce and maple: What's the bridge made of? If it's ebony, do you have the paperwork to show when and where that wood was harvested and when and where it was made into a bridge? Is the nut holding the strings at the guitar's headstock bone, or could it be ivory? "Even if you have no knowledge—despite Herculean efforts to obtain it—that some piece of your guitar, no matter how small, was obtained illegally, you lose your guitar forever," Prof. Thomas has written. "Oh, and you'll be fined $250 for that false (or missing) information in your Lacey Act Import Declaration."

Consider the recent experience of Pascal Vieillard, whose Atlanta-area company, A-440 Pianos, imported several antique Bösendorfers. Mr. Vieillard asked officials at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species how to fill out the correct paperwork—which simply encouraged them to alert U.S. Customs to give his shipment added scrutiny.

There was never any question that the instruments were old enough to have grandfathered ivory keys. But Mr. Vieillard didn't have his paperwork straight when two-dozen federal agents came calling.

Facing criminal charges that might have put him in prison for years, Mr. Vieillard pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of violating the Lacey Act, and was handed a $17,500 fine and three years probation.

Given the risks, why don't musicians just settle for the safety of carbon fiber? Some do—when concert pianist Jeffrey Sharkey moved to England two decades ago, he had Steinway replace the ivories on his piano with plastic.

Still, musicians cling to the old materials. Last year, Dick Boak, director of artist relations for C.F. Martin & Co., complained to Mother Nature News about the difficulty of getting elite guitarists to switch to instruments made from sustainable materials. "Surprisingly, musicians, who represent some of the most savvy, ecologically minded people around, are resistant to anything about changing the tone of their guitars," he said.

You could mark that up to hypocrisy—artsy do-gooders only too eager to tell others what kind of light bulbs they have to buy won't make sacrifices when it comes to their own passions. Then again, maybe it isn't hypocrisy to recognize that art makes claims significant enough to compete with environmentalists' agendas.

Another New Jersey Hurricane

He was probably guilty.

Meeting Life Challenges

Life is a constant challenge. They are a part of what we are. It is a given. We can wear them or carry them silently. Most challenges accepted take us to places that were never expected. I don't doubt for a moment the expressed joy and gratitude of this family for having accepted what was put to them. They are fortunate indeed.

Not immediately clear when First Lady Michelle Obama and daughters Sasha and Malia would leave the Vineyard.

Obama has not rested while in Martha's Vineyard, so engrossed has he been in organizing federal resources to cope with Hurricane Irene. Racked with fear and worry about the oncoming hurricane, unable to focus on his putting, stern faced Obama spoke to the nation through his teleprompters. Obama shared his profound thoughts: “indications point to this being a historic hurricane.” Following his riveting and vacuous announcement, Obama the imperious, had no time to answer a reporters question about how the hurricane would affect employment.


Watch this:



The First Big Ass, Michelle, was not quite finished her top-shelf vacation so that taxpayers now have to pay for the Obamas to fly back on seperate 747s. Tough luck for the security people and home owners in the area who cannot return to prepare for the hurricane.

"Thanks Suckas"

Too bad that shark is stuffed.