Unintedended Consequences Unlimited

Rock N Roll as the enemy of the environment.

Really? Sex, drugs and alcohol are natural items.

Blame it on the Blues or Country then.

The Economist and others including the Wall Street Journal have reported lately on the raiding of Gibson guitar factories in Nashville.

Yes, the US still has factories, but one wonders why our manufacturing base is not growing with our population.

Is it only driven by lower wages and unreasonably lower environmental standards abroad ?

One has to wonder why our Fish and Wildlife Service has been tasked with enforcing laws of other countries.

This does provide some government jobs, but not the kind of jobs that create jobs for taxes for things our government really needs to do.

It also no doubt creates jobs for lawyers and the adviser class, again not resulting in jobs for taxes to help our government do what only our government can do.

MAYBELLE CARTER strummed one with a smile. Slash, the lead guitarist of Guns N’ Roses, thrashed one with a snarl. One would be hard-pressed to find two carbon-based life forms more different than Carter and Slash (pictured), but they both loved Gibson guitars, as do thousands of amateur bards. So it struck a jarring chord when federal agents raided Gibson’s factories in Nashville on August 24th.

Agents barged in and shut down production. They were hunting for ebony and rosewood which the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) alleges was imported from India in violation of the Lacey Act, a 1900 law originally designed to protect fauna from poachers. This law has metastasised: it now requires Americans, in essence, to abide by every plant and wildlife regulation set by any country on Earth. Not having heard of an obscure foreign rule is no defence. Violators face fines or even jail. FWS claims the ebony sent from India was mislabelled, and that Indian law forbids the export of unfinished ebony and rosewood. Gibson denies wrongdoing.

Here a good idea: Let’s subsidize our banks some more, but require them to pool and package lawyers and lawmakers into securities to be resold to unsuspecting investors?

Isn’t packaging of politicians what happens every election day?

That is when they or their comrades and partners are not running for office or some high paying regulatory job.

Ever graphed the growth of pages of laws? No dips  or recessions in that expense economy telling us how to live and do business.

When will enough be enough. No question mark, as this is a rhetorical question with a too obvious answer.

Wait, wait, maybe if John Edwards the almost President of the United States, could get back on the stage he might tell us in his rehabilitation tours about the Two American Economies, the private jobs based Income Economy and the subsidized overly ambitious Expense Economy of the government?

More likely he will just get a show on CNN.