It's not much of a surprise that tea party groups and conservative bloggers got their knickers in a twist when an iconic American business was
raided and investigated by the government of a president they believe to be a Kenyan Muslim. But in the case of Gibson Guitar's illegal wood importing, there may be something else going on as well.
As the New York Times showed back in March, it looks an awful lot like some Asian businesses and industry groups that support logging and deforestation, not always legal, have been investing heavily in tea party groups:
But a Tea Party group in the United States, the Institute for Liberty, has vigorously defended the freedom of a giant Indonesian paper company to sell its wares to Americans without paying tariffs. The institute set up Web sites, published reports and organized a petition drive attacking American businesses, unions and environmentalists critical of the company, Asia Pulp & Paper.
Last fall, the institute's president, Andrew Langer, had himself videotaped on Long Wharf in Boston holding a copy of the Declaration of Independence as he compared Washington's proposed tariff on paper from Indonesia and China to Britain's colonial trade policies in 1776.
[...]
Mr. Langer would not say who financed his Indonesian paper initiative. But his sudden interest in the issue coincided with a public relations push by Asia Pulp & Paper. And the institute's work is remarkably similar to that produced by one of the company's consultants, a former Australian diplomat named Alan Oxley who works closely with a Washington public affairs firm known for creating corporate campaigns presented as grass-roots efforts.
Asia Pulp & Paper is owned by "environmental outlaw" corporation Sinar Mas, which has faced criticism for deforesting orangutan habitats.
Langer joined with Frontiers of Freedom to found the Consumers Alliance for Global Prosperity, which coincidentally released a report and started a website (pulpwars.com) opposing paper tariffs right after Asia Pulp & Paper came out with their own report. Yet he claims there's no link, that he just happened on this issue himself. That claim is challenged by the fact that "Internet domain records, however, show that pulpwars.com was created shortly before the Consumers Alliance Web site in mid-August, suggesting the paper issue was driving the project from the start."
In another coincidence, Langer has subsequently focused on the government raid of Gibson Guitar, writing, at Andrew Breitbart's Big Government site (Google it; I'm not linking), that "An unsavory alliance of government policymakers, ideological activists, and corporate interests is colluding to block trade in goods from developing countries, in this case wood from Asia, India, and Africa." He actually doesn't offer Gibson much sympathy, feeling they brought this on themselves by making some efforts to move to environmentally responsible practices.
Doubtless the Gibson case would have attracted some attention on the right no matter what, but it is surely suspicious that two of the tea party's recent rallying cries have involved Asian logging practices and had Andrew Langer whipping them up.