On 9/11/2012 2:00 PM, Jim Brown wrote:
On 9/11/2012 10:14 AM, Doug Ronald wrote:
Here's your wonderful government in action.
No, it's NOT our government. It's a company that BOUGHT stuff from the
government and is reselling it. Our government appears to have done
exactly what you wanted it to do -- it sold off what it didn't need,
this company was paying attention, and bought it. We weren't paying
attention, and missed the opportunity. :)
Yes it is as they stipulated the property be de milled and I can see no
reason for that.
As for the contractor, There is a "Surplus Property Bidder's List" that
I was on for years just like they are. You bid on property in lots.
The rules governing disposition of military property were and probably
still are set by congress, or direction of congress to the military.
The reasoning behind demilitarizing a portable tower is beyond
comprehension, but it's probably part of the huge batch of regulations
that have been heaped on us within the past few years.
I sold and repaired ham equipment and firearms back then. It took one
day to get the FFL and the MI tax license. It cost me $10 a year and the
total record keeping per year probably took 5 to 10 hours. Now it's a
stack of records, huge stack of regulations, and hundreds of hours.
Getting all the paperwork to start that same business would be a PITA.
Back in the early 70s a lot/batch of 5 P-51s went for $7,000 or $7,500
each. They were not only airworthy, the tanks were full as well. The
winner just had to go down and fly them home on ferry permits.(still
easy to get from the FAA as I used one just a couple years ago)
Getting them airworthy for a civilian airworthiness certificate was a
bit more complicated. An aviation mechanic who lived about 15 miles
West of me ended up getting two (not from that auction), got them
licensed, sold one, and kept the other for play. He probably had about
20 grand in the two of them and got 100 grand for the one he sold. Now
days they would be worth about 1.5 million each with civilian
airworthiness certificates.
Of course, back then $7,500 was almost a year's pay.
Even M-1s were readily available through the civilian marksmanship
program and still are on a limited basis. Our current glorious leader
refused a huge catch of M-1s from Australia in the last year or so.
Another point about all of this. With all the pressure on OUR government
to slash the debt, no departments have the staff to be selling stuff
individually to buyers,
It doesn't and didn't work that way. All they did was provide a list of
"lots" to be disposed of to a military agency. Material was "where is,
as is". Usually a couple of days or just a day was set aside for
viewing. It was up to the winner to pick it up and transport it on
schedule. As for non paying bidders? Deposits were required. I was
part of the "Surplus Bidder's Program" from about 62 through the early
70's. A weeks lists averaged a couple inches thick, but they ranged from
none to a stack well over 3 inches thick.
they need to have someone step up and take
EVERYTHING in a given lot. FWIW, virtually all large and medium-sized
businesses operate in the same manner.
Businesses, at least the ones I worked for, did so because of liability.
The chemical industry disposes of very little that will end up
available to the public.
A lot of *stuff* was disposed of as hazardous material just because of
what might have been in it, or run through it even after a thorough
cleaning. Get a batch of computers? They'd be outdated and no hard
drives. ALL hard drives were reformatted via the sledgehammer program.
So, in the end they really weren't worth much at all. Last I knew they
switched to a contract provider with all computers configured the same
way with the same programs and they were still using XP Pro.
It did what they wanted, there was a lot of custom software, they had to
interface with other systems, and they had many thousands of them around
the world. They won't update those systems until they have to because
you are looking at an overall cost of around 7 to 10 million just to
update the OS, let alone the custom stuff.
73
Roger (K8RI)
73, Jim K9YC
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