[TowerTalk] Example of typical gov waste

[K8RI]

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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