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Written by Michael Z Williamson

Created: 25 October 2013

Dear Frankford Arsenal: I have one of your case tumblers, about two years old. I'd estimate less than 200 hours runtime and 10,000 rounds tumbled. One of the motor bearings has worn out. Is a replacement bearing or a motor assembly available?

Thanks

Mike 

Mr. Williamson, Thank you for your purchase of our case tumbler. I apologize for the issue you are having with this item. We do not stock replacement parts for this item, however, I have entered an order to send you a replacement tumbler. Please allow our warehouse 3-5 business days for shipment from our facility. We appreciate your interest in our products! 

Thank you,

Tina Schneider

Customer Service Specialist

Battenfeld Technologies, Inc.

EDITED because I was a dumbass and got the company name wrong.

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Written by Michael Z Williamson

Created: 22 October 2013

Gah.  All over the auction sites and every gun show is some fucking "Parade" rifle or bayonet that's so-called because it's chromed.

It's usually some third rate piece of shit, invariably pitted and worn, with chrome on top of the pitting and marks.  Frequently there are pieces missing.  There are often scour lines where the original crisp machining has been blurred by someone's buffing wheel.

The proper way to describe one of these would be something like this:  "Used, crappy, old bolt ation rifle.  Some gap-toothed, slack-jawed, white trash, inbred yokel did a piss poor job of chrome plating it because he'd sucked down too much shine boiled off in the radiator of Pappy's '32 Ford, so his already sub-par brain approached genuine retardation and he thought this was a clever thing to do.  It's probably safe to shoot but we don't guarantee it.  Fifty bucks and it's yours."

Instead, the seller usually tries to tack $50-$100 onto the top Blue Book value.  But ask him for any reference to a "Turkish/Austrian/Spanish/Italian Parade rifle" that was chromed historically, and he can't find one,  because they almost never really existed.

There are so many of these things, and they are all so badly done in the same fashion, I have to wonder if somewhere in Appalachia was some proto-Meth head who did nothing but take old Mausers and dip then in chrome as an excuse to snort the acid fumes out of the tank.  Or did he just have an equally brain-damaged brother who did cut-rate autobody work and thought it would be cool to toss them into the tank along with the bumpers?

Add these to the list of people to assassinate if time travel ever becomes possible.  Those poor old rifles have seen enough battles and rebuilds across Eurasia without being roofied with brake cleaner and raped with chromium sulfate.

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Written by Michael Z Williamson

Created: 21 October 2013

Spangdahlem Air Base, 2 November, 2013:

https://www.facebook.com/events/292771870822485/412991242133880/?notif_t=like

And the American Book Center in the Hague, afternoon of 3 November:

http://www.abc.nl/

Do please stop by and introduce yourself.  Military/DoD/contractors and family can get a free signed book at Spang.  In the Netherlands, you can buy a copy and have me deface it in person.

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Written by Michael Z Williamson

Created: 13 October 2013

At $42.8 billion per year, the Federal Highway Administration costs a smidge under $200 per person.  You benefit from roads, because you drive on them, and everything you buy or use is delivered on them.  There are other aspects of Federal transportation, and they're paid for by a combination of excise tax, income tax, etc.  Ultimately, all those taxes are a cost of doing business, and are passed on from shipper to user to consumer—you. 

http://www.dot.gov/mission/budget/fy2013-budget-estimates

What about schools?  Department of Education has a budget of $69.8 billion (it's doubled in four years, by the way), which costs about $326 per person.  Schools provide a skilled workforce that generate GDP, and it reduces the amount of scavenging, looting and other activity that we commonly consider crime.

http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/index.html (also see Wikipedia for an easier summary).

So, these are things you pay for, and derive benefit from.

Now, let's move on to health care.

The uncomfortable fact is, few individuals affect you.  Immediate family, a few friends and coworkers, your employer.  And through Sept 30, 2013, we didn't have millions of people dying in the streets.  The system we had worked.  The worst case claims of the opponents conclude that 85% of Americans had adequate coverage, which means the real case is almost certainly over 90%, which is on par with any Western nation.  Let us dispense right now with (profanity for emphasis) any bullshit that "our life expectancy is 13^th" or whatever.  It's within a year of every other Western democracy, and that's without accounting for lifestyle issues like diet and exercise, which health care can't fix.  More people come here for health care than go elsewhere.

Please keep in mind there was no requirement for any employer to provide you with health care coverage.  It was entirely a choice on their part, and those who could afford to generally chose to.

They can still choose not to, and you get the bill.  But now, that bill is mandatory.

So how much are you willing to pay for a human life?  If it's your own, and you have 50% odds, you'd likely sell all your possessions, because they're no use to you dead.  You’d probably do this for your immediate family.  For a close friend, you might sell a used car or take a loan on your house.  For a coworker or a local child with cancer, you might throw in fifty bucks.  For the homeless guy in Pasadena who's about to die in the gutter of liver failure, you don't give a shit.  Nor should you.  Millions of people get sick and die every year, with no real effect on you.  Close down a road, you suffer.  Close down a school, you'll suffer in twenty years.  Someone dies of cancer?  If they're not a close acquaintance, it doesn't affect you at all.

Be honest.  Would you pay $200 to save some homeless guy?  You might.  Once a year.  What about $326?  Possibly.

Would you pay $1000?

What about $10,000?

What about $100,000?

At some point we passed the threshold at which you care about another human being's life.  If you want to pretend we didn't, write a check for $5000 payable to Health and Human Services, mail it to me, and I'll see that they deposit it.

Here's the problem:  You've told the government they get to set that value.  You no longer have a valid legal argument against paying.  It doesn’t matter if you can't pay it. It's tax.

Now, they insist there will be various means of moderating the system.  But liberals are notorious for having no clue how these things work.  Canada's gun registration program was supposed to cost a few million dollars.  It wound up over $2 billion.  On this, we've already found out that the morons didn't figure that a business would actually shift employment to part time to avoid a cost it could avoid.

Here's what it's likely to cost you, now, before they find more problems and realize that since it's cheaper for a young college person earning $25,000 to pay the fine (sorry, "tax") rather than get insurance ($2535) with an $826 subsidy taken out, which you'd pay, they're probably going to do that. Which means you'll STILL be paying for the ER care, just like now.  Same for the 64 year old on a marginal income ($7606).  They actually pay $1729, getting a subsidy of $5877, which you pay.  For every one of them getting a subsidy, one of YOU has to pay that subsidy. The money doesn't magically appear from nowhere.

http://kff.org/interactive/subsidy-calculator/

You will be paying $5000 a year for someone else.

It may only be $2000.  It may be $10,000.  But YOU will be paying for some random stranger's care.

At what point does your employer decide they can't afford it?  Keep in mind, in the real nonliberal world, a company's assets are limited, and most companies are fairly small.

When they decide they can't afford it, you pay out of pocket.  If you're lucky.  If you're unlucky, they say they can't afford to keep you on, and you have no job, and STILL pay out of pocket.  Of course, you're then eligible for "free" care, which is good, because all the people who were getting it free were being paid on your dime.

The cold, hard fact is that public health is a matter for epidemics and immunizations, and your horrifically painful liver cancer matters not at all to 214 million people.

Nor should it.