If you Really want Benchrest to grow

Jim
I totally agree with your theroies, but I have to say if right now you gave me a choiece of that 30" buck or the hottie in the bikini, I would pick the 30" buck! No seriously, I am just trying to figure out a way that the sport could get an infusion of new blood as it is desperately needed. I used to run the IR 50 matches in Vegas and also the I was one of 3 guys that brought group shoots back to Vegas for about 18 months and then our club got pissy and cut us off scheduling the range for 2 day shoots. So its not like I don't have experience running matches. I know your aware of what the future holds for BR if something isn't done. Heck just look at Springville I can remember 6-7 years ago when you had to get your registration in real early cause of all the shooters that attended that match I think they used to run no more than 3 relays, now your lucky to get 2 relays. This year I have introduced 2 new shooters to group and score at our club shoot in Vale,Or. 1 guy has no interestin group, but he likes the score so I am in the process of building him a score rifle. Maybe there are no solutions or as others have suggested, like mr Chism said economy, attrition, lack of interst, etc. He is right though about factory rifles thats how it all started, so why not a seperate factory class? after all if you get them to the bech and it peaks their curiosity to make their factory rifle more accurate and they then realize that you can only ring so much out of a factory rifle they decide to take the leap into a full blown BR rifle. All I can say is I hope things get better, and have to agree with Mr. Weisdorn and his post above.
 
Lawrence W. said:
If you want to get BR back on its feet, let's make sure that we send a Republican to the Whitehouse this November! I don't know about you guys, but Obamanomics has really crimped my cash flow and therefore my discretionary cash. A lot of the local shooters are now very budget conscious and don't see any changes on the horizon with the Democrats at the helm.
Click to expand...

????

The last financial debacle, also brought to us by a republican (Hoover), lasted from 1929 until the middle of world War II -- about 12 years. Unemnployment was 25%+

This one, brought to us by Bush, has a real unemployment rate of about 15% -- not the touted 10%. Still, a remarkable improvement.

While the financial crisis in Europe was/is about the same, the U.S. seems to be handling it much better.

Can Obama take credit for this success? I wouldn't think so. He just did what every economist south of the North Pole recommended. McCain was no dummy, he'd have done the same thing. Hard to ignore the experts (economists) when that's not your area of expertise...

But I will allow Romney scares me. Businessman, uh? Now in a mature industry, the way you improve your position is take business away from the other guy. Offer the same product or service for less money, or a better product/service for the same money. It's pretty much a zero-sum game. Well, you can always spend it on advertising, maybe you can fool enough people into thinking you have something better...

How does that kind of business sense help? Impose international tariffs? Yeah, right.Good luck getting that through congress.

More than likely, you do what you can by helping the people you know & trust. Which seems to be the guys that can place a $10,000 bet just for fun. Sadly, that isn't me. Glad you're so well off.

What he could do to get my vote would be to pledge -- fully pledge, in as "all his money is at risk" his fortune that he'd jail the people who committed the illegal frauds (i.e., statutory crimes) that got us here. Ain't nobody in jail yet, that I can see. That's Obama's real shame.
 
Still better than the way Obama runs things. For example:

79 % of GM’s sales last month was government purchased, during 2012 Remember how Obama keeps telling us how he saved GM, and how our economy is getting better, it seems the car company he bought is being saved by Govt employees using our tax money to buy new cars. GM’s sales figures for last month were the best since 2008 , up 16% for the month of June.

YIPPEE!

Well, wait just a minute. It seems that those rosy sales figures are due primarily to a 79% increase in fleet sales to the U.S. government in June.

That’s right. Our tax dollars are being used to pump up GM’s sales figures ahead of next month’s quarterly report so that our Dear Leader can point to "Government Motors" as a huge success. The incestuous relationship between GM, the UAW and the Regime has never been more glaringly apparent.

GM is unsustainable without government subsidies and will ultimately go bust again, taking billions of taxpayer dollars down with it .We bailed out General Motors to the tune of $50 billion. $30 billion of this is effectively a loss, mostly sunk into fattening the United Auto Workers Union—plus fierce fierce Obama supporters—while the actual bondholders were shown the elevator shaft.

Meanwhile, as News Busters reports, “We the Taxpayers are still stuck holding 500+ million shares of GM stock. Which we need to sell at $53 per share. Which debuted post-bankruptcy at $33 per share.. And which is currently trading at just over $20 per. Meaning we’ll lose about $15 billion.”But it gets better. Despite the overwhelming negatives, the tiny bright spot of positive June sales numbers is being heralded by Obama and the leftist press as proof the auto bailout was a “success.”

Obama is now campaigning on the “success” of – the government buying cars from…the government’s car company. with our money.

American vision says That’s like you setting up a lemonade stand for your kids. You buy them the lemons, sugar, cups and pitchers – and then buy most of the lemonade yourself.

The pressure is on Government Motors to appear financially strong as this may be the last earnings report before November elections and sets the stage for how “successful” GM is. One of GM’s past tricks to help fudge earnings numbers has been to stuff truck inventory channels. Old habits die hard at GM.

According to a Bloomberg report, “GM said inventory of its full-size pickups, which will be refreshed next year, climbed to 238,194 at the end of June, a 135 days’ supply, up from 116 days at the end of May.” 135 days’ supply is huge, the accepted norm is a 60 day supply.

The trick here is that GM records revenue (probably at list prices for costing and sales number) when vehicles go into dealerships to be floor planned.

We are being fed a numbers game.
 
Charles E said:
????

The last financial debacle, also brought to us by a republican (Hoover), lasted from 1929 until the middle of world War II -- about 12 years. Unemnployment was 25%+

This one, brought to us by Bush, has a real unemployment rate of about 15% -- not the touted 10%. Still, a remarkable improvement.
Click to expand...

Not so fast Charles.

Clinton started his pot boiling by mandating “aggressive homeownership goals” set by the government as part of a “philosophy of opportunity”. HUD then forced Fannie and Freddie to relax lending standards so that anybody that wanted to buy a home, even if they couldn't afford it, ("Liar loans") went out and bought homes. Freddie and Fannie packaged these loans and laid them off on Wall Street. Greenspan and Bernanke kept interest rates low and this, combined with buyers with no skin in the game, caused housing prices to double and triple to unsustainable price levels. This classic bubble finally boiled over in 2008 while Bush was President, but it was not Bush's policies that caused it. This one was brought to us by Clinton.
 
Sorry Charlie. Calvin Coolidge started the great depression. And that did not end till 1954. If you go with the current ways of analyzing the economy.
If Hoover had been re-elected or the Defeatocrats running Congress had followed Hoovers plan. The Great Depression would have ended 1932. And might have avoided WW2. What happened, here happened all over the world.
The billgore depression started in 1999. This is back up with references.

Billgore depression

It is a immutable fact that the two pieces of legislation that led to the credit bubble and our economy's eventual collapse were the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000.
The first signed by Bill Clinton in November 1999 - twelve months before Bush was elected - removed the last Depression era Glass Steagall constraints on the financial services industry thereby deregulating banks, securities firms, and insurance companies to invest in anything they wanted.
The second signed by Clinton in December 2000 a month before Bush was inaugurated deregulated commodities, in particular various derivatives including credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations which were at the very heart of the eventual crisis.
These two bills George W. Bush had nothing to do with were the "deregulatory craziness that led us over the cliff."
Yet Spitzer, who accused Tea Partiers of not knowing "history, economics, politics, sociology, science" as he bragged about believing in "facts" on national television falsely pinned them on our 43rd President rather than the man whose signature is actually on both.

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-s...us-deregulatory#comment-1533420#ixzz1Tce2baEb
 
Charles. The best thing for the world economy, is a Business Man, running the country.
Not a little boy who throws tantrums. And spends every Sat. on the golf course.

Charlie. YOU need to read some history. This country was started by business people. All of the signers of the Declaration and US Constitution were businessmen.
And most people came to this country for an opportunity. That's called a job.
 
The last financial debacle, also brought to us by a republican (Hoover), lasted from 1929 until the middle of world War II -- about 12 years. Unemnployment was 25%+

This one, brought to us by Bush, This is incorrect. The sub prime loans started with Jimmy Carter and continued through the others who drank the same Koolaid. Everyone was on it.has a real unemployment rate of about 15% -- not the touted 10%. Still, a remarkable improvement.

While the financial crisis in Europe was/is about the same, the U.S. seems to be handling it much better.

Can Obama take credit for this success? I wouldn't think so. He just did what every economist south of the North Pole recommended. This is incorrect. What Obama did, based on his advisors was to keep printing money, thus making everything worth less....more paper. The theory of pumping money spelled "Stimulus" is one approach to stimulating the econmy. A most productive method, based on recent past experience is to give tax cuts to businesses and the higher income crowd as they are the ones who spend money and employ everyone else.....McCain was no dummy, he'd have done the same thing. Hard to ignore the experts (economists) when that's not your area of expertise...
 
At least I got people to look at more than the last 3-4 years, which was the primary goal, and should let us divorce Obama from the current economic situation.

I'm a bit surprised no one picked up on my statement that the '29 crash was Hoover's responsibility. It wasn't, save for his policies in the cabinet during the Coolidge administration. It was Silent Cal who let 6 years of laissez fare run rampant -- the roaring 20s -- and that's pretty much what let to the 29 crash. Don't think anyone with any sense or knowledge of history argues against that.

Nor was Clinton or Carter primarily responsible for the current bust, or for that matter, Bush the younger. Republicans favor boom & bust business climates. Coolidge let it happen, and Regan's administration was primarily responsible for repealing the regulations set in place to minimize boom & bust. What's worrisome for me is this time around, big business figured out how to get the good & escape the worst effects of bust (too big to fail). This time, they just passed most all the bad to the middle class.

Whether you favor boom & bust -- it does have it's moments -- or the more restrained policies of the democrats (in the 20th century anyway), I would hope anyone with enough sense to pour piss out of a boot realizes the bad past four years are not "Obama Economics."

That said, and sadly, the cynic in me imagines there are a lot of people out there with wet socks...

Edit:

When it comes to benchrest, I guess I'm in favor of Mr. Hensler's ideas. Get rid of the rules -- which after all, were mostly the result of one brief time in the late 1950s (wasn't it?), and see what works now. Guess that makes me a shooting republican.
 
Last edited:
Obamanomics in action:

Last month 96,000 jobs added and 390,000 ran out of unemployment or just plain gave up looking for work! Net for the month is minus 294,000 jobsThat ain't forward in anyone's book. But, if your job title was Community Organizer then that type of performance would probably get you a pat on the back and an A+. Unfortunately the job job title is President and that's a D- and a pink slip.
 
Actually, I think the whole Federal government has been running unchecked for about 100 years!
 
Steelhead1 said:
Jim
I totally agree with your theroies, but I have to say if right now you gave me a choiece of that 30" buck or the hottie in the bikini, I would pick the 30" buck! No seriously, I am just trying to figure out a way that the sport could get an infusion of new blood as it is desperately needed. I used to run the IR 50 matches in Vegas and also the I was one of 3 guys that brought group shoots back to Vegas for about 18 months and then our club got pissy and cut us off scheduling the range for 2 day shoots. So its not like I don't have experience running matches. I know your aware of what the future holds for BR if something isn't done. Heck just look at Springville I can remember 6-7 years ago when you had to get your registration in real early cause of all the shooters that attended that match I think they used to run no more than 3 relays, now your lucky to get 2 relays. This year I have introduced 2 new shooters to group and score at our club shoot in Vale,Or. 1 guy has no interestin group, but he likes the score so I am in the process of building him a score rifle. Maybe there are no solutions or as others have suggested, like mr Chism said economy, attrition, lack of interst, etc. He is right though about factory rifles thats how it all started, so why not a seperate factory class? after all if you get them to the bech and it peaks their curiosity to make their factory rifle more accurate and they then realize that you can only ring so much out of a factory rifle they decide to take the leap into a full blown BR rifle. All I can say is I hope things get better, and have to agree with Mr. Weisdorn and his post above.
Click to expand...

Sure wish those Vegas matches were still goin'. Group I mean. But I think I'll go down there this winter and give VFS a try though. Not much else to do that time of the year now that ski passes have gone astronomical and there are about 2 million too many coyote hunters now!
 
As for the politics, folks are foolin' themselves if they think one man can change anything. For good or bad. Even if he works in the Oval Office. Especially if he works in the Oval Office.

The very idea of our government is checks and balances among three branches. The Pres is only 1/3 and probably the weakest 1/3 at that.
 
JerrySharrett said:
Yep, like say about 1913!!!
Click to expand...

There were about 100 million people in the USA then. To restore that, we'd have to get rid of 2/3s of our current population. That would be a good start -- I can think of a few candidates...

That was boom & bust economies for sure. If we can do it all again, I'll just ride the booms & get out before the busts. (Could use a little help figuring out just when to get out...)
 
Charles E said:
There were about 100 million people in the USA then. ....
Click to expand...

And they all worked and paid no income tax. The 16th amendment did not take place till 1913. We didn't have the FED overtaking the Congressional duties of coining money.....and I could go on.

I'm out of this leadoff from the original therad.
 
Just google you tube on Obama's domestic (private) army speech, that says it all in his own words.
 
goodgrouper said:
As for the politics, folks are foolin' themselves if they think one man can change anything. For good or bad. Even if he works in the Oval Office. Especially if he works in the Oval Office.

The very idea of our government is checks and balances among three branches. The Pres is only 1/3 and probably the weakest 1/3 at that.
Click to expand...

Executive Orders for welfare and the Dream Act let Obama sidestep those pesky little checks and balances.
 
Well, I have exactly the opposite problem.

We have been working a six and seven day work week for going on two years. I just gave up on going to matches, It is simply too aggravating trying to plan a trip when a phone call can change everything in a second. I do take time off to fullfill my resposibilities in running our Club Matches at Tomball.

This boom in our industry will end. They always do. That is why I don't mind the hours, I have seen it when we didn't have a single job in the shop.

When things slow down, I will be back. You can count on that.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top