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April 14, 2025 08:11 AM UTC

Monday Open Thread

  • 23 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

“In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.”

–Laurence J. Peter

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23 thoughts on “Monday Open Thread”

  1. I hadn't really thought of it,  Alva, but there is likely no more appropriate principle to apply to this administration…except, perhaps, "there is no honor among thieves". 

    Well done on the quote.

    1. Except that this administration prerequisites employment based on demonstrated incompetence, and then builds on that skill set as a stepping stone to move onto levels of even greater incompetence.  Here the climb up the T-top hierarchy is rewarded to those incompetents speediest to new and ever deeper bottoms.

      “Verily I say, for unto he (or she) who wrecks most, more shall be given.”  Two Donalds — 3:16

    1. That would probably be a good choice.  She only lost by about 2,000 votes.  Hopefully, she can get support, in the form of volunteers directed to her district, from other candidates (CD1, CD 6, etc.)

      1. I think my biggest concern with her is she took some questionable votes.  It's like "Why did you do that?"    Even with some things that wouldn't have benefited her after she lost last fall.  I hope she plans to do better on that front if she gets elected again.

        1. Beyond some votes away from the Democratic Conference's positions, Caraveo's announcement interviews also mention another element:  9News story is: Caraveo launches campaign to reclaim CO-8 seat

          Caraveo became an outspoken advocate for mental health resources during her time in Congress, based on her own experiences with depression and anxiety. 

          Caraveo checked herself into Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C., to seek treatment for depression in April 2024. 

      2. She would have to do a better job on telling her own story, rather than letting the Faux misinformation machine do it for her. Everywhere I went last fall that had Fox on the store TV, and that is still the "news" channel of choice in Colorado, there were scowly photos of Dr. Caraveo threatening to personally flood your neighborhood with criminal immigrants. A low information voter watching this propaganda would think she was also in favor of mandatory abortions and gender changes for your kids.

        I don't know why Dr. Caraveo voted for the resolution condeming VP Harris as the "border czar". It was a bad choice. Maybe she thought she'd redeem herself with the Fox watchers. But in CD8 as in CD3, voters showed that they prefer a real Republican than a "Republican Lite". FWIW, I walked Cd8 for Caraveo in 2020, and probably should have done it again last year.

        Somebody needs to tell the truth, nuances, warts, and all.

  4. Continuing yesterday's conversation about companies providing transparency on their costs. For a coffee shop or local hardware store, probably not that hard. But let's take a look at Windward Studios (my old company).

    Windward licensed document generation software. For example the loan documents on an automobile, the documents for your insurance policy, an offer letter, etc.

    First issue. I could assign the software to the company Dave, Inc. in the Cayman Islands. It then makes Windward the exclusive seller of the software with a license of 70% of gross. So Windward is not totally transparent with its costs of:

    • 70% License to Dave, Inc.
    • 7% Sales commission
    • 15% Tech support
    • 7.9% Overhead

    So there you have it, poor little Windward only makes 0.1% on every sale. Totally transparent. And it's bullshit because of the Dave, Inc. part.

    Second issue. I keep everything under Windward. There are two main products we sold, the template designer and the docgen server. We had customers with 28 designers and 1 server. They felt the designers should be free and we only sell the server. We had customers with 1 designer and 8 servers (producing over a million pages/day). They felt the servers should be free and we only charge for the designers.

    We charged for both. The prices were listed, so public. But how were they set? We discussed it in house, looked at how our competitors priced this, and then set it. You could have very valid arguments that the split should be very different. It's a judgement call. And anyone at either extreeme of number of designers vs number of servers will find the split we had as unfair.

    Then comes the price for the system. Our Nth sale each month had a direct cost of the sales commission. That's it. Fundamentally our only variable cost was the commission. There was a support cost but our software was super easy to use so that only became a real cost if we had to hire another support person.

    So the cost to us of that Nth sale is:

    • 7% sales commission
    • 1% support

    The giant cost is allocating R&D across all the customers. And allocating overhead across all of them. So the true cost is:

    • 7% sales commission
    • 15% support
    • 8% overhead
    • 65% R&D
    • 5% profit

    Note the profit was adding to our bank account so that we could hire more people and have a cushion to keep going if we hit a recission (COVID, Trump, etc.). So everything was put back in to the company.

    Big problem with the above – every customer wanted us to make an exception for just them of not covering the R&D costs. They understood it is needed but couldn't we let just them off? So it's all public now, but people generally don't feel better about it.

    And I swear, the extent people would go to to try and reduce the price (we never did so). Had one person asking for a call with me and 5 people from their end to push for a 5% discount. I said I was happy to explain why not but was it worth the time of all those people to discuss $1,000.00. They decided not.

    Anyways, there you go for your thoughts on making commercial pricing transparent.

  5. Trump hired henchman declares (standing next to the enfeebled, mentally impaired Trump, who is powerless to resolve the matter, of course):

    El Salvador’s Leader Says He Won’t Return Man Who Was Mistakenly Deported

    In an appearance with President Trump, President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador said that the question of returning a Maryland man deported in error was “preposterous.”

    I think you can actually see Trump’s hand up Nayib Bukele’s ass mouthing the words.

    1. This makes me so mad. The casual callousness of this is abhorent.

      It makes me want to steal from Trump, then, when I get called out for it, I should just be able to say "Oh. My bad. I thought that was allowed. I guess I'm not allowed to do that. Oh well, too late now. I can't give it back."

    3. This is a potentially very self-defeating tactic for Trump. Trump (and Bukule) are effectively arguing that once El Salvador has custody of someone, there is nothing the USA can do to force El Salvador to give the person back. The result of being transported to El Salvador is equivalent to the death sentence. Yet Trump wants to impose this fate on anyone and everyone that he deems worthy, without due process. Trump may "win" this one – Kilmar Abrego Garcia may never be returned and may die in prison in El Salvador. But his fate, and the Trump administration's refusal to comply with a court order, will give any reasonable jurist (and maybe the majority of the Supreme Court) reason to pause any future deportation proceedings. Trump has burned every bridge with our trade allies. He is lighting a fire with the rule of law.

      1. This is Trump's direct dare for Roberts and the other Supremes to stand up to him.  No one with half a brain believes Trump couldn't simply wink at Bukule and instruct him to release Abrego Garcia, explaining with profuse praise about the courage and vision of the most great and powerful leader of the free world, nominating Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize for his heroic efforts to pardon Abrego Garcia for his crimes.

        If this doesn’t get a rise out of Roberts, nothing will.

    1. No Republican candidate for Governor is going to get through a Colorado GOP primary with "We don’t need more political games, we need real leadership."

      I'd laugh if it wasn't so sad.

    2. I agree, Doctor. He will probably win the nomination – I mean, Baisley and the Bottoms are his opponents – just on name recognition. He's run a statewide primary before (losing to Heidi Ganahl). He won a congressional race. And in the eyes on many on the modern GOP, he knows how to handle his wife (I'm looking at you, Tate brothers).

      I don't see him coming anywhere close to Bennet or Weiser. He will probably do better than Dan Maes did in 2010 but not as well as Heidi did in 2022. And he sure as hell is no Bob Beauprez or Walker Stapleton.

       

    3. But the primary will be the reason he'll crash and burn in the general election. He'll position himself as a hardcore MAGA conservative (becasue it's become a contest of who's more pro-Trump nowadays) and show how extreme he is for Colorado, bascially doing most of the work to hurt himself. Plus while he may be the only notable Republican candidate in comparison to the others, he's still super obscure for most voters even political junkies like us barely know him. I forgot he existed until now and I'm sure I can't be the only one. 

      1. Airslash, are you talking about Greg Lopez?

        He doesn't have to "posiiton himself as a hardcore MAGA." He was born in that position and he's fossilized in that position ever since.

        Wth the exception of quasi-RINO Barbara Kirkmeyer – who may be offering herself as the Heidi Ganahl of 2026 – they're all pretty hard boiled wing nuts.

        And if Kirkmeyer somehow won the nomination, I'd be curious to see how former state chair Dave Williams responds to that. 

    4. I'm hoping for more, more, more Republicans saying they want to be Governor, then having a very active primary campaign to clarify the differences between them. 

  8. "I don’t want to be too fawning. But this is how you do it." Josh Marshall at TPM.

    (Apologies for publishing the whole commentary)

    You’ve likely seen that Harvard officially and publicly refused the Trump White House’s latest set of demands. You can see the letter here. I would say that if you’re going to read only one letter it should actually be the one the White House (notionally the GSA, HHS and Education) sent to Harvard, which the University published along with its response.

    It’s a very clarifying letter. It’s not too much to say it essentially demands operational control over the whole university or perhaps more specifically a kind of receivership police departments sometimes go into under consent to decrees after they’re caught framing or torturing prisoners. When I first read it I was not … well, certainly not happy to see it but it occurred to me that the demands were not only substantively of an indefensible character but also very tenuous legally. It’s good to have this fight on these grounds because, as I said, they demand to put the entire university under the direct control, down to hiring, curriculum, admissions and more of MAGA operatives. It’s been suggested to me by one person familiar with the university’s decision-making that waiting for the White House to spell out all its demands on paper may have been by design to put the University’s refusal on the surest legal footing. If that’s the case it was smart to wait.

    I’d really recommend reading the letter. Among other things it requires the University to hire a cadre of White House approved commissars to ensure that MAGA conservatives are equally represented not only at the University level but at each individual department, teaching and research ‘unit’ – both in hiring and admissions. The White House demands that every department and unit be “audited” by the outside commissar group for “viewpoint diversity.” Each department or unit found not to have sufficient MAGA representation (defined as “viewpoint diversity”) “must be reformed by hiring a critical mass of new faculty” to “provide viewpoint diversity.” Same language but with respect to admissions. Any department or unit which lacks MAGA representation must admit a bunch of new MAGA “viewpoint diverse” students. Again, it’s just one example.

    I’ll also note that as of today the University’s webpage has been remade into essentially an advertisement for the societal/human impact of university research. The splash headline is ‘Research Powers Progress’ followed by the tagline line: “Research at Harvard—from medicine to technology to education and business—touches countless lives, moving us closer to disease cures, next-generation technology, and a more secure future for millions of people.”

  9. "What distinguishes a concentration camp from a prison, is that it functions outside fo a judicial system. The prisoners are not indicted or convicted of any crime by juicial process." – From the US Holocaust Museum, h/t Mac Burns.
     

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