U.S. Senate
See Full Big Line
(D) J. Hickenlooper*
(R) Somebody
80%
20%
Governor
See Full Big Line
(D) Michael Bennet
(D) Phil Weiser
60%↑
50%↓
Att. General
See Full Big Line
(D) M. Dougherty
(D) Jena Griswold
60%↑
40%↑
Sec. of State
See Full Big Line
(D) A. Gonzalez
(D) J. Danielson
(R) Sheri Davis
50%
40%
30%
State Treasurer
See Full Big Line
(D) Brianna Titone
(D) Jeff Bridges
(R) Kevin Grantham
40%
40%
30%
CO-01 (Denver)
See Full Big Line
(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
See Full Big Line
(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
See Full Big Line
(R) Jeff Hurd*
(D) Somebody
80%
40%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
See Full Big Line
(R) Lauren Boebert*
(D) Trisha Calvarese
(D) John Padora
90%
20%
10%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
See Full Big Line
(R) Jeff Crank*
(D) Somebody
80%
20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
See Full Big Line
(D) Jason Crow*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
See Full Big Line
(D) B. Pettersen*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
See Full Big Line
(R) Gabe Evans*
(D) Manny Rutinel
(D) Yadira Caraveo
45%↓
40%↑
30%
State Senate Majority
See Full Big Line
DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
See Full Big Line
DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
April 23, 2025 08:18 AM UTC
22 Comments
I think Bessent and Lutnick promised Trump three scoops of ice cream if he stopped calling for Fed Chair Jerome Powell's termination. The manic depressive stock market is going wild with the news. Just imagine the market's reaction if Trump states "I haven't launched any nuclear missles against China".
But it seems Bully-boy Trump is trial-ballooning the idea of de-escalating the tariff war against China by cutting them in half (still an absurd 60%).
Give a bully a bloody nose and they will back down.
A new interpretation of MAGA to start the day:
Malice
And
Greed
Abound
I'm impatiently waiting for MAAA.
Making
America
America
Again
Did y’all know that a couple CO Republican state legislators proposed a bill this year to give Colorado a form of its own DOGE? SB 25-135 has already been defeated for the year, but it would’ve created a Colorado Governmental Efficiency Authority, with five of the eight board members from the private sector. Part of the authority’s mission:
I want to hope that we’ll learn some lessons from DOGE and avoid doing stuff like this into the future, but fear it’s only going to get more common. Even with fairly good appreciation for the private sector, I don’t believe they should be able to sink their hooks into everything public. There is one prominent private sector multibillionaire mogul I’m aware of, currently in the “electric car / slashing government” space, who many shareholders believe ought to focus more on his own corporation right now.
Public and private endeavors are different organizations with different purposes – perhaps most significantly because many public endeavors are human services-based and not about profit. We need to start resisting use of the euphemism “efficiency” if it really only means cut-n-gut.
Again, the "Government should be run like a business" is assinine.
100%. Governance is way harder than running a business, which is lost on most businessmen that want to be politicians.
Absolutely. The purpose of a business is to enrich the shareholders. The purpose of government is to serve the citizens under that government. In a democracy, the citizens are the shareholders.
Not necessarily. A business must be profitable or it's gone. But the priorities of a business are different for every business. At Microsoft the priority was to get everyone using their software. Granted, that led to gigantic profits. But the goal of us working was to own the market.
At Windward (my company) our goals were explicitly:
And again, make a profit because that enabled us to grow.
The successful companies tend to be driven by something other than enrichment of the shareholders.
One could argue if one plays their cards right, those three aims (or some variation of them) could help you achieve the fourth. Different businesses offer different things, and have different philosophies governing them. But they HAVE to make money. That's not a bad thing. It's just a fact of life. The point is that government is a fundamentally different entity than business.
My original intent never was to say "business bad, public sector good" anyway. The state bill was to put a probably-part-time panel including 5 people from the private sector partially in charge of EXAMINING EVERY STATE AGENCY… I mean, a monumental task that a small panel just couldn't do justice in any reasonable amount of time. No telling what prejudices and assumptions would color the panel's judgment about what to recommend slashing, but I think the real doge has gotten too much traction out of definitions of what constitutes "waste, fraud and abuse" that come from Musk or his inner circle. And we ought to at least consider that public layoffs could pave the way for tax cuts or removal of regulations that protect health and safety. But I have all the respect in the world for lawful and ethical private sector corporations that provide our goods and services. Government needs to be balanced and measured in what they do to the private sector as well.
Speaking as someone who has dived into trying to learn what the CEO and PUC does – understanding just one little part of the government is a full time job.
Government doesn't make a profit, but it is constrained by the budget. There are simularities.
And for companies it's not always the profit limiting it. About 15% of the time, like the great recession, income limited what we could do. But 85% of the time our limitation was not being able to hire the people we needed to grow.
There's complexity to the money/budget in both.
And your business is fundamentally different than government. You don't have three branches. You don't have constitutional limitations on your power or modes of actions. You are less subject to public reporting and recordkeeping requirements.
Putting it mildly. I serve in local government and 3 or more of us elected officials cannot even talk with each other at the same time unless the "meeting' was posted as a public meeting, open to anyone who wants to sit in. Would business managers want to work that way? I don't think so. And the public sector need/requirement to be fair, to bid everything out publicly, to listen to everyone, to provide fair ground rules for public engagement – and on and on. Businesses might find it a bit difficult to survive in the environment in which government is required to work.
I recall the first time I heard someone say, "Government should be run like a business." I unequivocally and firmly disagree.
You have stated, very well I might add, a fundamental reason that is not so. The bottom line is that corporations and businesses exist to make profit. Profit is a very selfish player.
Exactly. Public officials have to adhere to higher standards, which is as it should be. Yet, businessmen (mostly men) think they can "cut through the red tape" and make things run better. Just like trump's casinos (airline, university, etc.), failure is usually inevitable. But the arrogance keeps bringing them back. So tiresome
Colorado has a constitutionally mandated and statutorily authorized position of State Auditor. The auditor's office conducts performance, financial, and IT audits of all state departments and agencies, public universities, the courts, special purpose authorities, and other state entities. They focus on reducing costs, increasing efficiency, promoting legislative intent, improving the quality of programs and services, ensuring transparency and integrity, and holding government agencies accountable. Given what already exists, maybe there is no reason to create a "meme" coin entity.
Speaking of memecoin – the big doge worries the hell out of me because they're accessing data in a way that I would never approve as a public official, and we just don't have dependable assurances that it won't lead to attempted malfeasance or misappropriation. I don't think I would've been as worried about malfeasance or hacking with the proposed CO state bill, but my trust has been severely tested this year. Meanwhile, state auditing is a pretty robust process.
Yep … and if people want more of the Auditor's work, they could expand a budget or find a way to recruit competent people to work within the structure as pro bono contributors.
What Will a Nuclear Plant Cost, and How Long to Build?
Bottom line is we don't know. But here's an educated guess.
The past is the best predictor of the future. Folks should examine the history of the nuclear industry since the '40's and '50's.
The problem is we stopped building for decades. Restarting has problems. Vogtle 4 was cheaper then Vogtle 3. And Korea is building them for 5B – 7B now.
But yeah, when you have very few data points, there's a fair degree of uncertainty. But if we let that stop us we wouldn't do any large software efforts – they have a worse track record than nuclear.