Living in Colorado

 

Wonderful Picture

Photo taken by Jo Stanko, an old friend, from their ranch house SW of Steamboat Springs. Nothing political; just something to share. Locally that is called Sleeping Giant, officially Elk Mountain.

No, President Trump didn’t step on his pee pee

Truman famous desk plaque, “The Buck Stops Here”, applies to all Presidents. Big job, requires subordinates to deal with the minutia, and errors will be made. Given the hyper TDS infecting everything political, any chance to make the President look bad won’t be missed. Such is the case here.

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Perhaps better questions are who hired this individual in the first place, and who was his supervisor?

He has been confirmed by the Senate. Defense lawyers in Wyoming will continue their work for their clients but this will likely drop off the news cycle.

Colorado Specific

A summation of this year’s legislative super majority session by the Independence Institute is offered. In previous blog I’ve covered TABOR (Taxpayers Bill of Rights) addition to the Colorado Constitution from the 1970’s when Colorado was red. The state has a tax surplus and the (P)regressives are relentless in trying to find ways to spend it rather than return the surplus to the citizens.

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A left wing point of view.

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Brave Marine

The Veterans Administration held a, “Struggling with Technology”, help clinic in a nearby town. I decided this Latter Day Luddite should get the VA app on his phone and showed up for help.

The young volunteer was a Marine originally from Coney Island. After well over an hour and many attempts, the app is installed and working on my phone.

I suspect his next move was to find a bar and get a stiff drink.

Emperor Polis, wanna be 2028 President

He grants clemency to a man who shot at two cops, wounding one, on National Law Enforcement Memorial Day. Duh!

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He gets national notice for “pardoning” Tina Peters, Mesa County Clerk and Recorder, in prison for voting mistakes. He didn’t pardon her, he commuted her sentence. She is still a convicted felon and will be on parole for the rest of her life.

All the (P)regressives are OUTRAGED!

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He responded in a speech.

“I think this will be remembered fondly,” Polis said at The Colorado Sun’s annual legislative recap event at the University of Denver. “The nation needs to have a reconciliation and healing.

Sounding “Presidential” he continued.

“People know I’m a man of action,” he added. “I’m a bold person, I’m going to do things that I think are right, and that’s why people put me here. They want me to do things that I think are right.”

Trump Lite?

Car Story

 This isn’t a story of misadventures. Rather, one of, “If you don’t quit, you don’t lose”.

 My boss, Steve Lance, aka Little Hitler, had a vision of holding car sales in smaller towns across Colorado to promote Kia, then an obscure Korean built car. He had found a man in Indiana who was an “expert”, brought him to Colorado, purchased an RV to convert into a mobile sales office, and held the first sale in a nearby town. The sale was less than a success. The General Manager, Greg Miller and Steve brought me into an office and offered me the job of organizing these sales. Huh!

 “Tank, you are bored selling trucks”, Steve said. “You need a challenge”. We started negotiating. Imagine three stubborn men, all of whom were negotiators by trade, hammering out a position that didn’t, and had never in their experience, existed.

My demand was absolute authority. I answered to Steve and Greg only; nobody else in the organization had any authority over my actions. Rarely granted in the car biz, I demanded a monthly guarantee, win, lose or draw. I wanted expenses including a vehicle, either mine or one of the companies, to be included. After the next sale was less than successful, they agreed. What followed was several exhilarating years doing tasks that were unique and without any blueprint.

The man Steve brought in had a relationship with a man whose expertise was direct mail advertising. A problem was advertising, as the small town newspapers and radio stations were reluctant to work with us, fearing the wrath of their local dealers. With this direct mail operation, we could create and place in every mailing address or post office box an eye popping flyer that worked. Long after a sale in some town was over, people would arrive at one of our dealerships with an flyer asking, “Can you still do this?”

 “No, but we can come very close. Let us see what we can do. Hey manager”.  

Steve would tell me, “This is what I want done. This is when I want it done. This is where I want it done. Do it right, do it legal, and don’t cut corners”. Then, he only wanted to hear back that the job was done, or if not, why. For his own mental health, he preferred not knowing how I got the job done.

The Obama years were a disaster for the car biz and I moved on, drawing on my experiences in construction related activities, among other opportunities. 

 Life is simple. Get up every morning and start putting one foot in front of the other. Inertia is the enemy.

 As always, YMMV