The SchwabBlog

"Feasting on junk info"

2012-02-06T13:55:00.000-07:00

ronntorossian.com

There is one story in the Sunday Denver Post you should not miss, a piece in the Perspective section headlined: "We are feasting on junk info," by Clay Johnson, who originally wrote the piece for the Los Angeles Times.

"When you click on the computer, remember that clicks have consequences," Johnson wrote.

And he's more than right.

The information explosion brought on by the Internet, the engine powering this very blog, has caused a lot of wasted time, wasted reading, and a worldwide degradation of human comprehension, a true understanding of what we know and don't know about the world.

The reason for that last gargantuan opinion is that the Internet has changed our reading and writing habits. Even this blog is written short for a reason. I, the writer, am afraid I cannot hold your attention for longer than the time it takes you to read the words I put down here.

That's first a function of my writing skill, but secondly a realization that "writing short" is the style that has evolved for writing on the Internet.

If you read the daily emailed news report from The New York Times and only glance at the headlines and read the blurb rather than click through the link for the full story for fear you might have to pay for it -- "clicks have consequences" -- you now understand what I am writing about.

Johnson says it better:

"Our news is largely provided by conglomerates focused on the bottom line, and they have figured out that shrill opinions and celebrity hype draw more eyes than facts and substance. To the handul of billion-dollar corporations providing much of our news, journalistic integrity equals market inefficiency. Fear, opinion and gossip are less expensive to manufacture and draw bigger audiences than the truth."

If you haven't clicked on the link to the full Johnson column in the Post that I provided above, you should do it now so you can comprehend the fullness of his argument.

Johnson also is the author of "The Information Diet: a Case for Conscious Consumption," and he has written the column not only to further the argument of his book, but also to market the tome by seizing some space in the Los Angeles newspaper, and now the Denver newspaper as well.

That's how you market books and yourself nowadays. By adding to the information feast Johnson complains about; a surfeit that this blog, too, tries to become part of, a tasty appetizer included occasionally on my readers' information menu.

Hope you enjoy.

And by the way, I was serious about the Johnson piece being the one piece in all the Sunday Post that you wouldn't want to miss.

In the Chemo Room, again

2012-01-31T15:30:00.000-07:00

Well, I was back in a Chemo Room all day on Friday, although I was only there to take two pills and have my blood tested nine times over 11 hours, and to collect every drop of urine I could pee.

I'm entering a new clinical trial for a drug that has been widely tested on others and that is now given orally and requires me to keep a diary of the times I take it twice a day at home. The pee collection continued at home, too, for the remainder of 24 hours. You have to refrigerate the pee until your next appointment when you bring it in and they finish checking out how quickly your body takes up and disposes of the chemical.

So after that first day, you go in once a week so they can retest your blood and urine. After a while, I'm sure they'll scan me to see if the drug -- this one is called Estybon (rigsertib) and designated ON 01910.Na for the study -- is working any magic on my tumors.

It's still a Phase 1 study, but the clinical trial has gone on so long that the docs have pretty much determined what the best dose is, especially regarding peoples' tolerance to its side effects.

The goal of the study now is to determine how effective it can be at stabilizing the growth and spread of tumors in advanced-cancer patients. It's manufactured by Onconova Therapeutics, a small drug maker out of Newton, Pa., and Pennington, N.J.

I was told I was one of the few colorectal cancer patients being tested at least locally, but the company says this about its drug:

ESTYBON (rigosertib) is a novel multikinase inhibitor, with selective cytotoxic effects on tumor cells without impact on normal cells.... A significant effect of ESTYBON in cancer cells is the induction of multiple centrosomes during cell division, resulting in a multi-polar spindle and total disorganization of the mitotic apparatus, a phenomenon called chromosomal catastrophe….

Given the unique mechanism of action on tumor cell survival pathways, ESTYBON has the potential to be active against a wide variety of cancers.... Early clinical results from ESTYBON combination studies with either oxaliplatin or gemcitabine indicate rapid response in pancreatic, breast, colon, ovarian, and lymphoma patients, suggesting multiple indications for solid tumors.

That's typically dense language for cancer-drug descriptions, but it is what we patients find hopeful even if we don't understand all of it.

I'm still feeling out the side effects this drug will produce in me. The consent forms I signed list practically every side effect known to cancer patients as having been experienced by 2 percent of the people who have been enrolled in the trial. That means only that two out of 100 enrolled patents have experienced just one of the side effects in the long list.

If you give enough cancer patients any drug over a long period of time, you can bet that one will feel at least one side effect he or she has experienced on some other chemo drug and claim it is a repeat of that symptom under the new drug. That's the nature of clinical trials.

I reported more familiar symptoms under the first "study drug" I took than I think the docs wanted to count, but they were required to count them even though I'm sure they thought I was re-imagining old hurts and past responses.

The big side effects to look for under this drug are fatigue, nausea, diarrhea, decreased appetite, and painful urination. I'm happy to report none of them so far, although it seems I am dancing with diarrhea again. The condition encourages anticipation anxiety, so you don't really know what you've got until it hits. One thing is sure: I have no decreased appetite to report.

And I was able to play croquet on Monday, and drink a beer while once again losing the game. Who can ask more of life than a pleasant game of croquet?

Vectra Bank's forecast counters local good vibe

2012-01-18T23:29:00.001-07:00

I walked into Vectra Bank Colorado's economic forecast breakfast Wednesday and quickly ran into the always optimistic Tim Jackson. President/CEO of the Colorado Automobile Dealers Association, Jackson bubbled about a 13.7 percent sales increase for his industry in November, and said he hoped that Colorado dealers would finish the year posting a full 14 percent gain for 2011.

Jackson then introduced me to Andy Rogers, general manager of the Ritz-Carlton Denver, who said December was the best month of the year for the downtown luxury hotel, and he agreed with Jackson's ebullience over how Colorado's economy seemed to be picking up.

Then I sat down to listen to Vectra's speakers for the day:

Patty Silverstein, who delivered the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce's and Metro Denver Economic Development Corp.'s 2012 economic forecast;
Mark Snead, vice president and economist at the Denver Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City; and,
George Feiger, CEO of an investment firm in San Francisco, a past member of the Vectra Bank board of directors, and a frequent commentator on Bloomberg News, Fox Business News and in the Wall Street Journal.

Man, what a downer!

Silverstein told the crowd in the Seawall Ballroom at the Denver Center for Performing Arts that 2012 was a time for Colorado and metro Denver to "rebuild," but that the rebuilding will be "slow" because consumers are still being frugal; jobs will grow only about 1.1 percent both nationally and locally, leaving 123,000 people in metro Denver still looking desperately for work; "wages have been growing relatively slowly" in the region; and home prices may get boosted 3 percent at most during the year.

Snead, of the Denver office of the Fed, told the 400 business people: "It could be worse, it could be a lot worse. You could be in Greece."

And then he pointed out that Greece and the United States "have just about the same amount of debt."

The U.S., of course, is better equipped to handle that debt, Snead said. It is much bigger, and most of its population isn't drinking ouzo out on the beach. But still the comparison can be made; and, in general, Snead kept repeating, the U.S. and world economies during 2012 will mostly be "bottoming, not accelerating."

And then, with coffee in the room growing cold, Feiger took the lectern and told everybody the euro zone would definitely fail before it got better; China is actually in worse shape than its Communist leaders will ever let on; at least the U.S. is "the least bad place to be" in the world today; and nothing about what he was telling all the business leaders, who are generally paid to be optimistic about the outlooks for their firms, was funny.

"It's very far from funny," Feiger added.

No one was laughing as everybody headed for the doors.

4 bankers ready to lend

2012-01-11T16:29:00.000-07:00

Dana Bondy, senior vice president for business banking at Colorado State Bank and Trust, likes to make lists, and so he made one during a panel discussion Wednesday on small business access to capital. Not a "top" 10, and in no particular order, here is his list:

1. Communicate with your lenders, sharing both good and bad news about your business.
2. Get behind your results, to take credit for your successes, and accountability for your losses.
3. Ask a lot of questions of your banker or lender.
4. Listen to your lender's answers to those questions. He or she provides an honest perspective on the risk and potential presented by your business proposition.
5. Expect great partners in your lenders. Expect them to return your calls, and be quick to return theirs.
6. Get specific when asking for money.
7. Work with the decision-maker on your loan.
8. Connect to business-finance resources like SCORE, a group of retired execs who do business counseling, or SBA or your local Small Business Development Center, all of which give free advice.
9. Connect with your peers. Many small business owners have already experienced the problems you may be facing in operating your business. Learn from their experience.
10. Shop your loan request around until you find the lender who wants to loan you money; any banker's advice about your business proposal, even if he or she turns down the loan, is valuable to you as a business operator.

Bondy was one of four bankers who spoke at a forum on access to capital hosted Wednesday by U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette. Bondy was joined on the panel by Mark Abell, of Vectra Bank Colorado; Mary Rogers; of JPMorgan Chase, who said she was the national spokeswoman for Chase on small business; Alan Ramirez, senior commerical loan officer at the Colorado Enterprise Fund; and Greg Lopez, Colorado district director of the Small Business Administration.

The bankers' collectively suggested a willingness to lend to business owners who did their homework and presented viable proposals, but they also admitted their institutions might be among the nine of ten who rejects a loan proposal before one institution accepts it from a specific business owner.

That was the point of Bondy's 10th item on his list. Just because a banker doesn't review your loan proposal favorably doesn't mean he or she can't teach you something about the proposal while reviewing it. Take all the advice you can get and move on to the next banker.

Access to capital is a traditional complaint of small business owners, and Rogers from Morgan Chase admitted credit got very tight during the financial crisis of 2008-2009.

But she said her bank's loan window didn't close altogether; it lent $8 billion in business loans during 2009 and has been increasing that number by multiples of billions ever since, looking forward to another increase in 2012.

Abell of Vectra Bank said Vectra didn't change their lending policies throughout the crisis years, and he gave examples of borrowers who backed up their proposals with good information and obtained loans even during the hard times. Ramirez explained the Colorado Enterprise Fund's goal is to lend to companies that cannot obtain capital elsewhere. He said the fund loaned $3.1 million in 2011, averaging $30,000 a loan.

SBA district director Greg Lopez said it was a moral obligation for the people on the panels to help small businesses succeed. He said SBA in Colorado guaranteed 1,425 loans with a value of $619 million last year.

He also said SBA is about to roll out a program that will partially guarantee loans based on contracts the borrower holds with customers. Contracts, or the promise of future revenue, traditionally have not been considered collateral, preventing many firms from obtaining the capital they need.

Denver chamber to the leg: 'We're coming in as strong as ever'

2012-01-09T17:11:00.000-07:00

Kelly Brough, president and CEO of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, told lawmakers and business friends Monday the chamber expects to exert its influence on big issues at the state Capitol this year, but always with small business in mind.

"We're coming in as strong as ever," Brough told legislative leaders and others gathered in the Old Supreme Court Chambers to hear the chamber's legislative agenda for 2012.

She then spelled out the biggest business issues facing lawmakers: refunding the unemployment insurance trust fund, and deciding on the future of the state's successful workers' compensation system.

And in the realms of what the chamber considers the three "pillars" of an economically viable state government -- health care, transportation and education -- Brough made it clear the state's largest business organization will continue to support a state health-insurance exchange, the funding of FasTracks, the metrowide light-rail public transportation system, and new methods of financing public schools and higher education.

"Our economy depends on their (students') ability to graduate from high school," she said.

Those are big issues that require public funding -- tax money -- which is always a sensitive issue for small business owners.

But Brough kept pointing out that Colorado is a state with a business community that is 90 percent small business, companies with 100 or fewer employees, including many, many one-man or one-woman shops. She suggested any solutions to the state's economic problems must be crafted with that small business community top of mind.

Yet strangely, the only issue that was raised during the presentation that generated a mild debate was over a bill State Sen. Betty Boyd said would be introduced to give Colorado businesses and employers preference when it came to state purchasing contracts.

A questioner in the audience asked if Boyd had considered the downside of such legislation, and House Speaker Frank McNulty piped in, "The concern is a real concern."

McNulty said if the Senate, where Democrats hold a majority, passed such a bill it would get close scrutiny in the House, where Republicans hold a one-vote advantage. McNulty said such bills often create "hurdles" for business people who operate best with the least government interference.

The new legislative session starts Wednesday.

Microgrids grow energy independence

2011-12-28T13:32:00.000-07:00

Being energy independent by becoming your own distributor of electricity is an idea spreading among college campus administrators and the military -- to the point that soldiers in Afghanistan are already creating their own battlefield microgrids, according to an expert who predicts a 164 percent growth in generation capacity for campus microgrids over the next six years.

Yet the U.S. commercial/industrial sector, which includes large and small businesses that could benefit from generating and distributing their own power, is the least active of five industry groups in the developing market for microgrids, which Peter Asmus, a San Francisco-based analyst for Boulder's Pike Research, estimates will reach $777 million by 2017 for campus microgrids alone.

Commerical/industrial, especially small business, is "lagging a little bit" compared with other sectors' investigations of the benefits of microgrids and distributed power generation, Asmus said. "They're waiting for these [methods] to be validated," he said.

I wrote about Pike Research on this blog a little more than a year ago, and find its spotlight on cleantech markets a fascinating look into the future of American business. It also suggests promising markets for small businesses hoping to become vendors and suppliers to the bigger players in cleantech industries. Or to become bigger players themselves.

Asmus said distributed energy -- the local generation of power to serve onsite users, a long standing practice of college campuses using diesel fuel to generate power and now renewable sources like wind and solar -- is still "a small piece of the energy portfolio," but microgrids for distribution of such energy are increasingly considered adjunct enterprises to protect institutions from blackouts and sometimes to sell energy to create revenue.

"In the U.S.," Asmus said, "utilities will pay people to go off their systems" during peak periods in order to preserve capacity for their own customers.

Military bases in the U.S. are especially sensitive to power outages and are seeking to create their own microgrids to avoid dependence on a supplier subject to shortages. Asmus said soldiers in Afghanistan are already using "mobile" grids they can set up out of backpacks in the field.

Asmus' report suggests five groups of power users investigating greater use of microgrids: campus users (which includes business parks, college campuses, and large-company campuses); the military; remote users (mostly in developing countries that lack nationwide power grids for distribution); community/utilities (which are popular in Europe, especially in countries like Denmark which draws 25 percent of its total energy from wind); and finally commerical/industrial in the United States. He said some utilities in the U.S. are beginning to see the wisdom of creating microgrids for servicing customers off the national power grid.

Creating a microgrid is "relatively easy" when there is a single owner involved. Multiple owners of a grid, such as the many firms located in a business park, are more difficult to service and regulate.

By 2017, Asmus estimates installed generation capacity for microgrids will increase 164 percent from 620 megawatts to 1.6 gigawatts, with most of that coming from the campus sector worldwide.

Voters can save America

2011-12-01T09:55:00.000-07:00

It's not often that news, analysis and even your friends' opinions converge to make clear what's been happening to make the American voter so damned mad!

Here's Floyd Norris from the New York Times on Sunday:

"In the eight decades before the recent recession, there was never a period when as much as 9 percent of U.S. gross domestic product went to companies in the form of after-tax profits. Now the figure is over 10 percent. During the same period, there never was a quarter when wage and salary income amounted to less than 45 percent of the economy. Now the figure is below 44 percent."

Here's Benjamin Wallace-Wells in a New York magazine profile of Mitt Romney's record as an executive at Bain Capital, a company he helped create:

"Romney was also a business revolutionary. Our economy went through a remarkable shift during the eighties as Wall Street reclaimed control of American business and sought to remake it in its own image. Romney developed one of the tools that made this possible, pioneering the use of takeovers to change the way a business functioned, remaking it in the name of efficiency."

And here is Tim Correll, a lawyer friend of mine who has a sharp eye for what is happening as the sand washes out from under the feet of middle class America:

"I've had it with these class villains who argue that the one percent are 'job creators' who won't create jobs if they get a tax increase. For starters, lets note that entrepreneurs don't create jobs, consumers create jobs. Our greatest job growth over an extended priod of time took place from 1950 to 1980. During that time the top marginal tax rate was ninety, yes, that's right, NINETY, percent -- 90%, but we had soldiers coming home, unemployed men who were skilled in the scutty blue-collar skills of war, but we funded the GI bill (with those taxes on the one percent) and those GIs went to school and bought houses and spent money and the economy grew and grew and grew. (I'm 67 years old and through all my growing up years I never saw a year where my father -- a university professor -- didn't get a raise.) and things just kept getting better. We built the interstate highway system, creating huge winners in the petroleum and automobile industry, cars went from $500 to $3,000, and gas went from $0.15 a gallon to $0.85 a gallon, and families went from riding buses to buying homes with two cars in the garage. That's what it was like when we built a nation where the cost was shared based upon everyone's ability to pay. Tax those constipated assholes that have no patriotism, no loyalty and think of no one but themselves, and -- you know what -- we'll be the better country we used to be, and they'll still make money."

I find it "amusing," as my friend Ken Bugosh would say, watching media types like Charlie Rose trying to make sense of the Occupy Wall Street movement when the destruction of the middle class has been a two-decade process that was hardly invisible. "News to me!" the mainstream media is saying now, which is as much a symptom of that industry's decline as is the fact I now read the Denver Post online.

News becomes news nowadays only when New York, and, yes, Wall Street, finally notices. But it takes good journalists like Norris to document the little recognized, big-picture facts that accumulate along the way of a nation's decline. And by documenting them, make possible the opportunity for the nation to react to such statistics.

It takes American politicians, however, much too long to read the tea leaves and actually enact legislation to change the things that are happening to us. And yet, if only the political elite would wake up to voters' needs, even our current Congress and state legislature in Colorado still have time to make important changes that will shape our future.

The Romney profile was the first piece of journalism I have seen that actually showed why and how he became a wealthy businessman, a credit he now claims qualifies him to become the next president. But the story shows, too, just how souless Romney's policy making becomes because he values the American investor over the American worker.

Yesterday, I asked a Hispanic receptionist at a business I was visiting whether she would vote for Obama, and she quickly shook her head: no, no, no. I left saying, Well, don't forget who you will be voting for then!

If Mitt Romney is the Republican nominee opposing Obama's re-election, then perhaps the stark difference between a president who cares for all the American people and a candidate whose life has demonstrated his disregard for common people and overwrought concern for the wealthy will be prominently illustrated by the television campaign ads sure to accompany the 2012 election campaign.

Let's hope so. Because news and analysis and even the opinions of friends converge to provide a stark illustration of what truly is happening in America today. The nation's common-man soul is being crushed by the success of wealth in these United States.

Only the American voter can reverse that tragic trend.

In the Chemo Room: Out with a tumor

2011-11-16T17:16:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting at my computer on the day after a thoracic surgeon, John D. Mitchell, took out a relatively large colorectal tumor from my trachea, and I've been left wondering if all the muscle soreness in my body (as if at age 64 and totally out of shape I had just played in a two-hour pick-up, touch football game) is the result of not taking the heavy pain killers they usually give you after a major surgery?

Is that the pain they are trying to kill? Is it pain that results from full-body anesthesia? No matter where the surgery?

Because that's most of the pain I am feeling today on the day after. A mild sore throat, and little chest pain, but they pulled the tumor (literally) from the wall of the trachea and kept me overnight at the University of Colorado Cancer Center to make sure they didn't also pull out a hole in the trachea wall, which would have caused me further problems.

They did the work with a bronchoscope and had they accidentally pulled open a hole in the wall of the tube from my throat to my lungs, they would have had to split open my chest to go in and repair it. That's why I am home today; they did not open a hole, and I was released this morning as my over-all-aching increased by the minute.

But this has been the latest chapter in my fight from the Chemo Room against this four-and-a-half- year-old case of colorectal cancer.

The tumor grew in my throat while I was enrolled in a clinical trial testing a drug that had mild-to- moderate side effects and held most of the rest of the many tumors in my lungs and chest in check during the test. But then I started coughing badly, they ran a CT scan and looked closely, and ordered up the bronchoscopy.

So now I've been dropped from the trial because it was clear the drug I was receiving and have written about here before wasn't doing as good a job as we were thinking it was doing. But the trachea is a strange place for colorectal cancer to matastisize, so you can probably blame my individual cancer for the unexpected response to the drug.

The good thing is they found the tumor before it stopped my breathing altogether; they learned a little something about the drug; I'm breathing better now and no longer coughing as much. The bad thing is the tumor could grow back from the place where it was taken from, and the rest of the cancer mets (metastases) remain in my lungs and chest cavity (lymph nodes) and must be dealt with.

So you could call this chapter of In the Chemo Room, 'In, Out and Back Into the Chemo Room' because that's where I'm destined to return. As soon as all these aches and pains go away and my body heals from the surgery.

Dr. Wells Messersmith, my oncologist now, said he'd find a new way to treat me, which probably will involve a new clinical trial. But that's what the Cancer Center has come to be known for nationally in a very short time.

And that's why Mitchell, one of the nation's best thoracic surgeons I am told, is working there on patients like me. You can't say I'm not getting the best of care. And so are hundreds and hundreds of others who are passing through the center's gates.

Precision toolmaker wants to keep hiring

2011-11-02T14:25:00.000-06:00

Patrick Stacy has hired five new employees, including an engineer, in the last three months. "I'm a toolmaker," he said. "My mentor used to say a toolmaker's job is never done."

Stacy Machine & Tooling in Broomfield has grown over 30 years from a a one-man shop in Boulder to a $2 million, computer-aided-design and computer-aided-manufacturing shop with 21 employees and an owner who wants to make it bigger.

Stacy is one of those small-business owners defended by Republicans who argue against any increase in taxes by saying it will keep small businesses from hiring new people.

And yet Pat Stacy, who reached the ranks of the wealthy business owner only in 2011, his best year ever, still plans to expand and grow if only banks will help him finance the growth.

He says he has plenty of demand. "Global warming's been very good" to the instrument manufacturers that supply the research industries around Boulder, Stacy says. "Demand is coming from funding through the government," he added. "NASA contracts, Department of Energy contracts, Department of Defense contracts, all of these special research projects that are going on for the green stuff. We don't see a lot of green or solar; but we're just starting to see some of that."

Testimony, I guess, to the effectiveness of the stimulus spending that has been denigrated for three years of the Obama administration.

But Stacy's very success meeting that demand has now put him on President Obama's "hit list," he said. His income and profits this year will push through the $250,000 level that has long been considered a break point for increasing taxes on the wealthy.

"I'm finally getting to be where the politicians start taking aim," he said. But he said that's a problem 30 years in the making, and one most small business owners would welcome as a mark of achievement. It forces them to make decisions, however.

Most business owners struggle all their lives to get to a point where their business generates a little personal wealth -- "the time you're almost successful and actually get to be a player," Stacy said -- but then the "compromises" every business owner makes get a little more complicated.

Do you take a tax break that gains you the $60,000 you might plow back into your business for a new employee or a new piece of equipment? Or do you take it as a bonus or a raise, and bump up your tax liability.

"Growing a business, you're always making compromises," Stacy said. And growing his business, even after 30 years, is still Pat Stacy's primary goal for Stacy Manufacturing. His current plant at 2810 Industrial Lane in Broomfield is leased to buy, and the property has plenty of ground for expansion.

But banks for the past three years have not been willing to lend small business the money they need to to expand, he says. "These banks are all paralyzed. They will not loan money."

"Until they can get the banks to let go and finance people like me and people like a lot of other people who are highly leveraged in their business ...," Stacy says his voice trailing off.

"I'm up to here in debt," he said, "I've always been up to here in debt." But his business and others "still survive" and he believes "the rules have to change a little bit" to allow a real recovery to gain any momentum.

Pat Stacy got his degree in political science so he watches the way political winds blow, and he's not afraid to express his opinions.

"I love history, politics and all the other things of the world," he said, and it would seem some of those wider interests keep firing the childhood mechanical curiosity that lured him into the precision tooling business he has created. Hear the poetry in this description of one machine's operations:

"This eight-thousanths diameter copper wire, it cuts this underwater, deionized water.... you program it, you make a little fixture, you put it up there and you watch that little wire go cut it underneath the water with a beautiful blue flame, a blue arc."

Or in this position on Wall Street financiers vs. small business owners:

"If you're a stock broker and you're making deals and never get out of your seat and you make a quarter million dollars or a million dollars, should that be taxed a little different than maybe the money I make as a manufacturer, or as a farmer would make, or another kind of small business guy?"

Or: "Now you can put motives into the banking industry, whatever your want. You can put motives of: 'Hey, they're not lending money because they want to see Obama fail ... ' (but) the bottom line is the banks have money, somebody has money, and they're not lending it unless you're so rich you've got money coming out of your pockets."

There is a table in the front lobby of Pat Stacy's manufacturing plant; it's crowded with stainless steel and titanium parts he says he and his employees have made that now fly in space or rest in the joints of people who have had body parts replaced. On a wall nearby is his company's ISO certification, and you can tell Pat Stacy is pretty proud of the business he has made.

You can tell, too, that if he gets some financing he's going to make Stacy Manufacturing bigger by filling out his current second shift or by buying some newer machine to replace some of the "ancient" 1991 models his workers now use.

You can tell that because, even if he has made the politicians' "hit list" and his hard-earned "wealth" remains always at risk, Stacy believes what his mentor taught him long ago:

"A toolmaker's work is never done."

Online startup: Colorado Business Express

2011-10-28T15:46:00.000-06:00

The state this week launched Colorado Business Express, an online business registration service where budding business owners can file the state documents required to open up shop.

John D. Conley, executive director of the Statewide Internet Portal Authority, which overlooks the official website for Colorado, said five new businesses jumped on the service the first day it went live during a soft launch before Monday's formal start.

"People found it without us doing any type of advertising, which to us shows the demand is there," Conley said. "Especially in this economy, people are creating their own businesses, starting their own businesses" but "not being able to afford a business-filing attorney, (they) are trying to get through it on their own."

Conley said it took nine to twelve months to launch the service, which reversed the approach to online filings offered by three state agencies -- the Secretary of State, the Department of Revenue and the Department of Labor and Employment -- from an agency perspective, where forms served the agency's purpose of data entry, to the perspective of a user.

"That's why we went with the wizard approach," he said, "where the small business owner for the first time only has to focus on answering the questions. They don't have to understand the regulatory language or the red tape, if you will."

I tried the wizard briefly and found it takes you nicely to the places where you want to go, including the Internal Revenue Service for a tax ID if you need one. Once you move off the state pages, however, following things like IRS instructions remain as traditionally confusing as ever.

But state documentation remains easy. You have to have an already established business or trade name to follow the wizards, but if you don't have that, the Express will take you to the Secretary of State's website to get one for $1. The site's functionality so far allows you to apply for a state sales-tax license, an employee wage withholding account and an unemployment insurance account, and may, in the future, integrate other functions as well, Conley said.

You may have read in the Denver Post about a shake up in the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade that is intended to sharpen the state's focus on retaining and attracting jobs in Colorado.

Small-business hiring has always been a critical driver of state employment, so the Colorado Business Express, if it paves a way for faster business startups, serves that agenda well. Check it out.

In the Chemo Room: Integrative medicine

2011-10-17T13:32:00.000-06:00

I'm in a clinical trial of a drug alphanumerically designated by its maker Genentech Inc. as MEHD7945A, as if it were a star or a galaxy.

The drug has shown some benefit to me so far. It has reduced my lung tumors slightly, and kept other tumors stable. That, besides some moderate side effects, is the drug's benefit.

But my enrollment in the trial is a result of past chemotherapy treatments losing their effectiveness. Standard treatments no longer control the growth of tumors in my lungs and lymph nodes in my chest cavity; the new drug seems to be doing that.

But even as I take the drug and monitor myself for its effects, I have always been interested in what are called alternative or complimentary treatments for my cancer. They include diet, physical exercise, reduction of stress, spiritual and psychological exercise, dietary supplements and just about anything else someone might suggest to a cancer patient.

The suggestions can be overwhelming and an oncologist often will poo poo them as unscientific and not worth your bother.

But I listened to a 90-minute Colon Cancer Alliance webinar called Integrative Medicine: Wellness Throughout Treatment and Surviorship earlier this month and heard something I have wanted to hear ever since I began my own scattershot research of alternatives to chemotherapy.

Mary Hardy, a doctor and medical director of the Simms/Mann UCLA Center for Integrative Oncology, finally put an end to across-the-board dismissals of alternatives:

"I like to choose interventions from this arena that have scientific evidence where it is available," Hardy cautioned from her own scientific background.

She added, "The evidence base for what kind of diet, for what kind of supplements, for what kind of effects, is much smaller than it is for the chemotherapy medications that you'll be offered. But there is a body of evidence and it is growing, and when people are making recommendations for you in this area, they should be aware of this evidence, aware of these studies, and use them appropriately."

Hardy went on to share what she knew of the most-talked-about alternatives, first saying: "The best wellness plan is one that is tailored to you."

She suggested finding a knowledgeable coach to help you craft your own response to your disease, and she said to inform your oncologist of what you are doing so he or she can respond as well. Some chemotherapy drugs can be rendered less effective by certain dietary supplements.

Her basic components of a plan were simple:

Optimize your diet.
Exercise regularly.
Maintain a healthy weight.
Practice regular stress management.

Hardy's presentation -- you can listen to the whole show by clicking on the link above and then clicking on "Launch Presentation" -- was actually the second part of the webinar.

Anne Coscarelli, a clinical professor in the Department of Psychology at UCLA, opened the session speaking of the mental and emotional toll a cancer diagnosis takes on a patient, their family and their caregivers, and offering "mindful" techniques for patients to dispel fear and anxiety.

"Colon cancer, like other cancers, comes with a measure of uncertainty," Coscarelli said. "It really can change a person's life both physically, mentally and spiritually." It also can disrupt a patient's physical function, their social network, their sexual and reproductive health, their financial and work status and their spiritual and psychological outlook.

"Stress and anxiety become imprinted on us,' Coscarelli said. "They become imprinted on our brain."

She added that fears of the spread or recurrence of the disease can be spiked by news coverage of the latest medical or research developments, by surfing the Internet for more and more information about your disease, and even by anniversary dates: of surgeries or disease-free scans, or other markers in a patient's fight for life.

The webinar, jointly hosted by the UCLA Center for Integrative Oncology and the Colon Cancer Alliance, is one of a series of "Conversations about Colon Cancer" held on the CCA's website. Check it out for more information about living with the disease.

The entertainment value of occupying Wall Street

2011-10-10T12:25:00.000-06:00

John Hendrickson of the Denver Post logged into the Occupy Wall Street stream of consciousness over the weekend with a post on the newspaper's website and in the printed pages of its Sunday entertainment section, providng a little extra to what he calls the "spectacle" of the occupy movement.

If you have any sympathy at all for the occupiers' cause, ... er causes ... at first blush you would think Hendrickson's piece was a 1960s parent's cynical take on hippies.

But when you read the piece a second time, you realize that Hendrickson is merely pointing out that everything nowadays is captured on some camera and posted on the Internet for everyone to see.

Hendrickson implies such multiplicity of images detracts from the protestors' message, and he complains that the news consumer is left to fend for himself or herself when it comes to interpreting a meaning from the raw reportage.

In other words, the gatekeepers of broadcast and mainstream journalism are not around to guide you while you sit at your computer or stand in the middle of the street looking down at your mobile device to brush up on current events.

Hendrickson's publisher, William Dean Singleton, predicted as much years ago when he suggested reporters in the future would carry cameras and voice recorders to capture the news not only in words but in video and sound. But now everyone is a reporter; all you need do is upload your recorded experience to the Internet.

Then the gatekeepers have to sort through all that chaff to edit images they think suggest a meaning in it all.

Hendrickson's piece seems more a tired complaint than a commentary. But it was entertaining; I guess you could say the writer did his job.

Occupy Denver: future middle-class calls for help

2011-10-03T12:27:00.000-06:00

Corporate America is finally getting treated to its Arab Spring. Will it listen?

"Occupy Wall Street" is an informal movement of young people (college graduates without jobs commensurate to their education; activists without any other cause to jump on; victims of a Wall Street-induced financial crisis in 2008 for which no one has been held accountable but foreclosed home owners) gathering in a Manhattan park over the past two weeks to protest everything in their lives that makes them miserable.

And the movement is spreading as it should across the nation. The Denver Post wrote a short story about a demonstration held here yesterday that gathered 50 people at Broadway and Colfax, and then marched to the Federal Reserve building on the 16th Street Mall.

I've written about the growing efficacy of peaceful demonstrations around the world. And I've written about how the American poor and lower middle class gained nothing from the boom times that preceded the 2008-2009 Great Recession, but were the first to be punished for it by banks that recklessly lent them starter-home money just to collect the fees charged during a home purchase.

The Occupy Wall Street movement is a reflection of young peoples' dissatisfaction with President Barack Obama's cautionary approach to fulfilling his campaign promise of "hope and change."

If we're lucky, it may spread and grow through Election Day 2012, but unlike the Tea Party, set the country on a correct path out of our economic problems: taxing Wall Street millionaires who ripped off the country during the boom; passing a jobs act that puts more middle-class tradesmen and women to work and keeps teachers in their classrooms, and firefighters, policemen and other first-responders on the job; and offers small businesses tax credits to stimulate hiring.

America deserves the Occupy Wall Street movement on so many levels, it should only be happy its young citizens are taking to the streets to speak to power. If it accomplishes its amorphous ends, the movement will have provided the X- and Y- and Z-generations of Americans their own versions of the Peace and Civil Rights movements of the 1960s youth rebellion in these United States.

Have at it kids. It's your time.

The down low on Denver/Colorado

2011-09-30T16:06:00.000-06:00

The national buzz is all about creating jobs nowadays, but is metro Denver and Colorado a hot commodity among people who sell cities and regions to worldwide companies as a place to expand or relocate?

Only one of nine business site selectors who were wined and dined over the past three days by Denver economic-development recruiters cited the metro area and Colorado as a current hot spot. And that recruiter suggested the alternative-energy industry -- shaky ground during the current economic downturn -- is Colorado's strongest calling card.

But the site selectors were not brought here to pat Colorado and Denver on the back. The Metro Denver Economic Development Corp.'s annual site-selection conference traditionally seeks out the weaknesses of the area's attractions to national and international corporations in order to improve regional prospects for recruiting a corporate expansion or relocation in the future.

And why should small business in Colorado care? Because big business generates small business growth in an area where it operates. When a big company comes to Colorado and hires 100, 400, or 1,000 new employees, it also must look for local suppliers, construction contractors, maintenance firms and other service businesses -- sometimes even venture partners and bankers -- to accomplish their work.

And new jobs put money in the pockets of dry cleaners, sandwich shops and caterers, landlords and professional sports franchises, gas-station operators, home builders, teachers and government workers.

So what was the lowdown on site selection shared by the experts?

Outsourcing is being reversed. Companies that sent work to China and India are bringing it back to the U.S., using domestic call centers, data centers, and distribution centers to better serve their customers.
Companies are collaborating with each other to reduce costs of business services provided by third-party vendors: human resources, legal, some information technology, employee retention.
Consolidations and mergers and acquisitions are causing longer decision-making cycles, up to 18 months, but when a company decides to "pull the trigger" on a move or an expansion, they want a winning-city bidder to act quickly, sometimes within 30 days, to accomplish what they've promised in their bid.
Tax breaks and other incentives to lure businesses are being eliminated by some states, mostly for budget reasons; adjusted for different industries by others; and supplemented with cash funds, often under the control of a governor, to close deals in the hottest recruiting states. So the competition among states for new business is fierce. Colorado incentives are still graded a C- to D+ by most economic developers.

And no economic-development organization should assume current local businesses are not being recruited by other states. That's another reason small- to medium-sized businesses should pay attention to what these business-recruitment experts have to say about Denver and Colorado every year.

"You need to be in touch with your local businesses all the time," said Ann Harts, a Kansas City principal of Hickey & Associates, a national and international site-selection firm based in Minneapolis.

Another of the experts, Angelos Angelou, of Angelou Economics in Austin, Texas, said he visits Colorado and other states frequently without notice and when he hears a company has not been visited by its local business-development specialists, he wonders how his own client might be treated by that state if it chose to move or expand there.

"Colorado has never won a project on incentives," Angelou said, based on his experience working within the state. But he said Colorado can compete with any other state based on the talent of its workforce. "Focus on talent. Focus on the business proposition," he suggested to the 400 people in the audience.

Then, referring to Gov. John Hickenlooper who had spoken to the crowd to open the breakfast meeting, Angelou said Hickenlooper's vision of Colorado as a "pro-business" state is as competitive as any of the arguments of hot-spot recruiting states.

"Take the governor to places," Angelou said, "and let him speak." He seemed to think that might be Colorado's sharpest tool in its shed.

Bank failures reflect badly on Colorado

2011-09-15T13:47:00.001-06:00

Just as the penny-stock scandals reflected badly on Colorado's business community in the last decade of the 20th century, Colorado's bank failures in the first years of this century -- eight since 2008 -- will reflect badly on the state for some time to come.

You hear bankers in the state still complaining about over-regulation, but you don't hear many calls for crackdowns on the fast-money track records of the failed banks, or for reform of the wide-open-West, free-market philosophy that led to the failures.

In fact, whenever the state's political and business communities cross paths in the wake of such business scandals in Colorado, the word traditionally used is "mum."

The Denver Post's Aldo Svaldi has done some admirable reporting on the bank failures, documenting for instance that the eight banks that failed, between 2004 and 2008, averaged loan-growth rates of 900 percent, while the average of all U.S. banks' loan-growth rates was just 44 percent during that period. At 76.2 percent, all of Colorado's banks' loan-growth rates for the same four years also ran considerably higher than the national average.

Those figures show how fast leaders of the failed banks, and leaders of Colorado banks in general, were running and gunning during the free-market heyday for Colorado business during Gov. Bill Owens' administration. Neither of Owens' successors, Bill Ritter nor current Gov. John Hickenlooper, have made any move to slow such unfettered risk taking, but to do so would offend the business community each has been dependent on for their election.

So don't expect much more response to Svaldi's reporting than continued "mum." I asked three prominent business figures in town to comment on my thesis for this piece -- that all of Colorado business bears some accountability for the business practices that led to the bank failures -- but none responded to my call.

One former banker told me he knew of several banks that laid off what they suspected were bad loans to some of the failed banks thinking that regulators would catch up with the banks eventually and the process would work itself out. It did. Svaldi has reported that the five banks that failed in Colorado this year will cost the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. $1 billion.

If you recall, that's about how much Silverado Savings and Loan cost the federal government when it failed back in 1988, when I first came to Colorado. "Mum" never changes things anywhere. Speaking up and speaking out occasionally will. Let's hope Svaldi keeps on writing.

You may have noticed that I changed the name of my blog to The SchwabBlog. Nothing more has been changed about it, not its url address nor its tone. Hope you continue to enjoy.

Let the stock show roam

2011-09-12T09:25:00.001-06:00

Let the stock show roam to Aurora and redevelop its current site for the 21st century revival of American manufacturing.

The city of Denver and Mayor Michael Hancock ought to be cutting a deal with the stock show to get a good return on letting the producers of the show out of their lease -- there's no reason not to make them pay for the privilege -- but then use city bond money for redevelopment of the show's near North Denver site to create a world-class manufacturing center.

Make it green as can be by introducing sustainable, environmentally friendly manufacturing plants that actually make affordable products that can be sold in the world market. Use the latest technology and create jobs middle-class men can afford to take and still support their families, and line up a business community that is willing to take a chance on Denver becoming a world leader in this new revolution.

Because it is a new manufacturing revolution. The Chinese are on to it. Barack Obama is on to it. Young men in America are ready for it. And our country desperately needs to lead the world through it.

In Denver, it starts with letting the stock show go. Let the stock show breathe: ride its horses, sell its cows, and sheep and chickens, and promote all of Colorado agriculture, which now includes organics and home-grown fruits and vegetables, wine and beer, flowers and spices, in the open air east of the city where the farm fields of Colorado actually do begin.

And while we're at it, let Aaron Million bring the eastern plains some water to irrigate the crops that can result from a statewide commitment to Colorado farm and ranch families. And let transmission lines be built to carry electricity from wind farms to the places where its needed.

The only things keeping all this from happening in Colorado are environmental activists and the political fear they wield over Democratic politicians who continue to court a liberal base that is no longer big enough for them to win elections here. Democrats need to feel the strength of their middle-class roots and start doing something for the people who have always considered them on their side: labor, teachers, police and firemen, other government workers, the middle-income earner.

Barack Obama knows it. Gov. John Hickenlooper wants to believe it. Our two Democratic senators wish it were true, but are too afraid to stand up against the liberal establishment. State Sen. Rollie Heath has pushed an initiative that might really start to do something for education finance in the state. That kind of political courage is just a start.

The ramshackle pens and muddy parking lots you'll see again at the stock show in January are another good place to start.

Let the stock show roam.

Build some high-tech, clean manufacturing plants, oil refineries and even power plants.

In the Chemo Room: 4 years and still crawling, LOL

2011-09-08T10:53:00.003-06:00

I’ve been dying of Stage IV, metastasized colorectal cancer for more than four years now.

That thought occurs to me standing in the sun outside my house in the backyard where a bunch of croquet buddies gather once a week to play a game turned on its competitive head by a former Denver Bronco, Max Leetzow, who likes to sit on a plywood-cushioned bar stool and sing “Grown men playing croquet” as he waits his turn to beat us again, playing with only one hand.

The song, one Max made up, is meant to disarm his fellow players, making light of the play and any serious pursuit of victory. Every word said on the croquet course is meant to distract or dissuade a fellow player from playing to his own advantage. That’s how Max has changed the rules of the game for this bunch over the past twenty years, and everyone plays along.

It’s very competitive; Max Leetzow, is the most competitive human being I have ever met.

We began playing in my backyard before I was diagnosed. So my croquet buddies, in an odd way, have served as one of my first support groups, although many others have joined the fight with me through the years: my three sisters, my two daughters, a retired Chicago cop, two women friends, a formal, on-line support group called Colontown, my doctors and the nurses at Porter Hospital, and now a new cadre of doctors and nurses at University of Colorado Hospital Anschutz Cancer Center in Aurora.

On July 8, I joined a clinical trial for a drug known only by its non-name: MEHD7945A, made by Genentech, a big-pharma company out of San Francisco that wants to find out whether the drug helps, hurts or kills me.

So far, it seems to have helped a bit, but that’s not really the point of the clinical trial I’m enrolled in. It wants to know how bad it hurts at the dose I’m receiving now every two weeks.

The hurt, so far, has been surprisingly, if not pleasantly, mild. And the bit of improvement that I have felt from the symptoms of my cancer suggest I might survive through this fifth year and maybe even long enough to finish my novel.

I’m smiling as I write that.

I think it’s funny; or at least, as my daughters would say, it’s been fun. I have always taught them it’s a dangerous world outside your door, but if you’re careful and not afraid, you should always make sure you’re having fun. After four years of fighting cancer, I still believe that, and they keep asking me if I'm having fun!

Yes, my "fun" principle has been challenged, but as I write my the novel, and deal with the side effects of this new study drug, I cannot deny I’m still having fun. Croquet and Wild Turkey, of course, play their roles in that, too.

But to the clinical trial: I told my study doctor, Wells Messersmith, last week, as we looked over my preliminary scans since starting on the experimental drug, that within thirty minutes of my first infusion, I felt relief from a breathy kind of cough and shallow shortness of breath that my Porter oncologist, Tom Kenney, said would signal the continued growth of tumors in my lungs.

Kenney said eventually, within two years or maybe less, I would probably need to wheel one of those little green oxygen tanks around behind me, and that, generally I would “dwindle” to my death.

I told my sister-in-law as I started the clinical-trial appointments in July that I had no intention of “dwindling” to anything. Was I being gruff and bombastic? Yes, perhaps an old lion’s roar, as I used to call the barking of old men against the fading worlds of their own times.

But I also am determined. More and more people are surviving cancer for longer and longer periods of their lives. I expect to get something accomplished during the last years of mine.

In fact, I’ve been monetizing this blog, and starting a separate business, www.PioneerHQ.com, with two partners since the New Year, and I fully intend to request my sponsors here to renew when the calendar turns a full year on their support. But back to the clinical trial.

As I made my report of feeling better and looked at my initial scans, Messersmith smiled, a little too indulgently, and said, “We like patients to tell us when things improve for them,” he said. “We include it in our reports when we discuss efficacy.” You could almost hear “dwindle” repeated in his tone.

But efficacy is not the point of Messersmith's study. My scans backed me up; there was some initial, minimal shrinkage of the tumors lit up in the scans by radiation and a contrast they make you drink that always causes a dose of diarrhea.

The study is more concerned with side effects, and Genentech’s drug is no “spindly-armed,” weak hitter, as Max would call a poor shooter on the croquet court, despite the “mild or moderate” side effects described in the consent documents you sign to join the clinical trial.

After that first treatment, when I could breathe easier, I came home to a long night of fever, chills, crawl-into-bed chemo misery, and after a poor night’s sleep a bit of chemo-exhaustion and even a belated, three-day-later bout of chemo-diarrhea, which is when I’m told all the dead cancer cells get carried out of your body.

Later the next week, my fingers and hands started showing some tiny “splits,” a nasty side effect of Erbitux which has been one of my other chemical little buddies along the way.

The MEHD7945A splits, separations of the skin like thick paper cuts, were hardly as big, wide and painful as the Erbitux splits, so the drug lived up to it pre-consent reviews on that front, although those reviews did not mention splits at all. But again, the drug is being given to me to find out how my body reacts to it.

Also the nasal drip that came with all the other chemical cancer killers pumped into my blood stream over the four years returned within about a week of receiving MEHD7945 as well.

Overall, though, like I said, it's been fun. After a few days post-treatment, you actually do laugh about these minor discomforts, especially if your hope is still alive that the drug with no name might actually cure you.

And I have found that hope, if not LOL funny, still happens to be a lot of fun.

NIMBL, like Jack, jumps to $6 million in three years

2011-09-01T14:57:00.002-06:00

"Be like Jack," NIMBL exhorts visitors to its website, www.benimbl.com. Its logo incorporates a man in a business suit jumping over the company name as if it were a candlestick, a necktie flying away as if the action were real.

The image is appropriate. Yosh Eisbart and Michael Pytel have built their SAP software boutique to an expected $6 million in revenues this year -- only its third in business -- by "being agile and being flexible and trying to break ... the previous paradigm of one size fits all," Eisbart said in an interview, where he spoke without a tie and without a suit for that matter.

NIMBL is one of the companies that populates 2,500 square feet in Taxi, the mixed-use commerical development west of the South Platte River near the RiNo art district that I wrote about in April.

Eisbart wanted me to come out and see what the company was doing because its early success brought it to the casual atmosphere of Taxi but also branded it as a local software-implementation company with a national customer base that specializes in SAP: "the largest business software package on the planet," Eisbart says.

That's right. SAP AG, based in Germany, rival to Oracle, IBM, Accenture and smaller computer giants, with $17 billion-plus of revenue, 53,000 employees around the globe, and an icon of German international business interests. Which explains the well-suited figure in the NIMBL logo.

Michael Pytel and Yosh Eisbart

But if uptight is what you might expect from an SAP specialist, Eisbart doesn't bring that to NIMBL. Instead, he brings expertise. His is a "new-economy business," which is what Kyle Zeppelin called his Taxi tenants last spring, and Eisbart explains with conversational ease how that can save his clients money. Big money.

Big companies familiar with the software-implementation routine know the pattern for these transactions is to sign one of the big-company service providers to a sometimes millions-of-dollars contract, and have an army of consultants (or employees) of the provider descend upon your headquarters and work for months installing and "implementing" the new software.

Gambro USA, a medical-device manufacturer headquartered in Lakewood, signed up for an SAP installation whose end-users would be 400 North American employees spread across the continent from Daytona in Florida to Tijuana, Mexico and 12 other plants. The large provider had already spent nine months on the project but Gambro "didn't feel like they were getting the traction or meeting the goals of their implementation," so, because of an earlier relationship with NIMBL, "they brought us in tactically," said Eisbart. Within a year, 10 consultants from NIMBL had reduced the 40 original implementation consultants significantly.

Eisbart and NIMBL leveraged that success by making presentations about it at several SAP-customer conventions as the company has grown: from $2 million in revenue in 2009, to $4 million in 2010 and an expected $6 million for 2011. Customers now include Exxon Mobil, Pepsi and Nestle, and in Colorado: Newmont Mining, ULA (United Launch Alliance), and Gambro.

With that list of clients, you would not expect a busy Eisbart to be leading his company's pro-bono work for a non-profit, the Center for Immigrants and Immigration Services, as it helps asylum seekers, torture survivors and war victims, and victims of human trafficking, mostly from Africa, stay in the United States and gain the computer skills needed to hold down jobs here.

"These guys are doing God's work," Eisbart said of the group which he discovered when it applied for a grant from the Rose Community Foundation.

Eisbart sat on the evalutation committee for the grant; after it was awarded, he went further to offer CIIS pro-bono help with setting up a data base for the group's clients, and recruited more pro-bono work from Evolution Marketing Group, which is housed within NIMBL's office space at Taxi. EMG remade the immigration organization's website and is teaching CIIS volunteers how to manage it. NIMBL is providing basic computer classes to CIIS clients.

Frederick Jayweh, the volunteer executive director of CIIS, said the free work Eisbart's companies have contributed to CIIS probably would be valued at $15,000 to $20,000; but more importantly it puts the group in a position to apply for a federal grant next year that might provide some of its volunteers with a bit of salary for the work they do.

A "new-economy business." Helping to get God's work done with computer software.

Chemo 101: a web success story

2011-08-19T15:17:00.001-06:00

Kristin Gustafson started marketing Chemo101 even before she launched the website that keeps chemotherapy patients, nurses, doctors and caregivers abreast of the latest information available about life in the Chemo Room.

Gustafson says her Denver-based site has grown like a blogger's dream over the last year, landing a $25,000 ad schedule from Whole Foods because of the marketing buzz she created within its target audience by competing for startup funding in the Pepsi Refresh Project.

That's a fund-raising program run by Pepsi which gives away grant money to make innovative ideas -- anyone's idea, really -- into reality by winning the funds to make it happen through a contest.

KG, as Gustafson calls herself, entered Pepsi Refresh last September at the $250,000 level, but lost out to a much larger organization, the animal protector ASPCA, which was able to marshal many more voters to its cause than Chemo 101.

But soliciting votes for her project from all the people who might use it essentially put Chemo 101 in the minds of its audience even before it was available. The site launched in December, and besides her Whole Foods advertising program, KG is now averaging 30,000 unique visitors to the site per month. Like I said: a blogger or website developer's dream.

And that's as much a reason for writing about her here as the nature of her cancer-related website. Gustafson has started a small business on the Internet in the booming health-care industry which never seems to shrink even as the nation's economy falters.

So KG's business lesson is valuable to many of the readers of this blog whether they come from the blogging world, the cancer world, the small-business world, or even the politics and policy world. Chemo 101 is an example of a successful, small-business startup in a booming industry fueled by the Internet.

And Gustafson has gone about starting that business in an instinctively entrepreneurial way.

Her professional background is in human resources, having worked with health-care, and specifically oncology-related, companies in Minnesota, before moving to Colorado to work briefly with a medical-device manufacturer. She found herself drawn back to oncology and the fight against cancer, however, and so decided to start Chemo 101 as an outgrowth of what started as an HR consultant's practice.

She didn't win the Pepsi contest, so her funding came from her own savings and investments, and she was helped by a friend who volunteered his expertise not only in programming but also in sales and marketing because he had been touched by the fight against cancer in his own life and wanted to "give back" while waiting a few months to take a new professional position.

Chemo 101 was borne of KG's experience with her target audience: patients, nurses, doctors and caregivers from mostly community-based cancer clinics. "Our site is really augmenting what they do in the clinic every day," she said. "A lot of times from the day that someone is told there's cancer, they're just rushed through the process. And the oncology nurse has fifteen people that she's trying to get set up." So a lot of patients go home from a first treatment with dozens of unanswered questions.

KG's website has the answers to many of those questions. "My idea," KG says, "was build a website for cancer patients to understand their drugs and dollars, ... a resource to understand your chemotherapy drugs, understand the different food and drug interactions, and how co-pays work, and what type of insurance you're on; what questions to ask."

But while cancer consumers were the target audience, Gustafson knew her target market for monetizing the site was big pharma, the huge pharmaceutical companies that test, make and sell drugs that help millions of people fight cancer across the globe.

"My business models started with the thought of I'm going after the big pharmaceutical companies; they are the ones that have drugs in the data base that I have built. They have branded, marketed products that we see ... advertised on TV."

Those companies' oncology products, the chemotherapy drugs pumped into patients all over the world, are the mystery meat of the cancer-treatment industry. Millions of patients, nurses and caregivers are constantly seeking the ever-changing, latest information about drugs and their side effects in order to ease the patient's struggle to stay alive.

And Gustafson, through the website, keeps the information up to date. She uses what are called Food and Drug Administration-approved "package inserts" to describe the chemicals patients receive during chemotherapy. The inserts are the printed material included with any medicine sold to consumers.

But she also has a "resources" section of the site she says will be used to offer information about alternative treatments ranging from use of medical marijuana for nausea to nutrition and diet information geared to the cancer patient. That portion of the site is not yet very developed, but like any site on the Internet, Chemo 101 is a work in progress.

Nurses' desire for more nutrition information, however, is what drove Gustafson to seek out advertising from Whole Foods Market. Surveys she collected at a national meeting of oncology nurses in Boston earlier this year showed nurses ranked a desire for more information on nutrition as high as their desire for information about clinical trials.

"Wow, nutrition is really something I never thought of, and here we've got 40 percent of the nurses saying they would want nutritional information for themselves and their patients," she said. So she contacted a Whole Foods sponsorship program in Boulder and quickly signed up for the first $25,000 of revenue Chemo 101 has generated for itself.

At a later annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago -- "Kind of the Big Dance in oncology," Gufstason said -- "we met with just about any pharmaceutical company that sells an oncology product that you can think of" and were "walking on air a little bit" with the Whole Foods ads already up on the site.

When you are talking with pharma "Goliaths" like Pfizer or Merck, Gufstason said, "David at Chemo 101 didn't seem so small when you had a partner like Whole Foods."

KG is still working to land other advertising and sponsorship deals that carry Chemo 101 into the future of the fight against all kinds of cancers.

But her one-year fight to start the company: the pre-launch marketing campaign through the national Pepsi Refresh program; her visits to national meetings to build traffic and credibility among professionals "critical" to the care of cancer patients, her primary audience; her widening of her advertising market beyond big pharma to businesses on the periphery of the cancer-care industry; all make for text-book examples of how to build an online small business.

So, even if you don't have cancer, Chemo 101 is a website to watch.

How does government money create jobs?

2011-08-12T14:46:00.001-06:00

A question that has lingered through the debt-ceiling debate fiasco, specifically related to the need for stimulating a weak economy, is how can government money actually create jobs?

Gov. John Hickenlooper's administration is working hard to find an answer. It has applied to the Treasury Department for $17.2 million it wants to spend with lenders in Colorado to break their reluctance to fund small-business growth.

Small businesses grow by hiring people to produce and sell more of their product or service, increasing a firm's revenue and profits. The longest running complaint small businesses have had with state and federal policy makers has been that banks refuse to lend businesses money to achieve that growth.

Alice Kotrlik, a long-time valuable asset of the Office of Economic Development and International Trade and director of its Business Finance Division, is in charge of Colorado's application to the State Small Business Credit Initiative, and expects to hear a "favorable" response from Treasury very soon, perhaps within days.

She said the 2010 Small Business Jobs Act, signed last September and so far apparently in no danger from projected deficit-reducing budget cuts, requires the programs using the federal money to be started by states within 90 days of receiving a grant. All of Colorado's $17.2 million, if it gets it, will have to be deployed within two years. So the money will be going to businesses fairly quickly once the state gets its check.

That's good because business finance is a top-of-mind issue in Colorado not only because of political pledges to get people back to work -- create jobs -- but also because past efforts to fund small-business startups with government money have been dismally unsuccessful.

Kotrlic's office crafted her application for the small-business federal funding through Hickenlooper's "bottom-up" economic-development process, resulting in the release last month of the Colorado Blueprint, a document that amounts to a master plan for state governance.

The application calls for distribution of the $17 million through three programs: an existing loan-loss/reserve program run through the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority (CHAFA); an expanded pilot program started last summer that offers angel investors a tax credit for investing in Colorado small businesses; and an altogether new program designed to distribute $14.2 million of the funds by depositing cash certificates of deposit in banks that want to loan money to a small business but are hesitating because of a borrower's shortfall in the value of collateral being used to support the loan.

Kotrlic described the program for me in detail, and it sounds like the only kind of government effort a Colorado bank would be willing to sign up for to loosen up its lending to small business: direct cash infusions of government money they can take if a loan goes sour.

The banks aren't crazy. The reason a Small Business Administration emergency loan program failed in Colorado and around the country in 2008 and 2009 was because the loans -- $35,000 max -- weren't large enough for the bankers to bother with, and because the people who needed them, small businesses already in trouble and at risk of survival because of the economic collapse, were too risky to lend to.

Kotrlic's new program will provide up to 25 percent of loans from $75,000 to $1 million in a cash CD that can be deposited in the lending bank and dedicated as collateral for the loan. The small business owner then can use the full amount of the loan to grow his or her business by hiring new workers and increasing sales and revenues, and pay back the bank over a three-year term.

The state will provide a collateral shortfall for loans up to $5 million, but the percentage of state-supported collateral will drop for bigger loans to the amount needed to cover the borrower's shortfall up to about 10 percent of the loan. Kotrlic points out that 10 percent of a $5 million loan would still amount to a $500,000 cash CD, and she seemed to think that was plenty for the state to give a bank to cover the risk of an otherwise credit-worthy borrower.

That's how government money can create jobs and stimulate the nation's lagging economy. It's government at its best, helping private small businesses break through big-business bankers' reluctance to help Main Street get back on its feet.

In the Chemo Room: A guinea pig

2011-07-28T15:21:00.001-06:00

Never did I imagine I would be walking through the Phil Anschutz-funded doors of the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora volunteering to be a guinea pig for cancer research.

But that's what I did on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday when I went for my first screening and scan appointments to enter a clinical trial for a drug called MEHD7945A, sponsored by Genentech Inc. out of San Francisco, which I suppose wants to manufacture and sell the drug once it is cleared by the FDA.

The consent forms are pretty clear: "You are being asked to take part in this research study of an investigational drug called MEHD7945A. The study drug is being looked at to see if it could be a treatment for advanced cancer. "Investigational" means that the study drug has not been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The FDA is the U.S. government agency that reviews the results of research and decides if a drug can be sold in the U.S.

"You are being asked to be in this study because your tumor has grown or spread during or following chemotherapy or other treatment, or there is no standard therapy for your type of cancer.... The purpose of this research study is to determine the safety of the study drug and to determine the highest tolerated dose ... that can be given to subjects safely.... This is a Phase 1 study. This is the first time that MEHD7945A will be given to humans and is in a very early stage of development.... Please carefully read the sections on risk and benefits below."

The forms went on to describe known side effects, which so far have been mild in most subjects, but the forms don't rule out death or some lesser cataclysmic personal reaction to the drug and they schedule your first infusion (mine is on Wednesday) as a 10-hour day to make sure you don't have one.

The scans taken this week are done to establish a baseline for growth or reduction of the colorectal cancer growing in my lungs. The best results the researches will tell you about, however, is a possible stabilization of the growth and spread of the tumors. That's one reason entering the trial is considered one way a cancer patient who has gone through "standard" treatment and not defeated the disease can prolong his or her life beyond the time it would take for it to kill you if left unabated.

Dr. Wells Messersmith, the "study doctor" in charge of my treatment, told me July 8 that I don't look like someone who has cancer -- I've been gaining weight lately -- and my hope is that I keep up those appearances (and energy) while this new drug stabilizes my disease.

But none of all that is what amazed me most as I walked through the doors of the Anschutz cancer pavilion this week. What amazed me was the beehive of economic activity represented by the center during what has been the third of probably the three toughest economic years in the state's history.

Patients and employees alike hurried in and out of the pavilion; cars fueled by $3 gas, big buses and small carts ferried people in and out of jammed parking lots; hospital shops and cafeteria, information desks and check-in outposts were hustling with an assured, customer-service oriented dispatch.

I never thought I would have to be grateful to Phil Anschutz, but the marvel that has been created by The Anschutz Foundation -- which has contributed more than $100 million to building the center -- the University of Colorado, the city of Aurora, the state of Colorado and the federal government calls forth a deep sense of relief over having available to me the very best opportunities to beat my disease.

I don't mind feeling like a guinea pig.

Maybe my participation in this clinical trial, like all the work being done at the medical campus, will save a few lives down the road.

Regis-based Capital Congress reaching out for small business

2011-07-17T18:21:00.000-06:00

I just posted two ideas to a website being run by the Colorado Capital Congress, a new advocate for providing capital to small businesses that need it to survive in today's harsh economic climate.

That's a big chore to take on in Colorado, as Karl Dakin, executive director of the Sullivan Chair for Free Enterprise at Regis University, well knows.

He and "some other guys" tried to convince the legislature last session to create a public/private entity that could capitalize startup businesses to the tune of $25,000 to $250,000. They were turned down on a party-line vote in a House committee.

"They didn't want to see another government entity involved in funding" private business, Dakin told me in an interview Sunday. So Dakin took his ball and went home to Regis where last month he and Paul Alexander, director of the school's Institute on the Common Good, founded the Capital Congress.

On June 29, the pair held an organizational meeting with Denver-area business owners, some business financiers and at least one state legislator, Pete Lee, D-Manitou Springs, where they outlined a process for the congress to vet new ideas for accomplishing its cause: filling a shortfall of up to $10 billion a year in capital funding for Colorado small businesses.

The Colorado Capital Congress, www.ColoradoCapitalCongress.com, will collect, improve and then vote on ideas submitted from the general public, and then bring that agenda to next year's legislature with an assurance to elected officials the ideas have the backing of some of their constituents and represent a dire need for businesses in the state.

Capital, or cash, is always what most small-business owners lack if they can turn their attention from survival to actually strategizing about growth.

The growth of small businesses in Colorado is the largest single contributor to job growth in the state, so if politicians are sincere about finding jobs for Colorado's unemployed they will at least give a listen to Dakin and Alexander's suggestions when the next lawmaking festival rolls around in January.

"Business-friendly" is a descriptor many elected officials adopt for themselves when trying to persuade voters to support them. When the time comes to actually do something for voters who have believed in the descriptor, many state officials in Colorado do a free-market shuffle and beg off the issue.

I hope this Congress will hold some political cold feet close to the fire.

Media Salad: Tossed into business

2011-07-08T13:36:00.000-06:00

Christine Tatum was president of the Society of Professional Journalists for a year before she left the Denver Post to go into business, eventually for herself, as the founder of a Denver-based firm that provides competitive intelligence to other small and medium-sized companies.

She likes the fact she is taking journalism on a new route, that she is hiring fellow former journalists to provide her clients the information they seek, and that, while doing so, she and "the fellas" are still fulfilling the "calling" they answered when they became journalists.

"Which was to give people useful information," she said, information that can "enlighten" business decisions that are made every day. She calls the firm Media Salad Inc., and describes it on her website as: "a rapid-response research and reporting service that works on demand to deliver Market Intelligence so our clients can make informed strategic decisions faster.

"Our professional reporters and editors will work from around the globe to put independent findings in your team's hands for quick action."

Christine Tatum

Tatum, like many other reporters who have fallen out of the news business because the news/advertising model imploded, has created a new model for journalism based on the skills and craft she learned as a reporter, which she is now taking to market as a business owner.
Ironically, she believes what she has created could be taken inside a newspaper or other large news organization, providing a new client-driven revenue stream that puts a higher price on more targeted business information than what can be passed along in a general news story.

New revenue streams are what newspapers, magazines and most other media, including broadcast television, need to survive. Right now, traditional, general media has a hard time reaching the small niche audiences their once mass audiences have been broken into on the Internet.

"The information is not customized enough for these people," she says of her clients and the news industry. It's too generalized. "Sometimes a news story that is written raises more questions than it actually answers for you, and you can't call the reporter up and say, 'Hey, I'd like you to get rolling on that follow-up story.'" The newspaper reporter will "tell you where to get off," said Tatum.

But her "reporters" can start digging deeper at that point to "track competitors, vendors and donors; find and background potential partners; identify new market prospects; ... [and] track changes in regulation," she says on her website.

At the same time, Tatum says she hasn't forgotten how to tell someone where to get off.

"I make very clear at the outset," she said, "we give you the good, the bad and the ugly because we would not be doing our jobs for you if we didn't."

"And if they decide they can't swing it, and they find us obnoxious or all of a sudden we're telling them things ... or flagging things that they think: 'Oh my gosh, I just can't deal with this every day,' ... if they can't swing it, then I don't want to work with them. I just don't. I'm not interested in the money."

That sounds like the old technology reporter Tatum was when she worked for the Post or the Chicago Tribune before that. She's not afraid to tell stories of getting burned by the first business that hired her away from the Post, nor of her own dissatisfaction with the technology the Post was trying to use to build it's digital offerings at Denver Post.com.

Strangely, in terms of business, Tatum is not driven by a desire for great profit, which like many journalists, might disqualify her and them from the bruising, no-holds-barred world of free-market enterprise.

"I would be very, very happy if I just accomplished modest financial goals," she said, "as opposed to, 'Oh, we're going to be acquired by Google next week,' ... or, 'Oh, we're about to win like all of this massive investment.'"

Instead, she she'd rather know she helped a struggling fellow journalist feed his family, or make a tuition payment with the supplemental income she provides her independent contractors --her "reporters."

"Call me crazy, but I think that a lot of journalists have also answered a calling; it's not that you decided to go off and make lots and lots of tons and tons of money. You answered a calling, and in a weird way, I view what I am doing and continue to do professionally is answering that calling."

In other words, practicing a specialized, small-company journalism, independent of the big media dollars that no longer support as many journalists as once was before. It's the new journalism of the 21st century. Taking your writing craft into your own small business.

You may have heard that before on this blog. It's the pitch for my own small business.

Anti-tax pols should look to the Greeks

2011-06-30T15:05:00.000-06:00

Any U.S. Republican or Democrat who believes we can cut the deficit and balance the budget without a tax increase should listen closely to Greek protesters who ask "Why me?" when their government insists on austerity measures.

The Greek poor have a good argument if they haven't benefited from the huge debt their society built up before going bust over the last decade.

On the other hand, the hypocrisy of anti-tax politicians in Washington resounds all the louder because they ignored and allowed the speculative practices of Wall Street bankers and traders who got America into the mess we all find ourselves in today.

President Barack Obama took to the White House press-conference podium yesterday to scold Congress when he said, "These are bills that Congress ran up. ... Now they are saying, 'Maybe we don't have to pay.'"

Instead, the congressmen and women who oppose raising taxes -- mostly Republicans but including some Democrats -- want to cut government spending to the bone, which means they want the burden of curing the deficit placed squarely on the backs of the middle class and the poor.

Not only did the poor draw no benefit at all from the wealth generated on Wall Street before 2008, but companies all across America whittled away at the middle class by eliminating jobs; cutting salaries; pushing people into part-time, no-benefits positions; increasing health-insurance co-pays and deductibles; and forcing employees out of defined-benefit pensions into 401ks where their retirements were put at risk by the same Wall Street traders who caused the 2008 crash.

But the "cut-spending-only-crowd" has yet another motive. Opposing increased revenues for government today essentially means the rich will escape paying the government back for Bush tax cuts that made them even more wealthy over the past 10 years. Anti-tax pols have but one constituency it seems: the people who fund their re-election campaigns year after year.

Because George W. Bush promoted a lack of dissent as the only true expression of patriotism in America while all that was happening, neither the poor nor the dwindling middle class took to the streets to protest their lot.

But the Greek rock-throwers offer a glimpse of what could happen in America as more of the poor get poorer; more of what's left of the middle class gets pushed into poverty; and the rich inexorably keep getting richer, as seems the goal of the current Republican majority in the House.

Revolutions get started in the back streets of any nation; and the middle class in the U.S. elected Obama to change things for the better, not worse. If anti-tax Republicans and Democrats believe the population of their country will remain somnolent forever they should look to Greece and the Arab Spring, then remember the anti-Vietnam-war demonstrations of the 1960s.

The people here are not afraid to peacefully stand up against their government. They just have to be pushed hard enough.

In the Chemo Room: Colon Cancer Alliance national meetup

2011-06-25T20:45:00.000-06:00

I walked three miles today, more than I have been able to exercise since they but a bag on my belly and took a tumor and my rectum out of my bottom in September 2007. It felt good.

I was following some of the primary advice given colorectal cancer survivors -- about 60 of them -- attending the national conference of the Colon Cancer Alliance at the Marriott Denver City Center on Friday. The advice I heard most often was: Keep exercising. It will prolong your life.

Which is what all those survivors are looking to do. Some, like me, still have the cancer and are still fighting it. More than half of the 60 had survived the disease for more than five years, and some had passed the 10-year mark. Most of those looked pretty fit. And many of them walked in the Denver Undy 5000, a 5K and one-mile fun run and walk held this morning in City Park.

It didn't take long to be told on Friday that exercise was one of the best anti-cancer drugs. Dr. Tim Byers, a professor of preventive medicine at the University of Colorado Cancer Center in Aurora, opened the day-long conference with a keynote address packed full of statistics that showed declining death rates for both men and women treated for colorectal cancer.

Why?

"We don't really know," Byers said, striking a tone that held throughout the conference: a forthright realism about everything from ordinary doctors' lackadaisical endorsement of colonoscopy, the most effective preventive for colon cancer, to the lingering effects of "chemo brain," a loss of memory and other cognitive function after prolonged chemotherapy.

Another University of Colorado Cancer Center doc, Stephen Leong, lent credence to cancer survivors' complaints of "chemo brain," and suggested it was one of several persistent side effects doctors need to pay more attention to as increasing number of survivors live cancer free for longer than five years.

Other speakers noted lengthening survival times tend to make the magic five-year mark less meaningful. Cancer changes your life, many speakers agreed; but after-cancer realities are often magnified: money problems from long-term loss of income, relationship problems from a lack of a sex life, reassessment of career goals and capacities, all make surviving cancer a new life challenge.

Byers said at the outset that researchers believe all cancers, including colorectal cancer, like car crashes, are caused by a variety of factors -- genetic and cultural, environmental, behavioral, "What we run into in life" and simple "bad luck" -- that often combine in multiple and unpredictable ways.

Colorectal cancer, however, remains the second leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States after lung cancer, and part of the reason is that it strikes both men and women and most of it occurs sporadically, meaning the victim's cells mutate randomly.

Still risk factors for colorectal cancer are listed as:

Age, gender, race/ethnicity
Family history
Inflammatory bowel disease
Diet
Body weight
Physical activity.

But an estimated 40 percent of colorectal cancer can be attributed to four specific risks: obesity, lack of physical activity, fruit and vegetable intake, and consumption of red meats.

"For colorectal cancer, brisk walking can take down the risk factor dramatically," Byers said.

So the next morning, I decided instead of standing around at the Undy 5000, where runners and walkers wear underwear over their exercise outfits to designate the geography of the colorectal problem, I would indeed walk the three miles to see if I could do it.

It seemed the best and cheapest therapy available.

I did, and it felt good.

Tommy More tales: Vodka, lemonade and laughter don't mix

2011-06-23T15:55:00.000-06:00

In honor of my friend Bill Clair, who died June 16, I've also posted this on my poetry website: www.robertschwabpoet.com.

It is the first in a series of "Tommy More tales" I hope to post in the future if contributors will e-mail me stories I can rewrite and post for everyone's entertainment. I believe the statute of limitations will have run out on all but the most serious crimes.

Bill Clair, Ed Nowak and myself shared a Falco's pizza one night long ago in Bill's garage where he prepared his big red Chevy convertible for a trip to Lake Geneva over Fourth of July weekend.

We were planning to take a formidable supply of pink lemonade mixed with vodka to drink in the car on the trip, and actually started drinking some that night. We wanted a pizza and Bill would have none but a Falco's pie, which I argued was too greasy, having once watched a Falco's cook pour grease (or oil) from a pitcher onto a raw pie before he popped it into the oven.

Palermo's wasn't good enough for Bill. So we ate and drank our fill well into the night before rising for the trip.

We took off in mid-morning and by about 11 a.m. came to a stop light on U.S. 12 north of Chicago next to a tall pickup truck with three other guys riding high and looking down at the jug of pink lemonade we were sharing.

"Where you guys going?" said the driver of the truck, enjoying the sight of three youngs guys already pretty wasted and driving under a hot, summer sun in an open convertible.

"Geneva," I said to him from the shotgun seat. "We thought we'd watch a little National Guard action and take in the bikinis," I added, which cracked up both the guys in the truck and Nowak and Clair beside me. A year earlier, Wisconsin's governor had called out his National Guard and police dogs to quell rowdy youths who were celebrating the holiday too raucously. We three had been there then, too.

"Why don't you guys follow us and come along," I cracked. "We got plenty to share!"

Now Bill Clair was always known for his smile and easy laughter, and Ed Nowak, otherwise called "Dude," remembers him for the contagiousness of that laughter, especially when Billy kind of howled when things really got funny.

Dude started to choke as he laughed, and then cough -- and then wretch, as everybody else, including the guys in the truck, laughed harder and harder and the choking got worse. Until Ed puked, which was no laughing matter inside Billy's sparkling clean red convertible.

Besides that, Dude's vomit was pretty much marked by tiny bits of green peppers cut in perfect squares, lumps of Italian sausage and other liquid that Bill was very unhappy about seeing spread over the rubber mats of his clean car.

"I told you that pizza's too greasy," I said.

But Bill wasn't laughing anymore; he roared away from the green light, cut in front of the truck and looked for a pullout from the highway so he could quickly get the car cleaned up. And Dude, too.

E-mail me with your tale from Tommy More at rschwab@robertschwabpoet.com.

Republicans, Weiners and my friends

2011-06-14T11:57:00.001-06:00

Obama signs health-care bill

A friend -- you may remember Eric Marburger from when I wrote about him last October -- asked yesterday, during a croquet game whether I was planning to watch the Republican presidential campaign debate last night.

I wasn't, and this morning reading about the debate I realized why. It doesn't matter. Look at the potential nominees and it becomes clear not one of them will have a ghost's chance in hell of beating President Barack Obama. Photo credit: www.sodahead.com

Unless, perhaps, the nominee is U.S. Rep Michele Bachmann, who announced her official candidacy at the debate.

If Republicans nominate her, the country might entertain the idea of electing the first woman president, but then a majority of voters would also reconsider her Tea Party affiliations and vote for the incumbent as the lesser of two evils.

It seems every presidential election comes down to that kind of decision in modern America.

Besides that, by November of 2012, Obama will have proven himself a president who acts in the best interests of all Americans, not leaving out even those who oppose him.

One element of the debate last night proves my contention. I'm depending on New York Times coverage published in the Denver Post when I quote former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney who said during the debate: "What you're doing will not work. It's a huge power grab by the federal government."

That's nonsense and Romney knows it. He was talking about Obama's health-care legislation and even conservative-minded Tea Partyers will realize the benefits universal health-care coverage will provide them by the time the election rolls around. By then, too, all Republican opposition to the plan will be seen for the lie that it is.

Affordable health care for all the people of the United States will be just as laudable a goal in November of 2012 as it was during November of 2008 and all through 2009 and 2010 when the Congress debated the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and Obama signed it.

Calling it "Obamneycare" will just remind people that the president, like Mitt Romney when he signed similar legislation in Massachusetts, was thinking of all the people in America, not just the rich and not just the poor, but all the people who make up the great middle class.

We need universal health care in America; the president's plan protected the private insurance industry and offered health-insurance availability to 30 million uninsured Americans. It was a compromise position, but he got it enacted into law, and a grateful electorate will reward him with a second four-year term.

Even the idea of a woman president won't overcome that perception when we go the polls in 2012.

Now, about Weiner. New York Rep. Anthony Weiner made all kinds of headlines except one over the past few weeks. Another friend, I won't say who, suggested I write this headline for a blog post I might write about Weiner: "It really was Weiner's wiener!"

I hope my other readers appreciate my discretion in containing the headline to a single paragraph here.

How to make money on the Internet! The new normal

2011-06-10T11:17:00.000-06:00

Dave Taylor

Dave Taylor is a business expert in Internet communications.

He is a co-organizer of Front Range Bloggers, a teacher and a public speaker who last January in Las Vegas told an audience of bloggers, website operators and other techies to enjoy the life they've made for themselves despite the digital speed and pressures of the world where they have chosen to work.

"The Internet will survive without you for a day," he told a hundred "affiliates," who are people paid by the click for hosting advertisers on their blogs or websites.

"Try to have no-work days," he said, "or no-e-mail afternoons."

That's an odd message for the closing keynote speaker at a conference called "Affiliate Summit West," where most attendees had come to learn how to make more money on the Internet, not less. But bloggers and website operators are more than just ad-sales people.

They are writers, software developers and independent contractors of all sorts, trying just as hard to make a buck from their expertise as business consultants in management, engineering, marketing or politics.

In fact, many white-collar consultants -- whole businesses for that matter -- are becoming bloggers and website operators in order to extend the market for their wares to the Net. It's the new normal.

Taylor is an expert in the new normal.

I sought him out to ask how to monetize a website or a blog because my own effort to add advertising to this blog over the past 18 months can best be described as a frustrating exercise in learning what I didn't know.

I have learned, however, that you have to ask the right questions, and one of the ways I learned that lesson was by going to one of Taylor's popular websites: Ask Dave Taylor!

On the site, Taylor offers "free tech support" to all kinds of computer users, answering questions like this one running on the site right now: "How do I install an ad blocker in Google Chrome?"

Click on the link to get Dave's answer, but even if you don't and you still spend much of your time in front of a computer screen during your workday, you must realize how often you could come up with a similar question about your machine and not know where to go for help. Go to Ask Dave!

That's where I went first with my question about how to monetize my blog. It's a question most every blogger wants to know the answer to because most hope to make a living from their work.

But Taylor's answer, made to me in an interview, indicates a more complicated business analysis than a blogger might expect. You have to think about what your blog and website is doing for those who read it, Taylor said. And like everything in small business, doing something new on your computer becomes a learning experience in itself.

Taylor told me he was reluctant at first to put ads on his sites, fearing, as a writer, that he might over-commercialize them. Thinking through the process, however -- he has an MBA so the thinking was very businesslike -- he put some ads up on one of the sites (Ask Dave!), and soon realized he could pay his mortgage with the money he was making by showing the ads.

The first ad network Taylor used was Google's AdSense, an ad-placement service the giant search- engine company provides qualified bloggers. The service automatically selects and places ads on sites whose readers might have an interest in the advertisement. The blogger or website that hosts the ad is paid a portion of what Google is paid when a reader on their site clicks on an ad.

Taylor signed on with AdSense years ago, but because of the amount of traffic he has generated for his Google advertisers since then (all those people asking computer questions), he has been invited to be an AdSense premium publisher, meaning he gets special help and added services from the AdSense team to maximize the impact of his ads. That means both Taylor and Google make more money.

But Taylor runs another website (he has four) where he runs no ads at all. The Business Blog @ Intuitive.com is a business-management blog that discusses topics like: "Understanding the Legal Structure of Business," a guest-written piece currently posted there by Taylor to help Intuitive.com readers understand an issue related to starting a business.

Taylor's success as an Internet businessman and his successful monetization of websites depends on one word in that previous paragraph: HELP.

It is a part of Taylor's overall business and Internet philosophy. A blog that tells it's readers over and over again, "Here's what I'm going to sell you today," he says, "turns off most people, and it ends up not being successful."

"It's not sell, sell, sell," that makes your blog successful, he says, "It's help, help, help."

Ask Dave Taylor! does that directly, while Intuitive.com does it more intuitively, or indirectly, Taylor says.

"The Intuitive.com site is very much designed as an indirect revenue stream for me," he said. Articles there support his reputation as a teacher and business-management consultant, and spawn consulting contracts and speaking engagements for him.

The ads on Ask Dave! produce direct revenue when readers go there, "get the answer to their question," see an ad that interests them, "and leave" the site happy, Taylor says. The good experience will probably bring that reader back when a new computer question arises, ever increasing his traffic on the site and the number of eyeballs delivered to the advertiser.

"Generating traffic is all about pushing really good content, and then recognizing that you're not flying solo on the Internet, but you're actually a part of a larger ecosystem," he says.

That ecosystem not only includes millions of readers looking for help -- from crafts people who sew quilts to entrepreneurs hoping to launch a new startup -- but also thousands of experts willing to offer free advice or paid-for counsel.

You become known in the ecosystem by interacting with as many players as possible, Taylor said.

"It's really important for you to look at other blogs and other sites and make sure that you're known and visible and helping people on other sites," he said. "I don't care how successful you are, there's very likely someone who is more successful than you, who has more traffic than you and more visibility, and considered more of an expert," he adds.

"If you know who these people are, then you participate off their site, you leave comments, you e-mail them and ask if you can write a guest post.... [It's] a primary way to generate new traffic" back to your own site.

Finally, there's a reason Taylor was speaking to an audience of techies at the "Affiliate Summit West" in Las Vegas in January. Monetizing a website invariably puts you in front of a computer screen and requires a certain -- and increasing -- amount of computer savvy.

"You're right," Taylor told me. "If you are someone who is much more comfortable sewing a quilt than using your computer, then you are going to have a really hard time with Google Analytics."

Google Analytics is another service the search-engine company provides bloggers it hosts (including me). The service tracks page views your blog receives, and it can tell you various things about who is reading your blog. These demographics are important to potential advertisers, so the Google AdSense team uses the stats to qualify bloggers for certain advertising programs.

"Google Analytics, like everything else that Google has," Taylor said, "is very much predicated on geeky data collection, not on user-friendly, understandable outputs."

"I mean I look at analytics sometimes, and I'm pretty confused," he added. "And I consider myself pretty savvy in the tech space." That's just "the way it is," he said.

It's the new normal, dictated by a digital age. That's why Dave Taylor was telling the techies in Vegas to look up on occasion, and smell the roses.

Denver mayor's race spawns a business solution

2011-05-29T14:16:00.000-06:00

Poll results putting Michael Hancock in a 10-point lead over Chris Romer in the Denver mayor's runoff spawned a quote from a Romer supporter that suggests a national solution for excessive executive compensation.

Claire Brockbank, the Romer supporter, was quoted by the Denver Post, saying, "I don't get the sense Hancock has private-sector experience, and, to me, being mayor, that's a CEO job."

Great quote, but consider that mayoral CEOs across the country are paid considerably less than private-sector CEOs and yet often perform at a much higher level since they face electoral accountability on a regular basis.

Why not bring private-sector CEO compensation down to the level of major-city mayors across the country, based on the argument that whenever someone rises to the level of competency necessary to run a corporation in America they should be willing to serve the best interests of the company based on an altruistic instinct of public service.

After all, the efficient operations of our nation's corporations -- who are considered the equal of individual people nowadays, at least by the U.S. Supreme Court -- benefit the common good and "promote the general welfare" of all citizens, just as the preamble to the U.S. Constitution asserts.

I watched "Too Big to Fail" and "Inside Job" last night, the two film studies of the 2008 financial crisis, and executive compensation was mentioned as an issue in both. The heads of our country's largest banks protested in both films any government attempt to limit a company's ability to pay whatever it takes to recruit the kinds of brains that got us into the financial crisis of 2008.

I say, though, at the CEO level, the individual executive is essentially doing the nation and the company a public service and should be paid as such. Lower-level execs, in order to prevent the feared brain drain, could be recruited at limitless salaries if the lower-paid CEO signs on to that strategy being in the best interests of his or her company. And the country, for that matter.

Now, to go beyond that single topic for this post, I would also like to point out to my cousin Roger Wehling that Hancock's lead -- a surprise to both of us I think -- might be a reflection of voter discontent with politicians who seem to have their success handed to them by virtue of unmatchable campaign funding and pre-politics name recognition.

Voters want today's elected office holders to accomplish through public policy what change can be interpreted from the popular support they received in their election.

For Obama, it was universal health care. For Hancock it's going to be a fair shake for all citizens, not only those with insider status or pre-existing political clout. If Hancock is elected, he'll have as difficult a time producing for his supporters as Obama had producing a public option.

Politics is no longer an easy game to play in America.

And finally, the headline in the Post that elicited from me a shout out: "Egypt opens Gaza crossing."

Hooray! Hamas has to realize now that peaceful, nonviolent political action -- which, having taken place in Egypt, has led to the opening of the crossing and will lead to the eventual dismantling of the Israeli blockade of Gaza -- is the most effective opposition to Israel they will ever be able to adopt.

Violence is for thugs. It never accomplishes any nation's ultimate, legitimate goals.

Back to the Chemo Room

2011-05-25T11:40:00.002-06:00

Results of the PET scan came in yesterday, and the cancer is still with me, growing, unfortunately, but ensuring my membership in the Chemo Room.

What can you do? You have to keep fighting! A lot of people are dying in the world today: tornadoes, suicide bombs, soldiers, tsunamis. An associate in the media industry, Chris Power Bain, the former director of communications for the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, died Monday. She was 57 and had been battling lung cancer, according to today's Denver Post.

Chris was at the chamber for a time while I was at the Post and we developed a professional relationship that now is a pleasant memory. But you don't expect to read about such professionals dying at such a young age. And yet the Chemo Room teaches you it is all too true.

That's why you don't have much choice but to fight your cancer. If you don't, it takes you away.

My oncologist, Dr. Thomas Kenney, working out of Porter Hospital, is going to touch base with friends at the University of Colorado Cancer Center to determine if any clinical trials conducted there might be appropriate for my further treatment.

Otherwise I'll probably be going back on a mix of chemo called FolFox, which I really don't like. It tears you down over the long haul -- it was part of my first six-month round of chemo -- and caused neuropathy in my feet and lower legs that still bothers me today when I'm cutting the lawn or playing croquet.

I'm 64. About to enter my fifth year of fighting colorectal cancer, which means I'm so far about average at besting the odds of survival since diagnosis. About half of us make it this far, and half don't. If I make it through the fifth year, I'll be doing better than most.

And I plan to make it. One thing you find out about yourself when you are recruited into a battle for your life is that while death may be around the corner, living feels pretty good. The time you spend fighting is the time you have still to accomplish something in this world, and you keep in mind what I once wrote at ColoradoBiz: dying puts a period at the end of the sentence that is your life, so you better try your best to make what you do a good story.

That's this writer's take on it. There are millions of good stories out there to tell, and I want mine to be one of them. In the meantime, I'll try to keep telling some of the others.

One of the last things Chris Power Bain worked with me on was a chamber white paper that suggested health care for the poor, usually dispensed in hospital emergency rooms, raised the cost of health insurance because hospitals charged insured patients enough to make up for the free care they were giving away to the uninsured.

A lot of snow melt has gone under the bridges of Colorado since Chris and my discussion about such issues, and yet this country still faces the same problem, and opponents of what is called Obamacare still are trying to dismantle the only attempt this country has ever mounted to solve it.

They say chemotherapy clouds the mind, but I think mine is still sharp enough to ask: What's up with that?

It's amazing how well you can feel when cancer is growing inside you and the doctors are still trying to keep it from taking over your body. The side effects of the medicine (poisons) they give you are what put the struggle in the battle when you fight cancer.

But whiskey makes you frisky, and I'm feeling just fine.

Living, writing stories, and solving problems has been what my life in America has always been about. Lord willing, and the creeks don't rise enough to wash us away, I'll be doing that still for some time to come.

And then you can put that period at the end of this sentence.

Monetize your blog! It won't take forever

2011-05-18T13:28:00.000-06:00

Pat Wiesner

A victory! After months and months, with the help of a friend who took a few minutes on the telephone to talk me through a computer procedure, I have finally discovered one way to monetize this blog.

Look in the upper left column and you'll see my first gold sponsor: Pat Wiesner, my old boss from ColoradoBiz, a retired small-business publisher who has an abiding interest in helping the people who worked for him become successful. Photo credit:cobizmag.com

He still writes a column on management in the magazine, and helping employees become successful has been one of the management principles Pat has most persistently advocated over the years. He does it again in this month's column as he finds a business application for the best dog trick he has ever seen.

He writes: "In any case, here comes the business tidbit to think about. I will never forget Bella. Everyone who wants to cut a wide path in business has to have some of that "I'll never forget" mystique. The boss you will never forget because in addition to all the other things his mind was on, he had a keen interest in the career health of all his people, and because of this he had the best people."

Pat agreed to be my first sponsor and put a check in the mail before I had even had a chance to meet with him. But that check represents the first successful attempt by me to "monetize" this product, which I have been writing for two years and represents what I call the "new journalism" of the 21st century.

My point? Another friend, Tim Correll, suggested when I figured out how to monetize this blog, I write about it so other writers and small business owners could learn from my experience. That experience has been long and hard.

Google, which hosts the blog, has an advertising program called AdSense that its bloggers are supposed to be able to hook into. I started trying to work that process in February but recently was turned down for an AdSense account because my page, the one you are reading, was not designed quite right for Google advertisers. I'm still trying though.

In the meantime, I asked participants in a recent Idea Cafe for other suggestions. Henry Dubroff, another old boss, suggested I find people and companies to sponsor the blog. Great! But I still had not figured out how to acknowledge those sponsors on this page.

John Wren, who hosts Idea Cafes at the Panera Bread store on Grant Street near the state Capitol every Friday afternoon, took ten minutes this week to talk me through finding the right widget to use on this blog to show that Pat Wiesner had become my first sponsor. Victory!

And as with any victory, there are a few lessons to be learned from the experience:

First, realize how dumb you are and ask people for the help you need. I've been described as "plodding," and praised because I keep "plugging" my way toward journalistic and other business solutions. So be it. If that's what it takes to get a story or to create a small business, I won't be afraid to admit what I don't know, and I will find the answers to my questions.

Second, this relationship thing that business gurus keep preaching can work for you when you are trying to start a business. All the people who helped me here were long-time friends and business associates who, in time, were able to answer the questions I was finally able to ask.

Third, it's sometimes amazing how long it takes to solve the simplest of problems when you don't know what you don't know.

I'm going to continue writing about what it takes to monetize a blog. It's the new journalism of the 21st century! Keep reading.

Preemptive war and other nonsense

2011-05-17T11:44:00.000-06:00

Has former President George W. Bush's preemptive war doctrine been repealed or rescinded?

The New York Times editorialized yesterday against an expansion of the war powers of the president, a House Republican proposal the newspaper said would "authorize the military to pursue virtually anyone suspected of terrorism, anywhere on earth, from now to the end of time."

First you have to admire the Times' august tone in an era of newspaper degradation. No one in newspapers but the Times would write about all eternity with as much confidence.

But reading the editorial reminded me of a time when I stood up at a Brownstein Hyatt & Farber-hosted luncheon and asked now retiring PBS newsman Jim Lehrer if the Bush doctrine could be repealed. Lehrer gave a not-so-clear answer, but at the time anyone who questioned Bush was suspect of less-than-quality patriotism, so you could expect obfuscation at almost any turn.

The Republican effort to expand the president's war powers, however, shows that neo-con forces in government are still alive and kicking. No matter they cost us a war in Iraq that was unneccessary, a trillion dollars, and the lives of 4,000 soldiers. WMD? What WMD?

The USA has always had a number of nationalist/colonialist/expansionists within the reaches of power in Washington D.C., but history has shown every time they exert power in behalf of their philosophy, the nation and its people end up losers.

Peace is a better pursuit. Peace leads to prosperity, and prosperity is our best defense against our enemies. No one repeals a president's foreign-policy doctrine, but preemptive war was a preemptive loser. Better we battle enemies we see than those we imagine.

Colontown, a community of cancer survivors

2011-05-13T13:13:00.000-06:00

I'm out of the chemo room temporarily, and I've stepped from it into an online community where I can talk comfortably about my colorectal cancer.

It's called Colontown USA, a kind of gated community on Facebook.

You can only get into Colontown through Mayor Pro Tem Erika Hanson Brown, a Colorado woman who started the closed Facebook group just two months ago. She already has registered 190 Colonists, citizen survivors of a disease no one really likes to talk about.

My sister can tell you about that. Over the last four years while fighting my cancer, I often got tired of talking about it with her and told her so. It's not a pretty disease. The bathroom becomes the most important room in the house.

So not only do you not feel like talking about it, you don't, and that leaves you pretty much alone (unless you are hounded by a great sister).

Hanson Brown felt the same loneliness while battling her disease. She has survived seven years now, and has staked out Colontown to help others avoid a similar lonely road.

Colontown residents have posted 600 messages to each other over the first two months. Hanson Brown's business card calls the ongoing discussion "colorectal cancer survivors sharing their experience, strength and hope." I can testify that sharing your problems with others offers great comfort when you realize the others have spent as much time in the bathroom as you have.

You are not alone.

On Tuesday, very early in the morning, I spoke to about fifteen doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals who are members of the Colorado Cancer Coalition's Colorectal Task Force. For months, Hanson Brown has worked to have the task force, which mostly has promoted colon-cancer prevention and screening, to turn its collective eye toward survivors like herself -- and me.

She wants people without the cancer, professionals involved in treatment as well as caregivers and family members of patients, to enroll in Colontown and join the discussion. She'll call them Colonials, and she knows additional voices will only add to the town's collective wisdom.

But Colonials should be prepared. Town residents talk candidly about the side effects of chemotherapy treatments; about clinical studies they are enrolled in to test new drugs, what the new drugs do to their bodies, and whether they get results; about what a drag it is to miss events with family and friends because you are afraid to be far from the most important room in the house; and about the emotional release that is granted by the ability to vent about all of it.

Colontown residents so far have been mostly survivors from across the country (Erika says I am the only other Colonist from Colorado), but there is plenty of room for others to settle in our group.

Andi Dwyer, co-chair of the Colorectal Task Force, is compiling a resource guide for patients, survivors and caregivers dealing with the disease. Erika and I, and four other Colonists who joined the Tuesday task force meeting on the phone, were there to pitch Colontown as a valuable new resource.

Contact Dwyer through the Colorado Cancer Coalition. The coalition enjoys a national reputation for its work, and it already has compiled a resource guide for those working with or contending with breast cancer.

No one in Colorado has to fight cancer alone. Just find the kind of townsmen and townswomen who can help.

Bloggers unite! Repeal the tax!

2011-05-10T12:09:00.001-06:00

This is a call to action to all bloggers in the state.

Jeannine Crooks, a co-organizer of Front Range Bloggers, needs you to call or e-mail a state senator today to ask them to call up House Bill 1318 for a Senate committee hearing so the measure can be approved and sent to the governor by the end of the day tomorrow, the last day of the legislature.

HB 1318 is a repeal of legislation that resulted in 4,000 Colorado bloggers being dropped from "affiliate" programs by online merchants like Amazon, Hershey and Crayola, to name just a few.

If you think back, you'll remember that then Gov. Bill Ritter and the Democratic legislature, desperate for money to balance the state budget, passed a law that required online merchants to charge Colorado customers state sales tax. Amazon was so opposed to the law that it "fired" all its affiliates, who are online bloggers and website operators who link their customers to larger companies with different products to sell. The affiliates are paid for every click on a link to a larger seller.

"For somebody who is trying to monetize their website," said Crooks, the repeal of the tax law is the biggest issue to arise during the current legislature. "The current bill prevents you from doing that," she added.

The House passed the repeal last week, but the Senate has only the rest of today to have it considered by a committee and passed before adjournment tomorrow. The law passed last year was promoted as a way to raise $5 million in new revenue, but in the year since it was passed only about $20,000 has been collected.

Crooks said Colorado online operators have lost "several millions of dollars in sales that didn't occur" because the law caused so many major retailers to drop Colorado from their affiliate programs.

Here's a list of senators and their e-mails who Crooks said can do something about it. Give them a ping.

Sen. Irene Aguilar - 303-866-4852 - irene.aguilar.senate@state.co.us

Sen. Bob Bacon - 303-866-4841 - bob.bacon.senate@state.co.us

Sen. Betty Boyd - 303-866-4857 - betty.boyd.senate@state.co.us

Sen. Morgan Carroll - 303-866-4879 - morgan.carroll.senate@state.co.us

Sen. Joyce Foster - 303-866-4875 - joyce.foster.senate@state.co.us

Sen. Angela Giron - 303-866-4877 - angela.giron.senate@state.co.us

Sen. Lucia Guzman - 303-866-4862 - lucia.guzman.senate@state.co.us

Sen. Rollie Heath - 303-866-4872 - rollie.heath.senate@state.co.us

Sen. Mary Hodge - 303-866-4855 - mary.hodge.senate@state.co.us

Sen. Evie Hudak - 303-866-4840 - senatorhudak@gmail.com

Sen. Cheri Jahn - 303-866-4856 - cheri.jahn.senate@state.co.us

Sen. Michael Johnston - 303-866-4864 - mike.johnston.senate@state.co.us

Sen. John Morse - 303-866-6364 - john.morse.senate@state.co.us

Sen. Linda Newell - 303-866-4846 - linda.newell.senate@state.co.us

Sen. Jeanne Nicholson - 303-866-4873 - jeanne.nicholson.senate@state.co.us

Sen. Gail Schwartz - 303-866-4872 - gail.schwartz.senate@state.co.us

Sen. Brandon Shaffer - 303-866-5291 - brandon@brandonshaffer.com

Sen. Pat Steadman - 303-866-4861 - pat.steadman.senate@state.co.us

Sen. Lois Tochtrop - 303-866-4863 - lotochtrop@aol.com

Sen. Suzanne Williams - 303-866-3432 - suzanne.williams.senate@state.co.us

Where were you when ...?

2011-05-03T11:29:00.002-06:00

Where were you when you heard Osama bin Laden was dead?

I was dancing a jig in front of my TV. And couldn't help but imagine the short lecture Allah was delivering to Osama standing in judgment before the throne:

"No, dude! You got it all wrong! You been out there killing people.
"I said save your brother, not kill your brother!
"So off with you. Go to hell.
"No, no virgins for you.
"What were you thinking?"

And is it right to dance on the grave of your dead enemy?
Willy Yeats, in his poem "Tom O'Roughley," said this:

"And if my dearest friend were dead
"I'd dance a measure on his grave."

So what's good for a friend, must not be too bad for an enemy. Yeats also wrote:

"An aimless joy is a pure joy
Or so did Tom O'Roughley say
...
'And wisdom is a butterfly
And not a gloomy bird of prey."

Think about that as you dance your jig of joy.
The world is a better place today.

Mecca for creative small businesses

2011-04-25T08:37:00.001-06:00

Over the river and through a bit of urban jungle, longtime developer Mickey Zeppelin and his partner/developer/son Kyle are building a mecca for 21st century "creative entrepreneurs."

And I don't mean artists.

The Zeppelins' three buildings, two that make up Taxi and a recent truck-terminal renovation they call Freight, are rife with cutting-edge art and even an artist's studio or two.

But the commercial development is more about business, and particularly collaborative, Internet-based small businesses -- search-engine optimization, Internet advertising, digital graphics and design -- than it is about the artsy, loft-like design that has become common to modern or renovated business districts.

Besides that, Taxi and Freight are located on the west side of the South Platte River, in the still more industrial area of what many people are now calling RiNo, the River North Art District. When Taxi opened nearly 10 years ago, Mickey Zeppelin's ties to the arts community usually rendered publicity about his business enterprise to a secondary status behind the dozens of arts-oriented businesses and residences that were spreading out on the east bank of the river.

But the Great Recession, which drove many middle managers and executives into starting their own businesses, and the explosive growth of some of those new, Internet-savvy firms, "played into our hands in a lot of ways and is what got Freight leased" over the past year even before build out, said Kyle.

Kyle and Mickey Zeppelin

Kyle Zeppelin prefers to call those commercial tenants "new-economy businesses," and notes that their owners and employees fit perfectly into the open-air campus that Taxi and Freight have become.

He and Mickey bought the Freight building, the truck terminal still equipped with freight-bay garage doors that new tenants can open on mild and summer days, after building and filling the second Taxi building which includes residential units above a ground floor of commercial spaces.

The three buildings are 95 percent leased by about 60 businesses that employ about 300 people, Mickey said. Several original commercial tenants are still there, and some have grown from small spaces to larger ones, with one threatening now to take over the large leasing office Taxi had kept for itself.

The original Taxi building, 3455 Ringsby Court, was converted from the old headquarters of Yellow Cab and retains some of the concrete curbs and paving that were part of the original site. The Fuel Cafe, independently operated by a tenant, offers close-at-hand food and bar service; there's a Pilates studio and fitness center, free parking and a new childhood-education center in the Freight building.

"The Internet is not getting any smaller," Kyle said to explain Taxi and Freight's attraction to the new businesses leasing its space. "You look around at the inventory of real estate and it was primarily this pretty typical format of Class A and Class B office buildings that were very impersonal and in some cases very fancy and not very representative of the way this new generation of companies was working," he said.

It's "more collaborative, more open floor plans, more shared spaces, more opportunities for collaboration at a high level of specialization," he added, and both he and his father believe Taxi was ahead of the trend 10 years ago when it built just those kinds of innovations into its business "campus."

"You can't put them in a downtown office building next to a mortgage broker or an insurance company," Kyle said of his "new-economy" tenants.

"These guys want to come to work in their shorts; they don't necessarily have to answer to anyone. They're good at what they do and they want to keep their employees happy because their employees are in demand. And if they want to bring their dog to work, they'll bring their dog to work. If they want to play video games over lunch in their conference room, then that's what they're doing."

Mickey, at age 74, is quick to measure a potential tenant's interest in the culture of Taxi. "It's interesting," he said. "We generally will know within 10 minutes: They get it or they don't get it. It's the kind of place that has incredible energy around it, and people say, 'I love it,' or you just take one look at their face and say, 'This really isn't a fit."

The Zeppelin's next building -- new construction planned at about 95,000 square feet and a cost of about $20 million -- will be targeted to bigger companies, large tech firms that might be interested in 8,000 to 10,000 square feet to house up to a couple hundred employees.

"That's really the kind of Silicon Valley model," said Kyle. "Plug in the Apple or the Twitter or the Google and surround it with all these smaller groups and it creates an opportunity. The smaller groups create an opportunity for the bigger groups to tap into some of this innovation that needs that kind of small scale, and then the bigger groups present an opportunity for the small groups because they're out there functioning at a really big scale."

Sounds like the perfect formula for continuing to draw innovative small businesses to a 21st century business park -- with a little residential thrown in the mix.

Mickey Zeppelin said he and his partners have thrown about $50 million into the development so far, and their return on the investment is just now beginning to manifest itself. Rents range from $17 to $20 per square foot, which Kyle said is about 20 percent less than new construction in nearby downtown, and Taxi is actually able to help small firms finance custom tenant buildouts, adding another level of draw for smaller tenants.

And the urban atmosphere -- "We got a bus maintenance facility on one side, a concrete plant on the other," said Kyle -- remains in fashion among new businesses that are not only playing at the edges of their industries but that also appreciate locating in a place that's "got an edge to it."

That makes Taxi and Freight a little like the landlords who have developed the complex. "It's a little off center," said Kyle. "If you don't see the vision ...."

Pain may favor a tax hike come November

2011-04-14T16:29:00.000-06:00

Carol Hedges figures Colorado voters will be ready for a tax hike by November once they begin to feel the pain of longer lines at motor-vehicle offices, closed parks, crowded first-grade classrooms and much higher tuition at colleges across the state.

That's just some of the pain that will be inflicted starting July 1 when budget cuts being debated in the state House of Representatives yesterday and today are imposed on Colorado taxpayers.

Carol Hedges

"People don't always make the connections" between legislative budget debates in the spring and public-sector service cutbacks in summer and fall when budget cuts are implemented, Hedges said.

That's why she thinks a proposed initiative to raise taxes to restore state funding to state colleges and public schools will be "ripe" for passage come November's statewide general election.

That's also why Hedges believes Gov. John Hickenlooper and others are misreading the 2011 chances for voter approval of a tax hike in November. And that state Sen. Rollie Heath's announced plan to ask voters to raise the state's sales tax and their own state income taxes has a chance to win voter approval.

Hedges is project director of the Colorado Fiscal Policy Institute, a unit of the Colorado Center on Law and Policy, a local think tank and advocacy group that seeks "justice and economic security for all Coloradans." I wrote about Hedges here last June after her group suggested the state's tax burden isn't as heavy as Colorado Republicans persistently whine about.

She told a small gathering of center supporters this week that Colorado taxes "as a percentage of income ranks us as 49th in the country" for tax burdens on citizens.

Heath's proposal would raise the state income-tax rate from 4.63 percent to 5 percent of taxable income, and the state sales tax from 2.9 percent to 3 percent, and apply all revenues generated by the increases to education funding, where the state also ranks at the bottom among states.

"Everyone says that you have to show people real impact, personal pain, individual harm or implications," Hedges says of any proposed tax increase. She said cuts in this state budget, when it goes into effect, will offer Colorado voters the "gravest" proof ever of the need to raise state taxes.

Heath's initiative, which has not yet cleared any of the hurdles in terms of title and language to be presented to voters, will also need petition signatures of thousands of voters to make the ballot. Voters should be feeling the impact of this spring's budget cuts just about the time petition volunteers will be asking for those signatures, and certainly the state's college students will know by then how much their tuition bills will have been increased.

The Colorado Center on Law and Policy is expected to take an official position on the initiative "soon." If Hedges can convince her colleagues the time is right for an up or down vote of the people on state college funding look for the petition circulators in front of your local grocery store.

8 fault lines on the road to entrepreneurship

2011-03-28T13:11:00.000-06:00

All the while I wrote about small businesses for the Denver Post and ColoradoBiz, people asked me: Why don't you go into business for yourself?

My answer? I'd have to work too hard! The many entrepreneurs I wrote about were working too hard all the time. I also did not know then, but felt fairly certain, that starting a business around my own writing would be as difficult a task as I had ever set out for myself.

I'm now learning the truth about both those preconceptions as I try to make a business of RobertSchwabPoet.com, where this small-business blog and my other writing become my products, products I want to sell to advertisers.

Note well: The visible lack of advertisers on this blogsite is testimony to how difficult I'm finding converting "the dream" into profit.

But I'm not alone in this digital camp. Even big organizations like the New York Times have struggled to "monetize" their digital offerings, and today marks the newspaper's erection of a "pay wall" intended to eventually do just that.

So now might be the time to click here to see one example of a good source of information for small-business owners, the NYT's small-business blog called "You're the Boss." I've linked you to Jay Goltz's post last Wednesday, "Eight Fallacies of Entrepreneurship."

Goltz, who is identified by the Times as an owner of five businesses in Chicago, says: "I have compiled a list of frequently used phrases and comments that I often hear when people are discussing this decision [to start their own business] and that I think reflect serious misunderstandings. At best, these misunderstandings can lead to a waste of time. At worst, they can lead to very bad decisions and very big losses."

In the interests of saving both time and money for Colorado entrepreneurs, I thought I'd direct you to Goltz's well-conceived list. I'd also recommend "You're the Boss," which has a half-dozen other writers working for it each week, although I don't know how the "pay wall" will affect your access to the blog.

While you are in it, however, one way to multiply the value of reading each piece is to check out the comments of other active entrepreneurs who read them, even days after posting. The comments can be as instructive as the original prose.

End the wars, cure cancer, create jobs

2011-03-22T11:42:00.000-06:00

Is the nation war weary? Would the $700 billion this nation is spending on wars be better spent creating jobs for Americans at home?

There is a double-edged sword in the conundrum offered by those two questions.

I've had an epiphany! The Republicans are right! We don't need more public-sector spending to create jobs. We need the private sector to invest money in more businesses to create jobs.

Public-sector jobs are real jobs and help the economy because money in the pockets of public employees is spent just like the money in the pockets of private-sector employees.There's no discriminating between dollars spent in a free market. We are all consumers, and the American consumer has always led the nation's economy toward growth and confidence.

U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, on Charlie Rose last night, mentioned he would like to see the $700 billion we're spending on warfare nowadays returned to the domestic economy in order to keep from "savaging" government programs here at home.

That's fine. But Republicans are essentially right when they say government spending does not create jobs. Private businesses create jobs that public-sector jobs are intended to serve. The need to hire hundreds of lawyers to staff the Security and Exchange Commission arises from the thousands of jobs created in the financial sector by private businesses taking financial risks to boost the nation's prosperity.

Teachers are hired to serve the children of parents working in both the public and private sectors who want to provide a better life for their kids.

Health-insurance companies create jobs to serve private employers who want to provide affordable health insurance to workers whose health or illness creates jobs in the private health industry: nurses, doctors, lab technicians, record keepers and computer techs to create data bases to hold paper medical histories converted to digits. And the health-care industry needs public-sector regulators hired to oversee it.

But no one gets to create jobs if private investors don't have enough confidence in the American economy to invest in it. No one gets to return modernized, outsourced jobs to American shores unless private American money is pumped with confidence into successful, well-managed American firms.

War weary is right. We are all weary of the wars that keep claiming the lives of men and women who could contribute to a peace-time economy at home.

Contribute, for example, to the war against cancer that also keeps claiming life after life after life in this country and around the world. A drug war that seems eminently more winnable than any of the foreign wars we're waging because it actually has produced recent advances that have saved lives.

That's where the $700 billion could be put to better use for all Americans. End the wars, cure cancer and create jobs, too.

Startup ideas from two cafes

2011-03-21T14:25:00.000-06:00

When you start a small business, your first transactions are not conducted in dollars and cents but in the idea you have for the business: You have to convince people your idea will make money.

Sometimes you even have to convince yourself. So finally, after working to hone the idea of my own business for years, I decided to take in a Denver Idea Cafe, where founder John Wren says people meet to "share startup experience & ideas, NOT advice!"

Wren has been holding these meetings for years, usually to a group of five to fifteen people gathered at 2 p.m. on Fridays at the Panera Bread shop at 13th and Grant streets, near the Capitol Building and downtown Denver. I took in the session on March 12, and then another session closer to home at the Koelbel Library on March 19.

The second group has been organized by Richard Oppenheim, a business coach, and Ken Wyble, a marketing consultant with the South Metro Chamber of Commerce. It is intended to serve a South Metro clientele of would-be entrepreneurs.

Each group specializes in "brainstorming" ideas that might help attendees get started on the business of their dreams.

As Wren says from the get go, attendees can take or leave the ideas that cross the table. That way the atmosphere remains informal and encouraging. People come to hear something helpful, not to have their business concept shot down.

Wren enforces a confidentiality rule, too, so I'll limit what I report here to what was said about my own business concept. "Have a story," one entrepreneur suggested, when I asked about raising money to finance my business.

Naturally I took to the idea. My concept for RobertSchwabPoet.com is all about telling stories: stories about other businesses through this blog; other peoples' life stories and family histories written in books or private manuscripts; stories I tell in my poems and short stories which I want to sell from my website.

I've already written two books about Denver businessmen whose stories are compelling tales of overcoming adversity. Starting my business on a shoestring is slowly becoming my own story of adversity.

At the second session, I heard suggestions for connecting with other organizations that might help me, but the best idea I came away with from there was a realization that I need to get a lot more help in the technical area of business formation. I already knew the South Metro Chamber's Small Business Development Center is the best place for me to go for that, so I've resolved to take advantage of more of its services for startups.

So the cafes are interesting and valuable if for nothing more than to keep your dream alive. The nicest idea I took from the cafes was that starting a business is a journey where it's possible to meet helpful fellow travellers. The work remains yours to do. But the best time to start is now.

In the Chemo Room: In it to win it!

2011-03-11T10:29:00.000-07:00

I won my appeal! Yvonne Harris, senior grievance and appeals analyst for Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, put a letter in the mail on Wednesday that I didn't pick up until today, informing me:

"After careful consideration of all available information, the Level 2 appeal panel approved payment for the IMRT treatments received in May 2010 and June 2010."

That was a very understated way to tell me I did not owe my doctors and hospital $176,305 that would surely have forced me into personal bankruptcy. So it was a win, win, for all of us, including Harris and her company, and she said as much in her letter.

"I appreciate the opportunity to have assisted in your appeal process," Harris wrote, "and I am happy to confirm this favorable outcome."

It's a story of a health insurer -- a company that is often described as the big, bad wolf of the industry -- coming through for a patient who went through the motions required of him and his doctors to give the insurer its proper grounds for paying a huge claim on the patient's medical-insurance policy.

Harris said that, too: "This decision was based on your clinical circumstances in this particular situation." That's an important sentence to the company. It provides evidence and documentation that Anthem's decision pertains only to me and no other Anthem-insured patient. It prevents a run on the bank, if you will.

The victory is exhilarating and confidence-building and those emotions alone help in my fight against the disease. The "system" worked like it is suppose to work, and the experience reinforces my commitment to do what my doctors tell me, and maybe live long enough to finish the work I want to accomplish on this earth.

Just yesterday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that about one in 20 adult Americans are surviving a cancer diagnosis. Of that 11.7 million in 2007, 65 percent had survived for at least five years, and 40 percent for 10 years or more.

I'm still working on the five, but aiming for 10, now with some confidence my insurer will be with me all the way.

In the Chemo Room: 17 minutes to appeal $176,365 bill

2011-03-09T10:16:00.000-07:00

I go back to the chemo room later today, but this morning I sat in on a medical panel that heard my appeal of Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield's denial of $176,365 of radiation "benefits" I received last summer.

To make that clear: Anthem has initially refused to pay my doctors and my hospital $176,000 for treatments I received through May and June 2010 based on the company's medical protocols that don't consider the type of radiation therapy I received a standard treatment for metastasized colorectal cancer.

Both my doctors, Thomas Kenney, oncologist, and Seth Reiner, radiation, were on the 17-minute teleconferenced call as the appeal hearing was conducted, and both explained why they prescribed the treatments I was given. The panel seemed to agree, but a majority vote is to decide the issue and I am to be informed in 24 hours how the vote went down.

It was all very professional, and my doctors both said they have participated in such review/appeals in the past. It is part of the "system" of health care we've got going for us here in America, and the new "affordable" health care act passed by Democrats last year probably won't change this part of the system.

The law preserved the role of private-sector health-insurance companies in the health-care industry, so health insurers, in order to preserve profit margins, will challenge doctors on protocols in order to keep from paying as much as possible on insurance policies that are racking up huge costs for care. If the company is successful, the bills fall to the patient, no matter their ability to pay, and the insurance company dodges, in my case, this one $176,000 bullet.

Anthem Blue Cross has already paid much more for my care during my near four-year battle against the disease, so I don't blame them for this attempt to save themselves some money. It's good business.

And its good business on my part and my doctors' parts to appeal initial decisions and make the insurance company pay. That's all part of the initial transaction I made with the insurer, and why I keep paying my ever-increasing premiums. The appeal process adds costs to the "system," but that's a policy the wise heads of industry and government have adopted.

Of course, a public option to private health insurance might suggest a cure to this national chronic economic illness. But that's another story.

New job: social-media tweeter

2011-03-07T15:38:00.000-07:00

"The secret for these companies is to have identifiable people whose job it is to tweet," Paul Carr told New York Times blogger MP Mueller in a piece posted today on "You're the Boss," the NYT blog on small business.

That's the first time I've ever heard it spelled out. New media is creating jobs in small businesses if only the small business owners recognize that new media needs full-time workers filling the jobs. What small business is going to hire someone to "tweet" all day?

Naturally, Carr, who is making the recommendation, is also a blogger and a journalist, someone getting paid for writing up suggestions, not for making payroll.

But Mueller also quotes a businessman, Gary Vaynerchuk, who sells wine and helped boost revenues of his dad's New Jersey liquor store from $4 million to $50 million through social media. Vaynerchuk told Mueller he spent 12 hours a day answering e-mail and working Facebook and Twitter since 2006 to accomplish that. I suppose his dad was working the counter all that time.

The point I'm trying to make here is that new media requires work time from those who would use it to self-market and build their businesses. True, the time can be written off to marketing and customer service, but the time has a per-hour cost that often goes overlooked by those who recommend such investment.

"You're the Boss" features Mueller and a half dozen other bloggers on small-business issues at the New York Times website. I recently discovered the blog and have found the content interesting although a bit too "ivory tower." Check it out for yourself at the same link as I've included above.

Romero promises economic development across state agencies

2011-02-28T11:39:00.000-07:00

Dwayne Romero, the state's new economic development director, officially resigns from his seat as an Aspen city councilman today and has promised a cross-agency approach to economic development problems like mountain congestion on Interstate 70.

"I think that's an integrated approach, a cross-sectional, cross-agency state of mind, and a philosophical approach to how this particular administration chooses to pursue its work," Romero said in an interview last week.

I asked him whether he considers taking part in the decade-long discussion over how to fix I-70 congestion, largely the purview of the Colorado Department of Transportation, was a legitimate role for the director of the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade.

"I do," said Romero. "You know traffic and congestion around I-70 isn't going to go away overnight," he said. "These are difficult, meaty, hairy issues." And I-70 traffic cannot be considered a narrow concern for just transportation experts.

"It clearly feeds jobs in the tourism economy," he said. "Every time a new business looks to the state, they measure things like the strength of our infrastructure, and how well it's adapted to, and it services our constituents," he said. "And choke points along I-70 do not help that story."

I asked him the question because I have long considered the economic development director to be in a unique position to influence practically any state government undertaking, since any new government undertaking is going to involve private businesses as contractors.

From straightening out the human-services department's computer problems, to building a transmission line across the state, to fixing the state's roads and bridges, government agencies don't do the work itself, but hire and pay private contractors to do it.

But hiring private contractors in Colorado has long been a convoluted and time-wasting (therefore money-wasting) process that often discourages local small businesses and even medium-sized firms from taking part. Romero would do well to involve his department in reforming that area of state government as well. Or at least inject itself into reforms on the side of small businesses and all Colorado companies.

Romero said during the interview that OEDIT, his department, will also be greatly concerned with carrying out Gov. John Hickenlooper's primary dictate to all state agencies, which, in Romero's words, is: "Getting our budget balanced and at the same time focus on how we improve the performance of government."

"We understand that at the state level we need to make sure that our government is run like a very effective business, and we're responsible for our revenues, and we're responsible for the delivery of our services," he said. He wants small business and all business across the state to respect the administration's business-like efficiency, and gain enough confidence in Colorado's economy to add jobs and grow.

That will require his department and other state agencies to craft "efficiencies and economies that help, if you will, deliver more effectively on the services that we provide, perhaps at a slightly less dollar value," suggesting a tightening of the state workforce in order to meet budget demands.

"That's where I would rely on my private-sector, small-business and business management experience," he said when I asked whether new duties would not stretch his current department's staffing requirements.

"No," he said. "That concept of dropping or diluting to zero other initiatives or other focuses is just foreign to me. You know, when you make priorities, you focus your resources and energies. Really strong leadership would suggest you still are able to perform your other missions and your other capacities. Having a priority of effort is what small business has to do every day."

Save a middle-class dream

2011-02-26T18:06:00.001-07:00

Organizers and members of the crowd estimated 3,000 demonstrators showed up on the Colorado Capitol steps Saturday to rally to Save the American Dream, an Internet-driven demonstration supporting organized labor, Wisconsin public employees, the nation's dwindling middle class and the power of people in a democracy.

Since this blog on Wednesday suggested it was time for Coloradans to vote with their feet in support of the middle class, and Move On.org and a large coalition of other organizations called for noon rallies across the nation to do the same, I went to check out the crowd and add my large body to it.

Two Denver television stations reported the crowd as much smaller, and frankly, as a lover of crowds and a reporter assigned to cover a number of them, the 1,000 figure seemed more accurate to me.

Zoe Williams, an organizer who led "Power to the People" chants from the speakers' podium, said she obtained the permit for the rally even though she is not formally connected with Move On, and then gave over the rally to Move On folks.

The crowd was predominantly people over 35, and largely people over 50, who make up the middle class that has been decimated over the past 20 years, as has organized labor in the private sector, and the power of people in all of America for that matter.

Williams identified her chants as drawn from the Sixties although she was not old enough to have chanted them then. It's a wonder the words have not been forgotten.

But that has been the way America has gone since the Sixties. Buttoned up, free-market, anti-labor if not necessarily anti-people, unless the people are undocumented immigrants. It's just that many of the people of the Sixties have gotten rich, turned Republican and think that all their neighbors have done the same.

Peaceful despite significant police coverage, the tone taken by speakers at the rally was liberal to activist. One member of the Denver firefighters' union took after Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who is trying to strip collective bargaining rights from many public workers in his state. "Mr. Walker, you awoke a sleeping giant," the firefighter said. "We are the people."

Back in the Sixties you wouldn't have seen a white firefighter take to the podium during a demonstration. Today, first responders of all sorts are as much under the anti-labor, free-market gun that is aimed at any unionized worker, but most especially at public employees, who make up the majority of the few unionized workers who still have jobs in America. Private-sector union workers are almost extinct.

Signs are always the most entertaining element of a demonstration in America. "I am not a serf," read one homemade poster. "Of the Corp., Buy the Corp., For the Corp.," read another.

Cars honked in support of the rally, and so did the big air horns on cement trucks pulling away from the construction site where a new court building and history museum are being built. The drivers, from the private-sector, probably would like to be unionized.

And for all the business opposition to unions in Colorado, battles most Colorado business people believe have been won for good, the rally might signal to future middle-class prospects -- the great number of college graduates walking around without jobs in their field, for example -- that the power of unions and union-negotiated wages also fuels a state's economy.

Many people at the rally believe there would be no middle-class in America if unions did not organize a third of the workforce after World War II. That post-war era, the Sixties, still represents one of the most prosperous eras in the nation's history. But that lesson has been lost on most people who oppose unions.

It's not been lost on what's left of the middle class.

Demonstrators change the world; can they change Colorado?

2011-02-23T16:39:00.001-07:00

Look at Egypt, Wisconsin, Denver, Colorado! Peaceful protestors demanding their rights. Colorado union members standing up for the minimal influence organized labor has on state government here.

Judging from the Middle East and Northern Africa, you would think that the power of the protestor, the power of people demonstrating successfully for reform and civil rights, has finally achieved its full voice and power in the world.

But then you hear that the governor of Wisconsin remains deaf to the demand for collective bargaining rights for all his public employees; and you see there are demonstrators here, too, in Colorado, advocating the same governor's budget-cutting position.

What's a thinking moderate to do? Hillary Clinton has chided world leaders for trying to retaliate against their citizens for exercising their universal right to assemble and petition their government for legitimate reforms.

But looking at the rotunda in the Wisconsin capital only makes you wonder whether a crowd like that inside Colorado's Capitol would be allowed its same universal right of expression.

But then you tell yourself nothing will ever get that bad here in Colorado.

For one thing, state workers hardly have the collective bargaining rights granted state workers in Ohio and Wisconsin several decades ago. And as for the private sector, workers have hardly any rights at all.

So for Colorado, no worries in that regard; local business leaders can breathe a deep sigh of relief.

But you have to ask: Isn't Colorado's middle class being destroyed just as effectively here as elsewhere in these United States?

Wasn't it another attack on the state's middle-class wage earners when Democratic and Republican budget writers of years past forced Colorado into a position of depriving children all the way to college levels the financial support of a good public-school education?

Maybe it's time Coloradans did flood the Capitol with their bodies to remind our leaders that peoples' lives are on the line here just as they are in the poorer nations of the world. Whether you are wearing a tie with your sport coat or not, decisions made at the top have profound impact on the legions living at the bottom.

And maybe that message is finally getting through. I've been to many a demonstration big and small in Colorado -- for more gun control in the wake of Columbine and for janitors' rights in downtown buildings --when the protest had no effect on lawmakers at all.

Perhaps the numbers just have to be bigger, and the shouting louder, and protest has to become a worldwide fashion, for our leaders to listen more carefully to the legitimate concerns of a citizenry. Maybe it's time for all of us to vote with our feet.

At least when you walk for a cause you give yourself time to hope someone will listen.

South Metro SBDC unveils remodeled website

2011-02-22T12:43:00.000-07:00

Check it out: http://www.smallbusinessdenver.com/; it's a breezy read through what looks like everything you might need to know, and every source you might want to access, if you want to start or grow a small business.

The Small Business Development Center is hosted by the South Metro Denver Chamber of Commerce, that whacky crew that holds the most entertaining of business-awards lunches each year.

But the chamber is a separate entity, serving a larger audience of large, medium and small businesses across the south metro region from its offices at 6840 S. University Boulevard in Centennial.

The SBDC, located in the same office, specifically serves small-business owners and is part of a statewide network of business development centers that serve small-business owners across Colorado.

About the remodeled site: It is not only elegant but extremely efficient, starting from the first link to a "Start-Up Checklist" on its welcome page, to an exhaustive "Business Resource Links," that can send you to that entire statewide network of SBDCs or a specific website to help veterans get the information they need to start a business.

The South Metro SBDC premiered the new site over the weekend. It's worth a look if you want to cut through the blizzard of information that can boggle the mind of even the smartest entrepreneur seeking to become his or her own boss.

In the Chemo Room: Financing alternative care

2011-02-16T14:54:00.001-07:00

"It is quite emotional when you're fighting for your life and you are out of money."

Those are the words of Sue Memhard, recent founder of The Emerald Heart Cancer Foundation, a new Colorado nonprofit that is raising money to help women fight cancer through alternative and complementary methods.

My last two reports from the chemo room opened a discussion between readers about the high cost of conventional cancer treatments and the lack of financial resources (meaning health-insurance coverage) available to cancer patients who choose alternative care.

"The foundation was started last year," Memhard explained, "as a result of my own personal experience of trying to find financial help for myself while I was doing alternative treatments for breast cancer. I'm a three-time survivor and I found that there were no organizations that could offer financial help unless an individual was doing chemo.

"I had developed very significant chemical sensitivities from prior chemo that I had taken a number of years ago," she continued, "... [but] everything that is not under the umbrella of the conventional care system is pretty much not covered by insurance. So even if you have insurance, it really doesn't matter.

"It's all out of pocket, and it's quite expensive."

So Memhard and her husband moved to Colorado from Massachusetts to get her under the care of a local alternative-care practitioner, putting the family under significant financial stress. When her husband, who is still looking for a job, asked what Memhard wanted to do here to help the couple survive financially, she said she wanted to start the nonprofit, no small expense itself. Part of the money she is trying to raise will go toward her own salary (which effectively means her medical bills).

And that's how creative you have to get when battling cancer from a pocketbook. My last post described some of my own bills; besides Memhard, the blog inspired Dr. Robert Zieve of Prescott, Az., to contact me about a conference in Phoenix next month that will gather experts on alternative and complementary treatments that are far less expensive than conventional chemo and radiation.

But that doesn't mean alternative treatments don't also cost patients their accumulated fortunes. Memhard called the three $500 grants her foundation has already awarded three women from Connecticut, New Jersey and California "a drop in the bucket" toward the total cost of their care.

That's also why she is actively looking for donors and other sources of financing to get her foundation up and running at a scale that might approach the great need traditional health insurers continue to ignore.

One of the things I've found that is a little debilitating about fighting cancer as hard as you might wish to fight it is the realization of your own uncertain future. Conventional cancer doctors estimate your survival times at various lengths: usually from three to five years. If you are found cancer free after five years of being cancer free, the docs will tell you it looks like you're cured, but not to count on the disease not coming back.

So the shadow cast by survival remains hauntingly over your shoulder, a little dark cloud no matter how well you might be feeling.

"It's quite emotional when you are fighting for your life and you are out of money," Sue Memhard told me.

A professional counselor with 30 years experience, Memhard also uses the foundation as a conduit for providing free telephone counseling to women who are facing the emotional anchors that threaten to pull you under while you are fighting the disease. She could use a little help along her way.

Give her a call at 303-993-8843 or go to her website at http://www.emeraldheart.org/. Whether you need help or can offer some, she'll welcome your call.

Courting business becoming a political trend

2011-02-09T13:53:00.000-07:00

Gov. John Hickenlooper

President Barack Obama is not the only chief-executive-of-state courting the business community big time. Our own Gov. John Hickenlooper met with ten CEOs of the state's largest employers last Friday in a meeting that so far has gone relatively unreported except by him.

The president met with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Monday and asked its business membership to "get in the game" of hiring to reduce the nation's unemployment.

Hickenlooper hasn't said he asked the Colorado CEOs to open their doors and hire more unemployed Colorado workers, but he did say Monday on Mike Rosen's radio show that the CEOs "had all kinds of specific suggestions in terms of changing the taxes we ... have on business, not to lower them, but just to make them more fair."

He also said that raising corporate taxes in the state now "would put up a neon sign saying we don't want any [new] businesses" coming to the state -- exactly the opposite of the "aggressively pro-business" message Hickenlooper, like Obama, wants to send right now.

Both chief executives want Corporate America to pitch in and contribute to economic recovery. We don't know whether Hickenlooper specifically asked the Colorado employers to do that because his two-and-a- half-hour session with the execs in his Capitol office was deemed a "private meeting," according to spokesman Eric Brown.

Brown also said the governor "regularly meets with business leaders and will continue to do so."

That's a good thing for both the governor and the state because Hickenlooper needs business on his side if he expects to accomplish anything during his term. That's a reality that escaped his predecessor Bill Ritter, whose governance was in marked contrast to Obama's and Hickenlooper's because it followed a national Democratic agenda rather than one crafted by him for Colorado.

Obama, a former community organizer, and Hickenlooper, an entrepreneur with a Democratic bent, have realized from the start of their political careers that government has to work with business for the common good of all citizens.

They realize, too, that neither liberals who like to shut out business interests from government, nor free-market conservatives who want government to stay out of business altogether, hold the proper respect for the joint venture that our society demands from both its public and private sectors.

Hickenlooper told reporters and economic development specialists after his Friday morning meeting with the CEOs that Ken Tuchman of Teletech Holdings Inc., one of those businessmen who attended, suggested to the group that the tightening economy over the past three years has made all their companies "better and stronger," in Hickenlooper's words.

Operating lean and mean will do that for a company, but as Obama suggested to the U.S. Chamber, the time for Colorado's big businesses to get off the sidelines and hire people is now. Let's hope our new governor pressed the same point with his C-level executive friends.

Hickenlooper wants red-tape legislation this session

2011-02-05T15:01:00.001-07:00

Gov. John Hickenlooper said Friday he hoped legislation will be produced this session to reduce "red tape" that clutters Colorado business performance.

Hickenlooper talked to reporters before meeting with about 200 business and economic development types at The Cable Center on the University of Denver campus, the last stop on a 1,000-mile tour of the state to gather ideas about what state government should do to grow its business and industry.

He ruled out tax reform this year, saying any remaking of the state tax code is too complex to accomplish soon. He said, too, that while touring the state, he found no one much interested in raising taxes now, although one participant in the meeting suggested higher taxes are inevitable if Hickenlooper's administration is serious about addressing state budget shortfalls.

The Colorado Center on Law and Policy this week filed new paperwork calling for a statewide vote on a variety of tax increases, according to the Denver Post, but the initiatives proposed by the group have a long way to go before they are approved for the 2011 ballot.

Onerous state regulations that limit, license and sometimes fine businesses throughout Colorado --usually lumped together by Hickenlooper under the moniker "red tape" -- are more likely to be addressed by lawmakers this year, the governor said.

Without being specific, he has made reducing and eliminating unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles to doing business in Colorado a favorite element of his courtship of business and bipartisan support for the "bottom-up" region-based economic development plan that is the goal of the meetings like the one held Friday.

Like tax reform, the development strategy, will not be addressed by this legislature because it won't be produced until mid or the end of May, which is after the legislature adjourns. Still the crowd, drawn from metro-Denver counties including Clear Creek and Gilpin on the western edge of the region, was delighted to offer suggestions to foster statewide business prosperty.

When taxes were mentioned, they usually were accompanied by the descriptors "fair" and "low." One Jefferson County participant suggested recruiting a nuclear power plant to the state. And Hickenlooper even suggested creating a state venture-capital fund that would serve only Colorado businesses and be operated purely on a highest-rate-of-return standard.

None of that wishing and hoping will create a single job tomorrow, which is the ultimate goal of any economic development plan. But the "attitude" in the room might.

Dwayne Romero, the governor's newly appointed economic-development director, suggested that job creation is accomplished one job and one small business at a time. Confidence in Colorado's ability to recover from economic setbacks, he said, will drive those necessary new hires.

Space entrepreneurs wanted

2011-02-03T17:42:00.002-07:00

eSpace, the Boulder business incubator for space entrepreneurs, is looking for a half dozen new companies to launch into Colorado's growing space industry.

Part of The Center for Space Entrepreneurship, the incubator was started in 2009 by the University of Colorado at Boulder and Sierra Nevada Corp.'s Space Systems Group in Louisville. This week, it opened its third round of recruiting for prospective entrants to the space business.

The program provides money, physical space and business mentoring to successful applicants. Diane Dimeff, executive director, said three nascent companies have already applied, and she expects up to two dozen more to try. To apply, go here. The center plans to incubate six successful applicants.

eSpace has six young companies currently enrolled; the firms are developing products from new spacecraft propulsion systems to moonlanders, like the craft shown here. It was designed by Next Giant Leap, a contender for the Google Lunar X Prize, a $30 million contest to maneuver and land a small spacecraft on the moon and relay data back to Earth.

Those may seem like lofty ambitions, but in just its first 18 months, eSpace has already graduated two firms to the open market: Net.Centric Design Professionals, which sets up ground-to-space computer networks; and Zybeck Advance Products, a manufacturer of synthetic moon rock that also has developed a milling system able to melt nearly any material at temperatures up to 20,000 degrees centigrade.

Dimeff has a $1.4 million budget for the next 18 months and, naturally, is looking for more earthbound donors and investors. The center's goal is to grow a space-industry workforce in Colorado that literally reaches for the stars.

In the Chemo Room: Bills

2011-02-02T12:10:00.000-07:00

The "Level 2" appeal of a $79,000 bill for radiation treatments I took last summer went into the mail yesterday, and I have before me two more invoices from chem labs for more than $1,000 for services done late in 2010 and as long ago as the summer of 2009 that have not been paid by my insurer.

And that's just the unpaid tip of the huge mountain of dollars that has already been paid by Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield and myself during my four-year-plus battle against colorectal cancer.

I'm finally in the process of adding it all up, and hope to write more about it for your reading horror, but also to illustrate the cost of fighting and surviving cancer in Denver which is no small financial hill to climb.

Maybe some of you can share your financial experiences with me if someone in your family has been fighting a serious health issue.

Part of my problem in facing these costs over the years has been my lack of income. I went from a salary just under $80,000 a year to a spotty income of about $30,000 annually for 2007, 2008 and 2009, what with writing a book for pay, doing a few public-relations projects and cashing out my retirement and one life insurance policy.

This past year has been a lot worse, as it has been for many, many people, and I've been borrowing heavily to make ends meet. Strangely, even though I am still taking chemo therapy, I feel as if I have recovered 98 percent of my energy pre-diagnosis, and I'm working hard on writing projects, including this blog, but making no money.

I plan to change that this year. And one of the ways I hope to change it is by writing about how much it costs to survive cancer in Denver, Colorado. The problem with survival, as I've already indicated, is not only that you have to pay for a portion of its expense, but also that you have to pay all the rest of your "cost-of-living," like rent, groceries, car insurance, etc.

So filing an appeal of a medical bill that has been denied by an insurer becomes routine business for a cancer survivor.

And you do it with a kind of a hippie-inspired equanimity because you know your insurer already has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep you alive. You can only be grateful for that, even when you realize you are simply collecting on health-insurance premiums you have paid all your adult life.

Those total premiums, after all, hardly match the cost of long-term cancer care at today's health-industry prices.

But you realize something else as well. What you do not pay for during the four-year struggle is all the support, prayers and love shown to you by friends, family and readers of your blog. You can only be grateful for that, too. So thank you.

Moonlighting officials steal private-sector jobs

2011-01-28T13:44:00.002-07:00

I thought we were supposed to be creating jobs here in Colorado, not insuring the six-figure incomes of officials who are recruited to public service in the state.

Public service is called that for a reason, and I'm sure many state employees would love to make an extra 20 grand on the days they are forced to take unpaid furloughs in order to save the state some money.

But the public officials who insist on moonlighting to maintain $100,000-plus incomes and their status in the privileged class in Colorado don't seem to worry much about that. Neither, apparently, do they worry about setting a bad example.

The latest entrant to the "show-me-the-money" crowd is Dwayne Romero, an Aspen city councilman who apparently knows if you can't keep your salary cred in the respectable six figures you might lose some of your gilded Aspen status.

So instead of working as a full-time economic development director, he's giving up 19.2 percent of his state salary so he can part-time it as president of Related Snowmass, a subsidiary of a New York luxury real-estate developer.

Eric Brown, spokesman for Gov. John Hickenlooper (who gushed over Romero's gambit), told the Denver Post the new state employee will make about $28,000 less than other governor's cabinet members, which sounds to me like enough to hire a new assistant in the eco-devo/international trade office.

But that won't happen because the state is so short on money. Hickenlooper likes saving the money. He's assigned his lieutenant governor, Joe Garcia, to head the state Department of Higher Education, and has billed that as a way to save money, too.

But Garcia's double assignment was also a way to insure him a higher income, and that's the problem with the precedents being set here by Democrats and Republicans alike. Public service is public service and it has usually required some self-sacrifice from those who serve.

Now we have the elected Secretary of State, the elected State Attorney General, the elected state Treasurer, the elected Lieutenant Governor and the appointed executive director of the Office of Economic Development and International Trade making money on the side because the state won't pay them enough to make a "living" comparable to executive positions in the modern business world.

Actually, I don't begrudge the men -- notice they are all men -- the extra dough because private business in Colorado has been traditionally pretty cheap, certainly with most employees below an executive level.

But that's not necessarily true about private-company executives, so there's a bit of sticker shock among those members of Colorado's privileged class when they take on public-sector jobs. They don't want to lose their C-level social and economic status.

In a jobs-creating government, these good men would not only forego their private salaries and urge their former employers to hire or promote someone new to their vacated positions in the private-sector, but they might even double-down on their state public service and at least consider taking less money than is owed them for their valuable time.

That's the best way these wealthy men could serve the people of their state.

McCarthyism in the Colorado Capitol

2011-01-25T12:03:00.000-07:00

What does it mean when a Colorado state representative asks a union member during a legislative hearing: "Are you a dues paying member of Colorado Loses?"

Or when a Secretary of State tells a newspaper: "There have been certain family pressures that have been created by the press."

It means Republican state leaders are reverting to the language of McCarthyism, speaking in conservative code, trying to discredit people with labels meant to stir uncivil anger.

Language matters, and for that reason state Rep. Keven Priola (R-Adams County) and Secretary of State Scott Gessler ought to pick their words more carefully.

I've heard that Priola has already apologized to Tom Orrell, a member of Colorado WINS, a union representing state employees, for using language that echoed the Joe McCarthy-era inquiry: "Are you a dues paying member of the Communist party?"

As far as I know, Gessler doesn't even think he should apologize to the Denver Post for blaming the press for his own decision to take outside work with his old law firm to supplement an admitedly penurious $68,500 state salary.

The press had nothing to do with creating the pressures on Gessler's family finances. He chose to run for the low-pay state office. He opened himself up to charges of a conflict of interest by announcing he wanted to moonlight on weekends in order to make more money.

But language matters. And blaming the press (a politician's trick not exclusive to McCarthyism) offers Gessler no refuge from responsibility for his own words and actions.

I'm relying here on reporting in the Post, although I was told by a legislative staffer that Priola aplogized to Orrell and not Democratic Minority Leader of the House Rep. Sal Pace, who wasn't involved. The Post reported that House Speaker Frank McNulty suggested Priola direct the apology to Pace as well.

Perhaps McNulty, too, recognized the true offense loaded into Priola's word choice. He told the Post: "I wasn't happy with his tone."

In the Chemo Room

2011-01-24T14:25:00.000-07:00

When you are a cancer patient, you watch the news for breakthroughs and try to assess how they might affect your treatments, but you are also frequently alerted to a variety of folk cures by people who are concerned about you.

Lately along my path to wherever my disease is taking me, I've come across this list of such recommendations: Lypo Spheric Vitamin C, Dr. Oz's cancer diet (bok choy, artichokes, tomatoes and strawberries), cooked and pureed asparagus, and saffron.

Early on in my treatments I was told to take flaxseed oil, which I did and still do, and to some degree attribute what success I've had fighting the cancer-cell production that threatens me every day. My fight is extending into the second half of its fourth year, so I figure I can credit myself, the doctors and nurses who take care of me, and those who pray for me and suggest alternative cures with a significant measure of success.

So when I read in Sunday's newspaper a story about an Obama administration plan to set up a government research unit to come up with new drug treatments for diseases including cancer, I had a thought:

This unit should do a little research on natural substances that hold out promise of palliative or curative benefit.

Most doctors steer clear of recommending such treatments because none of the folklore behind them represents a scientific or clinical basis for a professional endorsement.

The Obama plan would undertake research pharmaceutical companies are not doing because it costs too much and there is no assurance of a return on the companies' investments. The companies have not investigated natural cures for the same reasons.

What better way to find out if natural substances work or not? Or at least whether there may be some scientific explanation, or none, for the folklore behind the so-called cures.

Bipartisanship starts with oversight

2011-01-21T10:51:00.000-07:00

There's a triple-whammy lesson in bipartisanship on the front page of the Denver Post this morning, starting with a call for a state audit of the Public Utility Commission by two Republican state senators.

Sens. Scott Renfroe, Greeley, and Steve King, Grand Junction, want the Legislative Audit Committee to look into the legality of several decisions made by the commission, including one that favored the natural-gas industry over coal interests in Colorado, rate-setting for Qwest, and the delay of a prospective taxicab company's attempt to operate in metro Denver.

Other critics of the commission have also questioned travel expenses and possible conflicts of interest for commissioners.

Renfroe, somewhat disingenuously I think, told the Post he wanted to take these questions about the commission "out of the political fray." But make no mistake, the issues are fraught with political implications.

Ron Binz, chairman of the commission, is an old public-utilities liberal from Texas, and he should be used to conservatives' political attacks on his performance. At the same time, Binz usually has been careful to provide the proper proof to justify his actions and positions.

But Renfroe's and King's request for an audit is exactly what bipartisanship is all about. Giving PUC decisions a "good-government" review allows the state as a people to test the quality of the commission's performance over time.

You will see House Repubicans in the U.S. Congress try to accomplish the same ends, as suggested in a Washington Post story that also appeared on the Denver Post's front page. It was more about the campaign finances of the Republicans who will "test" previous Democratic actions in Congress like the health-care law.

But oversight is a responsibility of any legislative body, and usually a newly gained majority tries to exercise that responsibility by going over the past actions of the party that has just lost a majority. That's politics, and there's no sense in describing it as anything less. The power to review and revise law is an asset we all should be happy legislators possess. God knows they make enough mistakes to warrant taking second looks at what they've wrought.

And bipartisanship in all its forms is finally on the rise. Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, has recruited Republicans to his new administration. Sen. Mark Udall is inspiring Democrats and Republicans in Colorado's congressional delegation to sit together during the State of the Union address next week. That's the subject of the third story on the front page of the Post.

Renfroe and King are invoking bipartisanship by asking for the state audit. Their move is political, no doubt, but voters sent them to the state legislature to be political and do what's right by the people of the state. The request for an audit ought to be granted.

Eco-devo tour might get it right this time

2011-01-14T12:55:00.000-07:00

Gov. Hick takes to the road today to do a little more of what his transition team started regarding Colorado's economic-development strategy.

So far, Hick has not named a director of the Office of Economic Development and International Trade, and to my mind that's a good thing. The last two governors did a poor job crafting a strategy for the office that actually accomplished something.

Which meant the state and its small businesses suffered for 12 years from a high-level lack of concern for the prosperity of Colorado's small-business owners. Small business, after all, generates the most jobs in our economy, and the state's interest in business owners who are job generators only makes sense.

That was not the strategy of the last two governors. Both Bill Owens, who thought a free market should allow small business to fend for itself, and Bill Ritter, who had a Democrat's instinct for stepping away from anything that smelled of the monied interests in Colorado, allowed the economic-development office to flounder.

I think both governors hoped the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce and its own economic-development arm would cover their asses on the eco-devo front during their terms.

But the Denver chamber had its own problems of perception rooted in its sometimes blind following of big-business interests. It paid lip service to small business, but I think its leaders felt more comfortable, more powerful and more influential dealing with the bigs. They simply paid less attention to the smalls.

The Hickenlooper team's encore tour of statewide economic-development interests promises a broader approach our new governor calls "bottom-up."

Outstate eco-devo folks have learned from the past that the phrase might mean they are just in for another spanking. Here's hoping for more from the state's newest chief executive.

Lump of coal

2010-12-28T10:48:00.000-07:00

The Denver Post delivered a lump of coal in its editorial pages on Sunday, an op-ed piece by Daniel Firger who gave "Colorado citizens" some bad advice.

"What can be done?" Firger asks rhetorically about improving Colorado's already limited dependence on coal as an energy source. "Colorado citizens can push to phase out dirty coal, not just in the state's power plants but also in its mines and transmission lines. ... No state is better suited to lead this charge."

Nonsense.

Colorado ought to be leading the charge to use every energy source available to it not only to wean the United States off foreign sources of energy, but also to solve the world's climate problems by cleaning up its continued use of all fossil fuels.

Firger, associate director of the Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University in New York, offers faint praise to the state for its efforts to clean up its energy markets, but suggests it go further to eliminate "dirty coal" from its industry mix.

Nonsense.

Firger evidently missed James Fallows' article in the December Atlantic Monthly that recognizes "dirty coal" will continue to be a worldwide source of energy and should be as long as efforts continue to clean up its dump of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It's cheap and provides jobs worldwide, including in Colorado.

Colorado Public Utilities Commissioners also must have missed the article before voting earlier this month to force Xcel Energy to reduce its use of coal to fire up six metro-area power plants. Not that the vote isn't healthy for the state; it just seemed uninformed.

Colorado coal miners would argue that technology is catching up to a sustainable use of coal to produce electricity -- adding that jobs and wages could be preserved if state officials would take cognizance of such developments.

Environmentalists in Colorado tend to be all-or-nothing types, and their influence on state government has been overwrought for the past four years. For the new Hickenlooper administration, it's time to balance that act.

Starting up a small-business chamber

2010-12-14T13:24:00.000-07:00

Chaos. That's how John Wren, a long-time small-business advocate in metro Denver, describes his recent attempts to start a new group, a Small Business Chamber of Commerce. It could eventually go statewide.

Wren obtained the registered name for the Small Business Chamber of Commerce recently, and wanted to add the new group to the collection of entities he uses to help small business owners talk out their problems and processes. So far, those groups include regular sessions of the Idea Cafe, when speakers share their startup experiences, and Franklin Circles, named after Ben, which gather active entrepreneurs together.

So he started a Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=145283622175466&ref=ts, and put a meeting notice in the Denver Post that quickly gathered more than 700 prospective chamber members, and called down the Facebook security gods in the process to slow down his explosive recruitment.

Wren called it "Facebook crankiness," but his formation of the chamber goes on, and the quick response he has received suggests the hunger in Colorado for some kind of effective small-business leadership.

There's no telling how it will all work out for Wren. He is hyper-active promoting his meetings on Facebook, Twitter, in the newspaper, and any other venue he can reach; but he told me he has "some people" working on taming the Internet glut he has going currently. That might also hone the mission of the new chamber as well as the services it might be able to offer small businesses.

He said the ultimate goal of the chamber is to lower Colorado's unemployment rate through small-buisness hiring. If you want to join the crowd, go to the URL shown above and sign up.

If you want to go to a meeting, attend the gathering at Panera Bread, East 13th Avenue and Grant Street, near downtown, at 2 p.m. Friday.

Pike Research, a worldwide toddler

2010-12-06T13:12:00.000-07:00

In less than two years, Pike Research in Boulder has grown legs in the clean-tech analyst industry, and toddled off to Washington D.C., London, South Korea and other parts of the Asia/Pacific.

Clint Wheelock, founder and the sole principal of the firm, says the company is doing that with about 40 people, 25 full-time employees and another 15 contractors. That's a small business that the new governor's economic-development administration should keep an eye on.

"Things have really been moving quickly," said Wheelock, after announcing the opening of the Washington office last week. "Faster than I orginally thought," and despite the national and global recessions.

But clean-tech, a worldwide industry that itself is in its infancy, is like that. Reaching out, growing fast, and learning quickly, without much help from any particular mentor, unless the Chinese government can be considered some kind of rich uncle.

Pike Research, according to its own press releases, "is a market research and consulting firm that provides in-depth analysis of global clean technology markets ... [including the] Smart Energy, Clean Transportation, Clean Industry and Building Efficiency sectors."

Wheelock said the opening of offices in Washington and London adds the fuel-cells sector to the firm's expertise. It's "a big new focus for us, and although fuel cells have been around for a long time, we really think the industry is on the cusp of some real growth -- for probably the first time, despite a lot of (earlier)talk."

"We have specialists in smart-grid and renewable energy, and in energy-efficient buildings and in clean transportation, including electric vehicles and other alternate-fuel vehicles," Wheelock said.

The analysts write research reports that include market size for a particular area of clean-tech operations, like software for smart-grid electricity distribution, Pike's latest research report. The reports estimate current and future market size and segmentation. That latest report, for example, predicts software and services for smart-grid technology will increase from a "relatively small" $356 million annual market in 2010 to $4.2 billion in annual revenue by 2015.

Pike sells that kind of advice in a single report -- "What we call a basic license and which is essentially one to five users within an organization," Wheelock said -- for $3,500. "There's also an enterprise license for large companies that want to post it on their corporate intranet, and that's typically 1.5 times the basic license, so in a typical case it would be $5,250" for an enterprise.

Pike sells its large clients subsciptions that allow access to its analysts for consulting and custom research. Wheelock said the "bulk" of the firm's revenue comes from subscription sales.

"A lot of the larger clients," he said, "are the large multi-national technology and energy companies that have an ongoing need for this, and so they'll sign up for a subscription or multiple subscriptions."

Opening the Washington office has been on Wheelock's radar since he started the company with his own savings. A London office is also in the future, and probably South Korea, Wheelock said.

Big market-research firms have retrenched during the economic downturn, he noted, but that has given Pike an opportunity to establish itself as a brand name for clean-tech analysis.

"The level of competitive intensity is very low, and much lower than I expected," he said. "One of the key things that we're trying to do is take advantage of that competitive vacuum and really assert ourselves as the authority on several of these key emerging areas....

"I absolutely anticipate that there will be a lot more intense competition in a couple of years, and I think we're just trying to get ourselves in a good position as the leader in the States before that happens," Wheelock said.

"It seems to be working very well."

Eco-devo transition to start in mid-December

2010-12-03T10:44:00.001-07:00

Colorado small businesses are being hit with unemployment-insurance rate hikes that sometimes quadruple their quarterly payments, according to Steve Raabe, writing today in the Denver Post. "Our hands effectively are tied," Don Mares told Raabe.

Mares is executive director of the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment, the agency notifying business owners of the higher insurance premiums. He has called together a task force to suggest reforms for the Colorado Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund, according to Raabe's story. The fund is the state's pool of money to pay unemployment-benefit checks. Colorado is already on the hook to the federal government for $368.5 million borrowed this year to pay benefits.

One of the members of that task force should be Gov.-elect John Hickenlooper's new director of the state's Office of Economic Development and International Trade, if Hickenlooper decides to appoint a new one.

Hickenlooper's transition team will begin rolling out a shape for his new administration about mid-month, spokesman Eric Brown said this week. What shape that takes around economic development is probably the top concern of the Colorado business community.

I once had hoped to join Gov. Bill Ritter's economic-development team. I can't say I'm glad I did not, but the four years I've had to think about it certainly fed my fantasies about what an effective economic-development team should be doing:

Like finding a way -- and the money -- for the state and its local governments to offer incentives to businesses to locate here. Big business fosters the growth of small businesses in a regional economy, and small businesses provide any economy the most jobs.

Or like being an advocate for the nearly 500,000 small businesses in the state, including more than 350,000 sole proprietors if they have survived the last two years of national recession.

Or like promoting the use of instate small-business vendors to do much of the work the state contracts out to private business. That work in the past has been valued at more than $4 billion annually. So there's a lot of job creation built into that money.

Or like advocating the growth of women-owned and minority-owned businesses in order to correct a lopsided disparity of such firms among the state's contractor corps. Facilitating the use of such firms by large businesses in Colorado as well as by state and local government units would help strengthen the state's economy at the core of its small-business community.

Or like acting as a mediator for small businesses among state agencies like the labor department when decisions are made that affect a small-business owner's livelihood. The OEDIT director or his representative could ensure that small-business owners are given some consideration prior to boosting fees and raising premiums.

Or like advocating for the general business position among state agencies, boards and commissions when other special interests like labor unions and environmentalists try to influence regulatory decisions.

Last summer, the Denver Post published a story that suggested economic-development efforts in Colorado needed an overhaul. Over the last four years, the state's economic-development office has seemed almost dormant. And advocating for anything through a state agency is often viewed in Colorado as some sort of blasphemy.

But the time is right for allowing such intra-government lobbying. Ritter got in trouble with the state's business community almost as quickly as he took office, and then spent the rest of his four years trying to make up for it -- only to offend the labor community as he did so.

Today's Post also carried an item that said Pamela Reichert, director of the trade office within OEDIT, was taking a position with the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp., signalling the exodus of state officials that usually follows a change of administration. Hickenlooper would be wise to consider some holdovers, but not necessarily in the OEDIT.

Appointments in that office will signal to the business community what kind of governor the people of Colorado traded for Ritter. Business friendly but also a friend to working men and women? Over the past four years those two positions were made to look antithetical. They are not.

All the people of Colorado ought to benefit from electing a new governor.

Be thankful for advertising

2010-11-27T13:32:00.005-07:00

Remember Black Friday 2010. It marks the beginning of the nation's recovery from the Great Recession of 2008-2010.

The mighty American consumer, taught the harsh lesson of credit-card debt, is back in the market, but this time buying with cash in the bank.

Online shoppers boosted online retailers' revenue by 16 percent on the Friday after Thanksgiving, according to the Associated Press, while long lines in the dark hours before dawn Friday proved before doors even opened that brick-and-mortar shops were going to have a good day.

Locally, you could tell that advertisers were back in force in the Denver Post.The Post has been selling the bottom of its Sunday front page for more than a year now, it seems. Since summer, the newspaper has sold the top-right corner of the page, labeled "Today's Daily Deal," to a variety of advertisers. And now the newspaper is selling off the bottom of page 2 as well, depriving readers of the interesting short items it has regularly showcased in that space but driving up ad-sales revenue that much more.

After all, what's a newspaper for? To share the news and serve the public interest? Not necessarily.

Newspapers survive today by selling space to advertisers; and the Great Recession for Newspapers, which began even before the nation's latest financial crisis, has proved unarguably that business survival is the ultimate goal of any newspaper, just as it is for any business.

In fact, newspapers, today, are not much different from any retailer; the ad sale is king, and not much will get in its way. Walmart, for example, long prided itself on not having to advertise in media because its low prices would lead consumers to its aisles simply by word-of-mouth. Today, however, Walmart is inserting ads in the Post like any other big-box seller.

I no longer argue with newspapers on that score. My profession as a journalist is dependent on the ad sale, and plenty of jobs collapsed when advertisers moved from newspapers to other venues to deliver their messages.

And if Today's Daily Deal for pole-dancing lessons, symphony performances and home-security packages do the trick (pun intended), then I'm all for using the deals to give working journalists some white space to fill with news.

And you can't argue with the results. If ads spur consumer spending, and consumer spending creates jobs and jobs create more spending, then an economy that is sputtering back to life is what every American, even the underemployed and unemployed, can genuinely be thankful for on this holiday weekend.

I am.

Health reform taking root

2010-11-18T15:31:00.001-07:00

Forget repeal. Health reform is taking root in Colorado and forcing doctors and insurers to face the facts of their new existence.

Take, for example, the complaint of nurse practitioner Mary Lou Hendrix in yesterday's Denver Post. In a story by Nancy Lofholm, Hendrix described the difficulties she has encountered trying to be "credentialed" by health insurers whose pregnant customers want to use Hendrix's skills without her being supervised by a doctor.

"Credentialed" means the insurer agrees to pay Hendrix for her services when their customers make a claim through her for payment. According to Lofholm, a 2008 state law allows Hendrix to operate without supervision, at the same rates as physicians. After working for doctors for years, Hendrix opened her own practice last spring.

In late September, Gov. Bill Ritter officially notified Medicare that Colorado is opting out of a federal rule that nurse anesthetists also must be supervised by a doctor, a full-fledged anesthesiologist. The next day, the Colorado Society of Anesthesiologists and the Colorado Medical Society, representing doctors, sued the state to block Ritter's decision. The lawsuit is pending.

Both developments reflect progress and resistance toward enactment of health reform meant to improve the lives of Coloradans. Nurse practitioners and nurse anesthetists can make competent health care available to more people across the state, expanding the market for their services and providing a measure of competition to doctors. Perhaps even driving down some prices.

For nurse anesthetists, the argument for their not needing a doctor's supervision is more than two decades old. I dated a nurse anesthetist in Texas, before coming to Colorado, who had to leave Austin for Idaho in order to practice her skill in a market unfettered by rules protecting the livelihood and wealth of doctors.

But when Ritter opted Colorado out of the Medicare rule this year, only 15 other states had done the same, showing how long it takes some reforms to take root. Hendrix's continuing problems with insurers illustrates the same slow creep of progress.

Following Ritter's decision and the filing of the lawsuit, the Colorado Society of Anesthesiologists posted on its website a call for members to register their displeasure with Ritter by calling or e-mailing his office. Lorez Meinhold said the office has received one complaint since the Sept. 28 announcement; that e-mail came in on Nov. 1.

Health care in these United States can hardly be called a revolution, despite the Tea Party's Revolutionary War custumes during the last election campaign. Evolution occurs with each dying dinosaur's extinction. One day in Colorado, the evolution of a 21st century health-care system will be complete.

In the Chemo Room: I'm back ... !

2010-11-15T14:37:00.000-07:00

Yes, I'm back in the Chemo Room, just as my oncologist suspected I would be, and I had hoped I would not.

But the only way to keep cancer from killing you is to keep fighting it.

So I am back in the Chemo Room fighting my cancer with the same two chemicals that got a "profound" response from my body during my last round of chemo: Erbitux, that expensive cell-starving biologic, and Ironotecan, a cell-killing juice you really don't want to try.

My latest treatment was last week on Thursday, and I spent most of Friday and part of Saturday and Sunday trying to get over the hump of it. Sunday's Broncos' thumping of Kansas City helped.

I feel better now, so I'm back at my computer to tell you again about where I've been in my fight against this disease.

Before the latest treatment, I was telling people I felt I had come back to nearly 100 percent of my work energy before ever being diagnosed. That was the result of a seven-month break from the chemicals: my hair grew back; the neuropathy in my hands, feet and legs continued to dissipate, making me feel like my nerves were growing back; I was writing and posting these blogs (about other subjects) more frequently, writing on http://www.examiner.com/ about Colorado poetry more often, finishing my book about Denver oil man Timothy Marquez, and even writing about other literary topics on my poetry website, http://www.robertschwabpoet.com/.

I also underwent six weeks of radiation therapy trying to kill the one cancer-cell production center -- a lymph gland in my chest -- spotted in the March 17, 2010 pet scan I received following the end of the first Erbitux round of chemo.

The side effects of that treatment were minimal except for the fact that Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield initially denied paying for the treatment and sent me a statement indicating a debt of more than $70,000. I believe that claim is now being worked out. When you don't make much money, you have to treat such claims casually and just seek to have them resolved between your doctors, the hospital and your insurer.

Five-year survival rates for colo-rectal cancer starting with a tumor in the rectum are about 59 percent, according to a 2006 post on About.com.

My doctor, Thomas Kenney, believes my cancer had already metastasized to my lung before the September 2007 surgery to remove my tumor, so my odds of living with the disease for five years probably have been considerably lower, but my luck on the Erbitux and Irinotecan gives me a chance to boost my odds of survival even past the five-year mark.

I was taking flax-seed oil during the whole last round, and I believe (with no proof) it might have helped me, too, since long-ago research that was ignored by the medical community claimed flax oil acted as an anti-cancer agent. The latest anti-cancer agent to acquire blooming Internet demand is something called Lypo-Spheric Vicamin C, but you won't find many doctors swearing by it (again no proof).

My docs don't like me taking extra Vitamin C because they claim it interferes with the chemo. Kenney has told me to investigate my own alternative treatments to the cancer, and during the seven months I have been off his chemicals I have found that diet is probably the most logical alternative or supplemental treatment besides flax that I might undetake.

That's a difficult choice. You pretty much have to stop eating red meat, and if you don't eat vegetables raw, you should cook them from a raw state to have the most impact. The idea is the foods naturally boost your immune system, and your immune system is the best cancer-fighting agent there is. Chemo essentially destroys your immune system.

But with a new Whole Foods store and a Vitamin Cottage nearby, I might just give the food route a try. Many of you who know me well, know that I have never lost my appetite during this fight. Not for the fight, nor for a good dinner, cocktail and dessert on most evenings.

Fees Colorado Republicans won't oppose

2010-11-08T12:14:00.000-07:00

The most interesting story in Sunday's Denver Post was given banner (top-headline), front-page treatment and it concerned the real attack against the middle class: increased prices charged by utilities and other public agencies that provide necessary services to the rich, the poor, and the middle class.

These are price leaders -- for water, sewage, electricity, public transportation, telephone, postage, and you could even include Internet connections -- that drive up costs for small businesses, drive down consumer spending on products and services that small businesses provide, drive up shipping costs for both employers and all consumers who still use the mails, and the cost of holding a job (by adding to the cost of getting to work) or sending your kid to school (also because of higher fuel costs).

The Post's Colleen O'Connor quoted Ethan Pollack, from the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute, who said such price increases act the same as taxes on the middle class and the poor, holding back both consumer spending and economic recovery.

Yet you won't hear Republicans, Tea Party activists, the business community including some Democrats, even Tom Tancredo or John Andrews going after these price hikes like they rail against taxes.

These price hikes have the cover of supposed good business practice. They may drive more people into poverty, but the authors of such cost-of-living increases bear no responsibility to the public. You could say they are the inevitable result of free markets and unrestrained capitalism.

Or you could hold their authors accountable. Admit such business practice is just as accountable for the destruction of the middle class as Wall Street shenanagans, the marginalizing of labor unions and outsourcing.

That's my kind of accountability. Happy Monday!

Post-election: Optimism vs. cynicism

2010-11-06T13:59:00.000-06:00

Following all the hoopla of the campaign, the vote on Election Day and the delayed declarations of winners in Colorado and elsewhere, perhaps a new bipartisan spirit is abroad in the land, despite Mitch McConnell.

God knows we need some, even if McConnell doesn't seem to get it.

Republicans across the land staged a comeback in Congress, but the wave splashed pretty harmlessly across Colorado. Michael Bennet beat Ken Buck and will take his business-friendly Democratic philosophy back to the state's junior Senate seat for the next six years.

Gov. Hick promises a new attitude from a different Democratic administration at the statehouse.

A one-vote majority of Republicans in the state House isn't promising to restore all the business tax exemptions Gov. Ritter took from them in 2010, but Hickenlooper is willing, like Obama, to give a listen.

The Denver mayor also is probably smart enough to try to restore a state helping hand to the natural-gas industry to get it off Colorado government's back. Gas is a clean fuel after all; and although it's available enmasse all over the country right now (keeping its price low), perhaps incenting local drilling to serve local natural-gas powered electric plants will actually revive Colorado's gas-producers.

Hick's probably smart enough to ensure a continued coal-producing industry as well. Our coal is cleaner-burning than most coal dug farther east, and there will be no wholesale conversion of old plants across the Mississippi, so despite transportation costs, that market will remain available to Colorado for years to come.

Perhaps, just perhaps, our new governor also will be smart enough to get the railroads to join a venture to improve transportation lanes in and out of the state, reducing shipping costs for coal and other products made here. There's lots a smart governor can do.

And there's certainly lots to do. On the Sunday before the election, the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp., which is the jobs-recruiting arm of the local Chamber of Commerce, weighed in on the challenges Hickenlooper will face as the new governor.

In the metro chamber's 2010 study, "Toward a More Competitive Colorado," education funding, multimodal transportation and health care for all Coloradans are cited as eroding pillars of the state's economy that must be fixed NOW!

Colorado labor has already been whipped into shape by Ritter to not expect much from a state leadership that is required to appease every whine that emanates from the business community.

And what labor really wants most right now is a job -- almost on any terms.

So what's left to be cynical about?

Only, perhaps, that even Republican victories, a restoration of balance to our legislatures both in Washingon and Denver, will not be able to insure that our political machinery is now well-oiled enough to actually produce something for its people.

Gridlock still threatens, and only politicians with "the People" truly in their hearts will make things happen in this the greatest democracy, the greatest model of capitalism, on the planet.

First, inspired business performance; then, Obama fires up Dems for Bennet

2010-10-29T16:33:00.000-06:00

Tom Mauro's big splash for Colorado Performance Excellence is next week. He hands out 2010 Timberline Awards to Elevations Credit Union in Boulder and the VA Health Administration Center, Denver, for continous performance improvement in 2010.

Also four Foothills-level awards for beginners in the CPEx program to AlloSource in Centennial, Avista Adventist Hospital in Louisville, the Poudre Fire Authority in Fort Collins, and the S.M. Stoller Legacy Management Program in Broomfield.

The awards mark the work done by participants in the statewide CPEx program which uses Baldrige National Quality Award criteria to improve business performance of an organization.

The all-day program at the Marriott South at Park Meadows, just west of Interstate 25 and Lincoln Avenue in South metro Denver, costs $275 per person for attendees from profit-making firms, and $250 per person for nonprofits. The speeches and seminar tracks explain how Baldrige criteria measure business excellence and improvement.

Mauro's organziation has been spending the year trying to develop ways for more Colorado small businesses to become a part of the Baldrige Quality Award competition. He will announce the results of that effort during this ninth annual CPEx Quest for Excellence event.

***

President Barack Obama fired up Sen. Michael Bennet's troops in a telephone town hall Thursday night, telling Bennet volunteers: "There couldn't be a better cause right now because obviously this is a tough election.

"We've got a lot of headwinds ... the economy is still tough in Colorado and around the country.... We inherited, both Michael and me, the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

But working together, you know we have been able to stop the size of job losses, stabilize the economy, get small bsuiness its financing, get our economy growing again.

"And Michael has been a critical part of that work in the Senate each and every day.!"

I was invited to listen because I contributed a small amount to Bennet's campaign. It was fascinating hearing the president of the United States speak over the phone. And Obama spoke with the same cadence and pronunciation that are mimicked so well on Saturday Night Live each week. You had to laugh.

Of course, you could push a button on your phone to volunteer your own boots on the ground during these last few days of Bennet's close race. I pushed the button, but am still waiting a call from the campaign to get my own feet out there walking for him.

Its hard to run a government or a campaign like a Baldrige-quality business.

But I think at least this government keeps trying.

Stop the pain at 8.5 percent unemployed

2010-10-18T09:27:00.000-06:00

I read in the news today that charitable giving was down nationwide by 11 percent in 2009 compared with 2008, and that the lingering end of the Great Recession might have had something to do with the decline.

The recession officially ended during the early part of last year, and yet most news stories that mentioned it also point out a stubbornly high, 9.5 percent national unemployment rate and anecdotal evidence from most everyone that they don't feel like they've recovered from the economic shock of the past three years.

Maybe we should redefine a recession, which currently is described by sustained negative economic growth over a period of time. Any sustained positive growth, no matter how small, officially ends the recession.

Maybe we should automatically consider the United States in recession as long as the national unemployment rate is at or above 8.5 percent. That way public pressure could be maintained on both business and government leaders to create jobs that increase consumer spending.

Consumer spending has been regarded as the only true savior of American workers and owners during all of the recessions and near recessions during my life.

When consumers spend their money, workers and owners, managers and employees, even government officials prosper. Fewer children remain in poverty. Fewer food stamps are distributed to feed the hungry.

Some might say 8.5 percent is a bit high. But during my lifetime, full-employment for the nation was once described at a 5 percent unemployment rate, until, during boom years and after welfare mothers were forced to go to work, even lower unemployment rates were accomplished in many states of the union.

Lots of people are working and tons of money is being made when the national unemployment rate dips below 5 percent. But real pain starts to be felt among middle- and lower-income people at around a 6 percent rate.

Yet pain has never been a signal to the rich in this country that middle- and lower-income people deserve some economic relief. When someone else is feeling economic pain, our American-Calvinistic work ethic kicks in, and we blame joblessness on a lack of character among the poor and uneducated.

So 8.5 percent, though high, seems an appropriate level to consider the workforce automatically worthy of a little bit of aid from the nation's pool of wealth.

It doesn't seem unreasonable at that point to increase taxes on the top 1 percent of earners in the country, as well as on those who earn money purely from their invested assets. We could hold those taxes in place at least until enough jobs are created to allow the middle class and working-class poor to regain the economic footing necessary to boost consumer spending again.

Middle-class spending will, as usual, give the economic engine of the country enough momentum to warrant pulling back again on any extraordinanry taxing of the rich.

That's a 63-three-year-old non-economist's perspective of the world on this Monday morning.

Let me know what you think.

Middle-class consultant, worthy of a tax break

2010-10-05T12:15:00.000-06:00

Eric Marburger is one of my croquet buddies, a part-time human resources expert working with the Mountain States Employers Council, and an entrepreneur HR consultant with private clients.

Marburger started his business, ESM Consulting Services, twelve years ago to supplement his and his wife Helen's income after the couple arrived in Colorado in 1998.

It was a good gig. Helen's position came with medical-insurance benefits, so Eric's tiny business and the Mountain States part-time work gave him the schedule flexibility he wanted in his work life. Together the couple made a good middle-class living.

"I don't want to work 60 hours a week," Marburger told me. Or "try to make as much money as possible."

Then came the Great Recession. Helen lost her job in February, but the couple continued their health-insurance through COBRA, the safety net that allows you to keep coverage provided by your employer's health plan as long as you can pay the full premium for the insurance.

As a human-resources expert for hire, Eric has had to know the ins and outs of health-insurance coverage, employee compensation, employee retention and terminations, other benefits and the whole range of HR chores within a company. His specific expertise is compensation, and you can tell he knows the subject well when he discusses problems employers regularly encounter in a down economy:

"There's only so much money organizations have for their employees," he said. "I tend to work with firms and organizations where personnel services might be 80- to 85 percent of the total expenditures for the company. Well, if health insurance is going up, let's say 12 percent, which is probably what it's averaged over the last few years, there's not a lot of money left over for pay increases or for any other additional benefits that might be wanted by the employees or even by the management of the company."

In other words, Eric Marburger knows the crossroads of operating a business profitably where rising health-insurance costs, declining sales, employee demands amid reduced numbers of workers (layoffs), and government regulation pull a business owner in multiple directions. As a sole-proprietor of his own consulting service, Marburger also makes a good example of a businessman dealing with all the push-and-pull that 21st century business entails nowadays. And this is a man who doesn't want to work 60 hours a week.

But Eric has been busy lately. We don't see him on the croquet court as often as we once did. His part-time work as a business consultant for Mountain States (about 20 hours a week or more) and the revenue he generates from his small consulting business (about $30,000 a year) is far more important to his family income now than it was before the recession. And like any good entrepreneur he is broadening the spectrum of services he can offer a client.

"I've tried to diversify my areas of expertise a little bit," he said, "just kind of make myself a little more valuable generally."

Making himself more valuable to the family, as well. For example, with Helen's layoff after 12 years at her employer, Marburger knew his family could qualify for a reduced health-insurance premium through a subsidy created by the economic stimulus package passed by Congress in 2009.

"We're paying $460 a month for probably a $1,400 insurance plan," he said, but the subsidy runs out next spring, as does his wife's COBRA coverage, so the couple is going to have to figure out a way to pick up new health insurance on their own, perhaps with a new insurer.

That's why learning the changes businesses face with the onset of national health-care reform becomes a large part of Eric's effort to make himself more valuable. He can help himself, his clients and his family all at the same time. And maybe even make more money.

Nevertheless, Marburger never expects to be one of those small-business owners with family incomes above $250,000 who might be taxed more heavily if Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy are allowed to expire in December. Republicans and some Democrats (I betcha they're the wealthy ones!) want to renew the tax cuts for the rich, but the Obama administration wants to limit the renewals to the middle classs.

President Obama's opponents on the issue argue that small-business owners who pay taxes on their profits through their personal income-tax filing will bear the brunt of the increased taxes on the wealthy, and, therefore, limit their ability to hire new workers at their small businesses.

To be quite frank, and since I'm a blogger and can use more colorful language than I could in a newspaper or a magazine, that argument is pure bullshit.

Small-business owners who include business profits on their personal-income tax forms are more often sole-proprietors like Eric Marburger, and they fall far short of the $250,000 income level that would be subject to restored higher taxes.

Marburger is a compensation expert. He agrees with me that the small-business owner who makes enough money to be be placed in the $250,000-or-higher tax bracket is a rare bird, indeed.

"I've certainly worked with folks that earn $250,000, but they're not small-business owners," Marburger told me. "They're executives of larger organizations. I've worked with a lot of health-care companies, hospitals and corporations, ... [and] the executives are the ones earning over $250,000 a year. I don't know that I've worked with any small-business owners that would fall into that category."

He also said his own income from private clients for the past few years amounts to about 30 percent of his annual take-home pay, which falls far below the $250,000 level. "Not even close," Eric said and laughs. "Not even close."

While I was a full-time business reporter and writer, I avoided doing profiles of business consultants because I considered them less than substantive parts of Colorado's economy. Self-employed contractors who don't employ others usually have little influence on the economy and, therefore, are often ignored by business journalists.

Now that I'm a self-employed journalist and wannabe consultant, I have a different perspective.

It's still true that small businesses with employees are the job-creators national, state and local governments are trying to stimulate nowadays to hurry up the nation's economic recovery.

But it is also true that the self-employed contractor -- a carpenter, electrician, even a business consultant -- is among those who suffer the effects of a business downturn, much like the unemployed who get laid off from small companies and larger ones as well.

The self-employed also add to the recovery when they get work as an economy improves. As Obama says over and over, we're all in this together. The rich people who made money during most of the Bush era leading up to the nation's latest economic downturn may have to give back a little of it to put a bunch of middle-class business consultants, construction workers and professionals back on the job.

Furthermore, if you've been making $250,000 a year through the downturn, it seems like a small price to pay for the privilege.

Pledge to the same ole

2010-09-24T16:03:00.000-06:00

Did it look to you -- like it did to me -- in the pictures of John Boehner giving his "Pledge to America" that the goof ball may be losing a little of his oft-mentioned tan?

I looked for a picture of Boehner to illustrate this contention, but found only that I am not the only one who writes about his tan. There's a whole page of references on Google to "John Boehner tan," so you can look it up yourself if you don't believe me.

To me, though, it looks like Boehner's work on the empty pledge took a little color out of him.

According to the New York Times version of Boehner's presentation yesterday, the pledge is about as empty-headed as the Republicans' two years of opposition to anything Democratic that has been introduced in Congress, or anything at all Obama, for that matter.

So, this from the Times' David M. Herszenhorn: "The approach Boehner set out is based on a belief that smaller government, lower taxes and less regulation will fuel economic growth, create jobs and ultimately lead to a more prosperous nation. It deviated little from the tenets of mainstream conservatism over the last generation."

Now, for a minute here, I'm going to sound like a Democratic politician facing a tough mid-term election battle or a lot like other Democrats including former President Bill Clinton who are taking up this cudgel in response to Tea Party invective: Were not the "tenets of mainstream conservatism over the last generation" what got us into this whole mess in the first place?

Free-market capitalism and less regulation led to greedy real-estate mortgage brokers and exceedingly rich Wall Street bankers.

Lower taxes led to a let-the-rich-get-richer recovery from the Internet recession of 2000-2001 that, if you recall, remained remarkably "jobless," resulting in more jobs lost during the first four years of George W. Bush's reign than his second-term administration was ever able to regain.

In effect, the 2001-2008 recovery showed only that a president could allow an economic downturn to have its way with the American middle class while he also waged two wars and turned a national budget surplus into a withering record deficit. And don't let it be forgotten that it was George W. Bush and the Republican majority in Congress who grew the government to the size that now Republicans want to butcher.

Herszenhorn also quotes conservative analysts as saying the $100 billion Boehner promises to cut from federal spending would hardly make a dent in the current $1.3 trillion deficit.

So a much paler-than-normal Boehner made a pretty pale pledge to America. He was promising more of the same ole, same ole Reagan/Bush conservatism that history has shown does no favors for America's middle incomes.

The sooner Americans -- and perhaps even Ohioans -- reject John Boehner's empty promises, the sooner the good-ole-boy congressman can get back on the golf course to burnish up that trademark tan.

Baby Boom bust II

2010-09-23T14:53:00.000-06:00

When you write as one of the many bloggers few people read, you are encouraged when a national writer addresses the same topic you've already taken up, confirming your instincts about what's happening in the world around you.

Take Michael Kinsley, for instance, writing in The Atlantic magazine about the bust of the Baby Boom.

Look down this page, and you'll see that in my last piece, written over Labor Day weekend, I took a slightly different and much shorter tact than Kinsley.

We both generally conclude that until now Baby Boomers, that great generation of Americans born between 1946 and 1964, have blown it.

Kinsley suggests in his article that our generation has 19 years to save its reputation, by allowing ourselves to be taxed to the point that we pay back all the money we and our parents borrowed to finance the society we have enjoyed over the past half century in America.

My suggestion was there was no way to make repairs.

But Kinsley has a point, and people who read me know I am all for making amends for our sins while we can.

Check out Michael Kinsley's piece. It's politically impossible, but at least he offers a solution.

Baby Boom a bust

2010-09-05T11:20:00.011-06:00

I come here on Labor Day Weekend 2010 to declare the Baby Boom generation a failure.

I'm part of the failure. In fact, all my life I liked to tell people I was born at the cusp of the wave of the boomers. Born in 1947, the official second year of the boom, I have turned 63 and am still trying to make a success of myself.

Reading the business section of the Denver Post today, pushed me to the conclusion that I am not alone. All my fellow baby boomers have, as Peter Fonda said in "Easy Rider," blown it.

Here's a little inventory of the stories and comment you'll find in the Post that back me up.

"Unions facing tough times," by Steve Raabe tells the story of a decades-long decline in union membership in Colorado and nationally, which coincides with the devastation of the nation's middle class in America.

Most of us baby boomers came from the loins of the blue-collar generation that organized America after World War II, although even that great generation never reached more than a 34 percent share of the workforce as union members.

That means, too, we baby boomers were young witnesses to the worst of union abuses: Jimmy Hoffa, wages paid for work not done, false claims of on-the-job-injuries, and a cycle of wage increases that made the work not worth the price.

So most of us chose the white-collar way, and found ourselves going to work, and teaching our children to go to work, in what is now parodied on TV as "The Office." The idiots are real; the trouble is they are us.

All the while the old wealthy and the new wealthy, the very establishment we rebelled against as hippies, made sure that,along with unions, the entire middle class in America was drained of power and influence, reduced to a status just above poverty line.

But let me continue my inventory.

Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, offers a piece in favor of a second round of stimulus measures for the economy, arguing that the unemployed and underemployed in America will never get back to work without one.

It's hard for me to even mention the idiocy of the article paired with Weisbrot's, by William F. Shughart II, a senior fellow at The Independent Institute in Oakland,Calif., who argues against a second stimulus package because: "The only sure way to perk up the job market is to cut taxes permanently and rein in public spending and excessive regulation."

Which, by the way, is also the establishment's sure formula to push what's left of the lower middle class below that poverty line, and to ensure future opportunities for the wealthy to become more and more -- even exceedingly -- rich.

But then there is the column by Robert J. Samuelson that provides the real indictment of an entire generation.

Samuelson gets to the failure of baby boomers to provide their children and their children's children a proper education, which was the real route baby boomers took to whatever prosperity they have gained.

Samuelson catalogs the failure of parents and education reformers in America to improve learning for large swaths of U.S. students over the years. "Motivation is weak because more students (of all races and economic classes, let it be added) don't like school, don't work hard and don't do well."

That's where we blew it. Unfortunately, there's no way to go back and make repairs.

Small-business finance in small chunks

2010-09-01T16:00:00.007-06:00

Small business in Colorado has someone coming to its rescue: Christopher A. Smith, right, the CEO and founder of new commercial lender CSI Holdings LLC, which is ready to fill a crying demand for small-business-sized loans.

The credit crunch that started in 2008 has lasted for almost two years now, despite a stimulus bill that was partly aimed to goose small-business lending and hiring, and despite later unsuccessful Obama administration attempts to use bank-bailout money to revive small-business operators.

"I saw it first hand," says Smith, who for two years before opening his own firm was executive vice president of Hillcrest Bank's expansion into Colorado. "I couldn't lend," Smith said of those first years when banks refused to let go of bailout money.

On Wednesday, Smith announced the opening of CSI Financial's Denver corporate office at 999 18th St., Suite 2700, Denver, 80202, and at http://www.csifinancial.net/. He said his experience in Colorado, where the firm will kickoff its lending, showed him "there was immense demand out there" for loans that were small enough for small firms to handle.

"That's why we specifically picked the niche," Smith said, reiterating what the company said in a press release: "CSI will differentiate itself by servicing small and lower-middle market companies with financing needs ranging from $50,000 to $1 million."

I know from covering Denver and Colorado's small business community for about 20 years that there are no lenders who market themselves as providers of that sized loan.

But Mr. Smith is coming to the rescue, and he doesn't even have to go through Washington to do it. Maybe you should check him out!

CSI also offers factoring services which is an alternative method of financing your business.

Calling out the wealthy

2010-08-20T08:49:00.009-06:00

It's time for wealthy patriots to step up and put America back to work. Buy GM's new stock. In fact, buy any American company's stock.

Remember all that blather back in 2002 and 2003, after the 9/11 attacks, about how not supporting President Bush was unpatriotic?

Of course that was nonsense, but now I'm not kidding. The patriotic thing for wealthy Americans to do now, even Republicans, is to support the American economy by buying anything.

It will bring down the deficit. Invest in America, it's the patriotic thing do do.

And I'm not talking Tea Party here. Most tea-party advocates are middle-class Americans who wrongly think the Obama administration's efforts to stimulate the economy are surreptitious attacks on the nation's core beliefs of self-reliance and individualism.

But the news of the day suggests otherwise. Unemployment claims are going up again, meaning private business hasn't started hiring again, just as banks have refused to lend to small business.

So we call on all patriots who make more than $250,000 a year, either in investment income or from the great private treasuries of Corporate America. Step up and invest that cash you put away during the Bush years.

Buy America and help restore and preserve its position as the greatest economy on the planet!

Democrats' lesson from Dan Maes

2010-08-15T12:14:00.005-06:00

"I'm voting against every incumbent; that's my theory."

Denver Post writer Christopher N. Osher quoted that little bit of wisdom from an unnamed Dan Maes supporter in a story on the front page of the Sunday Post about Maes' remarkable Republican primary victory. Photo credit: Boulder County Democrats

Democrats should learn a lesson from the story. Incumbent U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet beat former Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff in Tuesday's Democratic senatorial primary.

If you've read my blog before, you know I would have liked to see Romanoff win, reflecting the same anti-incumbent sentiment in my Democratic choice as was expressed in the Republicans' gubernatorial primary race, where Maes claimed his victory.

On Wednesday, I contributed $25 to Bennet's general-election campaign, and offered to work for him. If my offer is accepted, I'll have to stop writing about him on this blog, so maybe the Bennet campaign will accept the offer just to shut me up.

The contribution, however, won't silence me on the issue because I believe bloggers, as long as they disclose their leanings to readers, have just as much right to write about politics as anyone else protected by the First Amendment. Working for the guy goes beyond a mere contribution, however, so I'll quit writing about that particular race if I actually do some work for Bennet's campaign.

But until then, I suggest the Democratic establishment, who were the real winners in the Bennet nomination, beware of the anti-incumbent sentiment expressed by the Maes supporter.

Many traditional Democratic voters feel the same antipathy toward the ongoing partisanship of Congress, and don't have much sympathy for Democrats who can't use the legislative majorities given them along with a Democratic president in 2008 to affect the "change" in government they had hoped to see come out of Washington over the past two years.

A public option among health-care reforms is just one of those disappointments.

So Michael Bennet had better keep his campaign rhetoric tilting toward the populist view that Washington remains broke, despite his nomination, and he still needs to help fix it. Making up to his establishment mentors and contributors is no task to be undertaken now -- nor ever for that matter.

Ken Buck is going to be coming after Bennet with the Tea Party in tow. Bennet needs independent thinking Democrats and independents in his camp if he expects to overcome.