The future of journalism: Wanna' buy a house?

"There are a lot of niches in a newspaper, and everyone of these is going to be a niche online."

John Rebchook, author, reporter and publisher of the Colorado real-estate blog, Inside Real Estate News, took two years to prove that the niche he had developed as a reporter for the Rocky Mountain News could be replicated as a sustainable business online, and that the business could replace his old newspaper salary.

Rebchook expects to reach that mark this year after a struggle not only to craft an attractive online presence for his work, but also to carry his audience from the Rocky, which closed in February 2009, to the blog which he launched in July that same year.

Rebchook's blog represents the future of journalism in the 21st century. Out of the creative destruction of the newspaper industry, which is still struggling to find business models that work, comes individual journalists who turn their own work into a product sold through the new small businesses they create to replace their collapsed careers.

Small, online-only media startups will not pull down the huge numbers that major media organizations consider necessary to sustain themselves -- usually measured in monthly unique visits to a website, with large organizations tallying those in the millions of visits per month. But small online businesses can pull down unique visits numbered in the thousands, and Rebchook has proven those numbers can sustain his small company.

How has he done it? He said several of his sources while he worked at the Rocky came to him after the newspaper closed and proposed starting an online product where they could continue to read Rebchook's independent reporting. With their help, Rebchook was able to launch Inside Real Estate News with three commercial sponsors who funded the operation and made sure Rebchook could continue to support his family as the project got underway.

Today, Rebchook reports 25,000 unique visits per month to the site, and 15,000 unique visitors, with an average staying time on the site of about two minutes, which in the online world represents deep reading and an eternity of any one visitor's attention span.

Unique visitors are distinguished from unique visits by the staying power of any one reader; for example, a reader who went to Rebchook's site to check out one of his latest scoops (Payton Manning's closing on a $4.575 million home in Cherry Hills Village) may have also stayed to read reports on the heating up of the luxury-home market in Denver and the warming of the commercial real-estate market in the metro area.

Those stories attract both a Colorado and national sports audience, as well as the professional real-estate audience that may be selling homes to other relocating professional athletes or CEOs in Colorado or elsewhere, or who use the recovery of the luxury-home market as a measure of a town's comeback within its regional economy.

That's what the Internet has done to the information industry in this country. It has thrown open the doors of publishing to anyone who has information to sell by knocking down the capital cost of entry to the industry; it has put the future of journalism into the hands of journalists who do the work; and it has made available to the world's readers the pages  of any book, magazine, text, newspaper, academic research paper or other collection of knowledge gathered in one place in any language.

Or at least that's the direction we're moving toward. John Rebchook is already a regular contributor.

   

NEED HELP: Every little bit counts

If I were panhandling on  a street corner in Denver, that's probably what my scrawled, cardboard sign would say, although I might try to make the message a little more original.

I'm a blogger; not a dreaded blogger I hope, but a blogger nevertheless.

I'm a journalist turned blogger. That means I continue to write about the things I used to cover as a journalist, primarily small business and politics. But in launching a personally branded blog of my own, I allow myself to go beyond the limits of assigned areas of coverage imposed on journalists working for established media outlets.

I have written here, for example, about my five-year bout with colo-rectal cancer.

My being a blogger is the result of the collapse of the newspaper business and other print journalism outlets. The Internet blew down the doors that limited writers' access to those industries, allowing anyone with a computer to become a publisher simply by starting a blog.

I started mine on March 19, 2009, and have achieved some limited success if success can be measured by an average of 550 unique visitors to the blog each month and occassional pickup of my work by Huffington Post Denver. Those pickups also allow readers from around the nation and across the globe to occasionally find my work and comment on it.

I have been seeking sponsors for my blog for about the last 18 months, and display a list of eight individuals and couples on the left side of the blog whom I identify as supporters of small business and the new journalism of the 21st century.

I believe personally branded blogging is a permanent element of the Internet-driven journalism of the 21st century, and if journalism is to survive at all in this century, bloggers, especially journalists independent of any large-media organization, will have to figure out a way to sustain themselves financially through the publication of their blogs.

When I first started asking my readers to sponsor my work, I expected several business friends who had their own firms to step forward to "support small business and 21st century journalism." I planned to list those businesses in a prominent spot at the top, right-side column of the blog, a place traditionally used to display advertising.

That space still remains empty of either sponsors or advertisements. One businessman turned me down flat, reporting through an associate, "No, he did not want to do something like that!"

My blog is political at times and this businessman's political bent leaned far to the right from mine, so I could understand the rejection. But other past business acquaintances also fell silent when asked to support what I was writing, and frankly their rejection was disappointing.

I thought business had an interest in good business reporting, and either my audience was judging my journalism not to be as good as I judged it to be, or my readers who were business owners simply decided investing in my business was not a good business decision for them.

I've learned since going out on my own as a businessman who is trying to make journalism his business product that the market is tough and business decision-making is always a cold calculation of hard fact. Small business owners usually  have few dollars to spend supporting other small businesses; their own bottomline has to come first.

But I'm going to keep writing about small business for as long as I can, and keep trying to find some support among the business community that I write about.

I'm also going to write about the future of journalism and other journalistic small businesses that have evolved from the creative destruction and reconstruction that has occurred in my industry since the Internet began luring readers to screens and away from printed pages.

I think continuing to write about my profession might help it survive, and that eventually small business owners will see the wisdom and value of the work I do.

SBA budget an icebreaker?

It would be ironic if the 2012-2013 budget for the U.S. Small Business Administration were to break the partisan gridlock in Congress during this election year, but House Republicans have offered the Obama administration and Senate Democrats just that opportunity.

I rely on Robb Mandelbaum's reporting yesterday in the New York Times small business blog, You're the Boss, to bring you this pleasant political development. "In all," Mandelbaum writes, "House Republicans have proposed appropriating $1.16 billion to SBA ... about $40 million more than the Obama administration has sought and $237 million more than the agency received this year."

For a variety of reasons, usually philosophical bordering on radically ideological, SBA funding -- most of which goes to guarantee small-business loans that help the nation's business owners make more money -- has been a partisan battleground where the ideologues win and small businesses are left to gasp over a lack of capital.

But the House Republican proposal here, at least on its surface, suggests a mutual understanding that SBA is no evil wielder of reckless deficit-producing government spending. And that small business could use the government's help to pick itself up from the Great Recession. The confluence of good vibe over SBA was further reinforced on Thurday when the Senate Appropriations Committee proposed a similar total spending bill for SBA at $1.12 billion.

Any senator or representative could legitimately share a drink with a lobbyist over such legislation. And maybe the Great Partisan Divide in Congress will grow a little narrower when the three parties discover how good it feels to be both doing their jobs and some good for the commonwealth at the same time.

Out of the chemo room -- for good?

I'm out of the chemo room and unless I can beat my docs' first and only prediction of personal life expectancy for me, may never be going back.

More than a week ago (which now seems like an extraordinary length of time), and after another scan of my lungs showed the cancer still growing and new tumors forming from the previous month's pictures, the docs said the coughing and shortness of breath I was experiencing, and the increasing exhaustion that accompanied every step I took, or every exertion I made, would only grow worse.

Putting me on a  new round of chemo, with all their horrible side effects, would only add to the burden my body is fighting against, and so they recommended no treatment at all other than the medicines and practices that might lighten the load and make my life a little more comfortable.

"How much time do I have?" I asked, knowing full well that's not a question an oncologist likes to answer.

In five years of treatments, neither of the two oncologists who have treated me, Dr. Tom Kenney out of Porter Hospital, and Wells Messersmith, from the Anschutz Cancer Center, has ever offered a personal life expectancy. I think both of them are surprised to see me still walking around, no matter how slowly. "Look at you!" Messersmith said as I pressed him for an estimate for my survival.

Then he turned to his assistant and asked: "What do we tell people as a standard?

"Three to six months," said the young woman doctor.

"So that's it?" I asked, always wanting to confirm what I've heard from a source, which is an old reporter's trick.

"I don't know," Messersmith said, but probably.

Over the period of three scans, I realized, my plant-based diet seemed to be having no effect on the disease and its progress as well. So this time driving home from the appointment I knew I was going to go back to eating meat and fish, ice cream and using butter in what I cook. Funny thing is that first week after the diagnosis, I didn't seem to have any appetite at all. And kept losing weight by virtue of not eating much.

I have not been able to have a beer or a drink either, and that, too, seems to find it's way to the bottomline on the scale.Call it a benefit. I know the alcohol will make me feel bad so it turns off my desire for even a sip.

Yet, still, on Monday, I went back to Centennial to play croquet with my friends and share the news. That was actually a mistake. The sun and not much hydration combined with every heavy-footed step up and down the court and the increasing shortness of breath that accompanies such "work" wiped me out for three days after I got home that afternoon.

But 'Look at me!' I am still walking around and getting some things done, and I expect to beat my "standard" life expectancy by more than an additional three to six months after this first ticket expires. If some new drug is approved by the FDA in the meantime, who knows (God knows) I may still wrack up that miracle survival from this stuff.

And walk back into the chemo room for another round of living, albeit with side effects.

Also in the meantime, there is hospice and funeral planning to take care of. My writing here will probably turn more frequently to the small business coverage I have been posting, and since every day of life seems to cost at least about $75, if not $300 or $1,000, if you have any interest in sponsoring my journalism, I'm still alive and kicking, and barely living off my Social Security.

Give me a call. I will try to accommodate almost any request.

Owners rank Colorado, Denver and Colorado Springs 'small-biz friendly'

Colorado Springs got an "A"; Denver and the state as a whole each got a "B+"; and Colorado came out 13th among 45 states ranked for "overall small business friendliness" in a recent national survey of 6,000 small business owners.

Thumbtack.com, a San Francisco-based nationwide referral service of local small businesses, said Idaho and Texas ranked first and second respectively atop their list, with Oklahoma, Utah and Louisiana following in order of the top five. Rhode Island (45), Vermont (44), Hawaii (43), California (42) and New York (41) were ranked the five least "friendly" states for small business. Five states were not ranked by Thumbtack because too few business owners in those states responded to the survey to make a ranking viable.

The states and 40 cities in them were ranked in 15 categories corresponding to questions posed to business owners regarding, among other things: "ease of starting," "cost of hiring a new employee," "overall regulatory friendliness," "friendliness of tax code," "current economic health of small business" and "change in revenue over past 12 months."

The study was conducted in partnership with the Kauffman Foundation,  the Kansas City, Mo.-based advocate of small business.

"Asking entrepreneurs to rank state friendliness to their businesses is a powerful resource for helping policymakers understand the needs of business owners and for helping aspiring founders understand the full dimensions of their business environment,: said Dane Stangler, director of research at Kauffman.

For the full results of the survey, click here.

Colorado bankers answer call for small-business access to capital

Bankers have been called nasty names for years by small-business owners who have been denied credit, but the Colorado Bankers Association has launched an effort that could change that.

Through a website, SmallBizLending.org, Colorado bankers are beginning to refer customers who don't qualify for their loans to other organizations around the state that might find a way for the cash-strapped owner to find capital he or she needs to grow.

I've been covering small business in Colorado for more than 20 years, and this effort is the first I've seen between agencies of government and large commercial banks to solve the "access to capital" problem that is a perennial complaint of small-business owners who don't qualify for bank loans.

If you try it, it might actually work.

When you go to the website, you see a cup of coffee beside a napkin with a hand-drawn diagram describing a business owner's route to successful financing. Below the napkin, three links are shown to get you started:

1. Before you Seek Funding
2. Steps to Securing Funding
3. Advice and Resources.

Click on "Advice and Resources" and you'll find a list of organizations that joined with the bankers to create the guide, all conveniently linked so you can go directly to them for more information. The list starts with ACCION, a small-business lender that operates in Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona, whose reputation for actually lending money to businesses has grown large over the last three years.

The list continues with: the Colorado Association of Commerce and Industry, a statewide chamber of commerce; the Colorado Enterprise Fund, a nonprofit lending source that can loan a business up to $250,000; the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade, a state agency; the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority, another active lender to small business; the Denver Office of Economic Development and 10 more resources available to small businesses looking for financing they cannot get from banks.

But the member banks of the CBA are all supporting the effort to find money for firms and companies they cannot make their own customers. That is the unusual and unprecedented nature of this most recent effort to solve the "access to capital" problem.

"All of the CBA members were involved in the project," said Christie Drumm, vice president of communications for Wells Fargo & Co. in Colorado.

She said Wells Fargo, which was the nation's and Colorado's number one lender of SBA guaranteed loans in 2011, is instructing its small-business loan officers throughout the state to spread the word about the bankers' association website in order to educate business owners looking for credit that "there are other options" if traditional bank lending is not available to them.

Caroline Joy, who was the project director for launching SmallBizLending.org for the bankers' association, said the effort grew out of Gov. John Hickenlooper's Colorado Blueprint, a statewide plan for economic development.

The blueprint "saw a need to demystify the lending process," Joy said, and the bankers' association interepreted that citizen demand as a cry for "pulling down the walls of the silos" that separated lenders and other institutions who were ready to help small businesses grow and create new jobs.

"If a bank can't help you," Joy said, "we want to help you find another place that can."

In the Chemo Room: A lesson in clinical trials

I was treated to a little of the cancer-fighting establishment's scientific bias against alternative treatments last week, but the experience left me unconvinced that a plant-based diet is not helping me keep my cancer in check.

"There's no evidence for that," my doc, Wells Messersmith said when I asked if the diet could  have had any influence on results of a scan taken March 2 and compared with an earlier scan from Jan. 19.

Messersmith methodically measured the 10 largest tumors (the biggest being about one inch long) still growing in my lungs, chest cavity and abdominal region March 9 to show me how progress or the lack of it against the cancer is determined by the folks who conduct clinical trials of new drugs.

An independent report written by a reviewer Messersmith said could be in Japan, India or anywhere else in the United States, suggested the numbers of tumors and the size of existing tumors had increased in me while I was taking the study drug Estybon (rigsertib) for six weeks this year.

But my doc was skeptical and liked to take his own measurements even though he did expect the latest scan to show my cancer had gotten worse. If it had, I would be withdrawn from the clinical trial: "You wouldn't want to keep taking it [and feeling the side effects] if the drug wasn't doing you any good, would you?" he asked me.

So he measured up my tumors and found that overall the cancer in me had grown by 13 percent over the six weeks. He questioned whether one shaded area of the scan actually represented more tumors, as the first reviewer seemed to be suggesting, and he noted that "worse," as described by most clinical trials, usually was a 20 percent overall growth of the cancer.

My CEA (a tumor marker in the blood) also had risen from 40.3 on Feb. 15 to 41.1 on March 9, another indicator things were not necessarily getting better inside me.

Still, Messersmith wanted to keep me on the drug for another month and scan me again at the end of March or mid April, right around tax time. He said he expected the cancer would continue to get worse and then I would be pulled from the study and enrolled in another trial to try to keep me alive.

He actually mentioned that a "cost/benefit" analysis is what determines whether a patient remains in the trial or not. The maker of the drug, Onconova Therapeutics Inc., Newtown, Pa., provides me the drug for free and picks up all the extra costs of my treatment related to using the drug. But like any business, the company doesn't want to keep paying for all that expensive stuff -- costs of the drugs and scans can easily run into five figures, sometimes six -- if the trial shows the drug is not doing the patient any good.

That's the most significant lesson I have learned in participating in two clinical trials. The drug manufacturers, while hoping for the best for the patients testing their experimental drugs, are businesses that don't want to waste money where the drug isn't working the way it should, even if it is keeping rapid deterioration of the patient's condition at bay.

All the consent forms for these trials inform the patient they have been chosen for participation because standard treatments for their late-stage cancers have already proven ineffective; the cancer inside them might run riot if the trial drug doesn't help slow or stop its spread.

Those who advocate alternative treatments for cancer often criticize the scientific, medical and business communities that test new drug treatments for recruiting late-stage patients to a trial that also calls on those patients to forego alternative treatments while enrolled in the study.

That's why the cancer-fighting establishment is known -- and also criticized for -- testing drugs that provide a late-stage patient with only a month or two of life, and effectively write off the patient's life as collateral damage when the drugs don't work.

That old practice -- now cancer fighters are much more enlightened about the "potential" benefits of alternative treatments -- was also made clear to me by my experience with this new drug. A one-month commitment to the drug is not very long.

But Messersmith and his team at the University of Colorado Hospital and the Anschutz Cancer Center have allowed me to continue my "alternative" ways through this trial: a plant-based diet, some additional Vitamin C and flaxseed-oil supplements.

I admit that when Messersmith told me I was the only patient in the trial he knew who was experimenting with a plant-based diet, I rushed out to the grocery store to buy three half-gallons of "dairy" ice cream and looked forward to a nice juicy steak.

But then I re-thought about making that choice.

No evidence that a plant-based diet restores the natural immune system to a point where it can fight cancer by itself is not necessarily evidence that it does not.

And if I am the only patient on a plant-based diet involved in this trial and my cancer hasn't grown more significantly in a month on a lower dose of the drug than it did during the first six weeks on it, maybe I'll be manufacturing some evidence the drug companies should pay attention to. We'll see.

In the meantime, it's back to beans and nuts for me. I'll cheat a little with that ice cream still in my freezer, but not much. And if I last the month, there may still be plenty of time for that juicy, half-cooked steak. Scotch on the side.

"Feasting on junk info"

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

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

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

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'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.