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.

Let the stock show roam

Copyright (c) 123RF Stock Photos

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.

Anti-tax pols should look to the Greeks

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.

Republicans, Weiners and my friends

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.

Small business catches the president's eye

"Obama Offers Help for Small Businesses," shouts the headline atop The New York Times story that inspired me to get back to business with this blog.

I've been covering small business for most of the last third of my nearly 40-year journalism career, and I have to wonder how much national resolve is actually behind the words atop Jackie Calmes' story. If the president is serious, small business could show the nation the way out of the economic quagmire we are in.

Calmes covered President Barack Obama's speech at the Brookings Institution on Tuesday about job creation. Obama suggested eliminating capital gains taxes on small business investment -- as if many small businesses have money lying around to invest or still have it invested after the two-year stock-market crash; extending a stimulus-bill tax break through 2010 that allows small firms to write off $250,000 in qualified investments; and providing increased tax deductions of capital expenses.

My experience with small businesses suggests that no small-business owner worth his or her salt would turn down any kind of tax break made available to them; but that most owners would also view proposed tax incentives to increase hiring a kind of a "cart-before-the-horse" proposition.

Many owners, too, would simply complain that the paper work necessary and accounting expense of filing for the tax breaks eliminates the true incentive to taking advantage of them.

What small businesses need in terms of relief from this recession is lots of cash and a stimulated consumer and business marketplace for their goods and services.

Obama said his Treasury Department would step up loans to small businesses using unspent TARP funds. The assurance of such loans might indeed incent a small business owner to add an employee or two to his or her workforce.

But credit relief for consumers and existing small businesses -- how about a reinstatement of the credit-card-interest tax deduction? --might open more wallets more quickly to increased consumer and business-to-business buying and spending in 2010.

And more buying and spending, after all, is the best kind of economic stimulus a country can enjoy. Even, I might add, if it's government doing the spending.

My point, here, however, was not to suggest ways to extricate the economy from its worst recession in 50 years. It was to point out that Obama has small business on his mind.

The president never made small business much of an issue during his campaign, but since taking office, it seems, he has drunk the potion that opens one's eyes to the value of the job-creation engine that the nation's small firms have always been.

If more liberal lawmakers would taste the potion, too, this country might just pick itself up fast enough to keep from crying about a continuing economic downturn next Christmas.

And conservatives, by then, might be joyfully aghast at how fast Obama's administration is making progress at cutting into the huge deficits inherited from the last president's reign.

Going to the brink and back, and not learning the lesson

Tuesday morning I posted to my Facebook friends a link to an excerpt from Andrew Ross Sorkin's new book "Too Big to Fail: How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System -- and Themselves." I hadn't yet read the piece, but judging from an interview Sorkin gave to Charlie Rose on Monday night about his book, I had thought the excerpt might shed some light on the recent attacks of Big Business on the Obama administration.

(Photo credit: foxbookshop.indiebound.com)

Rose mentioned the assault himself. Big-bank lobbyists are teaming up to oppose new regulations for the financial industry that Obama has proposed to reduce the chances our nation might once again step to the brink of a Great Depression 2.0, as it did a year ago.

Also, last week, the health-insurance industry finally let drop it's opposition to any health-care reform by lying about the prospect for higher health-insurance premiums if currently proposed reforms go through. To my mind, the industry's contention only strengthens the argument that a public option must be included in any health-reform package. The insurance companies, after all, would be the people raising the rates!

A public option, offering lower rates, would compete against those very companies, and keep them from raising the rates if they wanted to keep their current customers.

Then on Tuesday, too, The Wasington Post, reported the White House was trying to sidestep opposition from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, big businesses' highest paid lobbyist. The U.S. Chamber is bucking up against the administration on several fronts: health care, global warming and financial regulation.

To get around them, administration officials are visiting with individual CEOs over their company's positions on such issues; and several big firms, Apple Inc. in particular, have dropped out of the chamber because of its harsh opposition to administrative iniatives.

Did anyone really believe big business would turn the other cheek in these battles with a centrist/liberal administration that still holds majority support among voters?

"People" are beneficiaries of all the Obama initiatives, and that's what big business and some small businesses are opposed to.

You cannot save the middle class and the poor in this country, without taking something from the establishment and the rich. It's time the rich gave back what they, in cahoots with a free-market government, have slowly, inexorably taken away.

Sorkin's excerpt doesn't give much of a clue to any of this, but he indicated to Rose that the word "Themselves," in his subtitle suggests one of the most disturbing things he found in writing the tome. Wall Street is a club of rich people who also serve in government, and their actions in both arenas are taken with their own self-interest top of mind -- or at least as top-of-mind as the greater good of all Americans, which undeniably also remains one of their motives.

Doing 'right' by the nation

"I think we misinterpreted what the markets wanted," [Federal Reserve Board Gov. Emmett] Rice said. "I thought they wanted us to stay tight. After the ease, I was concerned about how the financial markets would react. When they reacted positively, I was surprised."

Rice was a governor on the Fed when Ronald Reagan was president and the nation was suffering through the longest recession since the Great Depression until now. His words then, quoted by William Greider, in his 1987 book "Secrets of the Temple," sound a familiar ring for today.

Here's more of Greider's quote of Rice, along with a paragraph in Greider's own words about that time in 1981 and 1982:

"Market participants talk tough as individuals and they're hard-liners [Emmett Ricce said], but they wanted to see interest rates come down and they welcomed it. When they saw rates come down, they were very quick to jump on the bandwagon and benefit from it. If you talk to individuals in the market -- dealers, bond salesmen, investment bankers, commericial bankers -- they will say: 'Stay tight.' Yet they welcomed the lower interest rates. It was the same with the Federal Advisory Council, advising us to stay tight. Then we ease and the markets rally and the same advisory council says to us: 'You did the right thing.'"

Greider continues in his book:

"For months, the Federal Reserve had held tight, insisting that this was what the financial markets demanded. The politicians from Congress and the White House, pleading for lower interest rates, were dismissed as mere politicians. Governor Nancy Teeters was ignored, too. The economy was driven deeper and deeper into contraction. In effect, the national government's management of the economy was being guided by the self-interested commentaries from a few hundred thousand financial experts in Wall Street. The Fed was steering -- or was being steered -- by the opinions of bondholders and their representatives and what they alone thought would be good for the nation. Only, in this case, the investors and investment experts from Wall Street were mistaken. Because they were wrong, the Federal Reserve was wrong, too."

Ben Bernanke, current chairman of the Federal Reserve, and Timothy Geithner, secretary of the Treasury, were determined not to get it wrong again in 2008 and 2009, and that's why anyone who wants to understand how the 2009-2010 economic recovery is occurring should consult Greider's book as a blue print.

Their mentor, and one of the chief architects of this slow recovery, is Paul Volcker, who was the Fed chairman during the early Reagan years, and who joined in making the mistakes Rice was quoted as admitting. Volcker, like Bernanke and Geithner, also doesn't want to see the same mistakes made now that were made then.

And to ensure that, the 21st century architects of recovery are following a precept intimated in Rice's comments from "Secrets of the Temple." He admits the Federal Reserve Board was trying to do back in 1981 what it thought Wall Street wanted it to do.

The Fed was not trying to "do the right thing" for the nation.

The Obama administration has made it quite clear to Wall Street this time around that it will being doing the right thing by the nation, rather than cater to the financial industry's traditional beliefs.

And if it steps on some peoples' toes, Obama is a guy with big feet and so far has shown he doesn't mind appearing politically awkward in public. Lets hope the same goes for his health-care reform.

In the meantime, Greider's book remains an outline for financial-industry reform. It's long and I'm still reading it, but I plan to write more about about it here in the future.

You can order it for $16.38 on Amazon here.

Self-interest on parade

If you want to see how self interest is ruling the public health-care reform debate, take a look at two stories in the Denver Post today, one on the front page, and the other on the "Health Reform" page, which today is 15A.

The Page One lead story, by Allison Sherry, reports how Patti Gabow, CEO of the Denver Health Medical Center, has written metro-Denver counties asking for millions of dollars worth of compensation for care Denver Health has provided for citizens of those counties in 2008.

The self-interest of Denver Health is obvious. The health system, described by the Post in a story earlier this week as one of the best in the country, is going uncompensated for those same millions of dollars worth of care, and it wants money to cover the costs from counties where the patients live.

Sherry's story said Denver Health is asking Jefferson County for $9.8 million, Arapahoe County, $12 million, and Adams County, $11.3 million.

That's a lot of money, but only fractions of $318 million in uncompensated care Denver Health offered patients in 2008, yet Sherry reports that officials in Jefferson and Adams counties don't seem too interested in paying their fair share.

"We don't believe it's a responsibility for county government to compensate hospitals for uninsured care," Sherry quoted Mark Tandberg, a division director in Adams County, saying in response to Gabow's letter posting the bill.

That response, of course, is in Adams County's self interest. Tandberg, serving his taxpayers, takes the conservative stand in the health-care debate: Government shouldn't subsidize universal health care.

Sherry reports that Kathryn Heider, a spokesman for conservative Jefferson County, also blew off Gabow's request. "I think we probably won't be pursuing it," she told Sherry.

Sherry, in the meantime, has a little self interest in writing the story itself since she is the writer of the earlier story that lauded Gabow's operation as one of the most efficient providing uninsured health care in the nation.

Reporters live and die (literally, since their jobs are at stake) by the give-and-take of story for story with sources. Sherry writes a well-reported story about Gabow's good standing in the national debate over health-care reform, and is then given access to the more powerful story about Gabow's demand for repayment from local governments.

The second story that puts self-interest on parade in the Post's coverage of health-care reform is the story on 15A about certain Catholic bishops in America, including Denver Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, turning against the Obama reform plans, none of which is certain as yet.

That story, by David D. Kirkpatrick of The New York Times , connects the relatively new opposition of the bishops to old and long-held Catholic opposition to use of federal funds to pay for abortions.

Chaput is a vehement abortion critic and during the election campaign last year anti-abortion campaign flyers targeting Obama were passed around the parking lots of Catholic churchs on Sundays. Chaput's book, "Render Unto Caesar," goes somewhat lightly on the issue of abortion while urging strongly that Catholics stand up in the public square and marketplace to denounce political positions that run contrary to church doctrine.

I'm going to review the book soon on Examiner.com where I write about literature, so you might look for the review there when I finally get it done. Consider that last sentence to be promotion of my own self interest.

The New York Times story quotes Chaput as writing in a diocesan newspaper column that Obama's health-reform plan is "not only imprudent; it's also dangerous."

The Times story immediately adds, "The bishops' opposition ... is another setback for Obama's health care efforts."

The opposition also, however, serves the bishops' self interest by not only boosting the church's anti-abortion stance, but also by trying to boost the bishops' personal political credibility within their own congregations.

You could say anything anyone writes boosts someone's self interest, and that probably would not be too far from the truth.

But when self-interest powers a national debate that is supposed to target a common good, specific arguments that benefit one interest over another ought to be pointed out.

Royal tiff in the Springs

How can the state let that happen?

That was my first reaction to reading the story in The Denver Post this morning about the dust up over a public-private partnership in Colorado Springs that is intended to keep the headquarters of the United States Olympic Committee in Colorado.

Great story, Jason Blevins.

So I fired off an e-mail to Don Elliman, executive director of the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade, to ask my question.

Elliman answered graciously, but first allow me to briefly outline the problem, according to Blevins in The Post.

A three-way deal between the city of Colorado Springs, the USOC and a developer, Land Equity Partners, has gone sour because the developer has been sued by investors, the city has refused to go to a lousy bond market to borrow nearly $21 million it planned to contribute to the project, and the USOC has failed so far to lease a redeveloped downtown building in the Springs that is to serve as the committee's national headquarters.

That would make it seem state government has had no role in the controversy, but Elliman said his office was asked to participate and made a commitment to the project. What's fallen apart has so far been beyond the state's control.

"We agree the USOC is a very important presence in Colorado, and we certainly want to retain it," Elliman anwered. "As you are well aware," he said,"we have limited financial resources at the State level due to a host of constitutional and statutory constraints. If it were in our power to solve this deal, we would do so, but throwing large sums of money at it, beyond what we've already done is not an option."

So the answer to my question: "How can the state let this happen?" is evident. It couldn't prevent it.

Yet the importance of working out a solution would behoove the state to get active behind the scenes. Politics is exercised behind closed doors far more than in front of cameras, and economic development comes down to much more than holding news conferences.

That's why Tom Clark, of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp., recently announced he was was going to start a blog that kept the public informed about the Denver Metro Chamber's own economic development efforts.

I've not yet been able to find the blog, but in an era of transparency brought on by the election of Barack Obama, I'm sure I'll find it soon enough.

Information is king and queen in a transgendered age that has been named for it. Of course, it can leave you royally screwed, too, but at least you know when it's happening.

All the right moves

David Brooks, of The New York Times, published a column today headlined "Car Dealer in Chief,"and I thought sure it would be critical of President Barack Obama for stepping into the auto-industry crisis by pressuring GM's chairman Rick Wagoner to resign.

Brooks, after all, is conservative and identifies with Republicans, although he has been a staunch supporter of Obama through the election campaign and afterward in such venues as Charlie Rose and Jim Lehrer's News Hour.

But a president stepping into the restructuring of the auto industry by pressuring the head of the nation's largest auto manufacturer to resign is a little more than I thought Brooks might be able to bear.

The column, however, was more anti-GM than anti-Obama, and I was happy for that.

Obama has been making all the right moves during the first two months of his administration, from using the bully pulpit of the presidency to chide AIG employees about taking bonuses after turning in miserable company performances; to standing up for his Treasury secretary while bloggers and commentators found fault with Timothy Geithner's slow unrolling of reforms in the banking industry; to turning the White House into a video-conference-room to hold an Internet town-hall meeting.

And Michelle Obama gets high marks for planting a garden in the White House backyard.

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll, reported on in The Denver Post, says the percentage of American who say the nation is on the right track stands at 42 percent, the highest number in five years. Obama's critics are on the rise, but that's pretty natural for a sitting president. The number of people less enthused by any president's performance usually increases across America from the day of of that president's inauguration.

But so far, amazingly, Obama has made all the right moves, or at least, all the right major moves.

He is making decisions -- including pressuring the auto industry to right itself, while still not denying it government aid -- that make sense for the greatest number of Americans. The budget, the deficit, increased regulation of banks and financial companies, and energy iniatives all belong in that same basket.

The moves already ensure Obama a legacy of effective action. Whether everything will work the way it's planned is another issue, still to be determined.

But you've got to give the guy credit for making his bones as a president of these United States in a very short time.

Power exists to be used by those who have it. No one can claim they did not empower this President to take action when the nation elected him in 2008. That's one promise this politician has no intention of failing to fulfill.

Don't need no Steinbeck to survive this Depression

"If Americans had listened to Steinbeck, would things be different today?"

That's the question asked by a headline writer in The Denver Post -- metro Denver's only major newspaper these days -- atop an op-ed-page column by Rachel Dry from The Washington Post. In the piece, Dry reports that reading John Steinbeck is again a popular pursuit.

Especially since current times are so tough, Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath," the story of a Depression-era family picking up stakes in dusty Oklahoma and moving to California where life wasn't much better, resonates again with many readers, Dry reports.

But Dry suggests that Steinbeck's later writing is even more apt for today's readers. "At the end of his career, Steinbeck's main subject was his extreme distaste for materialism in America," she writes. Two non-fiction works of the late Steinbeck, "The Winter of Our Discontent" and "Travels With Charlie in Search of America" (which I read), "have it all," Dry says.

"Apathy, greed, moral decay, a dissection of an America gone soft."

Well, I know I've gone soft because I spent 18 months trying to cure my body of colo-rectal cancer, when I could not exercise properly.

I know, too, that I cannot say I've "gone soft" Dry-style, or Steinbeck-style.

I am actually going back to the church of my youth, I'm not apathetic enough to keep me from writing my opinion in this newly started blog, and, though I would like to make much more money than I am making now, I still don't make enough to be able to describe myself as greedy.

And I suspect many, many more Americans are like me.

They decry the near total destruction of the American middle class by high-flying and high-powered corporate forces under the guise of free-market democracy -- just as I do.

And they can only hope -- because its the only thing we can afford -- that the current Depression will end in a way that our government rebuilds the nation's middle class along the way.

That's my opinion.

To be frank, I don't much care whether you like it or not.

Obama's bold new rules for business

Free-market bloggers and radio talk-show hosts ought to have their rhetorical rifles loaded Monday morning after The New York Times moved a story launching the Obama administration's latest trial balloon: much expanded federal regulation of banks, hedge funds, insurance companies and even large companies like GM that can have a systemic effect on the nation's economy if they fail.

Increased oversight of executive pay and increased capital requirements for banks and hedge funds were the primary reforms cited in a version of the story by Stephen Laboton that I read in in The Denver Post.

The expansion of federal rules to companies beyond the reach of bailout money is the new and provocative concept unveiled in the story. Anyone who barks about the inviolability of free markets by government will be appalled.

Yet business is the provocateur here. Executives who ran companies like AIG took risks that threaten the economy on a large scale, and the government's desire to impose some limits on their behavior is a natural consequence. That's what a government is for: to protect the greater good from those who would selfishly abuse it.

I say have at it, Mr. Obama. Congress won't be your friend trying to pass legislation required to impose such limits. But that's no reason not to try.

Ready to rumble

By now, many people are registering their opinions about President Barack Obama's appearance on the "Tonight Show," but the interesting moment that struck me was Obama's balling up his fists and signaling he was ready for a fight when he mentioned that Washington D.C. is filled with little Simon Cowells, the feistiest critic on "American Idol."

To me, the president's gestures indicated he was ready to rock-and-roll with his critics over the recovery plan, over health care, over transportation projects and spending as long as the spending helped stimulate the economy.

I like that.

In response to his own remark about how, like Cowell, everybody in Washington had an opinion, Obama added something to the effect of: "That's all right. That's what Washington is all about," and then he balled up and whirred his fists, indicating that like any good Chicago street-fighter, he was ready to rumble.

I like that, too.