Watch the establishment take its Toll

Erin Toll, a Colorado government official, "was dangerously visible, perhaps overly visible" for the Colorado business community, according to a mortgage broker quoted in the Denver Post this morning.

"Dangerously visible" is especially dangerous in Colorado for anyone who is not part of the state's power elite, meaning the very rich business class, or the highest of elected officials, or the unquestionably successful and usually retired establishment.

Photo credit: Erin Toll, dora.state.co.us

On the high side of that equation, think of Phil Anschutz or Pat Bowlen or Bill Owens. On the opposite side, consider Clinton Portis, Herman Malone or Erin Toll.

When you are "dangerously visible" in Colorado, meaning you probably talk too much, you might as well get out of town because the unquestionably successful establishment has no room for you.

Witness Erin Toll. The Post today tried to explain Toll's unexplained, sudden leave of absence from her job as executive director of the state's Division of Real Estate, where she was given the charge of regulating previously unregulated mortgage brokers.

Mortgage brokers were a high-flying segment of the real estate industry in Colorado five years ago until their nefarious practices brought the real-estate economy low and put Colorado at the top of state rankings for the most home foreclosures.

Toll got her position in the Ritter administration in 2006 because she gained Colorado and herself national recognition for her investigation of title insurers, another segment of the real estate industry.

But real estate is a powerful economic engine in the state of Colorado, and you can bet Toll's enemies have been lying in wait ever since.

A Highlands Ranch Republican state senator, Ted Harvey, thinks he was handed the establishment hammer recently when Toll told the press his company was under investigation for false advertising, one of the tools unregulated mortgage brokers used often to get homeowners into trouble way back when.

The hammer came down when Harvey took after Toll during a legislative committee meeting.

Only the power elite knows why the Ritter administration hasn't backed up their real-estate regulator and told Harvey to go away. A judge has already backed her up, but that may have been an oversight.

The game is still in play, and Toll may still survive the presumed arrogance of doing her job. That would be a healthy sign for Colorado. It might also prevent some future crisis in the real-estate market.

Romanoff pulls off lead in Dem caucuses

Report from the Arapahoe County Democrats 37th House District caucus:

About 200 people showed up, compared with 2,000 in 2008 for the presidential election, and a relieved Ted Fritschel, site coordinator for the district, welcomed the smaller group with the news that party organizers simplified the process in order to avoid hundreds of mistakes that were made during the raucous caucus two years ago.

Fritschel also announced that for the first time in Arapahoe County history -- Arapahoe County was the first county jurisdiction organized in the state 100 years ago -- more Democrats were registered than Republicans, about 119,000 vs. 110,000. He didn't say how many people are now registered as independents.

My caucus of Precinct 227 went smoothly with a straw poll showing four of eight voters going for Romanoff in the U.S. Senate race, three for Bennet, and one uncommitted. By the time we took a formal vote, however, and after a couple speeches, the vote had changed to seven Romanoff, one for Bennet.

Today's news shows that trend held up across the state for Romanoff, who reportedly tallied 50.9 percent of the caucus vote to Bennet's 41.7. That doesn't mean Romanoff wins the nomination, but it should give him a big boost among the state's Dems, and it shows how much the party was divided by Gov. Bill Ritter's appointment of Bennet to the Senate seat.

Go Andrew! I was elected a delegate to the county assembly to cast a vote for him there, too, on April 10 at Hinkley High School in Aurora.

Hey, hey! Shout out for the Denver DA

Hey, hey, look at me. Writing a a blog in praise of the Denver District Attorney’s office.

I have never liked district attorneys throughout most of my journalistic carreer.

It goes back to covering some trials in Austin, Texas, where longtime DA Ronnie Earle made it a policy of his office not to prosecute cases he knew he might not win, but only cases that were sure convictions.

Only later did I learn that’s a widespread practice of district attorneys across America.

In fact, that's one bit of early evidence of the corruption of the electoral process in America, which today can be seen in the failure of Congress to pass health-care reform, immigration reform, and financial reform.

Elected officials, from sheriffs to DAs to congressmen/women, do not serve the public interest if their own personal interests – their re-election prospects – are not served by their actions.

That’s a terrible truth about America’s mature democracy. Government officials have learned too well how to game the American peoples’ will. The Tea Party movement, Ross Perot’s presidential campaign as well as Ralph Nader’s multiple presidential fantasies are all driven by that terrible truth.

Everyone in Washington and many, many people outside it (see Buie Seawell's guest commentary in Sunday's Denver Post) realize our democracy has been corrupted by wealth and position, and almost none of the people who know it actually object to it or want to change it.

But I digress.

Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey’s office worked long and hard with Denver police since Jan. 1. 2007 to solve the Darrent Williams murder case. Yesterday, it came away with a conviction of a gangbanger (he will remain nameless here rather than be historicized for his crime) who apparently immediately realized how badly he messed up when he shot into a limousine that New Year’s morning, killing Williams and wounding two others.

It took Morrissey’s office only four months to get the wheels of justice turning toward a conviction. By April, prosecutors and police got indictments of a huge cache of our town's gangbangers on drug offenses. I would guess now that officials knew then they would find Darrent Williams’ killer among them.

It took three years to convict the killer, but the wait and all the work proved worthy of every moment and every ounce of energy when a jury certain of its findings yesterday announced its verdict: guilty, guilty, guilty.

In the chemo room, III

I'm actually out of the chemo room as I write, but my coming out is one reason for a new chapter in this series.

A week ago, I had my last of 12 treatments in my second round of major chemotherapy, and I will soon be scheduled for another PET scan, an imaging procedure that involves injecting me with radioactive dye that lights up the areas of my organs where cancer cells are being produced at an abnormal rate.

In other words, the scan will show my oncologist, Dr. Thomas Kenney, what effect this second round of therapy has had on my cancer. Kenney and I will then discuss what further treatment I require to keep myself alive.

Kenney is now treating me as if my colorectal cancer is a chronic disease, not curable but treatable, probably a little like Elizabeth Edwards, whose breast cancer has been described the same way.

One PET scan has already shown that cancer producing cells in lymph nodes in my chest and in my lungs were being kept in check during the first three months of this round of treatments. Kenney, however, doesn't really know what to credit that development to. No oncologist can.

My doctor prescribed a combination of Irinotecan, a cancer-killing chemical, and Erbitux, a cell-starving biologic, for this round of treatment; but cancer doctors treat you according to their knowledge of the latest results of clinical testing of all the drugs available to them for specific cancer treatments, and the result is largely as individual and random as a toss of the die at a Central City roulette game.

The only thing predictable about the treatments are their side effects, and since my experience of the side effects of my two infusions followed past patterns for the drugs, the doctor and nurses who treat me guess the treatments are doing what they are supposed to do: reduce the spread and rate of reproduction of cancer cells in my body.

The new PET scan will confirm or deny that assumption.

Other than a sick day or two on the day of the treatment and the day after, I have been feeling pretty good most of the time. I haven't felt some bothersome pains in my chest, especially after hard labor like hauling downed tree limbs around my backyard, since the treatments began; but then I haven't had many tree limbs to haul since then either.

I feel like the treatments are doing some good, but the new PET scan will confirm or deny my self diagnosis.

So I asked my doctor about alternative treatments.

Clinical trials, for instance, if any are being conducted locally, that might lead to a cure of the cancer rather than mere abeyance; or perhaps nutritional therapy, which you frequently hear about saving lives.

"Most doctors won't take on this discussion," says one line in a book I'm reading called "Ultraprevention," by Drs. Mark Hyman and Mark Liponis, proponents of alternative treatments for a variety of ills.

And the authors were right about Kenney. He said he would leave any research of such "cures" up to me because he, himself, has seen no "data" -- and I know he updates himself on the latest data on everything as quickly as it is released -- that suggest proven beneficial effects.

Kenney plays percentages like the general manager of a professional baseball team, and he allows for only scientifically derived percentages of tested treatments to direct his care for patients.

That's more than okay with me, actually, since he made it clear to me at the beginning of my treatment that the cancer-fighting game is largely one of percentages. I figure Kenney's professional transparency is a lot more than you get from a banker nowadays.

So I'm reading this book called "Ultraprevention, The 6-Week Plan That Will Make You Healthy for Life." I have already watched a CD about dietary treatment of cancer, but the CD ranted on and on about why the "cancer industry" was all wrong in the way it treats cancer patients, while it offered little on the diet it suggested might cure you.

Both the book and CD were sent to me a while back by two friends in Chicago, but I largely ignored the advice until it became clear to me that Kenney was probably going to having me on Erbitux for the rest of my days.

The biologic, which attacks a sort of anchor that is characteristic to certain colorectal cancer cells, costs as much as $4,500 per month per treatment according to some of the latest news about it, and my health insurance company, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield of Colorado, so far has sported for the full costs of my chemotherapy minus copays.

I do pay $1,100 monthly premiums for the coverage, however.

I'll write another chapter of this series when I get the results of the PET scan to let you know how I'm doing. I'm also going to back track through my treatments to give you an idea of what it costs to treat colorectal cancer in Colorado, an idea originally conceived as: "What it costs to BEAT colorectal cancer in Colorado."

Developments have augured badly for a cure since that original thought occurred, and the energy robbed from you from cancer treatments also interfered with producing such a series of posts on an appropriately efficient schedule.

I do mean to finish the project. Stay tuned.

Voters mad about something

The trouble with polls is they lump everyone's individual opinion into clumps and ascribe the results as indicative of what all Americans think.

But whenever I read a news story about poll results, I remember what my first wife told me: Opinions are like assholes, everybody has got one.

That's why when I heard Charlie Rose and David Brooks, the New York Times columnist, agree the other day that the Obama administration didn't seem to fathom the angry wind sweeping the country over health-care reform and deficit spending, I shouted at my television that the pair's conclusion was wrong, wrong, wrong. I had seen no polls to support the breadth of the anger with government.

Now I have. The Washington Post reported today that their Post-ABC News poll of 1,004 randomly selected adults taken from Feb. 4-8, showed two-thirds of Americans were dissatisfied or outright angry at the way Washington works nowadays, one year after Barack Obama's inauguration. The headline over the Denver Post's story read: "Poll: Americans unhappy with government's tack." And the implication, amidst all the newstalk of the so-called "Tea Party movement," was that most of the anger being generated is a result of Obama's attempts to reform health care.

I submit much of the anger is also generated as a result of Obama's and Congress's failure to reform health care in America.

In fact, the Washington Post poll found more of those polled viewed "Tea Party" views unfavorably (40 percent) than those polled who found those views favorable (35 percent), and a full quarter of those polled (25 percent) offered no opinion at all when asked that question.

Which means the angry "wind" Rose and Brooks were describing Monday night is mostly huff and puff. Brooks noted that the president's personal popularity still out scores any dissatisfaction with his policies, and the Washington Post admits in its story that what "Tea Party" advocates advocate is almost unfathomable because the "movement" is so disorganized and disparate.

So come November, if the winds keep on a blowin', incumbents of every stripe are going to be at risk of voters' wrath. The American people want to see results out of Washington; not bipartisan incompatibility.

New journalism: partisan but professional

My headline ought to get some of my journalistic colleagues' juices flowing, but according to a writer in The Atlantic's January/February issue, American journalists are going to have to make some accommodation with the concept.

In fact, I'm making an accommodation to the notion with this ongoing blog. I'm writing about small business and politics from a very liberal perspective. And I hope to attract advertisers to my readership.

Paul Starr, a professor at Princeton, wrote the Atlantic piece. In "Governing in the Age of Fox News," Starr states toward the end: "Although most American journalists assume that professionalism and partisanship are inherently incompatible, that is not necessarily so. Partisan media can, and in some countries do, observe professional standards in their presentation of the news."

I have always questioned the journalistic principle of so-called "objectivity" in news coverage because I know as a writer the way you put words to paper (or on a screen) is inherently subjective. What nouns you use, what adjectives are colored by the writer's choice of words.

There's no escaping the tinge except by the samurai editor's butchering sword.

Unfortunately, quality of writing often slides away with the fat of a trim; occassionally, however, the cuts can actually make the writing better.

I take my journalistic principles and professionalism to the writing of this blog. I mean for my profiles of small businesses to carry the good and the bad about a firm, although my advocacy for small business will emphasize the good over the bad in most cases. And I will always give a business owner the benefit of the doubt.

I will not, however, give business as a community a pass when it comes to the harsher side of issues. Colorado's current debate over the elimination of tax exemptions for business is an example.

The tax exemptions should be removed in an attempt to balance two state budgets (fiscal 2010 and 2011) despite any damage to the state's reputation as "business friendly." A "people friendly" business community will recognize it must contribute to fiscal austerity that requires Colorado to reduce services to all its citizens.

At the same time, legislators should not forget that business owners are citizens, too, and already share as much as anyone else in the general pain.

Tax exemptions can be restored as well as removed.

If the state would correct its budgeting problems, if it can regain some economic steam, and refuel its revenue streams, exemptions and incentives can be given back as easily as they can be taken away.

Business and the business lobby knows that. They should begin working for the common good rather than their own self-interest.

Looking for a few good small businesses

Tom Mauro is looking for a few good small businesses that want to make themselves better.

Mauro, a retired banker, is CEO of Colorado Performance Excellence, a largely volunteer organization celebrating it's 10th anniversary this year, an anniversary marking a decade-long effort to improve other Colorado business organizations.

Make them better.

The tool CPEx uses for improving both nonprofit and for-profit business organizations is the criteria for winning a Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, which for me has always been a mouthful.

After 10 years, the award remains a mouthful, but for two Colorado business organizations, the award is a mark of national recognition and source of pride.

Poudre Valley Health Systems in Fort Collins won the national award for health in 2008 and the Monfort College of Business at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley won the award for education in 2004.

The Monfort school, with a staff of about 50 people when it won, was the smallest organization to ever win the award from Colorado, Mauro said, but he is looking for small businesses to hook up with his program so he can improve on that record.

"Job growth is going to come from small businesses," Mauro said, "and if we're going to be a service to the State of Colorado, we really need to focus on figuring out how to get them involved" in Colorado Performance Excellence.

But Mauro knows getting involved in a Baldrige application, either for a state or a national award, or, more simply, merely for the feedback on your organization's performance, requires a small-business owner's significant investment of time and money, and that the prospect of making that investment is a disincentive to the owner.

"It's more or less: 'We just don't have the resources to take the time to do this,'" Mauro said, describing the typical small-business owner's response to the CPEx pitch. "I mean, they may not say that to us directly," he said, "but we know that's why they don't get involved."

Yet Mauro will also willingly tell you how to get a free copy of the Baldrige criteria from either his own CPEx website or the Baldrige award site, http://www.baldrige.com./

"As a small-business owner, you're the one that has to think about all these things, and when you're trying to meet the payroll and do whatever it is that you do, either run a small fast-food organization or a small manufacturing firm doing biotech, you have to think about all these things. One of the best uses of this criteria is for small business to use it as a business plan."

The criteria, for example, ask you a series of questions about how you engage your customers with your product or service: "How do you identify and innovate product offerings to meet the requirements and exceed the expectations of your customer groups and market segments?" By answering the question, a business owner gains a perspective on how well his or her organization is performing, and at the same time, automatically compares the organization with national standards because the question is derived from Baldrige national standards of performance.

It takes a lot of work and a lot of time to prepare truthful answers to such rigorous self-examination. But if you sign up for Mauro's program (fees for a small business can range from about $1,000 to $3,000), a batch of volunteer examiners will go over the answers and visit your business to provide "feedback" on how to make your business better.

Mauro admits that CPEx and the national Baldrige awards have a reputation for serving large businesses with the resources to spend on such self-improvement, even when an award can provide an almost immeasurable amount of prestige as a return on an applicant's investment.

But an economic recession can bother even national "quality" programs, and Mauro's statewide board recently agreed that the group had to figure out how to deliver its products to small businesses in order to keep its own operations sustainable.

If you are interested, call or e-mail him at 303-893-2739 or tmmauro@aol.com.