Baby Boom bust II

When you write as one of the many bloggers few people read, you are encouraged when a national writer addresses the same topic you've already taken up, confirming your instincts about what's happening in the world around you.

Take Michael Kinsley, for instance, writing in The Atlantic magazine about the bust of the Baby Boom.

Look down this page, and you'll see that in my last piece, written over Labor Day weekend, I took a slightly different and much shorter tact than Kinsley.

We both generally conclude that until now Baby Boomers, that great generation of Americans born between 1946 and 1964, have blown it.

Kinsley suggests in his article that our generation has 19 years to save its reputation, by allowing ourselves to be taxed to the point that we pay back all the money we and our parents borrowed to finance the society we have enjoyed over the past half century in America.

My suggestion was there was no way to make repairs.

But Kinsley has a point, and people who read me know I am all for making amends for our sins while we can.

Check out Michael Kinsley's piece. It's politically impossible, but at least he offers a solution.

Baby Boom a bust

I come here on Labor Day Weekend 2010 to declare the Baby Boom generation a failure.

I'm part of the failure. In fact, all my life I liked to tell people I was born at the cusp of the wave of the boomers. Born in 1947, the official second year of the boom, I have turned 63 and am still trying to make a success of myself.

Reading the business section of the Denver Post today, pushed me to the conclusion that I am not alone. All my fellow baby boomers have, as Peter Fonda said in "Easy Rider," blown it.

Here's a little inventory of the stories and comment you'll find in the Post that back me up.

"Unions facing tough times," by Steve Raabe tells the story of a decades-long decline in union membership in Colorado and nationally, which coincides with the devastation of the nation's middle class in America.

Most of us baby boomers came from the loins of the blue-collar generation that organized America after World War II, although even that great generation never reached more than a 34 percent share of the workforce as union members.

That means, too, we baby boomers were young witnesses to the worst of union abuses: Jimmy Hoffa, wages paid for work not done, false claims of on-the-job-injuries, and a cycle of wage increases that made the work not worth the price.

So most of us chose the white-collar way, and found ourselves going to work, and teaching our children to go to work, in what is now parodied on TV as "The Office." The idiots are real; the trouble is they are us.

All the while the old wealthy and the new wealthy, the very establishment we rebelled against as hippies, made sure that,along with unions, the entire middle class in America was drained of power and influence, reduced to a status just above poverty line.

But let me continue my inventory.

Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, offers a piece in favor of a second round of stimulus measures for the economy, arguing that the unemployed and underemployed in America will never get back to work without one.

It's hard for me to even mention the idiocy of the article paired with Weisbrot's, by William F. Shughart II, a senior fellow at The Independent Institute in Oakland,Calif., who argues against a second stimulus package because: "The only sure way to perk up the job market is to cut taxes permanently and rein in public spending and excessive regulation."

Which, by the way, is also the establishment's sure formula to push what's left of the lower middle class below that poverty line, and to ensure future opportunities for the wealthy to become more and more -- even exceedingly -- rich.

But then there is the column by Robert J. Samuelson that provides the real indictment of an entire generation.

Samuelson gets to the failure of baby boomers to provide their children and their children's children a proper education, which was the real route baby boomers took to whatever prosperity they have gained.

Samuelson catalogs the failure of parents and education reformers in America to improve learning for large swaths of U.S. students over the years. "Motivation is weak because more students (of all races and economic classes, let it be added) don't like school, don't work hard and don't do well."

That's where we blew it. Unfortunately, there's no way to go back and make repairs.

Small-business finance in small chunks

Small business in Colorado has someone coming to its rescue: Christopher A. Smith, right, the CEO and founder of new commercial lender CSI Holdings LLC, which is ready to fill a crying demand for small-business-sized loans.

The credit crunch that started in 2008 has lasted for almost two years now, despite a stimulus bill that was partly aimed to goose small-business lending and hiring, and despite later unsuccessful Obama administration attempts to use bank-bailout money to revive small-business operators.

"I saw it first hand," says Smith, who for two years before opening his own firm was executive vice president of Hillcrest Bank's expansion into Colorado. "I couldn't lend," Smith said of those first years when banks refused to let go of bailout money.

On Wednesday, Smith announced the opening of CSI Financial's Denver corporate office at 999 18th St., Suite 2700, Denver, 80202, and at http://www.csifinancial.net/. He said his experience in Colorado, where the firm will kickoff its lending, showed him "there was immense demand out there" for loans that were small enough for small firms to handle.

"That's why we specifically picked the niche," Smith said, reiterating what the company said in a press release: "CSI will differentiate itself by servicing small and lower-middle market companies with financing needs ranging from $50,000 to $1 million."

I know from covering Denver and Colorado's small business community for about 20 years that there are no lenders who market themselves as providers of that sized loan.

But Mr. Smith is coming to the rescue, and he doesn't even have to go through Washington to do it. Maybe you should check him out!

CSI also offers factoring services which is an alternative method of financing your business.

Calling out the wealthy

It's time for wealthy patriots to step up and put America back to work. Buy GM's new stock. In fact, buy any American company's stock.

Remember all that blather back in 2002 and 2003, after the 9/11 attacks, about how not supporting President Bush was unpatriotic?

Of course that was nonsense, but now I'm not kidding. The patriotic thing for wealthy Americans to do now, even Republicans, is to support the American economy by buying anything.

It will bring down the deficit. Invest in America, it's the patriotic thing do do.

And I'm not talking Tea Party here. Most tea-party advocates are middle-class Americans who wrongly think the Obama administration's efforts to stimulate the economy are surreptitious attacks on the nation's core beliefs of self-reliance and individualism.

But the news of the day suggests otherwise. Unemployment claims are going up again, meaning private business hasn't started hiring again, just as banks have refused to lend to small business.

So we call on all patriots who make more than $250,000 a year, either in investment income or from the great private treasuries of Corporate America. Step up and invest that cash you put away during the Bush years.

Buy America and help restore and preserve its position as the greatest economy on the planet!

Democrats' lesson from Dan Maes

"I'm voting against every incumbent; that's my theory."

Denver Post writer Christopher N. Osher quoted that little bit of wisdom from an unnamed Dan Maes supporter in a story on the front page of the Sunday Post about Maes' remarkable Republican primary victory. Photo credit: Boulder County Democrats

Democrats should learn a lesson from the story. Incumbent U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet beat former Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff in Tuesday's Democratic senatorial primary.

If you've read my blog before, you know I would have liked to see Romanoff win, reflecting the same anti-incumbent sentiment in my Democratic choice as was expressed in the Republicans' gubernatorial primary race, where Maes claimed his victory.

On Wednesday, I contributed $25 to Bennet's general-election campaign, and offered to work for him. If my offer is accepted, I'll have to stop writing about him on this blog, so maybe the Bennet campaign will accept the offer just to shut me up.

The contribution, however, won't silence me on the issue because I believe bloggers, as long as they disclose their leanings to readers, have just as much right to write about politics as anyone else protected by the First Amendment. Working for the guy goes beyond a mere contribution, however, so I'll quit writing about that particular race if I actually do some work for Bennet's campaign.

But until then, I suggest the Democratic establishment, who were the real winners in the Bennet nomination, beware of the anti-incumbent sentiment expressed by the Maes supporter.

Many traditional Democratic voters feel the same antipathy toward the ongoing partisanship of Congress, and don't have much sympathy for Democrats who can't use the legislative majorities given them along with a Democratic president in 2008 to affect the "change" in government they had hoped to see come out of Washington over the past two years.

A public option among health-care reforms is just one of those disappointments.

So Michael Bennet had better keep his campaign rhetoric tilting toward the populist view that Washington remains broke, despite his nomination, and he still needs to help fix it. Making up to his establishment mentors and contributors is no task to be undertaken now -- nor ever for that matter.

Ken Buck is going to be coming after Bennet with the Tea Party in tow. Bennet needs independent thinking Democrats and independents in his camp if he expects to overcome.

Hire Bruce Willis, save the world!

Here's a great idea Jay Leno and David Letterman can promote in their nightly comedy routines.

You know that huge ice island that just broke off the Petermann Glacier in Greenland? The Associated Press reported today that the fresh water contained in the ice could keep the Hudson River flowing for two years. Image credit: fandango.com

Why not muster an international team of construction workers and miners led by Bruce Willis, of course, to break up the island four times the size of Manhattan and ship the pieces to the world's worst areas of drought.

Willis can attack the ice island like he did the asteroid in "Armageddon" and save the world from global warming. The ice chunks will melt and restart streams and rivers flowing in the drought regions and the new humidity generated from those regions will create their own rain storms and eventually the planet will start to cool again.

More importantly, Willis will survive this movie and still be available to save the world again when the time comes. It's just a thought.

Keep the kids out of it

Call me an odd blogger, but what struck me most jarringly in the coverage of Sen. Michael Bennet's defense of himself over the Denver Public Schools pension refinancing, was his bringing kids into the political battle.

The Denver Post quoted Bennet as accusing the Andrew Romanoff campaign of "repeatedly trying to score points at the expense of kids...."

Bennet ought to be careful about such a kid-centered accusation while his own campaign is blatantly using his own children to win support for the appointed senator, their Dad.

A Bennet ad currently running on television has each of his three beautiful daughters saying something nice about their Dad's cleaning up of messes created by other politicians.

The mess their Dad has gotten himself into with a high-finance bond scheme meant to reduce DPS debt but which has been turned around on the district during the collapse of the nation's credit markets is a fine mess for sure, Ollie.

Bennet, who gained a business reputation as an inovative financial turnaround artist, used some fancy footwork to conceivably get his district out of a crippling pension burden, but was treated to a little bait-and-switch by the very markets he was so adept at playing.

The deal so far has cost DPS more money than anticipated and now has it entangled in expensive "wind-down" penalties if it decides to back track on the action. The figures being thrown around here range from $25 million to $400 million to $750 million, perhaps small change to Bennet's mentor, Phil Anschutz, but nothing to sneeze at for an inner-city school district.

Bennet also said the New York Times, which reported on the collapse of the DPS deal while Democratic voters are still filling out ballots that will decide whether Bennet gets to stay a U.S. senator, "got it wrong." Yet when you read the story, its details are pretty convincing that "wrong" was the word Bennet should have considered more carefully when the deal was cut back in high-flying 2008.

The Times sometimes gets things wrong, but their authority is a hard wall to breach. Romanoff is right in calling this one a "bet gone bad." Time to close the casino to Wall Street playing with public money. Kids, even bright-eyed neat ones, have no recourse.