Holly Square could be a symbol

Ever since President Obama won his election in 2008 after being ridiculed by Repubicans as a mere community organizer, community development has become an "in" thing.

A story in Wednesday's Denver Post suggests, however, inner-city redevelopment also can be a long haul.

A worthwhile long haul, but not something that can be treated as a fad.

The front-page news story, headlined: "Holly Square hopes," was illustrated with two pictures: one of Brother Jeff Fard laying a kiss on the forehead of Nobel Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchu Tum at a ceremony on the site of the Holly Square redevelopment project, and a second photo of the Family Dollar store burning down at the site two years ago.

The redevelopment represents an opportunity for small business owners.

Retail and office space is expected to be available on the site when final redevelopment plans are approved and funding is found.

On public television you can see and hear stories about redevelopment in Chile, South Africa or Brazil, but Holly Square is smack dab in the middle of Denver. It needs community interest from the entire metro area if it is to pull off its resurrection free of gang influence, poverty, violence and despair.

Redevelopment for the blighted site has been a long time coming. The fire that cleared the land followed a long, inexorable decline driven by the poverty of area residents, and despite past attempts at neighborhood revival. The Denver Office of Economic Development has been involved for several years.

Terrance Roberts, founder of an anti-gang group he calls the Prodigal Son, told Colleen O'Connor of the Post: "This community has been hit hard with a lot of youth violence. But we also have the most community organizing efforts in northeast Denver right here in Park Hill."

The development is between 33rd and 35th avenues, Hudson and Holly streets in northeast Denver.

New minority-owned businesses should consider such projects natural -- and usually cheap --start-up locations because a built-in customer base can be expected to grow with the redevelopment; established small businesses can look at such projects as opportunities for expansion without adding steep costs to their balance sheets.

It is appropriate for Holly Square to be revived during the administration of the nation's first African-American chief exeutive, not only because Obama is president, but also to illustrate what community organizing can do for a nation that desperately needs renewal.

Remembering what we've already learned

I love it when the Denver Post's news coverage belies its editorial conservatism.

On Tuesday, the Post slapped the headline: "More spending not the answer" atop its main editorial, suggesting President Obama was a little off his rocker for arguing with his European colleagues in the Group of 20 that governments need to spend more now to fuel economic recovery rather than cut back, which the European heads of state want to do.

The Post's editorial writers even referred to "left-leaning" economist Paul Krugman, whose column they published directly below their editorial, to subtly underline their opposite tack and to show readers they can be as conservative as any European social democrat.

Krugman, on the other hand, took on the Europeans and blamed them for an economic orthodoxy of austerity that fueled the Great Depression of the 1930s and what he called a Long Depression of the late 19th century. (He expanded on that column in the Sunday Post's business section. The earlier column is no longer searchable on the Post's website.)

Both times in American history, Krugman said, government officials prescribed economic penance -- high interest rates and low government spending -- and caused both initial recessions to elongate into painful, 10-year or longer depressions and recoveries.

Obama's call for more government spending is a recognition of history, while Republican and conservative Democratic calls for restrained deficit spending -- denying extended unemployment benefits to millions of people across the nation -- forget history and ignore informed policy in favor of knee-jerk reaction.

The old ways, some say, have served us well in the past. Oh yeah? When? While ordinary people lose ten years of prosperity to some kind of reverence to establishment principle?

Meanwhile the Post's business writers continued to report stories that go beyond conventional wisdom. Steve Raabe reported Friday that Creighton University economist Ernie Goss has spotted a robust manufacturing and service-industry recovery underway in Colorado, which often runs countercyclical to the national economy.

And Greg Griffin, in Sunday's business section, reported on the real economic pain already being felt by people whose unemployment checks have stopped.

Austerity boosters are usually people who can sustain their levels of income during a business downturn. The bosses who lay off workers usually keep their jobs; I know, I was one of them.

But the U.S. economy right now needs more spending, both from government and from private businesses, to keep hold of a recovery that has not yet gained momentum. Banks need to lend to small businesses so small businesses can hire workers who become consumers, driving renewed economic growth.

It's all there in the history books. All we have to do is remember what we've already learned.

Space race: Time to go 'all in'

The Denver Post this morning published one of the most honest paragraphs I've ever seen reported on its business page, and it ought to spur state officials into action. (Photo credit: kineticsystems.com)

Ann Schrader, reporting on New Mexico's spaceport, which is still under construction, wrote this about the Colorado space industry:

"Insiders also point to Colorado's shortcomings, such as a lack of proactive leadership, funding erosion in the higher-education system, a congressional delegation with a dearth of seniority and an unfavorable space business climate caused by tax disincentives, looming ballot issues and TABOR amendment restrictions."

Hooray for honest reporting!

Schrader also quoted Tom Clark, the state's premier economic developer, lackadaisically excusing those shortcomings as the product of a state government not being willing to support the industry "with state moneys." Clark went on to say that it's too late now to build a spaceport in Colorado because the New Mexico facility is too close.

He's right about that, but the attitude he takes doesn't seem apologetic enough to me for the state's having missed a great opportunity.

Clark is also right about Colorado's space industry building itself into the third largest aerospace state in the nation -- unassisted but for federal dollars -- by creating a space village of small companies that stretch from Fort Collins to Pueblo along I-25.

The interstate will be the quickest access to the space port once it gets going -- unless, of course, state and federal leaders decide a north-south, high-speed bullet train for Colorado would finally be feasible if New Mexico is brought into the mix.

That's "thinking ahead," as my father use to tell me. And that kind of thinking could make up for the hands-off treatment Colorado has had toward its space-niks all these years.

End 30 years of anti-tax rhetoric

In Wednesday's newspaper, a Doonesbury character, Havoc, tries to convince an Afghan warlord to stop making money from the Taliban through the drug trade, and suggests the warlord tax his people instead.

"Taxes!" Havoc says. "That's it -- taxes!"

But the warlord responds glumly: "I don't believe in them. Reagan changed my life."

I laughed because the comic strip so fit my frame of mind chasing down an interview with Carol Hedges, right, senior fiscal analyst for the Colorado Fiscal Policy Institute, an organization that recently raised a minor ruckus on the ColoradoBiz website where the institute posted a piece it titled: "Maybe Colorado's taxes aren't so taxing after all."

In a comment stream, one of the magazine's conservative readers questioned the politics of the institute as hardly non-partisan, as it described itself, and questioned the magazine for not "calling out" the group as a "liberal think tank."

I asked Hedges whether her group was liberal or not, and she said she had taught her children that labeling people was intellectually lazy. "Do they mean that the organization ... [believes] that we have to have a strong public sector in order to support the private-sector activities of the market? Well, if that's what they mean by liberal call me a liberal, rock on, that's who we are," she said.

"But what I find so interesting is that I was at a presentation recently and somebody said that in Colorado we have a broad political spectrum: We have the far right that doesn't believe in government, and we have the far left who believe that government is the solution for everything.

"And I stopped that person," Hedges said. She asked, "Who would that be? Who is that far left that thinks government is the solution to everything? ... I don't think there is an organization in Colorado that that would be descriptive of, and I know it isn't a label that would be descriptive of our organization."

The Colorado Fiscal Policy Institute is a unit of the Colorado Center on Law and Policy, which describes itself as nonprofit and nonpartisan. The institute started about ten years ago, in Hedges' words, "to find justice and economic security for all Coloradans."

"We originally got started as a volunteer organization that was helping folks understand sort of the unique budget and fiscal constraints in Colorado, to help them do their advocacy work on behalf of families and economic justice, etc.," she said.

I was interested in the group after reading the ColoradoBiz piece because it seemed to be stating what is obvious to me but which never seems acceptable to conservative business interests in Colorado. Government services cost money, and people and businesses that pay taxes fund those operations, much like sales fund a business operation.

Taxes are the government's revenue stream; without them there would be no government. That's why the warlord's comment in the Doonesbury strip struck me as funny. Reagan was the American leader who turned the nation against being taxed for services government provides. Here's more from Hedges:

"We've had basically thirty years of anti-tax, anti-government rhetoric, which has been the predominant narrative in this country around how we support one another....

"We think that the public sector is important. We think it is the most efficient and accountable way to provide certain foundational services upon which people and businesses rely: education, transportation, higher education, to some extent health care. But we want a system, a public system, that is accountable, is effecient, is effective. We believe that the market economy can't work if we don't have a strong public partner to match up with the private sector."

"In Colorado," Hedges said, "our public officials are actually not the decision makers on this stuff. That's one of the most interesting things about Colorado, from my perspective. The decision makers on taxes are voters. And I think that the pendulum has swung so far on the anti-tax message, particularly as it relates to really large corporations, that voters are beginning to say: 'I do want higher ed, K-12, roads, clean air, clean water, access to the mountains when I want to get there. Is there somebody that's not paying their fair share?'"

"We're a think tank," Hedges said. "We do research, we do analysis.... As I said, it's been thirty years of anti-government rhetoric that we're combatting, and I think one of our big efforts ... is to help voters and to help citizens to connect up the benefits they get from private-sector and different public-sector investments.

"What did government do for you today? ... People don't think about things like: Well, they made sure my water was drinkable, and they inspected the restaurant where I grabbed my lunch to make sure everybody was concerned about my health. ... People generally don't think about government and education ... but it's what comes from your taxes."

That's the message Hedges' institute is going to be touting for the next year or so as Colorado voters try to dig themselves out of the fiscal hole the state has dug itself with tax-limiting state constitutional amendments like TABOR and three new proposed amendments that will go to voters in November. Hedges said her institute is not against TABOR, and would just as soon keep voters in charge of deciding how much they want to be taxed for government services.

"The real issue is," she said, "Are citizens willing to invest more in the public sector?"

Good roads, good schools and a good infrastructure for doing business in Colorado are the choices Colorado voters must address even beyond November elections. The state needs its voters and businesses to invest in themselves, to invest in Colorado. Its future is at stake.

Hick gets my vote, along with all the other Dems

Behind the monitor of my computer, hanging on the wall of my study beneath a window looking out to the blue sky, hangs a copy of the ColoradoBiz cover for the September 2003 issue.

Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper's picture claims the cover art, and behind him is the faint image of the Colorado state flag. Inside that magazine, I interviewed Hick and asked him if he wanted to be governor. Of course, he told me then that all he wanted to be was a good mayor.

On Saturday, I shouted aye! when 4,000-plus Colorado Democratic delegates to the state assembly, me included, were asked to award the party's nomination for governor to Hickenlooper by acclamation. It was my first ever Democratic state assembly after 42 years of voting, most of them as a news reporter.

Now I'm a blogger, though, and no longer constrained by the feigned objectivity of the newspaper reporter. I can serve as a delegate in the party I support and write about it to my heart's content.

So at the risk of driving Hickenlooper from the race, I'm going to endorse him as I made an early endorsement of Gov. Bill Ritter, who thereupon quit running for the office.

I'm also endorsing Andrew Romanoff, who I was a delegate for from Arapahoe County. If rhetoric helped Barack Obama gain the White House, Romanoff sounded more like a presidential candidate Saturday than a former school superintendent, and that's probably why he polled 60.4 percent of the delegates' votes compared with Michael Bennet's 39.6 percent, just 9.6 points more than the required 30 percent needed to take a place on the August primary ballot.

Obviously, I hope the former Speaker of the Colorado House of Representatives beats the appointed incumbent senator as soundly after a summer of campaigning as he has in earlier precinct caucuses, county assemblies, and now the state assembly.

And then, as far as I'm concerned, you can vote Democratic down the whole ballot. Everything I heard on Saturday fit my political preferences just fine, including a minority plank added to the Colorado Democratic Party platform. It vented opposition to the new Arizona anti-immigrant law, which I have opposed since the day it was signed. (See an earlier post below.)

I can say I enjoyed the assembly a lot more than any of the earlier procedures you have to endure to become a delgate to the statewide confab. It was run efficiently, and demonstrated the energy of Colorado Democrats' commitment to improving the lives of all Coloradans no matter their political convictions.

SchwabBlog: Watch out for a bailout

The Colorado General Assembly, according to the Denver Post, faces a boat load of decisions on issues ranging from public-school teacher tenure to college funding, from medical marijuana to river rafting, during the last week of their legislature.

Watch out for a bailout.

Legislators in the last few years have prided themselves on early wrapups, conducting their business with money-saving dispatch. This year, however, too many unresolved issues will probably push the gang of politicians to the more traditional push back of the clock at midnight May 12, in order to give themselves time on that Wednesday night to do the last of their dirty deeds.

Unless they decide a bailout is the better part of political valor.

Not acting to resolve conflicts is a favorite device of politicians not willing to face the political backlash that results from taking action.

Why do you think it took almost 100 years and seven presidents to gain nearly universal health insurance coverage for Americans? Congress during all that time was afraid to act and face the repercussions of their votes. So thousands of Americans died for lack of care.

Expect the Colorado legislature to make the same choice on at least a few of the issues lawmakers still face. I'd bet river access will be the most likely.

Cry me a river; who wants sacred landowners howling for your skin because you voted to give all Coloradans access to their rivers.

Delay is not what we pay these guys and gals for, so anyone who has any influence over the mob should press them to take all issues to a vote. The time for right policy is always now, not later. At least that's how Schwab reads the news.

Ban Happy Meals? Oh no!

Ban McDonald's Happy Meals! Isn't that taking government intrusion a little too far?

Not when you read the news further to learn county officials in California's Silicon Valley want to ban the toy giveaways accompanying restuarant meals of more than 486 calories, more that 600 mg of salt, or high levels of sugar or fat. Photo credit:Inhabitat.com

I am starting a new feature on this blog that I'll call SchwabBlog: Schwab reads the news. The endangered Happy Meals sparked my interest, but other stories in today's newspaper also caught my eye: on Colorado Republicans emulating Democratic fund-raising tactics; on the action in the U.S. Senate yesterday over financial reform; the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's new interest in American workers; and, finally, on chocolate being identified as a possible source of depression. I thought I'd jot down a few short takes on each:

First, Happy Meals. You would think government has gone too far when it starts keeping your kids from eating a favorite food that just happens to come with the day's hottest junk toy, and serves as an inexpensive way to keep the little ones entertained for hours and hours.

But then you read calorie and salt content dictates the delinkage and you realize there is some sense behind the proposal. Obesity is a national problem, and our kids are not immune.

So, go for it Santa Clara County! It can't hurt anyone but big corporations like McDonald's, and since McDonald's has been ruled a person who enjoys free speech by the U.S. Supreme Court, the elected officials who vote for such a ban will eventually pay the piper, no doubt.

And then our kids can go back to being happily fat.

But how can food researchers go after chocolate? I was depressed for many years before my last divorce and all that time I loved chocolate ice cream. Only now, five years later, do I find myself buying butter pecan, Spumoni, and vanilla a lot more frequently than I used to.

And what about Colorado Republicans? I knew they were spooked by the Democratic Gang of Four millionaires who funded the campaigns of enough state House and Senate candidates to give control of the legislature to the Dems back in 2004. But I never would have guessed the old stick-in-the-muds of the establishment would ever become copy cats! If you like the two-party system in America and believe bipartisanship is necessary to the success of the nation, all you can really respond to the GOP is: Welcome back to the party! It's time you got back into the game.

Having said that, the Senate action on financial reform makes sense. Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid forced a vote on limiting debate of the Democratic proposal to remake the nation's financial system, and then voted against his own motion in order to bring the topic up again after seeing it was going down by a few votes. Essentially, he gained time for proponents of reform to craft a bipartisan compromise, and yet put pressure on Republicans to sign on to some kind of reform bill. After all, those Repubs don't want to be seen as upholding the rights of fraudsters on Wall Street to rip off the American taxpayer. And bipartisanship is good; right?

And speaking of mixing it up politically. When was the last time you heard of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce stepping up for the American worker? Thomas Donohue, CEO of the chamber, must have choked a little in a speech he gave in Denver yesterday when, according to the Denver Post, he said: "Americans have a long history of coming together to tackle a problem."

Then described the pro-business chamber's plans to help create 20 million jobs nationally. Anybody catch the naturally red-face Donohue blushing as he said that? You can bet they won't be union jobs.