Sail on!

Dear Churchill Wendell Wilkie will give you this--He is truly helping to keep politics out over here. I think this verse applies to you people as it does to us: "Sail on, Oh Ship of State! Sail on, Oh Union strong and great. Humanity with all its fears With all the hope of future years Is hanging breathless on thy fate." As ever yours Franklin D. Roosevelt

Pro-life Rally, Women's March, and What Divides Us.

Thursday, January 11, 2018

My last post here, one post back, was about my big idea with the Colorado Caucus. It produced no comments. There were readers, or at least visitors to the page. But no comments. Maybe everyone was just bowled over, awe struck with the brilliance of my simple idea.

Does it hurt business to express support for a political candidate?

Coming here soon, the latest research into this question. In our pluralistic society gave we now gone to the politically correct extream of demanding neutrality in politics? Colleges are being accused of trying to stifle political debate  on controversial issues. The conventional wisdom has been that in business the topics of politics and religion should be avoided. Is this no longer true today?

I'll post my thoughts on this topic here over the next week or so as I attend Socrates Cafes here in the metro-Denver area as I gather information and clarify my thinking.

You are welcome to post your thoughts here as a comment now or give me a call if you want to influence my thinking as I try and be as open minded as possible. And it would be great if you'd join me at a Denver Socrates Cafe this week, see Meetup.com/Colorado-Socrates-Cafe-Society 

John Wren
(303)861-1447

Live at 12:30 p.m., the Startup Show Today, how to start a political career.

Watch here live at 12:30 p.m. Mountain each day Monday thru Friday or any time by recording.

Today the focus will be on serving in elected public office. Watch, then post your comments here.



Sponsored by John Wren's Small Business Chamber of Commerce, Inc.
"We cooperate with local chambers to provide more real help to startups."
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Membership is free, just post an intro as a status update, on our Facebook Page, then Like and Share:
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Las Vegas for Freedom Fest

Allen West gave a powerful, powerful talk to conclude first day of Freedom Fest.

Much of the crowd is Libertarian, West's strong advocacy of the need for a strong national defense won't sit well with some of them, but it very much did with the gentleman I sat next to, after 20 year career in the military, worked for a government contractor and just retired from it after a similar time. He want to get involved, he likes Libertarians except for the utopian stance some take on nation defense. West spoke directly to his concern.

No mention today of Pope Francis in South America. Hasn't he been meeting with the World Meeting of Popular Movements? He was quoted in the paper last week as saying the "Evil Financial Empires" need to be brought to an end, a play on Ronald Reagan's use of Evil Empire to describe the enemies of the United States. 

CEO of Overstock.com talked about his battle with the Federal bureaucracy and why he thinks peer-to-peer replacements for government centralized services will be growing. He likes Bitcoin, still seems like a giant con to me, and he likes a peer to peer stock exchange, of which I'm even more leery. He doesn't like pooled clearing done now, looks to me his peer-to-peer is much more risky and it really put me off when he refused to discuss the details, what he calls "the plumbing." 

Martin Luther King reenacted by Jim Lucas was very moving. Immigrant from North Korea shared what life was like there, why she escaped and how she did it. Similar story from woman who escaped from China, a man who's family had escaped from Nazi German.  Makes me very grateful for the freedom we do still have here.

Lots more tomorrow, popular New York Times columnist, CEO of Whole Foods, Donald Trump has announced he's dropping in sometime.

Interesting mix of economics, politics, and financial advice. I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow. 

If you want more check out Twitter #FreedomFest or @TheFreedomFest where I'll be posting pictures tomorrow, battery died today.

Colorado primary election

Low turn out was astonishing. Denver had less than 10 % of registered voters cast a ballot, disgraceful. That's 10% of registered voters and most aren't registered.


Big opportunity of the county political party that starts aggressively reaching out now in anticipation of the 2016 Colorado Caucus.


GOP Governor's race was bound to be a surprise, no matter what happened. See my comments, posted at bottom of this Denver Post editorial that's worth reading, too:  http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_26027687/second-chance-bob-beauprez 


President Eisenhower told us that in our system of government politics must be the part-time occupation of every citizen.


Let's all promise to do just a little bit more in our part-time job between now and the Colorado Caucus of 2016. You can start right now just by taking a couple of minutes to read the above editorial, reading my comment there, and then letting me know what you think, and more importantly what you are going to DO.

Me? What am I going to DO? I'm going to start by renewing my subscription to the Denver Post.


Post your comment here, or call me. (303)861-1447.


Life is short, but it's only too late if we don't start now!

Tuesday join your neighbors...

I've been posting this Facebook notice about Tuesday's Colorado Caucus, #1 networking event in Colorado. Do well by doing good through your participation.

What do you think would make this message go viral? Have an idea? Great! Now just do it! Or post your suggestion here for me and others.

Here's the Facebook message I've been putting up today along with a link to it:

Want to do more than just complain about the government? Want to really help make a difference? 

If you're in Colorado, attend one of the 6,000 free, open (by state law) neighborhood meetings that will be held next Tuesday. Learn how right now by checking out http://www.COCaucus.org/ and then SHARE with your friends and neighbors.

The Colorado Caucus: The best chance the common person has of serving in elected public office.

https://www.facebook.com/john.s.wren/posts/10152720342008782

Skip the Academy Awards, get ready for Tuesday. None of today's "stars" will be remembered in 30 years:

Help to strengthen the grassroots.

For years I've had an interest in the Colorado caucus-assembly system for nominating to the primary ballot, in my opinion the best chance the common person has for serving in elected public office. See http://www.COCaucus.org 

Here's a new idea. Let's created a new business, doing well by doing good, with grassroots civic education and a Welcome Wagon type neighborhood marketing network. 

Let's write a handbook for Colorado citizens, update every year, sell to newcomers through a network of neighborhood representatives who will welcome newcomers and be the hub for neighborhood communications.

The citizen handbook will cover the caucus system, referendum , recall and initiatives, as well as how to get elected to public office. 

If you'd be interested in being part of this project as a sponsor, neighborhood representative, writer, or advertiser, contact me via John@JohnWren.com or (303)861-1447 see http://Facebook.com/goodNeighborsWeVote PLEASE SHARE 

Big news? Preview Monday on The Startup Show.

By next Thursday we should finally be ready to announce our plans, what we are going to do next with ReferendumOrRecall.org

Get a preview Monday on The Startup Show. We'll bounce the idea off our guest Ken Wyble and announce to the world the top vote getters in our "favorite chamber" poll.

One way or the other, I hope to talk with you soon.

John S Wren
"Have meeting--Will travel."

What's next?

Big news on The Startup Show tomorrow, 4 to 5 pm see link here then, or see our Facebook Page now http://Facebook.com/SmallBizStartup

I've taken this week to ask God for direction, to see what's next in my decades long effort to strengthen the grassroots, the voice of the common person, in business and politics:

1) My non-political Small Business Chamber of Commerce and the effort to help local chambers start IDEA Cafe Startup Workshops and Franklin Circle Peer Advisory Groups, 2) the Colorado Political Committee ReferendumOrRecall.org.

A good friend told me long ago, "if you chase a rabbit you'll catch a rabbit, if you chase two rabbits you won't catch a rabbit. For years I've been trying to herd rabbits.

I hope you'll listen tomorrow (Mon, Apr 1) live via a link right here 4 to 5 pm, or to a tape of the show anytime after that here or on our Facebook Page http://Facebook.com/SmallBizStartup, where you can listen to a tape of last week's show with Doug Root (Tony Gallegos listened, emailed me "I really liked it.")

Our new Colorado Political Committee to fight SB11 and Civil Unions being ignored by media

But a reporter for CNS did Tweet this: @kevinjjones: Tireless community organizer @JohnSWren was at anti-#civilunions rally yesterday spreading word about his site http://t.co/B1dvBwPy

Article in Denver Catholic Register to follow? I'll let you know if they call.

Jesus criticized the lukewarm, but that's exactly where the Catholic Church is in Colorado with it's lobbying efforts. The Colorado Catholic Conference Facebook Page that had been up for a long, long time had less than 140 "Likes", maybe it's time for the office to be shut down and the staff sent on retreat. When your tank is disabled and blocking a bridge, sometimes it has to be shoved into the river.

What really irritates me is that now they don't even allow posts on their Facebook Page. Big waste of time and money. I think a case could be made that civil unions wouldn't be about to pass in Colorado if the Colorado Catholic Conference had just stayed clear out of the elections last fall.

I'm flattered!

If you Google "John Wren's Journal" right now, this is what comes up:

Wren's eJournal
The Journal has nearly one million paying online readers, generating about $65 million in revenue. Posted by John S. Wren, MBA at 8:50 AM 0 comments ...
wrensjournal.blogspot.com/ - 163k - Similar pages

It would be wonderful if this was true, but it's not. As you who are reading this now know, there is no charge for this. One million readers? Right.

This must be someone's idea of a joke. Could it have anything to do with my criticism of the Mayor's bond proposals on the upcoming Denver ballot?

On this date in 1875 J.C. Penny was born, who started his career in retailing here in Colorado.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

From Readers Digest, September, 2007
Stand-up Comics’ Funniest Lines
My problem is I belong to so many anonymous groups, everybody know who I am.
Nancy Redman

I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, “Where’s the self-help section?” She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose. Brian Kiley

You don’t get married to get sex. Getting married to get sex is like buying a 747 to get free peanuts. Jeff Foxworthy

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So if it is not for the free peanuts, why do we get married or have close friends? Melville knew.

This is from Moby Dick by Herman Melville, at the end of Chapter 10. Ishmel tells about his becoming a soul-mate with Queequeg:

After supper, and another social chat and smoke, we went to our room
together… He then went about his evening prayers, took out his
idol, and removed the paper fireboard. By certain signs and
symptoms, I thought he seemed anxious for me to join him; but well
knowing what was to follow, I deliberated a moment whether, in case
he invited me, I would comply or otherwise.

I was a good Christian; born and bred in the bosom of the infallible
Presbyterian Church. How then could I unite with this wild idolator
in worshipping his piece of wood? But what is worship? thought I.
Do you suppose now, Ishmael, that the magnanimous God of heaven and
earth--pagans and all included--can possibly be jealous of an
insignificant bit of black wood? Impossible! But what is
worship?--to do the will of God--THAT is worship. And what is the
will of God?--to do to my fellow man what I would have my fellow man
to do to me--THAT is the will of God. Now, Queequeg is my fellow
man. And what do I wish that this Queequeg would do to me? Why,
unite with me in my particular Presbyterian form of worship.
Consequently, I must then unite with him in his; ergo, I must turn
idolator. So I kindled the shavings; helped prop up the innocent
little idol; offered him burnt biscuit with Queequeg; salamed before
him twice or thrice; kissed his nose; and that done, we undressed and
went to bed, at peace with our own consciences and all the world.
But we did not go to sleep without some little chat.

How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for
confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say,
there open the very bottom of their souls to each other; and some old
couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus,
then, in our hearts' honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg--a cosy, loving
pair.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

But sometimes friendships can take an evil turn. Have you heard of Colorado’s Gang of Four, a cabal so rich and powerful that they can buy elections? As Republican political expert Alan Philip says, it is easy to understand why legislators and candidates in the state of Colorado are wary of getting on the wrong side of them.

Robert Frank talks about this dangerous Kolorado Kash Kabal in his new book about the last few election cycles "Richistan: A Journey Through The American Wealth Boom And The Lives of The New Rich" which you can read online for free; the book is being serialized in my friends Stephen Keating’s very interesting and informative Politics West website.


The Gang (of Four) included Jared Polis, a 32-year-old dot-com whiz who’s already created and sold several tech companies and has a net worth estimated at more than $200 million.

It included Tim Gill, a former software magnate who’s worth more than $400 million and who’s become the nation’s top funder of gay-rights causes.

Rounding out the group was Pat Stryker, the billionaire heiress to the Stryker medical-device fortune, and Rutt Bridges, a geophysicist who made his money creating software for oil exploration and had a fortune worth tens of millions.

A Streetwise Veteran Schooled Young Obama
By JANNY SCOTT
New York Times

The rise of Barack Obama includes one glaring episode of political miscalculation. Even friends told Mr. Obama it was a bad idea when he decided in 1999 to challenge an incumbent congressman and former Black Panther, Bobby L. Rush, whose stronghold on the South Side of Chicago was overwhelmingly black, Democratic and working class.

Mr. Obama was a 38-year-old state senator and University of Chicago lecturer, unknown in much of Mr. Rush’s Congressional district. He lived in its most rarefied neighborhood, Hyde Park. He was taking on a local legend, a former alderman and four-term incumbent who had given voters no obvious reason to displace him…

Mr. Rush won the primary with 62 percent of the vote; Mr. Obama had less than 30 percent…Obama learned from that experience. Mr. Mikva recalls telling him about advice once given to John F. Kennedy by Cardinal Richard Cushing: “The cardinal said to him, ‘Jack, you have to learn to speak more Irish and less Harvard.’ I think I recounted that anecdote to Barack. Clearly, he learned how to speak more Chicago and less Harvard in subsequent campaigning.”

In March 2004, Mr. Obama won the Democratic primary for the United States Senate with nearly 67 percent of the vote, racking up huge totals in wards he had lost to Mr. Rush in 2000. (Mr. Rush, still stung by Mr. Obama’s challenge to him, endorsed a white candidate in the race, Blair Hull, a former securities trader.) Mr. Obama won the general election with the biggest margin ever in an Illinois Senate race.

Today, Mr. Rush, a practicing Baptist minister in his eighth term in Congress who is backing Mr. Obama’s presidential candidacy, still seems to be ruminating about the Obama phenomenon with grievance and wonder. Mr. Obama’s ambition has found its audience, he said. In a Congressional race, your neighbors “hold you to a different standard…”

Mr. Rush has an explanation for Mr. Obama’s emergence after the dark days of 2000 as a political star four years later. He vanquished a field of multimillionaires, some more experienced and better known, and benefited from fortuitous domestic scandals that sidelined two opponents and left him facing a Republican widely seen as unable to win.

“I would characterize the Senate race as being a race where Obama was, let’s say, blessed and highly favored,” Mr. Rush said, chuckling. “That’s not routine. There’s something else going on.”

What was he suggesting?

“I think that Obama, his election to the Senate, was divinely ordered,” Mr. Rush said, all other explanations failing. “I’m a preacher and a pastor; I know that that was God’s plan. Obama has certain qualities that — I think he is being used for some purpose. I really believe that.”

Wikinomics explains how to prosper in a world where new communications technologies are democratizing the creation of value. http://wikinomics.com

Wikinomics--How Mass Collaboration Change Everything hit #10 on the business best-seller list last Sunday, so I finally picked it up. Wish I'd read it when I'd first noticed it last year! If Ben Franklin was alive today, he'd be a Wiki publisher!

I've kept this blog for years, am considering shifting my energy to a wiki or two. Blogging feels too much like just raising my window, leaning out, and shouting, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more!"

American Idol
By GARY HART
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/24/books/review/Hart.t.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&adxnnl=1&8bu&emc=bu&adxnnlx=1166966340-LqlaFMNFpZaMKFKZf0LDjw

THE AUDACITY OF HOPE
Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream.
By Barack Obama.
375 pp. Crown Publishers. $25.

In a more perfect world, a graduate program complete with a doctoral thesis might be required of all those seeking the presidency. In certain ways, “The Audacity of Hope” qualifies as Senator Barack Obama’s thesis submission. While exhibiting his leadership attributes, life experiences and personal qualities, largely in anecdotal form, this book also displays reasonably wide and thoughtful, if occasionally predictable, responses to domestic controversies and underscores that in his brief time as the junior senator from Illinois, he has been exposed to conflicts in the Middle East, the former Soviet Union and elsewhere.

The self-portrait is appealing. It presents a man of relative youth yet maturity, a wise observer of the human condition, a figure who possesses perseverance and writing skills that have flashes of grandeur. Obama also demonstrates a wry sense of humor. His life has given him many reasons to be wry.

The senator is a global man for the age of globalization, and his story is now familiar. A Kansas mother, a Kenyan father, an Indonesian stepfather, and years growing up in the disparate places of Hawaii and Indonesia marked him for distinction the moment he walked through the doors of the United States Senate, and provided him with a unique prism through which to view the glory and the folly of American politics.

Obama disarmingly admits to ambition, “chronic restlessness” and envy of more successful younger politicians. Before rolling the dice on a risky Senate race, he had begun to harbor doubts about his choice of career, and suggests here that he went through at least some of “the stages prescribed by the experts”: “denial, anger ... despair.” And, in a particularly Tolstoyan moment, he confesses to “acceptance” of “my mortality.” He listened to countless people’s stories and came to a Roosevelt-like epiphany: “Government should help.” He laments the loss of a shared civic language and the widening gap between the myth of American life and its reality, and he devotes this book to the discovery of “a new kind of politics” and “civic life,” to “the notion of a common good.” He specifically refuses to offer “a manifesto for action, complete with ... 10-point plans.”

Confessing guilt at being “insufficiently balanced” in his political views — “I am a Democrat, after all” — Obama insists that “government has an important role in opening up opportunity to all”; he also believes in “the free market, competition and entrepreneurship.” He suspects that some of his views — his open-mindedness on social issues, for example, combined with economic traditionalism — will cause him trouble. His relative newness on the political scene, he admits, will also cause him to be seen as a “blank screen” on which a variety of people will project their own views, but he then quickly acknowledges that he must “avoid the pitfalls of fame.”

Given his recent media exposure, Obama would be well advised to follow his own counsel in this regard. “Precisely because I’ve watched the press cast me in a light that can be hard to live up to,” he writes, “I am mindful of how rapidly that process can work in reverse.” The media age has been known, as he wisely recognizes, to devour what it doth create.