Much of the forest on Pikes Peak is poor health; some of it is plain sick. There hasn't been a major fire there for more than a century. Because the city of Colorado Springs has11 reservoirs on the mountain, the utilities department is  afraid the of the damage that would be done to water quality if a major fired stripped away vegetation around the reservoirs. That fear is one of the reasons the city has kept the South Slope under lock and key for decades.

The flaw in this strategy is that there has been little in the way of forest management on the mountain. That, coupled with a fire-free ecology, has menat that the forest on Pikes Peak is less diverse as time goes on. Aspen, a species that often comes back in after a fire,  has been slowly disappearing as the mountian's forest is increasingly dominated by shade-tolerant species, especially spruce. Any forester will tell you that the fewer species a forest has, the more susceptible it is to disease. The thinning planned by the forest service won't do much to help that aspect of the problem, but simply removing fuel for a potential fire is a good step in the right direction of making Pikes Peak less vulnerable to a fire. To read about thinning and other project, click here.

Although the Pikes Peak forest might be a fire waiting to happen, there are a few factors that mitigate the danger, if you compare Pikes Peak to other forested places. For instance, the mountain is hardly remote. During the fire season, thousands of people are on the mountain at any time. That means any fire would be reported quickly. Also, although the South Slope is locked away from the public, there are roads there, so getting firefighters to any blaze would occur more quickly that in more remote locales. The city's reservoirs could be used by firefighters as a water source as well.

Many Americans have some money in the stock market now, thanks to 401(k) and IRA investment vehicles. When history looks back, it will mark the creation of these tools as a very significant change, because before it occurred in the 1980s, very few Americans owned stock. One of the reasons for the stock market's rise in the 1990s was the cash infusion from this new source.

Is it a good thing for a broad swath of America to be invested in the market, to have a direct stake in the nation's prosperity? For the most part the answer is yes. Should we get hung up on electing a president because he/she will be good for our mutual funds?  No, but as everyone knows, cash is good.

Oh, October has a reputation for market crashes for a reason. But when you look at what caused them and what happened afterwards in the market, there are all kinds of differences. The crash of 1987 turned out to be a great buying opportunity and within about a year, the market recovered fully. The crash of 1929 led to the Great Depression. Although times have been tough, most experts now say there is little likelihood of a reoccurrence, because of regulatory steps that were taken and because our economy is much more diverse and global now than it was in 1929. The economic engine is much bigger than it was. It still can suffer breakdowns, but there are good reasons why they are likely to be shorter in duration, and much of that happens to do with economies elsewhere in the world.

Depression? The unemployment rate is bad now, but it is only about half what it was in the 1930s. We've had bank closures, but the existence of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation means that Main Street bank customers were not destroyed. Of course, the FDIC was created in 1934 in resposne tothe steep market plunge.

There's rarely a shortage of people complaining about activist courts. In the absence of the legislature, city councils and county commissions  doing their jobs, Colorado courts will have no choice but to create the new law governing medicinal marijuana. On Thursday, the Colorado Court of Appeals ruled that to be a caregiver under the state law, someone must have personal contact with the patient. That sounds like common sense, but the term "caregiver" was never defined, either by the proponents of the medicinal pot law or anyone else.The Colorado Department of Health earlier this year tried to limit the number of patients for each medicinal marijuana caregiver to five. That would have put medicinal marijuana out of business in the state, and it seemed an arbitrary limit, since doctors are not limited to seeing just five patients. No doctor could survive with such a limit. The health board declined to pass the regulations proposed by the Colorado Department of Health.

Colorado Springs officials sway they are about to try to tighten enforcement of medicinal marijuna dispensaries. They're also going to begin a process on what regulations are appropriate by initiating an ad hoc group. The first meeting for the group is Thursday, Nov. 5, at 7 p.m. in the Pikes Peak Conference room at City Hall. It's a good idea to make easy-to-understand local rules. How the city will try to proceed with enforcement without them is a mystery.  How can a medicinal pot business be expected to comply with rules when the rules don't exist? For instance, will a medicinal pot dispensary be deemed illegal if it is an in-home business? Will they be required to be zoned commercially? How close can they be to schools? How could a code enforcement officer rule on such an issue when no code exists? Because medicinal pot is constitutionally protected, what court would allow a city code official to just make it up as he goes along? What would you prefer, an activist judge or an activist code enforcement official?

These questions can mostly be swept away by the creation of reasonable local rules. "I think we should learn to regulate  and tax it," Councilman Sean Paige said.

Colorado's medicinal marijuana registry has come under much criticism from many sides of the issue. No where can a patient find a list of doctors who will prescribe marijuana for one of the ailments on the list for the drug.

Readers in the Pikes Peak region reacted strongly to the publication of a list of city workers' names, attached to their salary information. But this has been done elsewhere. At the Sacramento Bee, says Assistant Managing Editor Amy Pyle, the list of state employees names and salaries "continues to be the most popular page we have on our website." Guess who clicks into the page the most? Right -- state employees.

By state law, Iowa posts the same information. It used to be in book form, but the book cost $30, so now it's online for free, and it's posted also by The Des Moines Register.

In Oklahoma, The Tulsa World does the same thing. It has been said the Gazette crossed some ethical boundary by publishing the list. It's hard to agree with that charge, seeing that in states as politically diverse as Iowa, Oklahoma and California, publishing employees' salary data is routine.

I'm just saying here that posting this information is not as radical as some have portrayed it. Any citizen in Colorado Springs can get the information the Gazette posted. The paper didn't have some special privilege. It merely exercized its rights under state law, as any citizen could do.

Conservatives don't like unions much. Liberals tend to diss corporations. But both are motivated by the same essential thing: money. Both want to maintain or increase their share of the pie at the expense of the other.

Long ago, there was no such thing as a union. Before conservatives long for the good old days, they should consider the history. America's Industrial Revolution was partly built on the backs of little kids. Worker's compensation, the 40-hour work week, and yes, even health insurance for employees -- all sprang from the labor movement. Corporations on their own have done some egalitarian things, but without the labor movement, America would still be a pretty backward place to live.

Some Gazette readers have flayed grocery store workers for threatening to strike, reasoning that in today's tough job market, it would be foolish for anyone to walk. In our history, though, it is during times such as these that labor unions grow stronger. During the Great Depression, which came after decades ot the Industrial Revolution and relatively unbridled properity for corporations, Americans' respect for labor unions grew.

So, whatever one thinks about it, what's happening today has happened before, and the outcome, when you read history, is relatively predictable. Heed one of this blogger's favorite presidential quotes, from Harry S. Truman: "The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know."

The latest version of the national health care reform bill is several inches thick. Here is a version from mid-October. It's obvious that relatively few congressmen, let alone Americans at-large, have a detailed grasp of the bill.

Ah, it used to be a simpler world, yes? A bill from Memorial Hospital for an 11-day stay shows that:

Although it may be a bit hard to make out here, the entire bill for an 11-day stay is contained on a single page, and the total charge was $118.18. A bill like this simply wouldn't be allowed now, because federal and private insurance providers insist on detailed billing before hospitals can get their money.

The federal Medicare program is a good example of how complexity has been added over time. Private insurance companies also insist on line-item accountability. There are good reasons for all of this, but it adds to the cost of health care, because with each layer of complexity comes more need for audits to guard against fraudulent claims.

Now here is a recent bill from Memorial Health System. It is not too complex, but it is more detailed than the 62-year-old bill. Also, this bill is for just one day at Memorial, where the current average length of stay is about 4.5 days.

Although you can't read the bottom line.....this bill totals charges of more than $25,000, paid through Medicare.

Denver Mayor played hard ball on the budget with the Denver Police Protective Association in September. He got the cops to back off of a pay raise and it also came to light that the force has m0re officers than it needs to do the job.

Here is news on furloughs for state workers in Hawaii on Tuesday.

And from the private sector: Many companies have been grappling with cost-cutting this year.

For years, CSPD has lobbied for more officers, with the justification that response times would go down and people will be safer. It naturally follows that a department with less officers on duty would see longer response times and people would be less safe. Recently the Colorado Springs Police Protective Association endorsed ballot measure 2C with the following reasoning:

"Up to now, our police department has responded to these devastating budget cuts in the best manner possible, radically consolidating departments and streamlining services in order to continue to answer the ever increasing pleas for help from the citizens of our community. However, as these budgetary shortfalls continue to cut deeper and deeper, the department finds itself being systematically dismantled. In a time where the need in our
community is rising, the ability of our police department to respond is diminishing. Additionally, the atmosphere in our city is becoming increasingly disturbing and dangerous for the very officers who are sacrificing their personal safety for the well being of the public; the men and women who are willing to run towards the danger when all others flee. We are rapidly approaching an era where the police department will no longer be able to answer the call to assist in the safety of our citizens in an efficient and timely manner."

Then last week, the CSPPA issued the statement attacking Councilman Tom Gallagher's call for a pay cut:

Colorado Springs Police Protective Association’s Response to Tom Gallagher’s Recent Comments on Pay Reductions

COLORADO SPRINGS, CO., October 16, 2009:

Councilman Gallagher's reckless comments do nothing to solve this city's long term fiscal problems. His solution to a problem that has been brewing for years, during his tenure on council, will have the opposite effect of what he is suggesting. If implemented, Mr. Gallagher's idea will cost the city millions! The city will be forced to reinvest in a Police Department which will be demoralized and depleted at the expense of our community and its citizens. For Councilman Gallagher to play politics with the public safety and trust of its citizens is nothing short of absurd and borders on negligence. Mr. Gallagher has chosen to subsidize nonessential city services on the backs of Police Officers and Fire Fighters. His proposal will do nothing but further erode the citizens’ trust in our local government and make OUR city less safe.

Elaborating on these points Tuesday, Officer Pete Tomitsch, vice president of the Colorado Springs Police Protective Association, said he fears that if City Hall goes for one pay cut for city workers, it will become easier to do it the next time, and the next time after that. "Once you open that door, there's no going back," Tomitsch said.

"It's unfair to take it out on the backs of city employees," he said, adding that CSPD officers already get paid about 10 percent less than their counterparts at other Colorado departments.

For several years, a major flaw in Colorado's system for handling domestic violence cases is that an offender who is guilty of, let's say, throwing a beer bottle through a television screen, gets the same counseling sessions ordered for a guy who beat his wife five times. It has been a one-size-fits-all system. A primary goal of the new system being proposed by the Domestic Violence Offender Management Board is a three-tiered program designed to identify three levels of severity among the offenders. Then, a counseling program will be signed for offenders according to their needs.

Here is a link to the proposed guidelines, which porbalby will become effective sometime in early 2010.

Another important difference in the new system is that when someone pleads guilty, he will not know how long his counseling sessions, which he must pay for, will last. That bothers defense attorneys. Pleading guilty when you don't know all of the ramifications "is an uninformed decision" and should be unconstitutional, said Colorado Springs attorney Michael Salkind. Salkind wrote about this issues not long ago.

Another issue: A three-member panel will decide what counseling regime will be applied to each offender. One of the people on the panel will be the therapist who will be paid by the offender for the counseling. It's an apparent conflict of interest, but defenders of the new regulations say the presence of two others on the panel will maintain the integrity of the process.

Another public hearing on the proposed rules will be held in Colorado Springs next week, although the entire board will not be present.

If you were writing a novel and included a character named Congressman Crank, your editor would probably say something like "No, this isn't going to work. You're having too much fun here, and it's not believable."

Jeff Crank, who twice failed to win the Republican nomination for the Fifth District congressional seat, now hosts a local radio show. The Jeff Crank Show occupies the 8 a.m. time slot on Saturdays. To be fair, Crank very nearly beat Rep. Doug Lamborn when he ran the first time in 2006. The second time around, Lamborn the incumbent won more comfortably. Both primaries were bitter ones, as the candidates attempted to get to the right of each other, slinging a lot of negativity.

Now Crank the talk jock weighs in on lots of things. Hear is the e-mail he sent Wednesday:

Here it is: The Manitou Incline. The well known hiking destination is at the center of the parking woes in Manitou Springs. Hikers park up and down Ruxton Avenue trying to get as close as they can to the base of the Incline. The causes parking problems for residents and the problem at times spills over into downtown Manitou. The Incline is what a lawyer might call an "attractive nuisance" and city leaders have been grappling with how to transform the Incline into an attraction.

Other issues in Manitou these days include the desire by some to re-development the east and west ends of town in hopes of securing businesses that produce sales tax revenue that is less susceptible to the ups and downs of tourist season.

The recession has hit Manitou hard. It currently does not have a town manager and a couple of other positions have been left open as well. Like Colorado Springs, Manitou is somewhat over-dependent on sales tax revenue, so the recession has had more of a fiscal impact than it would have, had there been a more hefty property tax.

By not growing, Manitou has avoided some of Colorado Springs' problems -- notably the increasing difficulty of covering the entire city adequately with police and fire protection. Manitou Springs has its own school system, too, but because so many Manitou residents work and shop in Coloorado Springs, the town of 5,000 has an interest in the vitality of Colorado Springs, as well. Manitou voters will go to the pols in November to elect a mayor and three city council members. They also will vote on a charter amendment that would allow city hall a bit more flexibility in spending on infrastructure.