Meet.The.Bloggers* would like to acknowledge the support of the Washington Monthly Magazine, who paid for the production of this transcript for a story on Congressman Ryan that will appear in an upcoming issue.
George Nemeth: Hi, this is George Nemeth of Brewed Fresh Daily, and I’m here with several Northeast Ohio Bloggers and Congressman Tim Ryan. Thank you for joining us.
Tim Ryan: Good to be here.
George Nemeth: I think what I want to do is I want to ask you first about the Youngstown Business Incubator…
Tim Ryan: Oh, awesome.
George Nemeth: …because in was it this week, earlier this week or was it last week you paid a visit there?
Tim Ryan: Yeah. Well I actually have an office in the Incubator.
George Nemeth: Okay.
Tim Ryan: When I first started, we wanted to…
George Nemeth: Oh, I got the email that said you were there talking to .
Tim Ryan: Yeah. Yeah. Well I was there with Congressman Strickland.
George Nemeth: Congressman Strickland, okay.
Tim Ryan: We wanted to make sure he’s over there and knows what’s going on. And it’s a software incubator, and it’s just, it’s probably the most promising thing happening in Youngstown right now. There’re two really great companies in there: one’s called Turning Technologies and the other one’s called Softek. Turning Technologies is the one that we all brag about. It went from just a couple of local guys from Youngstown (I think one’s from Columbiana County) started this business and now they have 70-some employees, all in downtown Youngstown.
George Nemeth: Now is that the guy who sold his like maintenance company to start the company?
Tim Ryan: Michael Broderick.
George Nemeth: Right.
Tim Ryan: Yeah.
George Nemeth: Okay.
Tim Ryan: Yeah, and they make, if you’ve ever sat in a meeting, like say we’re sitting here and we wanted to poll everybody and we put a question up and it would say, you know, “Strongly agree.� It’s kind of like a focus group, “Strongly agree, Agree, Not Agree and Strongly Disagree.� We would all have a little hand pad, kind of like the size of this Blackberry, and you would hit like one of the six or seven buttons on there and in real time it would monitor the opinion of everyone sitting there. So these guys started this thing. They import the product from South Korea. They assemble it in Youngstown, and they’re distributing it all over the country now, so it’s really good. They have a national contract with, international contract with UPS. So anyway, this company is really great, and they’re growing by the day. They’re doing business in 33 different countries now. They have 16 patents. And so you know we talk a lot about, in Youngstown, is that you know we’ve got to grow our own, we’ve got to grow our way out of this, and these incubators are a key component of that, and you know we want these guys to be a billion dollar company and hire hundreds, if not thousands, of people in the City of Youngstown so that citizens are making $58,000 in Youngstown, paying taxes into the City and we can help grow the economy, but that’s how it’s done.
George Nemeth: Well I think that that area is uniquely positioned, because the way Jim talks about it is it’s basically right in between Pittsburgh and that area and Cleveland, you know, and so maybe you could kind of expand on your district and the economic situation that you’re representing.
Tim Ryan: Yeah. The geography goes from Summit County. I have four wards in the City of Akron (1, 2, 6 and 10), and then I have the southeast portion of Summit (Green, Mogadore, Tallmadge, Springfield), and goes over almost all of Portage County, except for the northern tier of townships that are there, and over to almost all of Trumbull, except for the northern tier townships, and then I have the northern half of Mahoning County, which includes Youngstown, Campbell, Struthers, Lowellville and a good portion of Austintown Township. And it’s we basically got caught in the underbelly of globalization with steel, rubber, now automotive. There’s a huge, was a huge General Motors plant in Lordstown that I think had 13,000 or 14,000 people working there at one point in the late ‘60s. Now it’s down to several thousand. Delphi, you know we read every day what’s going on there, and that plant was around the same. It had 12,000 or 13,000 people there working and now it’s going to be down to 1,033 I think.
So we’ve been able to keep things fairly stable I think because of the retirees that are there, and there are so many of them that are still getting some benefits. Now how that’ll change when they renegotiate the Delphi contract, I’m not exactly sure, so you know we have a lot of economic issues. I mean the market is extremely soft and you hear about it when you go to the barbershop or get your car fixed, or you know I was on the radio station yesterday and they were saying even the sales for ads on the radio were real, real soft.
So the long-term plan I think is regionalization and utilizing our universities, and you know to that end I’ve really been focused on getting research money for YSU. Got some money for the Incubator, to expand it. We’re actually going to put what we’ll call YBI II. We’re going to knock about four our five buildings down and put an addition on so that this turning technology can grow. They want to sign a five-year contract with the Incubator, so it would be perfect. We really want to keep them in the City.
And focusing on, you know getting into the schools. Mayor Williams and I go to the schools and just stop in and just visit with the kids and just talk to them about how they’re the future of our community and they need to start thinking about how they’re going to help us, what they’re going to do, are they going to start a business, be a pro athlete, be a singer, come back here, buy a building, help us out.
And one of the things that I was going to mention, it’s passed. It’s just got to go back to the Senate to pass renaming this consent. We’re going to do a study on the Western Reserve Heritage Area, and basically we’re going to create a heritage area of the 14 counties that comprise the original Western Reserve, like Connecticut Western Reserve. And so as we’re talking about regionalizing economically, I think in order to really make that gel, I think we have to do it with our history, with our tradition, with our schools and with everything, and I’m hoping that the Western Reserve Heritage Area will be that vehicle that we can all kind of say, “Okay, this is our area and this is how we’ve got to work together and figure out how to do that.�
In addition to that, when Ted gets in, I would really like the State of Ohio at some point to advertise in Connecticut, in New England about coming to see and visit us and spend your money here. We have a lot to offer. It’s amazing when we started doing this all the firsts that came out of the Connecticut Western Reserve, the first stoplight, the first union newspaper, John Brown the Abolitionist, great people.
And I think for us that live in Northeast Ohio, we’ve got to start communicating to our kids that this last 25 years has really just been a blip on the screen of our history. Our history is about people who moved here, who were innovative. They were entrepreneurs, they were risk-takers, they were smart, they were civic-minded, they were big into Civil Rights, and the number of underground railroad stops in Northeast Ohio is unbelievable. I mean we have a proud tradition of supporting labor and Civil Rights and those kinds of things. So I want part of this to be educational, and use this as an opportunity to get into our schools and start changing the mindset of people, young people, who go to school here and who live here about we are winners. We’ve always been winners. We may have lost in the last decade or two, but we can’t lose that spirit that we had that got us to where we are.
George Nemeth: Can I ask you, because I was looking at your bio real quickly, and it mentions about the Trumbull County Dunham’s.
Tim Ryan: Yeah.
George Nemeth: And my experience with Trumbull County is I actually lived in Thompson, Ohio and so we would drive into Trumbull County and go to Rock Creek. And I mean that entire area right there, it’s all agriculture. It’s all farms and stuff like that.
Tim Ryan: Right.
George Nemeth: So I know you’re on the Manufacturing Caucus Committee, right?
Tim Ryan: Um hmm.
George Nemeth: And so if you could contrast what’s going on with manufacturing with what’s going on in agriculture in your district and around Ohio, I’d appreciate that.
Tim Ryan: Yeah. To be honest with you, because I don’t have a lot of those northern tier of townships in any of them, my focus really hasn’t been on agriculture, but I know it’s a huge part of the Ohio economy, and it’s something that I think we really need to focus on, and I’m hoping as probably you are that we can parlay our assets in agriculture into the next alternative energy source for the world, and I think that needs to be a real focus of ours. But as far as the state of agriculture, I couldn’t probably answer anything too specific.
George Nemeth: Should I keep going, or does somebody else have a question?
Tim Ryan: Do we need all these other people here?
George Nemeth: I’ve got lots!
Tim Ryan: We could just…
Tim Ferris: Let me jump in. You mentioned 14 counties in the Western Reserve Heritage Area and you mentioned regionalization. I just wondered how…
George Nemeth: Tim, did you say who you were?
Tim Ferris: No, I’m going to in a minute.
George Nemeth: Okay.
Tim Ferris: I just wondered how ambitious your scope? And this question comes from Tim Ferris and I blog at Tim Ferris.blogspot.com.
Tim Ryan: I’m sorry, can you say that again?
Tim Ferris: How ambitious is your scope on the regionalization?
Tim Ryan: How ambitious?
Tim Ferris: Yeah, when you think of regionalization, what cities do you think of as cooperating in your vision?
Tim Ryan: Well I think we’ve got to do the triangle up here in Northeast Ohio: Cleveland, Akron, Youngstown.
Tim Ferris: Okay.
Tim Ryan: And I think too often Youngstown has been left out for a variety of different reasons, and some may have been good, but Youngstown’s ready to play now. Youngstown wants to play ball and they want to be a part of this thing, and I think the reconstruction of the District at 17th going over to Akron, when we first started campaigning, we saw this as an opportunity to be united with the rest of Northeast Ohio and not to be on this little island all by ourselves. So I would say now hopefully we’ll be moving into my third term. I think it’s time for me to start being more aggressive in a regional approach, because I mean we’re losing Ted and Sherrod in the House, so I think my responsibilities as far as taking a role in the regional economy are greater now, because I’ll be more senior.
Tim Ferris: And then you have overlapping regions or cooperative regions, then you have Pittsburgh and whatever that region would be and whatever you have below you then.
Tim Ryan: Yeah. Well you know go down the river is Steubenville, East Liverpool.
Tim Ferris: Okay, so there’s overlap every place, but the three cities you mentioned are the nexus of that region.
Tim Ryan: Yeah.
Tim Ferris: Okay.
Tim Ryan: And I think it’s practical for us.
Tim Ferris: Sure. Sure.
Tim Ferris: You mentioned bringing New Englanders here, having them make the trek out to the Western Reserve again. I notice you went to law school out at Franklin Pierce. Now what got you from Bowling Green out there?
Tim Ryan: You know I just wanted to go somewhere that I knew I wasn’t going to stay but wanted to always visit, and I went to New England once, I went to Boston once and I just loved it and I says, well… And then I was actually thinking it really fit together because I was going to graduate in 2000, so I would be up there for the Presidential Election, and I figured, “You know, we have New England. This is great. Work in the Presidential,� actually got to meet Al Gore and Clinton a couple of times up there. And so that was kind of it, but it didn’t really work out that way, because my last year of law school I moved back and I did an externship back home for a semester and then I did a semester at Akron Law and I ran for the State Senate in the last year. So I ended up running myself.
Tim Ferris: And that’s a success story that I’d like you to share with us, because you were the wunderkind out here. Tell us a little bit about how that came about and how you went ahead and overcame ferocious odds and became the state senator.
Tim Ryan: You know I just was really, as I say, at the right place at the right time, and I think my role was having the guts to do it. That’s where I think if I contributed, that was my main contribution. But it was really an issue of timing, and my friends have all, were leaving the area.
And I had gotten a real interest in law school. I was basically doing International Law. I was thinking of going to the Foreign Service, and I just thought, “You know, the seat’s opening up,� because there were term limits, and I like politics. I said, “Let me give it a whirl. I don’t have any kids. I’m not married. I have nothing, absolutely nothing to lose,� and so just ran, and took on the Party, and Marc Dann was actually running. I ran against Marc Dann and another woman, who was a Township Trustee who the Party people were all very supportive of. And the big thing in Trumbull County is to get the Party endorsement, because they send out this mailer . Now when you’re poor as hell and you don’t have any money, like “I need them to send one mailer to Democrats saying I’m with you,� and it was just an amazing experience, because I spent a good part of two months going to visit over 200 Precinct Committee people. We would hold signs on the side of the roads in the morning and in the afternoon in bowling alleys and bingo halls, but during the day I would go to all of these Precinct people’s houses. And I had a buddy of mine, who wasn’t a friend of mine at the time, who had just retired from General Motors and had absolutely nothing to do but to drive me around to these Precincts, and he got the nickname “The Shark,� who actually works for me now, which is great. So the Shark would take me around and I would just sit at coffee tables like this for an hour and talk to these Precinct Committee people.
Tim Ferris: “The Shark.� Why “The Shark� specifically?
Tim Ryan: Because he’s crazy, that’s why
Bloggers:
Tim Ryan: When you’re in a car with someone that long, you’re like you come up with shit that you maybe shouldn’t
Bloggers:
Tim Ryan: But so we did that and the woman who was running was backed by all the Party leaders and she was just calling these Precinct people to try to get the endorsement.
Tim Ferris: Who were of the Burges and the Burges Rep on that one? They were working against her.
Tim Ryan: They were probably with Marc Dann, I would think.
Gloria Ferris: I think. I think.
Tim Ferris: Okay.
Tim Ryan: Yeah, I think they were with Marc. And I just went and I sat with them and I talked to them and I sat in their kitchen and ate with them and coffee and this and that, and I got enough of them to support me to get me to a second ballot, and it was Darlene St. George, the Township Trustee, and then me and then Marc Dann, but as I was going a long, a lot of these people were with Darlene because she was the Party candidate, and so I said, “Well if this gets to a second ballot, I know you’ve got to be with her on the first one, but if it gets to a second ballot, give the kid a shot.� Right?
Tim Ferris: Um hmm.
Tim Ryan: And they did, and I ended up blowing her out on the runoff and we got the Party endorsement. And the deal all along was, if you get the Party endorsement, the other one was going to get out of the race, either me or Darlene, because we had a lot of the same friends. And so the day after we were like, “This is great. She’s going to get out and the Party has this money, they’re going to send this mailer.� None of that happened . There wasn’t any money there. She stayed in. She thought she could win and everything else, and then we ended up just running, and her and Marc ended up getting in a big fight and I was the new young guy just… I figured if they knew my last name and they knew I was young, coming off of all the indictments and everything that had been happening, that they would say, “Yeah, isn’t that the kid that played football at Kennedy?� You know, because I had some sports background. I figured if they just knew that that they would give me a chance.
Tim Ferris: Okay.
Tim Ryan: And you know, I mean and my opponents were saying, “Never had a real job,� which they could probably still say …
Bloggers:
Tim Ryan: This is my first real one. And you know but people were ready for a change, and I think them voting for me and then again in the Congressional race I think signaled to people that Youngstown really is wanting to move on and move in another direction, a new direction, unlike the Democrats.
Terra Milo: I want to jump in on your involvement with the Precinct Committee persons. I’m Terra from the Chief Source.
Tim Ryan: Hi Terra.
Terra Milo: And I’m a Precinct Committee person also. But my concern is voting rights and all these controversies we’ve been having, even in Akron, with 29 Precinct Committee people voting for themselves, having people vote for them, anything officially not elected. At least 29 people have. I don’t know if you’ve read in the Beacon. That’s been the new story going around that…
Jason Haas: There was a follow-up this morning, too.
Terra Milo: …and there was a follow-up this morning, yeah, how 29 people voted for themselves. They were right end candidates…
Tim Ryan: Oh, okay.
Terra Milo: …and the Board of Election said, “Sorry, not elected,� so the Beacon went in and counted, got a hold of the ballots and saw they were all fairly elected, but they’re not getting that.
Tim Ryan: Oh wow.
Terra Milo: So I mean I don’t know what kind of plans you have for voting rights and some more consistent voting laws, as far as, I don’t know, nationally or even focusing just on Ohio especially the Governor’s race.
Tim Ryan: Yeah, well I think the fact that a Secretary of State can oversee his own election is absolutely ridiculous, and I think things should probably start there, and then the resources, and then there needs to be some, I don’t know if it’s a third-party that oversees the process where these voting machines are equally distributed. You know to have short lines in the suburbs and long lines in the inner cities where the Democratic voters are, I think it’s just cheating. I mean basically it’s a sophisticated form of cheating, and I’m sure we all read Robert Kennedy’s article in the Rolling Stone, and I don’t know if you saw this week’s Rolling Stone, but there’s a great article in there with Kurt Vonnegut. You ought to read it. It’s hysterical. He says that Bush hates Arabs because they invented algebra.
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Tim Ryan: So but I think the more we could give this the perception that it’s fair, and that it actually is fair and have some kind of third party oversee it, I think is the best thing we can do.
Terra Milo: Like an outside?
Tim Ryan: I don’t know if you want to have like a judicial oversight. I don’t know exactly how we’d do it, but I think it’s part of a larger conversation we need to have about what’s happening.
Terra Milo: Yeah.
Tim Ryan: And the fact that average people, I think, don’t want to believe that that would actually happen in this country, and that’s a big thing that we need to overcome. So the more these things happen and the more it’s in the press, I think the better off it’s going to be, but I worry that something could still happen, and especially not just because… I mean Ted’s a friend of mine, but my god, this state clearly wants to go in another direction, and all the polls have him up 20% and he loses, that would be a problem, but that’s not going to happen.
Terra Milo: I think most people are saying, “Why not receipts?� I mean nobody’s…
Tim Ryan: Yeah, a paper trail.
Terra Milo: I don’t know of a lot of politicians who are really pushing that.
Tim Ryan: Paper trail, you know.
Terra Milo: Yeah. I mean that’s what we want. I don’t know what kind of plan is being put together to get that done, I mean to get us a paper trail.
Tim Ryan: I don’t know. I could find out, and if not, take the lead on it.
Terra Milo: Yeah.
Tim Ryan: All right.
Terra Milo: That would be a good idea .
Patti Choby: I’d to switch the topic here to housing. This is Patti Choby with the Reframed Dialogue Sessions, and I was really excited when you started talking about the Western Reserve Heritage Area. In the Community Development classes that I teach at Case Western, we always use the Connecticut Western Reserve as the oldest example in this region of community development. I mean basically people came here, transportation and commerce converged. It was settled, and as you described, well over 100, almost 200 years of real economic prosperity. Not everybody benefited from that, but in general it was a very prosperous region.
We have a big issue with housing in this region, in this state. I mean it’s the number one state for foreclosures. Is there anybody in Congress looking at revisiting the Housing Act of 1949 and coming up with a new Housing Act that will meet needs of people today in terms of the quality of housing, the affordability of housing, the issue that in this region we have a lot of old, substandard housing full of lead paint and lots of other things that make it cost-prohibitive to redevelop. And if not, is there a way for us to focus attention on that, because housing is a huge economic development issue.
Tim Ryan: Yeah. I haven’t heard of any major plan to address the housing issue in the country. I personally think it needs to be part of what I describe as an urban renaissance that we need to have in the country where we focus on what we’re going to do with our cities. You know Akron, fortunately, has done a great job and in good measure to the kind of leadership of Mayor Plusquellic, but I think the housing component and addressing gentrification within that. I think downtown housing, I think, needs to be promoted. I used to have a little apartment in downtown Warren, you know, pine floors, brick walls, and I was paying $500 a month and I had a beautiful view of Courthouse Square. If it was in New York, it would have ran me $5,000 or more. So I think there’s a lot of opportunity to take advantage of what’s going on, and at the same time that I can address this sprawl issue and make sure that we have balanced cities and balanced growth and address these in a very thoughtful way. And the lead paint issue is a huge issue in Mahoning and Trumbull County. We’ve got about two or three thousand cases a year. Some of these kids that live in these old homes, they have lead poisoning to the point where they almost are mentally retarded, because it had such an effect on them, and you know you see these kids in school, you think they’re on drugs, they’re not paying attention, they’re falling… They have lead poisoning, and there are about 3,000 kids in Mahoning County, so I’m sure Cuyahoga’s even worse within the population.
So I think all of that needs to be addressed, and not just say, “Well we’ve just got to do housing.� See, we have a problem in this country that we’re not doing anything for the long view anymore. We just pick one issue and pretend like it’s not connected to any other issue, you know. I mean housing is connected to urban development, economic development, what your downtowns are doing, is there a university there (how does all this kind of fit together?) transportation; you know when you’re talking about senior housing. We’ve got to stop siloing all this stuff and just pretending like, “Okay, here’s education. Here’s healthcare. Here’s energy,� it’s all, and the more we realize that we’ve got to have all these different conversations and unify them, and I think that’s why things like this are very important, and your conversation that I’m going to go listen to with the Anthropologist, we’ve got to start having those discussions. So there’s nothing (to get back to your question) pressing or I can’t even think of anything in Congress right now, that’s dealing with that issue.
Patti Choby: Do you think that the Bush Administration is still trying to get rid of a Cabinet level position (HUD) that has to do with housing?
Tim Ryan: Um hmm. Yeah.
Patti Choby: Is that something that you think they still will pick away at?
Tim Ryan: I don’t know. I don’t know if they’ll do that, because of the politics, especially now. I don’t think they will.
George Nemeth: Tim, I need to kind of throw in a curve ball here, because I want to follow up Patti’s questioning with something that I’ve heard about Joseph Campbell and The Myth of the Hero.
Tim Ryan: Oh my gosh.
George Nemeth: And I’d like to talk about that in leadership. Right? And how that’s kind of affected your opinions about being a leader and what it takes to be a leader in the community. One of the things that Patti and I were talking about is sort of the grassroots organization, because if you’re talking about an urban renaissance (right?), we’ve already got these leaders that are in place that are kind of maintaining the status quo, and how are people going to on a grassroots level organize and meet that sort of change that you’re talking about? Let’s start with Joseph Campbell.
Tim Ryan: Well Joseph Campbell is one of my absolute favorite topics to talk about, so I remember seeing the Power of Myth on TV once, and I think I was in a hotel room.
George Nemeth: With Bill Moyer.
Tim Ryan: With Bill Moyer, and just so powerful, and I must have watched it a million times.
George Nemeth: Really?
Tim Ryan: Yeah, and started reading all of his books, and I’ve now…
George Nemeth: When was this, in kind of your career path?
Tim Ryan: That was, I think I was probably just out of college, when I first kind of starting saying, “This guy’s neat.� And the thing that caught me (I grew up Catholic)the thing that caught me was, he was telling a story about all these other cultures who have virgin births in them, and Buddha was born from a virgin and this, and being Catholic I’m like, “No. No. No, no, no, that’s Mary, you know,� .
Bloggers:
Tim Ryan: And it just caught me. And I think it’s a human potential thing, really, is that we all have this innate, human potential that goes untapped, and these religions and myths and stories are there to teach us how to basically go to the next level and be courageous and not worry about people judging you and just go and do what… Look inside instead of look outside, and so that kind of gave me the courage. Eric Murphy, who is a good friend of mine, who’s actually out in L.A. right now, just graduated from film school, he during the State Senate campaign, I was either with the Shark or I was with Murph, and when I was with the Shark, it was Frank Sinatra…
George Nemeth:
Tim Ryan: …and when I was with Murph, it was Dave Matthews…
Bloggers:
Tim Ryan: …and Joseph Campbell. We had books in the car. We’re like, “This is a great quote,� you know, just keeping ourselves in that zone of like you’re insulated from what all the opinions of other people are. And I think when you’re talking about politics, I see it more as much as the legislation and housing and this and that and the policy stuff, which I like. I think the bigger part of it is the ability to communicate and inspire and move people to be the best they can be, you know, and that’s really our job, and that’s what’s so frustrating about this President. He’s not there inspiring. He’s not there saying, “We can be energy independent.� He’s not saying, “We are America and that really means something,� other than dropping bombs in neighborhoods, you know? And so I think Campbell got me into that.
So when you’re talking about leadership at a local level, it’s Michael Broderick. That’s leadership at a local level. This guy has got the courage and the guts to start his own business and go into the Incubator, and some young people have lived with their parents so that they can start a business. You guys started this, you know. Yeah, people probably thought you were crazy.
George Nemeth: They still think we’re crazy .
Tim Ryan: There’s probably a good reason they think you’re crazy, because you are crazy, but crazy is okay, crazy is good. It’s just, it’s different. Normal is not good. It’s not going to get you anywhere. And so we need local leaders I think to recognize that this is about not your comfort level, not being comfortable. It’s about leading, and that means you’ve got to break some eggs sometimes. And so the local level, I think people need to recognize that they need to vote for people who are willing to be risk takers, may not say everything they’re exactly supposed to say, you know, that the Talking Points have, but speak from their heart, and that’s how you’re going to get… You know Jay Williams is a perfect example in Youngstown, a Democrat, there was I think four or five African-Americans in the Democratic Primary. He ran as an Independent, and all the Democrats are going… He’s not a Democrat, but he was like “I’m going to change the City, and I’m going to run as an independent, not because I don’t like the Democrats, but because this needs to be done and we can’t sit by and have the same kind of politics that we’ve had in Youngstown without somebody doing it. I was with Hagan, because I was with the Democrats, and I was like “I love this kid,� and every time he would see me on the campaign trail he’d be like, “You know I’m running because you did this, and now you’re with Hagan,� but it’s that kind of courage that I think we need at the local level.
And just quickly I just want to mention this, because it’s been inspiring to me. I went to, when Jack Murtha got Profiles in Courage Award a few months ago, some or all of us went and it was at the Kennedy Library and everything else. So as we were leaving, we were walking through the library and they had two, actually four CDs of old President Kennedy speeches. You know I went to Kennedy High School and you know Kennedy’s the man, so I got them, and I’ve been listening to them. They are so inspirational. I mean when you hear Bush after hearing this guy, you just want to cash it in. You’re like we are so far… You know the “Going to the Moon� speech. They’ve got like two or three speeches on Civil Rights and this is a moral issue. Just go to the country with your guts and say “This is a moral issue. What kind of country are we? We’re not going to say this person’s a human being? Because I’m the President and I’m saying they are and I’m willing to stick my neck out,� and you know there were people saying he should have done it sooner than that, but he did it. And there are some graduation speeches on there and he’s talking about why America has to lead the country and how important diplomacy is, and it’s just so much different than what we’re talking about now. He talks about us only being a few percent of the people in the world and how we have to work with other people, as opposed to what we’re doing now, you know. And so those kind of leaders who are saying, “We are going to go to the moon,� the great scene in (I’m getting excited here)…
Bloggers:
Tim Ryan: …Great scene in Tom Hank’s movie, Apollo XIII, when Kennedy gives this speech about going to the moon and then they clip and they go to the NASA people, the engineers, just freaking out, “What, is he nuts? We’ve got to go to the moon? Why are we going to?� You know, yeah, that’s leadership.
George Nemeth: Great. Gloria?
Gloria Ferris: No.
George Nemeth: No?
Scott Bakalar: Congressman Ryan, my name is Scott Bakalar and I blog at a blog called Word of Mouth in basically the City of Lorain.
George Nemeth: And you’re a composer.
Bloggers:
Scott Bakalar: Of sorts, of sorts. Lorain, we sometimes refer to Lorain as “Little Youngstown on the Lake,� because our paths have been so parallel, except Youngstown has kind of led the way. You’ve gotten to places first, with the loss of the steel jobs, then we followed, loss of industry. We’re following a lot of the issues that confront that area or confronting us now and have for many years. From your experience, from your knowledge and time in the area, what would you tell the people of Lorain, Ohio? What kind of message of hope could you give the people of Lorain, Ohio and what steps can they take to do things like are being done in the Youngstown area now?
Tim Ryan: I don’t know a whole lot about Lorain, but I would say I think you need a few people to step out and run for political office, Chamber of Commerce, whatever the case may be, you’re going to need some new ideas, a new vision, a new way of thinking about Lorain that’s different. And again, go back to your strengths. Go back to the past of what you did really well. We focus a lot, Ryan and I talk a lot about, when we’re talking about our area, we focus on how tough people are. People are tough and they’re a little stubborn, and that’s good. Highlight it. Turn it into an asset, like in a job interview and they say “Turn your negatives into positives.� Whatever, you know you just flip it, and think do that, and I think education is just the key. They have a community college, I believe, over there.
George Nemeth: Right.
Scott Bakalar: Yes.
George Nemeth: Yeah, in fact they have an Incubator. It’s the Kline Incubator, and that would be something really to focus on, given Youngstown’s success with that.
Tim Ryan: Yeah, and you know like we’re starting, beginning to have conversations with some people about a venture capital fund. You know, why not? And I think that has to be the attitude, you know, “Why not?� It goes back to the Campbell thing.
Scott Bakalar: And taking the risks.
Tim Ryan: You’ve got to. I mean no one ever gets… And what’s good about having political conversations and giving political speeches in our area is that the use of sport in analogies hit home. You know I talk about the Buckeyes; I talk about Jim Tressel, and I think when people look at life through that lens, it can be helpful, and I would imagine you could probably do that in Lorain, given the Browns won last night.
Scott Bakalar: Thank you.
Tim Ryan: Um hmm.
George Nemeth: Guys?
Jason Haas: My name is Jason Haas. I blog at Psychobilly Democrat. This question I asked Sherrod Brown last week after we were off the audio, after the interview was over. But one of the things that frustrates the heck out of me with this Administration is every time you get economic news, it’s trumpeted, like the economy is booming. You know you hear about well there’s only 4½ or 5% unemployment, yet they don’t talk about how many people have dropped out of the statistics because they’ve stopped looking or they’ve gone off unemployment rolls, etc. And I think it was a BLS stat that I saw that said we need to replace, I think it was 155,000 jobs, a quarter over a month, just to keep pace with people dropping out with retirement, population growth, etc., yet we come up with 120 when the stats are announced, and everybody wants to blow their own trumpet. So my question to Sherrod and now to you was, how do Democrats talk about that? Not necessarily on the campaign trail, but in any form to really make that sink home to people that “Is this really what they’re saying?� because it seems to me like some people take those pronouncements and they run with them, say “Hey, everything’s fine.�
Tim Ryan: I think our best approach in the fall and now (since we’re almost there; I can’t believe summer’s almost over) is to just say “Look around. How does it feel?� You know everyone’s talking and no one believes that they can believe anybody anymore, especially a politician in Washington, so our approach is “How do you feel? Does it feel like things are going okay? Does it feel like there’s job growth? Does it feel like wages are high and where they should be? Does it feel that way, because if it does, vote for these guys.� Probably doesn’t, and I think you can get past the numbers and all this other stuff, and that’s kind of why I think you see Bush struggling, you see Blackwell struggling. It’s because they are saying the same damn things they’ve been saying the last five or six years. They’ve been trying to pass the same bologna they’ve been trying to pass, you know, here comes the summertime before election. Here comes the gay marriage. Here comes your flag burning. Here comes all this stuff that doesn’t mean anything, and now people are watching it again for maybe the second or third time saying, “That’s not what I want you to do,� and so I think they can’t believe what anyone’s saying. So I say, “How do you feel?� and get in their gut, you know.
Gloria Ferris: I have a question for you, Tim. You talked a little bit about leadership in Congress. And I am Gloria Ferris and I blog at Gloria Ferris.net. You talked about leadership at home here in the State and in your District, but I see you being a potential leader of Congress, of the House of Representatives, and I think that’s something missing at this point in time. I don’t see a Tip O’Neill. I don’t see a Patrick Moynihan. I don’t see someone that has the vision that you have. Are you thinking in those terms of how you become a voice of the nation, as well as Ohio? Because if Ohio is where everything stops, right here, and everybody tells us that, I think you’re in a perfect position to be there.
Tim Ryan: You try not to think you’re important where like “I’ve got to do this,� and “I’ve got to do that,� and “I’m the only one who could do it.� I think there’s a role for me to play, and I think… Congress is a pretty complicated endeavor, you know, and so I’m on my fourth year, and just I know I know how to handle things better, so I think there probably is a role for me to now play, like we were talking earlier with the regional efforts here. I’d really like to get on the Appropriations Committee. I’ve seen what Mr. Regula’s been able to do with Akron General and Akron Children’s and Stark County Community College and the OU Comm. I think as he’s probably winding his career down, I think it’s important for someone in Northeast Ohio to be on that committee and possibly spend some time there to help build this regional economy through the Western Reserve, and if I’m the only appropriator, and I know Stephanie and Dennis, they both have a regional concept, and I know Betty Sutton does and Charlie Wilson. So I think there would be a role for me to play there, and quite frankly Nancy Pelosi has given Kendrick Meek and I a lot of rope to go on the House floor, sometimes three or four times a week, and do our thirty-something. We’re on there for… Some weeks we’ve been on there four or five hours, on weeks where they’re Monday through Friday. So I think she is seeing that him and I and Debbie Waschan Schulz need to kind of step up, so we’re being encouraged to do it. And I kind of guard against trying to think of too much self-importance, but if there’s a void there and I can fill it, then again, it’s about stepping up and doing it.
Gloria Ferris: Well yes, you don’t want to come off as being self-important and egotistical, but the other point is that sometimes we need to step up and fill that void, and I do see that void in Congress. I mean I just don’t see (maybe it’s because I’m getting older and more cynical) the people that were there with John Kennedy in the ‘60s and ‘70s. It’s just it doesn’t seem like there’s been a replacement caliber that I think is unfortunately parochial. People are seeing their region as being that they’re not realizing what you realize as the big picture is that we’re all interconnected. New England is connected to the Western Reserve. We’re all interconnected. They’ve chose that with the way they add the line items in for their little bit of pork that often means that legislation that is very important doesn’t get passed, and I think that… I’m listening to you talk today and I think you see that, and I just wondered what was happening. I feel much better now.
Bloggers:
Tim Ryan: You learn so much every day, and just we all went down there. I mean you know my staff in D.C. all came from Ohio. There were all in my campaign. They were all young, and just to watch them grow exponentially because you’re basically thrown into the fire and you learn by fire. So I’m the same way. You have to be down there. You’ve got to know all the players. You’ve got to know all the issues. You’ve got to really understand them I think at a level that you can get command of the information, then able to say, “Okay, how does this all fit together in a positive way?� I like Newt Gingrich. I just think obviously on some of the political issues, but he is a visionary. He was a big picture idea guy, and I think if there’s anything that’s starved in Congress right now, I think it’s the ideas. And so we’re trying, and my staff is not big enough to nearly… because we’ve got them coming all the time, and this Western Reserve was one of them and they’re starting to slowly get implemented, but we need… And I recommend to you Alvin Toffler’s new book, Revolutionary Wealth, which is just phenomenal. I mean you’ve got to read it, Democrats. I gave it to Harold Ford, and I’m like “Hey, did you read that yet?� He says, “I not only read it; I’m quoting it on my stump speech now,� and that’s what we’re talking about in Youngstown about these three waves in agriculture industry and now information and how… He talks a lot about how government is constraining wealth creation. Okay, instead of unleashing it, we’re constraining it, and what better issue for the Democrats to talk about than say, “We are pro business. We’re pro wealth creation. Profit is not dirty word,� like Jim Rhodes used to say. Profit is not a dirty word. Responsibility’s got to go with it. And so I think the Democrats need to talk about how we are going to reform government, and the one piece of legislation that helps crystallize this for us is John Tanner, who is with the Blue Dogs, head of the Blue Dog Coalition, has a bill that when we get in, we will audit the federal government. We’re going to just start, because we have a government that is meant for an industrial age and we’re not there anymore. You talk about permitting processes and the local level and the state level, how much money… You take a loan out to build a house or build a commercial building, you got the loan and the permits are being held up, so you’re paying back the loan and nothing’s moving forward because you’re waiting. And so that’s a way to say, “We want to audit the government. We want to downsize it. We want to squeeze it. We can’t go back to the taxpayer and ask for more money from hardworking people who don’t have work,� whether it’s Lorain, Youngstown. The wages are suppressed. They’re not making more money, they’re making less, as regards to inflation. So how do we squeeze this thing? School districts. I mean we need to start talking about joint police and fire districts in some of our rural areas, “If you cooperate, we’ll buy you a fire truck.� You know, let the federal government come in with these carrots. The administration of schools, purchasing together, all these kind of things I think the federal government should come in and dangle carrots and help downsize this stuff, and if you lose, whether it’s a municipality or government agency, like AFSCME, good ally for the Democrats, good people. You know what, they have AFSCME county employees and they have nurses, and we need more nurses. How do we as a federal government say, “As we downsize government, we may lose some AFSCME people, but we will go one for one. We will not let you lose a member. You will go from being a municipal worker. We will train you to be a nurse, and you will go right into maybe our schools.� How do we start talking and thinking about what our schools are going to look like? We have all these kids that are qualified for S-CHIP (State Children’s Health Insurance Program) that don’t get it, qualified for Medicaid, don’t get it, and we’re building these community health clinics all over. Put clinics in our schools, tie it to your Phys Ed Program, tie it to your Wellness Program, get nurses and doctors and dentists in our schools. Now you have role models walking around. You’re totally changing the concept of what a school is, and again it’s not “You’re educated, and then some day later we’re going to talk to you about how it’s good to be healthy, and then that would be different.�
Bloggers:
Tim Ryan: “We’re going to want to talk about that in school,� but tie all this stuff together, and the more Democrats come up with saying “Streamline, focus, can’t go back to the taxpayer,� better off we’re going to be, and then we look like the party of ideas, which is what we get criticized for, “Where are your ideas? What are they?� You know, sit down and ask Newt Gingrich what he stands for. He’ll sit here for 30 days with you and give you…
Bloggers:
George Nemeth: A 30-day podcast.
Tim Ryan: Yeah, yeah. I mean he’ll give you all those ideas. But that’s what we need, and that’s fun.
Gloria Ferris: I like that. I like the Demo… What about the rest of them, “The Democratic party being the party of ideas,� I love it.
Scott Piepho: And I need to follow up on Gloria’s idea of you as a leader within the Democrats (and I’m Scott Piepho; I blog at Pho’s Akron Pages), and there is a kind of cliché on the right that no one can achieve any success within the Democratic Party if they’re not resolute with Pro Choice, and I think it’s a cliché. I don’t think it’s true, and I think that you’re Exhibit A on that, and I wanted to ask you to kind of talk about your experience as a Pro Life Democrat.
Tim Ryan: It really hasn’t been much of an issue, I mean as far as like the leadership saying, “You can do this, but you can’t do that.� I’ve actually used it as an opportunity to… It’s been a good part of the last two years, we have an Abortion Task Force in my office. I don’t know how it happened. We are proposing the Abortion Reduction Act, okay? Now some people call me Pro Life. Some Pro Lifers think I’m Pro Choice because I’m not Pro Life enough. I’m like in the middle. I’ve got everybody mad at me on the issue.
Scott Piepho: So you’re only like the majority of Americans.
Tim Ryan: That’s all. Yeah, I’m very average…
Bloggers:
Tim Ryan: …when it comes to abortion. And but I think we all should be able to say that we want to reduce the number of abortions, so we’re calling this the Abortion Reduction Act, and it has some prevention stuff in there, through Medicaid and different things, and it talks about (this is broadening the discussion), we’re talking about full funding for S-CHIP. We’re talking about putting babysitting centers on college campuses. We’re talking about nurses for newborns. You know we want to communicate to the mother that “If you want to have this baby, society will be here to be supportive. If you’re in college, we’re going to build babysitting centers in colleges and provide grants for schools who want to do that kind of thing, to encourage them to bring the baby to term, and then at the same time prevent through some preventative measures, and what I’m trying to do now is get Pro Choice and Pro Life people (Democrats) on the same stage saying, “We are all united about reducing the number of abortions. We’re not being judgmental. We’re not talking about Roe v. Wade. We’re not criminalizing anything. This is just about how do we take a holistic approach to reduce the number, because we are better reducing the number of abortions than Republicans are, because we talk about prevention and we talk about the social support that we need. So I’ve never been suppressed or looked down upon because of my position, which is a pretty average position to have, and in fact we’ve tried to turn it into a positive and tried to use it as an opportunity to unite the Party behind a clear message of “We’re not Pro Abortion on demand,� which we aren’t, but the Republicans want to make us look that way. And here’s a funny thing, too, that happens and everyone says, “Well the Democrats are so liberal. They’re for gay marriage.� Who’s bringing these issues up? We’re not bringing this up. You know, they’re bringing it up, and they force us to vote on them. We want to talk about healthcare and jobs and all these other things that we think we need to move on, and they have these votes that they make us vote on because it benefits them because they’re about dividing, not uniting.
Scott Piepho: There’s a cynical part of me that thinks Republicans really don’t want abortion to ever go away.
Tim Ryan: Well, I mean if you get…
Scott Piepho: I mean it seems to be consistent with kind of the difficulty you’re having getting, and the difficulty I remember getting a compromise on partial birth abortion abatement, where they’re basically, it all died. The compromise died because the Republicans wouldn’t go along with an exception for the health of the mother, which that’s it. And it seems to me it’s on the Republican side, it’s more important to look tough on the issue than to actually decrease the number of abortions. I mean is that your experience in dealing with…?
Tim Ryan: Yeah. Well it’s look at what they’ve not done on S-CHIP, on WIC, full funding for Women, Infants and Children’s on the Abortion Tax Credit, which is also on our bill, to double it, or the Adoption Tax Credit. They don’t move on any of the issues that we know will reduce the number of abortions. I mean look at what’s going on with the FDA right now. This has been a circus for two years about the Plan B deal. It’s-you look at their actions, I think.
George Nemeth: Can I? I need to jump in real quick, because out of the 60-some interviews that we’ve done with civic leaders and stuff like that, you’re the first person who has mentioned Alvin Toffler and the Third Wave, and so if you could kind of give just a little summary of that and why you think it’s so important, please do.
Tim Ryan: Well it’s important because he articulates the reality of what’s going on around us, and I read the book. You know talk about I’m in my fourth year and you start to kind of sow your oats a little bit. I called Toffler and told him I wanted to meet with him.
George Nemeth: You’re kidding.
Tim Ryan: No, and guess what? He came to my office.
George Nemeth: Wow.
Tim Ryan: Kendrick Meek and I met with him. It was supposed to be an hour meeting. We were in my office for about two and a half hours. He was so excited that we were listening to him and trying to work with him, he started canceling meetings. He was supposed to be somewhere. He had his guy leave, went and got on the phone, cancelled meetings, he was late for the next one.
George Nemeth: Wow.
Tim Ryan: So we sat there and we talked to him for two and a half hours. He’s actually coming to Youngstown in the spring…
George Nemeth: Is he really?
Tim Ryan: …so you guys are all invited, if you want to come.
George Nemeth: Oh that would be amazing.
Tim Ryan: There will be a public dinner at YSU, so you guys can. He’s great.
Tim Ferris: Can we Meet the Bloggers in the spring?
Bloggers:
Tim Ryan: I’ll talk to him.
Gloria Ferris: Tim, that would be great. I would love… I mean I remember Future Shock.
Tim Ryan: Yeah.
Gloria Ferris: 1972…
George Nemeth: Yeah.
Tim Ryan: Yeah.
Gloria Ferris: …I mean, and that was just everybody on campus read that and “Have you read this book?� and I just think it is amazing that 30-some years later the Third Wave is just the same way, causing those same kinds of conversations and the whole thing.
Tim Ryan: And in the new book, you know he addresses China and India and everything, terrorism, all of this, and here’s a good example. I think it’s important, because 1) it’s exciting, 2) it articulates the truth, what’s happening around us, and like he said in the meeting, he’s like, “You know there’s a crisis in healthcare. There’s a crisis in education. There’s a crisis in energy. There’s a security crisis.� He says, “Well, at some point don’t you just take a step back and say, ‘Maybe all these are all tied together somehow’?�
Bloggers:
Tim Ryan: And bing, and then the light bulb goes off. And he used this example, and he said about the Third Wave and knowledge and information and everything else and he said, “Take 9-11 for example. We get hit by a decentralized, private Terrorist group that has cells that pop up and pop down and change, and they circulate money around the world and information on the Internet and through cell phones and everything else. Very decentralized. How does the United States combat that? We build a 20th century pyramid bureaucracy from the top down,� and he said “Why? Because that’s what we know how to do. We’re good at it. We know how to build a bureaucracy. We know how to build a Department of Homeland Security,� and that was the wrong response to being… And because it’s just like all the other government agencies that are in crisis right now, and how do we as Democrats work with guys like Toffler, and actually the head of the GAO sits on Toffler’s board, Toffler sits on his board. He’s pretty cutting edge, and then our next meeting Kendrick and I had was with him, we need this in the starts of auditing the government and figuring out where the money is being wasted, and what programs aren’t working. Democrats should clearly say, “If there’s a program that’s not working, cut it and get rid of it. It’s wasteful spending.� What is wrong with that? It doesn’t mean you’re against poor people. It means you really want to help them. How do you do it? Let’s figure out the next way to do it, and Toffler puts us in that kind of mindset that I think we all. Every Democrat I gave a book. I gave Sherrod Brown a Toffler book. I gave Strickland a Toffler book. I gave Harold Ford a Toffler book. I saw Bill Sack, he was in. I’m sending him a Toffler book. We all need to just need to be reading this stuff, and you guys especially. Where are the ideas? People listen to you guys, I mean obviously with the whole Lieberman deal. People listen to what the Bloggers say, because you guys are smart and you pay attention.
Tim Ferris: And we’re a network and not a hierarchy, and that’s the whole thing.
Tim Ryan: You are what we need to do with government.
Gloria Ferris: Well you know you’ve said if it’s not working cut it. That was FDR’s philosophy during the Depression. Try something. If it doesn’t work, kill it and go to the next.
Tim Ryan: Right.
Gloria Ferris: But it’s become so institutionalized with what we do that it’s a hard… People don’t want to let go of what they know and try something different, and I mean and what time better than now, given all that we’re going through. I think that you’re on the right track.
Tim Ryan: It’s safe. It’s safe to just, but it’s not working and we get paid to kind of make things right and make them better and we should. And so Toffler I think gives us a lot of good stuff to talk about. It’s antithetical to what we’re used to talking about. We’re the ones that are supposed to protect government and protect the bureaucracy, and that means we’re for the interest groups that we’re trying to help; but if we’re not helping them, if 80% of the kids in Youngstown City Schools live in poverty, something’s not working. Something is just not working. Cleveland’s the poorest city? Poverty in America? And you know if you want to talk about poverty, no one even talks about it anymore. John Edwards is the only one that even talks about it. But still, I don’t even know if he’s talking about it in a way of it’s a structural problem. It’s structural.
Tim Ferris: You know Tim, Patti started talking about it with the housing and foreclosures, the structural problem of poverty, and then you talked about not being in the industrial age anymore, and really we’re not. We’re pre-industrial, because we have a whole bunch of people in this rust belt region who are indentured servants right now, and they’ve been foreclosed upon and they’ve been foreclosed upon 60% more than other people in other regions. And the problem is they’ve done away with certain consumer protections, the new bankruptcy law and so on and so forth, giving more leeway to the credit card companies and the banks, and I’m just wondering. Okay, you know we had Eliot Spitzer spitzerize the securities industry and hold them to a high, high fiduciary standard on a $1,000 investment in a mutual fund, and yet, on houses where people are making the biggest investment of their whole life, there is no fiduciary standard of due care, and the banks just are having field day with people. And not only do we have 60% more foreclosures in this area, the banks are moving to cover their markers quicker, and they’re doing it with some really creepy moves, and yet nobody is protecting the knife. You talked about protection and everything, is this something you might take back?
Patti Choby: But I think, Tim, you also raise, it’s a good example of how the current government regulatory environment is ignoring the real culprits in all of this, which is the mortgage industry, which is not regulated at all, and if it is, it’s at a state level that’s lame at best. So that is another structural issue, you know, community reinvestment, just general regulation of that industry, and we can’t do at state level.
Tim Ferris: They can feed off our population right now, and I’m talking about people being indentured servants. You cannot discharge that anymore. You’re going to have people 80 years, 90 years old working in some kind of checkout line to pay the bank back. You know you’ll have triple baggers in the checkout line earning minimum wage, just, you know, it’s a terrible mess.
Gloria Ferris: Well the Federal Reserve, the Treasurer in our County, Jim Rokakis went to a meeting of the Federal Reserve in Philadelphia, and a banker got up there and outright admitted that in Ohio and the Midwest Region that the banks are more likely to foreclose than they are on either coast, in Florida, or in Chicago.
Tim Ferris: Because we’re having problems and they’re not going to have problems too.
Gloria Ferris: Because we, yes. Because they don’t see our region as being able to come back. And Jim said it was like everybody in the audience was like, and they were trying to get this banker off the dais so he wouldn’t be talking like that. But Jim says, “When you look at it and what’s happening in Ohio, that man told the truth.� I mean it’s really very, very scary what the Federal Government has kind of allowed. The same way with the IRS going after hairdressers and waiters and waitresses and saying they have all this income that obviously is not reported. These people…
Tim Ferris: And they give up and don’t fight and they have a lien put on them.
George: Okay, I need to jump in real quick, because it’s been an hour. I know you have to leave soon. The first thing is, there’s audio versions of the Alvin Toffler book online. You can get it through Audible.com and iTunes. I just bought a copy , so that’s on my thing to do. Does anybody have one more question? I want to give the Ferris’ and Ryan a chance to respond to that.
Tim Ferris: I want to know if he’s aware and what he can do, because I seem to think he might be the right guy to carry some of this forward.
George Nemeth: I’d like him to respond to that…
Gloria Ferris: I concur.
George Nemeth: …but then I’d like to get your commitment to do this again at a future time, because we’ve only been an hour and I’m sure there is plenty of other things that we can discuss.
Tim Ryan:
George Nemeth: If you could think about it, I’d…
Tim Ryan: Sure, I’d be happy to.
George Nemeth: All right.
Tim Ryan: I’d be happy to. I need to study that more. I don’t know. I can’t talk to educationally sound advice, something like that.
Tim Ferris: We’d be glad to help you.
Tim Ryan: Yeah, I’d love to, but you know I’m hoping that when we take the House back, especially with the bankruptcy, I hope we get a chance to go back and fix a lot of that stuff that was there.
Gloria Ferris: That’s good enough for now.
Bloggers: Yeah.
Tim Ryan: Yeah.
George Nemeth: Congressman Ryan, thank you for meeting with the Bloggers.
Tim Ryan: Thank you.
Tim Ferris: Thank you.
Tim Ryan: It’s been a blast.
Meet.The.Bloggers* would like to acknowledge the support of the Washington Monthly Magazine, who paid for the production of this transcript for a story on Congressman Ryan that will appear in an upcoming issue.
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1 Meet the Bloggers » Congressman Tim Ryan Transcript // Apr 1, 2007 at 8:41 am
[...] Just posted the transcript from the Tim Ryan interview we did back in November here. An excerpt: Patti Choby: I’d to switch the topic here to housing. This is Patti Choby with the Reframed Dialogue Sessions, and I was really excited when you started talking about the Western Reserve Heritage Area. In the Community Development classes that I teach at Case Western, we always use the Connecticut Western Reserve as the oldest example in this region of community development. I mean basically people came here, transportation and commerce converged. It was settled, and as you described, well over 100, almost 200 years of real economic prosperity. Not everybody benefited from that, but in general it was a very prosperous region. [...]
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