MORE FROM JAY YOO: Jay had more to say in the comments cited in my last post, and this part really deserves to be quoted:

Currently, we outsource a lot of creative work in Cleveland. Our design firm is Emit Design (Absolutely the best around), and there are several print shops in the area that do work for us. Furthermore, all of our models and our photographers are all located here and they are all under 25. To be honest, they are doing really kick ass work that obviously has caught the attention of MTV/VH1. Hats off to them! As we grow, so do their sales and their company.

JAY YOO ANSWERS MY QUESTION: Jay Yoo of KOYONO and I have had a little exchange about my last post in the comments section of his blog here. Here's his response to the question I raised (emphasis added):

I will cut to the chase and say that indeed we do have plans to hire people in our business plan. However, we will hire people around our strengths and strategic focus, which is Innovation/Design/Marketing. Hiring people for manufacturing is a complete distraction as there are so many quality contractors around the world. Focusing on a weakness only weakens your strengths.

We are very clear on what we want to be strong at and will be hiring around building strength. Hopefully Cleveland will become a destination for creative people. That would make it even more attractive for us to want to stay here...

This clear, forthright statement is the kind of thing we need more of in local discussions about economic development strategy. It cuts to the heart of a vital but neglected economic development issue: Is successful new enterprise development the same as local job creation?

The answer is, not necessarily... especially if we're trying to find jobs for unemployed or poor people. As KOYONO demonstrates, Northeast Ohio could create lots of profitable new firms (and new rich people) with very few new jobs -- if those firms send their work elsewhere, or hire only a few very high-value employees, or both. (Remember this from my other favorite straight-talking NEO entrepreneur, Scott Rickert of Nanofilm?)

That doesn't mean those entrepreneurs and companies aren't valuable, or that supporting them won't pay off for the community in other ways. But it does mean we need to separate the various ED value propositions -- new business starts, wealth creation, job creation, "fighting poverty" -- when we consider public ED investments. These goals are not all the same thing, and they can sometimes be in conflict. To invest "strategically", we need to be clear about what we're buying.

If we're buying just a few high-skilled creative or technical jobs, let's be clear about that. And if we're creating outsource work for "quality contractors around the world", let's ask how we can spur competitive bids for that work from entrepreneurial Cleveland employers who pay living wages. I bet Jay Yoo could give us some tips.

UMMMM, I HAVE A QUESTION: JumpStart's first "Pace Setter of the Month" is Jeasung Jay Yoo of Koyono, inventor of the famous $375 "Black Coat" for Geniuses, Artists, and Innovators. (I'm not kidding, that's what the website says.)

JumpStart Pace Setters are entrepreneurs who exemplify the leadership, courage, energy, and drive necessary to grow a business in Northeast Ohio.

Now I have it on good authority that Jay Yoo is a happening guy, and that his Black Coat is really cool, as the kids say. And it says here that he still lives in Lyndhurst and uses Thompson, Hine for his legal work. And he's a Northeast Ohio blogger in good standing... in fact, he's onto the Philadelphia wireless thing just like yours truly.

But it also says here that Koyono's Black Coats are manufactured in Seattle, the patterns are made in Pennsylvania, and the marketing happens in North Carolina. Only the buttons are made in Cleveland.

So in what sense is Mr. Yoo "growing a business in Northeast Ohio"?

Just asking.

JUST BUSINESS AS USUAL: Ever wonder how many Cleveland jobs have been lost, not because the companies were unprofitable, but because the owners sold out to distant competitors who wanted the assets (brands, customers, patents) but not the actual businesses? Think this might have any relevance to our current civic mythos, in which entrepreneurs and "wealth creation" will save the city?

Crain's Cleveland Business, current issue, page 1:

New owner pulls plug on three lampshade plants

By DAVID BENNETT

Nicole Shades LLC of Cleveland, a maker of specialty lampshades that was acquired during the summer by a Pennsylvania company, will lay off 161 workers when it turns out the lights in November at three city manufacturing sites.

The 34-year-old company, formerly known as Nicole Corp., has notified the state that it will close all three of its Cleveland manufacturing operations, which are on West 110th Street, Superior Avenue and Kelley Avenue. The company makes and imports lampshades under the J. Alexander brand and a private label. The shades are sold at major department stores.

According to a notice the company filed Sept. 9 under the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, Nicole will eliminate 125 manufacturing jobs by Nov. 9, as well as 36 administrative and distribution positions.

The decision to close the Cleveland operations was made by officials at Emess Design Group, a lamp manufacturer based in Ellwood City, Pa., that merged in July with accent furniture supplier Stein World Inc. of Memphis, Tenn. Its first move was to buy Nicole Corp. that same month for a price the company did not disclose.

Incidentally, the only reason we (the employees, the City, Crain's) got a 60-day warning about these plants shutting down is a federal plant closing notification law -- the "WARN Act" -- passed in 1988 by Ohio Senator Howard Metzenbaum over the strenuous opposition of the Reagan Administration, the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, the NAM, etc.

BLACKWELL TELLS ELECTION BOARDS NOT TO ACCEPT PAPER REGISTRATION FORMS: The story is on MyDD today, with a link to a Dayton Daily News article.

Cuyahoga County board of elections officials are ignoring the edict because they have already had an avalanche of new registrations submitted on forms printed on newsprint in The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer.

"We don't have a micrometer at each desk to check the weight of the paper," said Michael Vu, director of the Cuyahoga County Board. Blackwell's office has given the Cuyahoga board a special dispensation to accept the newsprint registration forms...

Confusing the matter further is a national registration form available off the Internet at the federal Elections Assistance Agency. That form must be accepted by Ohio boards regardless of what it is printed on, Blackwell has said...

The League of Women Voters of Ohio on Thursday called on Blackwell to clarify his position. League national president Kay Maxwell said she knows of no other states that are requiring the 80-pound paper stock for voter registration cards. "This is the first I've heard of it," she said on Thursday in Columbus.

Those darn Republicans... they're so innovative!

Update: Atrios points out this language in the Federal Voting Rights Act:

No person acting under color of law shall... deny the right of any individual to vote in any election because of an error or omission on any record or paper relating to any application, registration, or other act requisite to voting, if such error or omission is not material in determining whether such individual is qualified under State law to vote in such election.

DEMOCRATS WINNING THE "NEW VOTERS" GAME IN OHIO? Various polls of "likely voters" keep spotting Kerry a step or two behind Bush in Ohio. But the New York Times reports that those pollable LVs may have lots of unlikely company on November 2 -- a horde of new, mostly Democratic registrants.

The Times examined registration from Jan. 1 to July 31 in a sample of counties that included seven of the state's nine largest, along with some smaller rural and suburban counties...

In rock-ribbed Republican areas - 103 ZIP codes, many of them rural and suburban areas, that voted by two to one or better for George W. Bush in 2000 - 35,000 new voters have registered, a substantial increase over the 28,000 that registered in those areas in the first seven months of 2000...

But in heavily Democratic areas - 60 ZIP codes mostly in the core of big cities like Cleveland, Dayton, Columbus and Youngstown that voted two to one or better against Mr. Bush - new registrations have more than tripled over 2000, to 63,000 from 17,000.

Here's the Greater Cleveland Voter Registration Coalition.

POLLS APART: A new poll of Ohio likely voters from the American Research Group has Bush 48%, Kerry 46%, 5% undecided. Calls were made to 600 likely voters between September 17th and 20th.

This is a very different picture from the recent Plain Dealer and University of Cincinnati polls, both of which gave Bush a significant lead.

My guess? This is just way too close to call, and it's going to stay that way right up to November 2.

CLEVELAND'S QUIET ELECTRIC RATE CRISIS: Our Cleveland Public Power bill showed up late last week. August consumption: 478 kilowatt-hours. Price: $60.91.

That's 12.7 cents per kilowatt-hour. Some CEI customers -- those not getting a discount from NOPEC, or from WPS in Cleveland -- are paying the same rate. Otherwise, there's not another electric utility, public or private, in the state of Ohio now charging home consumers as much as Cleveland's municipal electric system.

The political silence about this fact is astounding. And here's another astounding fact: according to CPP's last few financial statements, the system has been accumulating extra cash at a rate of $5 million a year or more, and had over $90 million in its pocket -- in "unrestricted net assets" -- at the end of 2003. (Here's CPP's 2003 audited financial report; see page 3.)

This is a bomb waiting to blow up in some City Hall faces. Eventually, some wannabe Council candidates are going to figure out how easy it is to cross-reference a likely voter list with the houses connected to Public Power poles, and how vulnerable an incumbent Councilman could be if the voters in those houses realize that they're getting royally hosed, with the incumbent Councilman's silent complicity.

Will "eventually" come in 2005? Or will the Mayor and Council, who are literally CPP's CEO and board of directors, decide to get on top of the issue now? Stay tuned.

Meanwhile... if the City is really concerned about so many of its residents living in poverty, overcharging all those poor residents for City electric service is a strange, strange way to show it.

OHIO'S RECOVERY CONTINUES, AUGUST EDITION: The BLS state-by-state job numbers for August were posted yesterday. Ohio jobs were back on the downward path after a little uptick in July.

The PD story this morning leads with the state unemployment rate (up to 6.3%), burying the total job numbers deep in the article.

But either way you look at it, this should be very bad news for the Bush campaign. Just one more jobs report to go before November 2...

TIM HAGAN, CALL GROVER NORQUIST: Apparently when Grover Norquist is finished drowning government in his bathtub, he's hoping to do the same to Bob Taft. Daily Kos has audio of the national conservative poobah and White House insider telling a Republican meeting:

We HAVE to hold OHIO. We have an idiot, stupid, corrupt, dumb rotten republican Governor in that State... who has been busy looting the state, raising taxes, lying to the gun owners.

Ohio is the only state that in the nation that has lost jobs and isn't recovering because he's been beating the economy to death in the state. But he's not on the ballot, George Bush is on the state. It's not helpful, he should be taken out and horsewhipped.

PHILADELPHIA STORY: There are a few more specifics on the City of Philadelphia's citywide wi-fi plan available at the new "Wireless Philadelphia" site. Look at the Fact Sheet and FAQ pages for clues about the proposed system configuration:

Specifically, the City of Philadelphia is proposing to invest in the creation of a new wireless mesh network serving the entire city based upon the current Wi-Fi 802.11b standards... By deploying individual Wi-Fi cells on street lights and other traffic control devises, large areas can be quickly served at low cost.

Once the Wi-Fi units have been installed, they create a self-organizing and self-healing wireless mesh. While some of the units will require a high capacity connection to the Internet, most units will only require access to a power source that can be readily obtained from the existing street or traffic light. Anywhere from 8 to 16 units will be needed per square mile depending upon topography and the built environment. It is estimated that one employee can install 10 units per day. Deployment is both quick and economical and wireless access is available as soon as each unit is placed in service. Wireless access can be rolled out as new units are installed. Additional costs will be incurred to provide a connection to the Internet for some of the units.

On Friday, the Inquirer joined the Daily News in giving editorial-page support to the plan. And today...

Philadelphia expanded free outdoor wireless Internet access on Tuesday as part of a multimillion-dollar plan to connect the entire city by early 2006.

It is the first major U.S. city to start a citywide wireless Internet project, although some smaller communities already have such networks, said Dianah Neff, a city spokeswoman and head of the wireless project.

The expansion offers Web access to users of WiFi-enabled computers and devices within a radius of about a mile from the first so-called hot spot -- downtown's Love Park, where the project originated earlier this year.

Since this story broke a week and a half ago, all I've heard around Cleveland is people muttering that One Cleveland was there first, and counting the times Lev Gonick got quoted in the national coverage. (Here's George at BFD linking to Neil Pierce's column that starts with Philly but soon gets to OneCleve -- not very accurately, since Pierce seems to think the whole 1C system is wireless, but what's a fact or two among friends?)

Guys... One Cleveland is great, but what's going on in Philadelphia is different. If Mayor Street actually does what he's committed to do, people in far-flung neighborhoods from Bridesburg and Germantown to South Philly may soon be able to put $49 USB wireless clients in their windows and pick up free, fast Internet connections from lamppost routers up the block. There is nothing like this in One Cleveland's plans. It's more like the rooftop mesh networks being built by the community geeks Steve Goldberg met recently in Champaign-Urbana, but on a much, much bigger scale.

Philadelphia deserves its headlines for a very interesting concept, and a lot more headlines if they execute it. Cleveland needs to get over itself -- once again -- and learn what we can from some smart people elsewhere in the world.

A FERRY GOOD IDEA... NOT? Jerry of Red Wheelbarrow, who knows a lot more than I do about travel between Canada and here, thinks the Cleveland-Ontario ferry project (moving toward service in 2006) is a bad idea... mainly because you can drive to the big Canadian destinations faster than a ferry will take you there.

Among the problems that I've mentioned, is the fact it barely faster than driving to the nearest major city on the Canadian side, London, ON. Plus the fact I'm a bit dubious there's a big crowd of people here in Cleveland and northern Ohio clamoring to go to London.

But Yahoo Maps tells me the driving time from Cleveland to London is six hours, net of border crossing delays. If a ferry takes me and my car to Port Stanley (20-30 minuters from London) in two-and-a-half to three hours, then I could be in London in half the highway time. Of course that's "fast ferry" speed, but that is the type of service the Port's looking at.

Does anyone here want to go to London (or anyone from London want to come to Ohio)? Hmmm. Well, London is a city of 300,000 people, about the size of Pittsburgh (but without suburbs to speak of.) It's got a healthy industrial economy, a university, etc. If there was a city like that on this side of the lake, but there was no direct highway to it -- and you could cut the travel time from six hours to three by building one -- how long do you think it would be before that road got built?

See, I don't think this is a tourism question... it's a transportation infrastructure question. There's always an economic and social advantage to linking large human settlements to other large human settlements. There's also an obvious long-term advantage for Cleveland to strengthen its role as an international port of exit and entry.

But there's also a strong case for keeping the city's first experiment with this route as economical, incremental, and low-public-exposure as possible, consistent with a) speed, and b) truck transport as well as people and cars. That seems to be exactly what Rochester hasn't done. Failor's people at the Port of Cleveland talk like they're proceeding more carefully. Time will tell.

So I remain a Ferry Fan. Hey, Jerry, I want to go to London. Want to lead the first tour?

AND IN A MORE GRASSROOTS VEIN... Steve Goldberg now has notes posted from the National Community Wireless Summit on his WiFi Wiki. Steve actually made it to Champaign-Urbana while various others (like me) putzed out, so he's now our expert... go look, it's interesting stuff.

One of the interesting themes developing in the "community bandwidth" world, from Champaign-Urbana to Reykjavik, is the idea of the community network as a local common carrier rather than an ISP. From Steve's notes on a site visit to Champaign-Urbana Wireless:

They are setting up node antenna kits around Urbana with 802.11a backhaul and 802.11b access point in a mesh network configuration. They are NOT setting up access to the internet, they are creating a network. If the "owner" of the node wishes to share his broadband access, then there is mesh connectivity to the internet...

"We look at a community network, not as getting internet to the masses, but as making the community its own internet." --Zach Miller, SW egr CUWiN

MOVE OVER, ONE CLEVELAND: The City of Philadelphia has started to plan a public wireless network infrastructure covering the entire city.

The Daily News' columnist "Urban Warrior" says:

Mayor [John] Street may well have laid out Philadelphia's version of Sputnik.

The mayor, who is known as a technology buff, wants to turn all of Philadelphia's 135 square miles into a seamless wireless network, creating one of the largest Internet hot spots in the world.

No other big city has done this.

And Street, who thinks the city can bring in enough money through grants and licensing fees to pay for the $10 million estimated cost, has appointed a 14-member committee to work out the specifics.

While the Daily News loves the idea, the Inquirer business page isn't so sure.

So while Philly is a long way from actually installing the first big citywide wi-fi system, it's already succeeded in creating the first local media controversy about one. This could be a precursor to the first real political controversy about public wi-fi... something for wireless enthusiasts here to pay attention to.

Here's a Washington Post story that has some other details and looks around the country for comparable ideas, including One Cleveland, whose Lev Gonick is quoted thusly:

"We like to say it should be like the air you breathe -- free and available everywhere," Gonick said. "We look at this like PBS or NPR. It should be a public resource."

It turns out that I know one of the Philadelphia planning committee members, so I'll see what else I can find out.

JUST WHAT NE OHIO NEEDS RIGHT NOW (OR, MORE NEWS OF THE RECOVERY): From Brad DeLong...

Urrrkkk!

This is not good:

WSJ.com - GM, Ford Plan Cuts in Production: In moves that could slow the Midwest manufacturing economy -- particularly in election-year battleground states such as Michigan and Ohio -- the two titans of the U.S. auto industry, General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co., said they will cut fourth-quarter vehicle production. The announcement followed a disappointing August for auto makers, which saw American consumers steer clear of large, fuel-chugging sport-utility vehicles as oil prices surged. Sales of GM's big Chevrolet Suburban SUV fell 38%, amid a decline of 14% in overall sales, and Ford's large Expedition SUV slumped by 23%, despite discounts of as much as $6,000 per vehicle, amid a 13% decline in overall sales....

But the decision to ratchet back production is a significant step, because the auto makers play a huge role in the country's manufacturing economy. GM said it will cut production at its North American factories by about 7% during the fourth quarter in response to slowing sales. Ford said it will cut North American production by nearly 8%.

POVERTY OR PUBLIC RELATIONS? Brewed Fresh Daily says that Cleveland's "poorest city" ranking has produced "the worst Civic Strategies post on Cleveland", in which Otis White writes:

What's the worst news a city can receive? Here's a candidate: Learning that it's now considered the poorest big city in the country. Welcome to Cleveland.

It's become apparent in the past five days that Greater Cleveland has two kinds of people:

Those who think our "poverty problem" is that too many of our neighbors are poor; and

Those who think our "poverty problem" is publicity about the fact that too many of our neighbors are poor.

Which side are you on?

POVERTY, ENTREPRENEURS AND UNIONS: Cool Cleveland is in my email box this morning, and in addition to linking to this weblog (which means a few of you came from there, thanks) it has two pieces that speak directly to this week's Cleveland buzz-topic: The city's poverty and what to do about it. The two pieces are Lee Chilcote's extended interview with Cleveland AFL-CIO leader John Ryan, and the short squib ("Can we talk?") about Indoor Comfort Services, a small venture started by laid-off HVAC worker Steve Lee.

As everyone keeps saying, the city needs more jobs. But one of the lessons the Census numbers should teach us is that employment, by itself, does not end poverty. Most of Cleveland's low-income heads-of-household are working for a living, even after the loss of all kinds of jobs in the last three years. The numbers for 1999 (the real Census) make the point clearly: With a far lower unemployment rate, at the top of the 1990s job market, Cleveland was just about as poor (relative to other cities) as we are today.

With a couple of kids to feed and house, a $7 or $8 an hour job doesn't get you out of poverty. But those are the job opportunities we've been creating for workers at the bottom end of the education/skills/experience continuum, which is a huge share of the city's adult residents. While we call these jobs "entry level", few of the employers -- in low-end service, retail, hotel or even health care -- can offer in-house upward mobility to more than a small fraction of their employees.

From the worker's point of view, there are three well-known ways out of this corner:
1) Get a better education that qualifies you for better-paid employment
2) Start your own business
3) Get a union and bargain collectively for a bigger share of the value you're helping to create.

Under the right circumstances, all of these approaches work. In a good economy with lots of job creation, they work really well. In a crappy job market like the one we're now enduring, it's hard to achieve short-term income gains with any approach, but education, entrepreneurship and (intelligent) collective bargaining can all help workers to make the best of their limited options... and get positioned for better times when they arrive.

The Mayor's "poverty summit" needs to talk about new enterprise and job creation, of course. But it also needs to discuss new City initiatives to empower Clevelanders to help themselves out of working poverty -- through education, entrepreneurship and unionization.

I've talked a lot about the first part of this triad, i.e. the strategic value of sending Cleveland to college (and computer training, and GED classes, and financial literacy classes, and anything else that enhances our people's ability to make and manage money). Today's Cool Cleveland piece about Steve Lee's new company addresses the second part, making the important point that Cleveland workers, as well as grad-school entrepreneurs, have skills that can be turned into businesses -- businesses designed to make their owners a living, not a fortune. And the interview with John Ryan introduces the often taboo third part -- the powerful role of unions in turning "a job" into "a decent living", and why so many low-income Cleveland workers are missing this opportunity.

Props to Mulready and the Hard Corps at CC for raising the right issues. And thanks for the link.