Tag: Michael Ryan

The Innovations of Michael V. Ryan: Forming an important relationship with Joby Aviation that is the gateway to the future

The plan is for Joby Aviation to conduct some flight tests soon, as early as 2026, in the Miami Valley, where it has a new manufacturing plant in Dayton.  And the Vice Mayor of Hamilton, Ohio, Michael Ryan, wants Butler County to be part of it, as a member of the Hamilton City Council who has done a commendable job of restoring commercial viability to the historic city.  And he has some bigger ideas about helping Butler County as a whole by running for commissioner in an upcoming election, which coincides with the release of Joby Aviation’s new air taxis from its Dayton facility.  Michael recently met with the people involved in this expansion and reported some results to me as part of his campaign platform, which is quite ambitious.  I love the topic of sky taxis, or as they are known to President Trump, eVTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) vehicles.  Joby is headquartered in Santa Cruz, California, and currently has five sky taxis that they are delivering to Dubai as the first flight destination.  As I’ve covered this topic extensively, I believe this is one of the most significant transportation trends to emerge from the human race.  Essentially, these eVTOL vehicles are personal vehicles, much like the Jetsons’ or the flying cars from Back to the Future.  But the technology is real, and it’s happening now, in 2025.  In Dubai, they have already built the infrastructure, which consists of four vertiports: one at the airport and three others located around the city.  They will essentially serve as an Uber experience, but instead of getting into a car and having a driver take you somewhere, you will get into one of these very advanced drones.  Initially, they will be piloted by a real operator.  However, they will soon be completely automated, and you will interact with the experience through your phone. 

In America, there are only three places seriously considering entering the eVTOL market: New York, Los Angeles, and the Bay Area in San Francisco.  However, Michael Ryan is trying to make Butler County the most obvious starting point, as Ohio is the birthplace of aviation, and the new Joby plant is just up the road along the Aviation Corridor.  There are few places in America as aviation-focused as the span of I-75 from Dayton to CVG in Kentucky, and making Hamilton and Butler County, in general, a hub for Joby interaction would be a tremendous commercial opportunity.  All Joby is waiting for is the FAA to complete their review and for some testing flights to occur around Dayton International Airport.  The Trump administration is ready to support this new opportunity, and it won’t take long for everyone to clamor for their own vertiports.  It’s good to see that Michael Ryan isn’t even the commissioner of Butler County yet, and he’s already trying to create opportunities that few in the world have seen yet.  The timeline will be fast; the Dayton facility plans to produce 500 air taxis per year, and it won’t take long for them to become as common as routine airplanes. However, eVTOL vehicles will operate under the flight levels of current commercial airlines and personal planes.  Traffic problems will be significantly reduced because traffic can be stacked in the air.  Infrastructure is relatively simple compared to railroads and highways.  Vertiports typically require an investment of $100,000-$ 200,000 for the pad to operate from, and a few million dollars for a multi-level stack terminal.  However, eVTOL vehicles can operate almost anywhere, including in dense cities, which will be demonstrated in Dubai before 2025 comes to a close. 

Speed is the wave of the future in communication, so the amount of time that people spend interacting with each other will need to increase.  The experimental trend that had been emerging during the COVID-19 pandemic has turned out to be a bust: the work-from-home crowd did not turn out well.  Economic activity, aside from all the socialist experiments, occurs when people who can invest and produce manufacturing can communicate with each other easily, which is why so much industry ends up clustering along highway access.  It used to be railroads.  Starting in 2025 and beyond, access to vertiports will be available, and ultimately, person-to-person travel will be possible from your driveway to your employer.  Ground traffic will become a second-level option.  It will be like riding a horse as compared to a car.  When you can get anywhere within a city in 10 to 15 minutes, that speeds up human interaction, which emerging AI and a new space economy currently are constrained by traditional infrastructure that is much slower than it needs to be.  Many people aren’t thinking about these things yet, but Michael Ryan is.  He is a refreshing new Republican who fits in very nicely with the J.D. Vance generation, as well as Vivek Ramaswamy, who will soon be the governor of Ohio.  As Elon Musk develops Starship to emerge into this new commercial space economy, where SpaceX has just had a very successful test of their flight 10 Starship, things are going to move very fast, not years from now, but within the year.  Therefore, a political vision will become increasingly important in meeting those emerging market trends.  As a city council member, Michael Ryan and his team in Hamilton have been effective at staving off further taxation of a legacy economy that has largely shifted away.

One of the most impressive renovations to Hamilton is part of the good work that Michael Ryan and the Hamilton City Council have brought forth, namely the Spooky Nook Sports Champion Mill, which is America’s largest indoor sports complex.  It’s a fantastic facility right on the river, across from downtown Hamilton, and is a testament to what is possible when an old space is historically preserved and transformed into something that everyone enjoys.  The Joby Aviation air taxi technology would be ideal for this specific site, as it would enable people to get in and out of the area much faster than with a car.  It would take a one- to two-hour trip by car from the surrounding area, making it about 15 minutes, as Joby vehicles can travel at speeds of up to 200 miles per hour.  And they are now safe enough to consider them more reliable than traditional cars.  They will quickly prove to be the safest way to travel.  As Michael pointed out to me during our conversation, personalized sky travel won’t even be the most lucrative market.  Logistics will be revolutionized as drone technology soon delivers to our doors, as Amazon has been promising for a long time.  The technology is now here, making it viable to have distribution centers far away from congested traffic corridors.  Because the drones can fly over these areas, Joby technology will enable drop-offs from airports to these centers to occur much faster and more efficiently.  Things are about to get a lot faster, and Michael Ryan is looking to make Butler County the most attractive destination for this new Joby Aviation opportunity.  Michael Ryan has been a city council member in Hamilton since 2017, and it didn’t take long for great things like the Spooky Nook complex to emerge with new economic viability that is bringing new opportunities to the city of Hamilton, which is the best way to keep taxes down, to pay for infrastructure with financial viability, not personal property taxes.  And what Michael Ryan is doing with forming partnerships with Joby Aviation shows an opportunity on a much larger scale.  And he is far ahead of any other politician in the country, which is something to be very proud of. 

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Michael V. Ryan is Running for Butler County Commissioner: There is no reason to put up with wilted flowers

It was a surprise that so many people attended the Michael V. Ryan press conference at the Courtyard by Marriott in Hamilton, Ohio.  The current Vice-Mayor of the city and city council member announced that he was running for Butler County Commissioner, and it was good to see such a diverse group of people coming out to show him support on a Monday afternoon.  There were people of all ages and a nice, even number of men and women from all kinds of backgrounds, which showed broad support early in the process.  When I first heard about it, I thought it was a great idea that someone from the group of anti-liberal rebels on the City Council would migrate into the commissioner seat that is coming up, where the incumbent, Cindy Carpenter, is up for re-election.  Recently, she had been caught in Middletown, Ohio, campaigning for Democrats, and that pretty much sealed her fate among the many who have been unhappy with her over the years and have been calling her a RINO.  Well, now people had more than speculation on the matter, and they were looking for alternatives.  And Michael Ryan was making himself available, and people were excited about it.  It was also surprising that several officeholders also showed up to lend their support.  When you see Bruce Jones at a political event, you know something significant is brewing, because he tends to associate with emerging vigilance over the years that I have come to trust for several decades now.  And as I peeked around the crowd to the back of the room, I saw Mark Welch, the West Chester trustee there, whom I wanted to talk to.  It was a good crowd that had run out of seats, leaving many standing in the background and doorways to hear the future commissioner speak.

After the announcement, I took the chance to speak with Mark because I knew he was also thinking of running for commissioner, so it showed some significance that he was willing to come out and support Michael Ryan running.  The other two seats for the commissioner have a few years left on them, so for Mark to show public support this early in the process was very admirable.  And as we discussed, he has challengers for his trustee seat, which is up for re-election this year.  And he is committed to protecting that seat, which I thought showed great teamwork by the GOP to help in several races, which I’d like to see more of.  West Chester has been great because it has had some significant policies from the trustees over the years, which worked best when George Lang and Mark Welch served in West Chester simultaneously.  The best path forward, which has made West Chester one of the best places to live in the world, occurred during this period.  But since then, George has moved on to become State Senator, leaving Ann Becker to fill that void, which we all thought was going to be a good thing, as she used to be the President of the West Chester Tea Party, and the Cincinnati Tea Party, and she was a good friend.  She was on 55 KRC all the time announcing on the radio Tea Party events and was a key to implementing fiscal small government ideas back into the Butler County Republican Party.  But time has a way of eroding at people, and the person she once was isn’t quite so much anymore, and she has been siding with Democrats a lot these days, which has been a concern.  Because the other guy, Lee Wong, is a known Democrat.  So the trustees have moved more toward the Democrat side of things in dangerous ways.

Mark knows the situation, and he doesn’t feel like he can step away from the West Chester Trustee race because he needs help, so things don’t get out of control.  At a minimum, Mark needs to win one of the two seats this year, with Lee also up for re-election.  So while everyone is excited about Michael Ryan running for commissioner, the Republican Party needs to protect some of the best spots, which in West Chester is how the MAGA movement evolved in the Butler County area and set the foundation for what a prosperous community with good politics should look like.  Ann Becker and I used to be close during all this, and I was very supportive of her in that other Trustee spot George left behind.  And back then, we all planned to keep West Chester conservative by tag-teaming who would run and maintain a two-vote majority.  It meant a lot that Mark was doing that with this Butler County Commissioner race because that’s how you get good management at these positions.  It doesn’t do any good for everyone to beat each other up in primaries only to wonder why some knuckle-dragging Democrat ends up winning in the end, pretending to be a Republican, such as what we had for a long time in Cindy Carpenter.  I can say that in Ann Becker’s case, she didn’t start badly.  She and I parted political ways a bit when Trump came into the picture, and I was in full support of him early, while it took others a while to get there.  Ann eventually did, but over the coming years, it got increasingly complex to hold the same Tea Party political philosophy, as life has a way of chipping away at our foundational beliefs.  And at times like that, political challengers are healthy and needed.  But knowing when to work together and when to challenge for the betterment of a party that serves the needs of a representative government can be tricky, and takes good people to do things for the right reasons. 

Many great things are happening where Michael Ryan, as a commissioner, could be inspiring, especially given that Vivek Ramaswamy will soon be the governor of Ohio.  Butler County is one of the biggest counties in Ohio, with high population density, so having Michael Ryan as one of the commissioners is a rare opportunity.  Trump in the White House setting economic policies flowing down into all levels of government is showing great promise, which Vivek’s future administration will take full advantage of.  Then, having an enterprising commissioner like Michael Ryan engage in that excitement is a great opportunity.  What he has done with the City Council of Hamilton has been fun to watch; they have done things that have brought life back to the city that I never thought I’d see in my lifetime.  And he could do so much more as a commissioner.  But we don’t want to lose the West Chester seats, because that would be a step backward.  So it was good to see some teamwork at key positions, covering each other with support where it counted.  Elections are always opportunities.  It’s rare to have such good people running for politics simultaneously in the same room, but that was certainly the case here.  Michael Ryan and his very nice wife, Amanda, are good, solid people who bring a lot of pride to Republican politics and have a very bright future that is well deserved.  But authentic leadership doesn’t just come in election wins; it comes in setting the table for victory on many fronts.  It was also good to see that happening in the background at the Michael Ryan announcement for County Commissioner on a bright day in May 2025 was unfolding a new strategy, where so many opportunities were blooming everywhere.  And in the Republican Party, several flowers have lost their luster and are wilting.  Cindy Carpenter is one of them, and she needs to go.  There is no reason to put up with wilted flowers who are Democrats in disguise when we have so many good, solid Republicans who are aligned with the MAGA movement.  But everyone will need to support each other in these efforts. 

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

The Michael Ryan Solution: Why its great that he is running for Butler County Commissioner

Out of my most recent articles, the one that has received the most attention is the one I did on sky taxis, specifically the products that Joby Aviation, right up the road in Dayton, Ohio, has ready to go straight from the concept of the Jetsons to practical applications now in 2025.  There are places in the world right now, within a few months of this writing, that will take delivery of these sky cars and make them part of their expanding economy as a new transportation option.  This is not science fiction, but indeed the next generation in personal transportation, and I have proposed that it should be Butler County, Ohio, the home of perhaps two future presidents very shortly, that should be leading the way on this exciting new technology, because honestly, someone in the United States is going to do it, and do it soon leaving everyone else to catch up later.  It is much better to be a leader in something new than to be a come-lately, especially in the way that Butler County, Ohio, is evolving as one of the tremendous technical centers of the world.  I talked to Vivek Ramaswamy recently about his plans as governor, and these eVTOL aircraft concepts will be a natural extension of what he wants to do in the state.  New economies form around new technology, and probably there is nothing newer than these air taxis.  Soon, they will be everywhere; most people will use them just as commonly as people use cell phones, and the world will be much more interesting and faster.  At the State of the State speech from Governor Mike DeWine this year, 2025, even he mentioned what Joby Aviation was doing in Dayton, so this is very much a technical reality waiting for some bold people to be the first, and I have been trying to encourage people in Butler County to be those first bold people.

While I was at a recent fundraiser for Nancy Nix, I was carrying around a plate of food, looking for somewhere to sit down.  I had been talking too much and didn’t have a place to sit as Nancy was trying to prepare everyone for some entertainment she had for the evening.  My wife couldn’t attend that event, so I was alone and didn’t consider taking a seat.  So I was in a pickle now that everyone was sitting down.  So there I was with my plate full of food, needing a seat when Vice Mayor of Hamilton Michael Ryan and his very nice wife Amanda encouraged me to sit with them.  So, I did, and for dinner conversation, we had an excellent talk where I learned that he was planning to run for commissioner of Butler County, which is good because recently, Cindy Carpenter had been caught campaigning for Democrats in Middletown, leaving many people very angry.  So, for the upcoming Republican primary ahead of the 2026 election cycle, people were looking for alternatives, and it sounded like Michael Ryan could be it.  I have come to know him somewhat well; we pass each other at many events, and he has enjoyed my social media over the years. I have seen him stand tough in the pocket on more than one occasion, even for a pretty young person, young to my eyes.  He’s over 40 now, but I have a habit of referring to people in his age group as young, which I do to many people I deal with who are his exact age.  But when it comes to some of these new political positions, I would love to see someone with a good 20 years of work history in front of them, with lots of fresh ideas and ambition to do them.  So it didn’t take me long to get interested in his statement about running for county commissioner.

But he wanted me to sit with them mainly because he was interested in my articles on new transportation methods like Elon Musk’s Hyperloop system, which I proposed should be built in Monroe, Ohio.  Then, this Joby Aviation alliance I was talking about for West Chester, Ohio.  While Michael has been on the Hamilton City Council and has been doing a great job there, which has plenty of challenges, running for commissioner of one of the three seats requires a much larger vision for a community like Butler County, which comes with some lofty expectations.  We have had pretty good commissioners, and I had been thinking for a while that there is great potential if only we could get T.C. Rogers a second vote.  T.C. is a free market advocate, thinks right about many things, and could use a good partner as a commissioner.  Don Dixon has been pretty good, too.  They know how to make the spaghetti in the kitchen but could benefit from a fresh, youthful vibrancy.  Cindy Carpenter is listed as a Republican with the other two, but she behaves like a Democrat and has for a long time, leaving people hungry for an option.  So, Michael Ryan came across to me during this discussion as someone who might fit perfectly into the needs of Butler County.  So, given all the elements, it seemed like an opportunity to talk about some of the exciting things that could be possible if we put someone like Michael Ryan onto the seat of Butler County commissioner.

Michael and I met at a spot I think is the perfect property for a Joby air taxi service port.  There are lots of places in Butler County for something like this as a hub, where people visiting at CVG downtown could fly straight to Butler County to shop at Ikea for the day or to conduct business and stay at one of the many hotels that are within walking distance to this proposed location.  However, even within Butler County’s 400,000 residents, it is a quick way to get to Miami University, downtown Hamilton, and even Butler Regional and Middletown airports.  An air taxi service would see immediate good business and be economically viable right out of the box.  So Michael Ryan and I talked, and I filmed it so people could listen in and get to know him a bit.  It would take investors with vision to make anything happen.  It would take technical expertise to set it all up.  There are plenty of achievable challenges.  However, the most important thing to me is setting up the political infrastructure to achieve it.  Given where the Trump administration is on these kinds of things, I am confident that there would be lots of encouragement at the federal level.  This economic boon could help Middletown a lot, and J.D. Vance would like to see that happen.  His personal friend, Vivek Ramaswamy, will be the next governor of Ohio, and I know he’s excited about it.  The proposed location of Butler County, Ohio is mainly in Senator George Lang’s district, the current Majority Whip at the Statehouse.  I know a friendly trustee in Mark Welch in West Chester who could get on board with something like this.  What was missing was a county commissioner who could connect all the dots and remove the barriers so the business people could make the investments.  And after the talk Michael Ryan and I had, it should be obvious why I’m endorsing him and why I was so happy that he invited me to sit with him and his wife at the Nancy Nix fundraiser.  We had a great discussion that could grow into something truly special, which is very exciting. 

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

I Endorse Michael Ryan for Butler County Commissioner: A wonderful future if only we have the courage to embrace it

I thought it was going to be a secret for a while, but it was announced at the Nancy Nix fundraiser on February 21st, 2025, that Michael Ryan, the Hamilton City Council member and Vice Mayor, was planning to run for one of the commissioner openings that were coming up in November of 2026.  I have felt for a long time that if only T.C. Rogers, one of the current commissioners in Butler County, had another friendly vote, lots of good things could happen for a community that has over 400,000 people and has the potential for some of the best economic output anywhere in the United States, or even the world for that matter.  If another commissioner could help with the critical free market philosophy, lots of upward mobility for a lot of people would be created.  Upon hearing this news, I first thought that Michael would be a perfect replacement for the current commissioner, Cindy Carpenter.  I haven’t been a fan of hers since she started, but her career path fell off the road last year when she was caught campaigning for a Democrat in Middletown, Ohio.   There is a lot of talk about Cindy winning eight straight elections even though she has a lot of detractors in the Republican Party.  I would argue that the reason she holds up so well to Democrat challengers is because she is essentially a Democrat who puts an “R” next to her name to win elections in a very conservative county.  I think this campaigning in Middletown for Democrats thing will hurt her now in ways she’s not used to, so I think she’s very vulnerable.   We’re in a new day of politics, and putting up with these RINOs has been something that Central Committees have not been willing to do, especially when they have an opportunity to get a MAGA type of officeholder.  And that is precisely what Michael V. Ryan is.

My wife has been very busy with family business lately.  To run a family well takes a massive commitment sometimes, and my wife is the kind of person who will drop everything at the drop of a hat to help my two daughters with life as it’s happening.  This leaves me going to some of these vital community functions by myself a lot.  And at Nancy’s fundraiser, I talked too much to too many people to find a seat in the vast crowd.  Nancy Nix always does a great job with these events, which are always well-attended.  On this particular evening, it was being held at the Elks Club in Liberty Township, which is a favorite venue of mine.  It holds a lot of people, and she always brings in big-time comedy acts to entertain people during a nice dinner provided by the Spinning Fork restaurant that facilitates the club.  The comedians were Jeff Jena, Dave Dugan, and Lou Santini, so they were not second-rate acts, so seating had some priority.  If my wife had been with me, we would have found a seat and held it near people we usually associate with.  But Jeff Jena was acting as the master of ceremonies, and he was getting impatient. People were still talking as it was time to serve dinner and start the show.  So I needed to stop shindigging and get to a seat.  I had been talking to Michael Ryan about several county and city topics, and he saw my dilemma and said that I could sit with him and his wife, along with others from city councils in not just Hamilton but also nearby Middletown. 

Michael and I have had a lot of discussions over the years about the potential of Butler County, and as a younger guy, he has reminded me of a lot of up-and-coming political people who are formulating the MAGA movement that is emerging behind Trump’s leadership in the Executive Branch, which includes J.D. Vance, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Bernie Moreno.  These are different kinds of brilliant people who could be successful in any field they want to be in.  However, a personality type is emerging that is quite noticeable, and Michael Ryan, who I call “young” at 41 years old, has a lot of good stuff to give.  Once I heard that he was planning to run for that Butler County Commissioner seat that Cindy Carpenter occupied, I got excited and decided to get behind his campaign and help however I could.  As he and I were talking about his upcoming campaign, shortly after Nancy Nix gave him a full endorsement in front of the crowd that caused a little controversy, in a good way, he kept reminding me of a different version of Vivek Ramaswamy. I met Vivek years ago through Nancy Nix and a few other places at VIP events, such as a time with Mike Pompeo and again as he prepared to announce his race for Governor of Ohio.  Leading up to Nancy’s fundraiser, I was coordinating that big announcement with Vivek at CTL Aerospace, and I noted how different this new generation of politicians was as opposed to the past before Trump changed politics forever.  Michael Ryan fits this new, young, ambitious type of politician who runs toward capitalism, not away from it as Cindy Carpenter has all these years. 

So I appreciated Michael and his very nice wife Amanda letting me share in their date night as a third wheel.  We talked about many incredible opportunities for Butler County if only someone like him could fill that critical seat.  We spent a lot of time discussing the vertical taxi market, which I have been talking about with everyone with a mind to listen.  A lot of people haven’t yet put all the dots together, but Joby Aviation is right up the road of the aviation corridor of I-75 that Vivek Ramaswamy is planning to talk a lot about as his run for governor, and they are building eVTOL aircraft that are ready to go right now.  I told everyone months ago how it was going to go down. They are only waiting for regulation approval and can start shipping these air taxi vehicles worldwide.  China and Abu Dhabi are the first to market as they have much fewer regulatory environments to slow them down.  However, under the Trump administration, I’m just saying that those barriers to the United States will be removed.  And someone like Michael Ryan is just the kind of person with the vision to put their arms around it and bring top tech innovation to Butler County as a leader of this emerging new technology.  He understands the value of that kind of innovation, but that’s not the only reason I like Michael.  He’s just a good person who wants to do good things, and I enjoyed spending time with him and his wife, along with the table of fellow council members and community managers.  Michael and Amanda are the kind of people you want to see providing leadership and opportunity to people hungry for it, and Butler County is a prime place to have the most vibrant economy in a state that is going to be Trump’s example of turning a rust belt into a tech giant.  From my experience with the Vivek Ramaswamy campaign for governor, I know his plans for the state.  And to cascade off that, Butler County can be the leader of the state to have the best opportunities that many people can’t yet possibly imagine.  And with a commissioner like Michael Ryan, even the wildest dreams of the most optimistic people can’t even be imagined because such greatness has never yet been seen among the human race. But that opportunity is coming at us very soon, with Vivek Ramaswamy as Ohio Governor and Michael Ryan as Butler County Commissioner. 

Oh, and regarding Joby Aviation and why Abu Dhabi is the current leader in the eVTOL market. Joby’s S4 aircraft, which hauls a pilot and four passengers at 200 mph with a 100-mile range, could slash the two-hour car slog from Abu Dhabi to Dubai to a breezy 30 minutes—no emissions, and much less noise than a chopper. They’re tying this into Abu Dhabi’s Smart and Autonomous Vehicles Industry (SAVI) cluster, a big local initiative to lead in next-gen transport. Joby’s already got exclusive rights to operate in Dubai starting as early as 2025, and this Abu Dhabi move opens the door for zippy inter-emirate trips. They’ve been showing off the aircraft at events like DRIFTx in Yas Marina, flexing their tech to seal the deal.  This is not science fiction.  The only thing stopping us in the United States is having the kind of politicians who can take away the barriers to market saturation currently held up to the speed of slow government left to us by Joe Biden and Obama’s years of bureaucratic infrastructure. The eVTOL is the future of transportation, much more important than building any new highway or railroad.  And Butler County, Ohio can lead America if only it has the right politicians who can make it happen.  The money and investment are just waiting for the pin-headed politicians like Cindy Carpenter to get out of the way.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707