For years, leaders in Columbus have launched an ideological attack on the working men and women of Ohio and their ability to collectively bargain for good wages and safe workplace conditions. That's wrong, and it has to stop.

We marked a milestone for consumer empowerment when we began to publish consumer complaint narratives which allow people to share in their own words their experiences in the consumer financial marketplace.

I'm low key at times and really learning as a political figure to give more - show more of myself and be less buttoned down, which I was when I was a lawyer and I was when I was a federal regulator.

The Fair Debt Collection Act was passed in 1977, and there were never any provisions for rules to be written under it, so it hasn't kept pace with the times.

One of the big myths about philanthropy is that it's all about donating funds for a cause. I like to look at it quite differently. Philanthropy is about 'giving' - not just in monetary terms but also in non-monetary aspects, like time, ideas, or being a volunteer. Donating money is just a small part of philanthropy.

America has always fascinated me; it's a country where you can make it from one side to the other with no money, by hook or by crook.

I thought at the time that I wanted to go into institutional sales, selling stocks and bonds to institutions. In those days, which was the 1960s, the institutional salesman was making about $100,000 a year. I thought that was just an enormous amount of money.

I never really had any grand aspirations of mainstream country success because I know what that entails, and I'd probably be too much trouble for people to work with. If I can just reach the point where I can get 200 or 300 people in small clubs and I'm carving out enough money to pay my bills, then I'm the happiest guy I know.