Steve Byington is the Democratic candidate seeking election to the Ohio House of Representatives from the 37th District. Mr. Byington spoke at the South of Dayton Democratic Club on May 12, held at Wright Library, and I recorded his short speech on my video camera. (See below.).

Byington is an architect. He is an active Oakwood citizen, a member of Oakwood Rotary, Oakwood Planning Commission, and Oakwood City Council. At the Council’s January meeting, Byington was chosen Vice-Mayor of Oakwood.

On his web-site, Byington writes, “I’m not sure people know, or ask, what my party affiliation is. They just know me as someone who’s willing to listen to all sides and work hard for solutions that will best serve all the stakeholders. That’s the kind of bipartisan approach—not just lip service, but real, practical outreach—I believe Ohioans want and deserve from their legislators. As I campaign, I want to hear from everyone in the District, regardless of party affiliation.”

In order to win the 37th District, Byington must convince a big block of voters who previously have sent Republicans to the State House to switch their vote. In 2008, the 37th was an open district because the incumbent, John Husted, was term limited. Byington’s opponent in this contest, Republican Peggy Lehner, in 2008, received 65% of the vote and her Democratic opponent, Andi Eveslage, received 35%.

Byington says his campaign will emphasize three topics: job creation, education, and “government itself.” He says, “i’m frustrated with everyone’s frustration with government.” He says the current Ohio Assembly is not focused on solving problems and he will go to Columbus “to get something done.”

The Reorganization Meeting for the Montgomery County Democratic Party will be June 2 at 7:30 PM at the Democratic Headquarters on Wilkinson Street in downtown Dayton. At this meeting officers will be selected and a constitution and by-laws approved.

I’m not counting on any improvements in local party policy or local leadership to emerge from this meeting, because attending the Reorganization Meeting for the most part will simply be the same crowd controlling that is already in charge.

At the Reorganization Meeting, voting delegates are those Democrats who were selected to the Central Committee in the May Democratic Primary. Every precinct may select a delegate, but of the 360 precincts in Montgomery County, only 186 precincts had any delegates seeking election. You may see a PDF of the 186 elected delegates here.

I attended my first Reorganization Meeting four years ago, in 2006, when I first became active in the county organization. At that meeting, I was actually shocked by the attitude and actions of those in control of the meeting — I observed a stifling of debate and a rush to push through a preestablished outcome. It was my first taste of the antidemocratic attitude of the leadership of the local party.

For this Reorganization Meeting, I personally recruited about seven people to run as a delegate and three of those individuals won, but most Democrats in the county had no idea that this opportunity for participation in their local Democratic Party, via the Democratic Primary, even exists. And so 184 of the 360 precincts in the county had no candidate. The party suppressed information about this delegate opportunity and even the DDN seemed in collusion to suppress information about the opportunity — refusing to print a letter to the editor I wrote in January urging county Democrats to become involved.

My effort to get Central Committee support for advertising the Primary delegate deadline got zero support. See Special Interests Controlling Montgomery County Democratic Party Suppress Expansion Of Participation

The 186 delegates, chosen in the May Democratic Primary, for the most part, are the same crowd already on the Central Committee, the same crowd that has established the current policies and who chose and still support the current leadership. Many of these delegates — who wouldn’t dream of challenging the status quo — are those who hold elected office, those who hold patronage jobs given to them via the influence of the local party or elected Democrats, and those who have influence in the current structure.

I intend on attempting to suggest changes to the By-Laws of the the MCDP to stop the antidemocratic practice of Primary endorsement used by the clique in charge of the Montgomery County Democratic Party to advance their buddies and keep themselves in power. But, I’m not expecting my effort to go anywhere. I’ll post the language of a motion I intend on making in a later post. See Mark Owens Says Most Montgomery Dems Approve The Party’s Suppression Of Primary Participation

The people in control of the local party like to be in control and, generally, like the way things are. I’ve heard several Central Committee members, over the last four years, declare that they were finished coming to any more monthly meetings because they had concluded that their voice had no chance of being heard, that they were sick of the “rubber stamp” mentality expected of them.

Working to reform and vitalize our local political parties, I feel, is the best opportunity for meaningful grassroots democracy to make meaningful advancement. The only hope is to get a lot more people actively involved. The next chance for Montgomery County Democrats is in 2014.

Chapter three of Simon Johnson and James Kwak’s new book — “13 Bankers, the Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown” has tons of statistics showing the astonishing growth of Wall Street over the last 30 years.

This growth was the result of the financial industry breaking free from the constraints legislated in the wake of the Great Depression.  Johnson and Kwak explain, “The basic principle behind any oligarchy is that economic power yields political power.”

This chapter shows how there was an “explosion of new products created vast new profit-making possibilities for financial institutions.” These  “money machines of modern finance” —  high yield debt, securitization and arbitrage trading, derivatives market — came from “powerful new computer technology and highly trained mathematicians and scientists from leading research universities.”

Excerpts:

• Of Ronald Reagan’s treasury secretary, Donald Regan, former Merrill Lynch CEO: “It was not unusual for a treasury secretary to come from the banking industry.  But it was unusual for a treasury secretary to embrace a deregulatory agenda as broad as the one Regan espoused.
• Between 1980 and 2000, the assets held by commercial banks, securities firms and the securitizations they created grew from 55% of GDP to 95%.  Financial sector profits grew even faster, from an average of 13% of all domestic corporate profits from 1978 to 1987 to an average of 30% from 1998 to 2007.  The growth was faster still for the largest banks.  Between 1990 and 1999, the ten largest bank holding companies’ share of all bank assets grew from 26% to 45%, and their share of all deposits doubles from 17% to 34%.
• In 1978, all commercial banks together held $1.2 trillion in assets, equivalent to 53% of U.S. GDP.  By the end of 2007, the commercial banking sector had grown to $11.8 trillion in assets, or 84% of U.S. GDP.
• All told, the debt held by the financial sector grew from $2.9 trillion, or 125% of GDP, in 1978, to over $36 trillion , or 259% of GDP, in 2007.
• Most of the growth in the financial sector was due to the increasing “financialization” of the economy — the transformation of one dollar of lending to the real economy into many dollars of financial transactions.  In 1978, the financial sector borrowed $13 in the credit markets for every %100 by the real economy; by 2007, that had grown to $51. … The amount of borrowing by financial institutions had quadrupled.
• From 1980 until 2005, financial sector profits grew by 800%, adjusted for inflation, while nonfinancial sector profits grew by only 250%.
• In 1990, Salomon Brothers paid its top traders then shocking cash bonuses of more than $10 million.  In 2009, it emerged that a single executive at Citigroup was due a $100 million bonus.
• In 2007, five hedge fund managers earned at least $1 billion each for themselves, led by John Paulson, who made $3.7 billion successfully betting against the housing market and the mortgage-backed securities built on top of it.

Written by Mike Bock