Yesterday was the deadline for local candidates to file their finance reports with the Montgomery County Board of Elections. An article in today’s DDN revealed that, for the first time, these reports have been posted at the BOE web-site in PDF form.

Candidates are required to file this initial finance report, only if they have raised $1000 or more in contributions. In Kettering’s City Council races, six candidates filed.

Ward One

This seems to be the hottest race, with three impressive candidates vying for the open council seat.

• David Brown: 9 contributors gave him a total of $4975. His major contributions were $1000 from John Staten, Chairman of O’Neil & Associates; $1000 from Dennis Quebe, President of Quebe Holdings; and $1000 from Harold Rieck of Rieck Services. See PDF.
• Rob Scott: 20 contributors gave him a total of $2,475. His biggest contribution was $500 from The Realtors Political Action Committee CP40. See PDF
• Nolan Thomas: 125 contributors gave him a total of $7530. His biggest contribution was  $500 from The Realtors Political Action Committee.  See PDF

Ward Two

Bruce Duke is the incumbent and has served on the City Council for about 25 years and has been an exemplary member of the Council. In this race he would have to be seen as the favorite. But, he has a very sharp challenger in Lisa Crosley who, at the LWV forum, I thought, was very impressive in her presentation. I wish I had video taped that event.

• Lisa Crosley: 11 contributors gave her a total of $6648. Her biggests contributions came from Joshua Crosley for a total of $4000 and from herself for $1550. See PDF
• Bruce Duke: 1 contributor for a total of $4020. Mr. Duke’s report shows that his campaign is totally self-financed. See PDF
  

  Ward Three

The incumbent is Joseph Wanamaker.

• Mike Brandt reports contributions of $1651. His biggest contributors: $400 from himself, $250 from Ashley Webb and $250 from Doug Arnold. See PDF
• Joseph Wanamaker, the incumbent, did not file a finance report.

Kettering Board of Education

There are four candidates competing for two positions on the the Kettering Board of Education.  The two incumbents, Lori Simms and Jim Trent, both are seeking reelection and are being challenged by Jim Ambrose and Frank Spolrich.

Jim Ambrose is the only Kettering Board candidate who filed a finance report — showing nine contributors and total contributions of $2175. His largest contribution was for $1000 from the Kettering Education Association. See PDF

The distribution of wealth in our society is becoming ever more disproportionally distributed. A new report released the Congressional Budget Office shows that changes in government policies has caused an even bigger proportion of new income to be distributed to the already wealthy.

The report — “Trends in the Distribution of Household Income Between 1979 and 2007” — gives the good news is that 1979 to 2007 the income of American households, on average, adjusted for inflation increased by 62%. It shows some interesting graphs as to how this new wealth has been divided:

The graph (above) shows that the top 1% of income earners saw their incomes increase by 275%. The bulk of income earners — the 60% in the middle — saw increases of about 40%. and the lowest incomes saw increases of only 18%

Market share (figure 2 above) is defined as “income measured before government transfers and taxes” and those already wealthy had the biggest increases in market share. The highest income quintile’s share of market income increased from 50 percent to 60 percent. The change in the top 1% was the most dramatic, more than doubling — from 10% to 20%.

This third chart shows that government policies was a major reason why the big increases in wealth were distributed to favor the wealthy.

The report notes,

“Although an increasing concentration of market income was the primary force behind growing inequality in the distribution of after-tax household income, shifts in government transfers (cash payments to individuals and estimates of the value of in-kind benefits) and federal taxes also contributed to that increase in inequality.” …

The size of transfer payments — as measured in the study — rose by a small amount between 1979 and 2007. The distribution of transfers shifted, however, moving away from households in the lower part of the income scale. In 1979, households in the bottom quintile received more than 50 percent of transfer payments. In 2007, similar households received about 35 percent of transfers.

Likewise, the equalizing effect of federal taxes depends on both the amount of federal taxes relative to income (the average tax rate) and the distribution of taxes among households at different income levels. Over the 1979– 2007 period, the overall average federal tax rate fell by a small amount, the composition of federal revenues shifted away from progressive income taxes to less progressive payroll taxes, and income taxes became slightly more concentrated at the higher end of the income scale. The effect of the first two factors outweighed the effect of the third, reducing the extent to which taxes lessened the dispersion of household income.

As a result of those changes, the share of household income after transfers and federal taxes going to the highest income quintile grew from 43 percent in 1979 to 53 percent in 2007 (see Summary Figure 3). The share of after-tax household income for the 1 percent of the population with the highest income more than doubled, climbing from nearly 8 percent in 1979 to 17 percent in 2007.

The population in the lowest income quintile received about 7 percent of after-tax income in 1979; by 2007, their share of after-tax income had fallen to about 5 percent. The middle three income quintiles all saw their shares of after-tax income decline by 2 to 3 percentage points between 1979 and 2007.

The four candidates for the Kettering Board of Education met on October 25 in a public forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters. It is the only public meeting scheduled for the entire election season. Two of the candidates — Lori Simms and Jim Trent — are incumbents seeking reelection. Their challengers are Jim Ambrose and Frank Spolrich.

The battery on little Sony “bloggie” camera only lasted for 20 minutes of video. Had I been using my brains I would have brought the cord to attach the camera to an electrical outlet. But the 20 minutes of video does give each of the candidates a chance to introduce him or her self and gives a viewer a chance to gain some insight into the personality of each.

By running out of battery power, I missed the best part of the program — the discussion about SB5, Issue 2, and the concluding remarks of each candidate. I write about the Issue 2 discussion here. I felt that Lori Simms was particularly strong in her concluding remarks, speaking of the four points of the district’s improvement plan, and I’m sorry I don’t have the video. All the candidates, I felt, showed strong points.

These local elections give evidence that we all should be concerned about the state of our democracy. In Kettering, at the last Board of Education election, about 18,000 votes were cast, out of 41,000 possible. With so little pertinent information, how did these 18,000 decide how to vote?

The task of informing the public concerning their choices concerning a school board is much more important to the safety and future of our society than what the resources allocated to that task would indicate. Here in Kettering, there was one public meeting organized and one very amateur and incomplete You-tube produced.

The joke on “The Simpsons” is that Homer works at the local nuclear power plant and that everyone working there are lazy buffoons. The joke is that something of such importance, something with the capacity to produce a dreadful catastrophe is treated with such nonchalance. But the mechanism of our democracy is also treated with nonchalance. And we are surprised that our society seems bent on going over a cliff?

I’m glad there is a League of Women Voters that is making an effort. Here are the videos.