Cross posted from New Zeal

It is a central theme of this blog that Barack Obama was promoted to the presidency of the United States, by several Marxist groups including Democratic Socialists of America.

While this sounds far – fetched to some, there is nothing new about socialists working inside the Democratic Party to put “their” candidates into very high positions.

The late Millie Jeffrey was a leader in the United Auto Workers and an high ranking Democrat for decades.

In 2000 President Bill Clinton presented Millie Jeffrey, with the nation’s highest civilian honor bestowed by the U.S. Government, the Presidential Medal Of Freedom, with a citation, saying those awarded “have helped America to achieve freedom.”

Millie Jeffrey, red dress

In the 1950 and 60s, Jeffrey was a Democratic Party National committeewoman from Michigan. In 1960, she helped campaign for John F Kennedy, as a member of the Democratic National Committee.

After mobilizing the Michigan Democratic Party behind JFK in 1960, she then reportedly pushed JFK to initiate the Peace Corps.

Millie Jeffrey quit the DNC in the late 60s to protest the Vietnam War and to work for Robert Kennedy.

Less publicized were the facts that Millie Jeffrey was also a long time leader of Democratic Socialists of America, a ‘midwife’ to the radical Students for a Democratic Society and a veteran of the communist infiltrated Womens International League for Peace and Freedom.

Jeffrey also traveled to the Soviet Union in 1969 and to the Peoples Republic of China in 1974.

According to Democratic Socialists of America member and prominent journalist Harold Meyerson, Millie Jeffrey remained highly influential inside the Democratic Party.

From DSA’s Democratic Left, Spring 2004

In the early ‘70s, during her final years on the staff of the United Auto Workers, she helped found the National Women’s Political Caucus and launched a decade-long campaign to have Democratic National Convention delegate slots divided equally between men and women.”

From her perch on several Democratic Party commissions, and using the contacts she’d acquired in 40 years of liberal activism, Millie built enough support for this wild-eyed notion that it was adopted by the 1980 convention.

That wasn’t all Millie Jeffrey achieved. She and a group of “co-conspirators” succeeded in placing left leaning Geraldine Ferraro on the Democrat ticket as the Party’s first female vice Presidential candidate.

Millie then became “the unelected leader,” in the words of her co-conspirator Joanne Howes, of a committee of seven Democratic women promoting the idea of a female vice presidential candidate on the 1984 ticket. “By the fall of 1983,” recalls Howes, “we came to the conclusion that the right person was Gerry Ferraro” – then an obscure member of Congress from Queens. That required augmenting Ferraro’s visibility and bona fides, and as a result of “Millie’s strategic thinking,” says Howes, the group successfully pressured the party and Walter Mondale to make Ferraro chair of the convention platform committee. The rest is herstory.

This is a good insight into how the US left works inside the “Democratic” Party. A small group of Party ‘insiders’, led by a well connected socialist, had a good shot at putting ‘their’ candidate into the Number 2 spot in the White House.

Let’s all be thankful for Ronald Reagan.

In 20 years time, will Democratic Socialists of America, or their Communist Party and Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism allies finally admit their role in putting Barack Obama into the White House?

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From the Peoples World

Calling the recently passed Arizona anti-immigrant law a “most dreadful piece of legislation” and likening it to apartheid South Africa’s passbook program, Coalition of Black Trade Unionists President Bill Lucy told the 700 delegates and guests at the organization’s 39th convention in Detroit that the CBTU would be moving its 2011 convention from its scheduled location in Phoenix.

“We have to join in that fight,” said Lucy, even though his organization may face severe penalties for breaking its hotel contract.

Lucy, who is also secretary-treasurer of the 1.6-million-member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and a long time member of the marxist Democratic Socialists of America said that the law targets immigrants who “have as much right to be here as any other nationality.”

“People want a decent job and better life and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that,” he said. “We need an immigration law to bring 12 million people out of the shadows and give them legitimacy. Yes we can!”

Lucy also went on to praise president Barack Obama a long time associate of Democratic Socialists of America.

“President Obama is our friend; we want to be seen with him day and night. He’s our best chance“ said Lucy.

Lucy reminded everyone that President Obama inherited the greatest mess since FDR. Our economy was “going down the sewer” until this president came into office, Lucy noted. Obama has the sensibilities and program to reclaim this country for regular people, he said, but he warned that “Republicans will never vote for anything that allows him to claim success bringing this country back.”

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The Soviet Union’s most important front organization the World Peace Council, is still active and as anti American as ever.

Maria do Socorro Gomes

From the Communist Party of Australia’s Guardian;

The President of the World Peace Council, Maria do Socorro Gomes has slammed the US government for maintaining in Cuba the Guantánamo naval base “against the will of the Cuban people.”

In a Seminar on Peace for the Abolition of Foreign Military Bases underway in Guantánamo, Socorro Gomes (a communist member of the Brazillian parliament) said the “Gitmo” base is an “insult to the Cuban people” and it should be closed.

Socorro Gomes demanded the unconditional return of the territory that was seized by the US through the Platt Amendment in 1903. “The naval base in Guantánamo, turned into jail and centre of tortures for eight years, reaffirms the hypocritical nature and the double standard of US policy, which has no moral to talk of democracy and human rights,” she said in the seminar attended by some 80 delegates.

According to Gomes the establishment of new bases in Honduras, Panama and Colombia proves the objective of those centres is to overthrow revolutionary movements and governments, and not the struggle against terrorism and drug trafficking, as Washington has put forward.

The Brazilian delegate demanded Washington lift the economic, financial and commercial blockade against Cuba and expressed her support for the release from jail of five Cuban anti-terrorist fighters “unfairly imprisoned” in that country.

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Cross posted from New Zeal

A seat on the U.S Federal Reserve Board, carries tremendous power. The seven members of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System are nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. A full term is fourteen years. During that time, a board member can influence the financial policies of the world’s most powerful economy. In some ways the seven men and women, have more power than Congress or even the President himself.

That’s why appointments to the Federal Reserve Board deserve as much scrutiny as those to the Supreme Court.

President Barack Obama recently made three nominations to the Federal Reserve Board, Janet Yellen, Peter Diamond and Sarah Bloom Raskin.

Janet Yellen, Peter Diamond, Sarah Bloom Raskin

While most “Obama watchers” said little, some commentators from the left did take notice;
Democratic Socialists of America member, Larry Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute was pleased with the appointments;

I think these are all great choices, and ones that will move Fed policy in the needed direction — responsive to the needs of middle-class and working families.

Of the three named, one stands out in particular- Sarah Bloom Raskin. That surname should ring alarm bells.

That’s because Sarah Bloom married into what is perhaps the closest America has to a radical “royal family”.

Sarah Bloom Raskin is the wife of Jamin (Jamie) Raskin, a legal academic, Maryland State Senator and the son of Marcus Raskin – founder of the deservedly notorious Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).

In 1963 Marcus Raskin and his partner, the late Richard Barnet founded their radical “think tank” in Washington DC. IPS quickly grew to become a highly influential, source of ideas, guidance and training for the U.S. and international left. Its critics claimed that IPS consistently supported policies that aided the foreign policy goals of the Soviet Union and weakened the position of the United States.

Since its founding, IPS has consistently followed a pro-socialist line on foreign policy, defense and the economy and has spawned a large number of spin-offs, other think tanks and public affairs organizations following the same radical agenda.

In 1978, in an article in National Review, Brian Crozier , director of the London-based Institute for the Study of Conflict described IPS as the “perfect intellectual front for Soviet activities which would be resisted if they were to originate openly from the KGB”.

IPS became a place where leftist Congressmen, Senators and Capitol Hill staffers could mingle with third world radicals, East Bloc diplomats and even a few identified KGB agents.

The FBI was intensely interested in Raskin’s institute, until IPS sued the agency and extracted a written agreement forbidding any further FBI surveillance – an agreement, I believe, that still stands today.

In the early 1990s IPS worked with Democratic Socialists of America and socialist Congressman Bernie Sanders to set up the now more than 80 strong Congressional Progressive Caucus. In 2003 IPS also helped set up the communist dominated “peace” umbrella organization, United for Peace and Justice.

Jamie Raskin admits that he grew up “in an environment of progressive politics”.

An Harvard graduate and a “lifelong progressive Democrat”, Jamie Raskin has brought “innovative ideas and a hands-on approach to government and politics at every level.”

He has served on the Montgomery County Hate Crimes Commission, the Takoma Park Election Redistricting Task Force, and the Takoma Park Gun Policy Task Force.

In 1992, he served on President Clinton’s Justice Department Transition Team for the Civil Rights Division. He was elected as a Kerry-Edwards Delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 2004.

A member of the board of FairVote, the nation’s leading electoral-reform group, Raskin is best known as “a champion of voters’ rights”. In his 2003 book, “Overruling Democracy: The Supreme Court versus The American People,” Raskin documented the Rehnquist Court majority’s “assault on voting rights” in the 2000 election, and “placed Bush v. Gore in the context of a series of Supreme Court decisions undermining the participatory rights of the people.”

Focusing on the Rehnquist majority’s statement that the “individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote” for president, Raskin argued for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to vote (and to get one’s vote counted) to all Americans.

Raskin has served as a Washington-area Board Member for the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s heavily communist infiltrated National Rainbow Coalition.

He has worked closely with far left Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. to advance a voting rights amendment in Congress, and with IPS affiliated Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton to “advance a voting rights agenda for the people of Washington, D.C.”

Unsurprisingly Jamie Raskin has done pro bono legal work for SEIU, ACORN, Greenpeace and the radical led Students Against Sweatshops. He has written for two Democratic Socialists of America and IPS affiliated journals, The Nation and In These Times.

Raskin has also served on the board of Progressive Democrats of America, an IPS spinoff , which is effectively the activist wing of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

On March 10, 2006, IPS supporters, Yolande Fox and former Algerian Ambassador, Cherif Guellal hosted a book launch, in their Washington home, for Jamie Raskin’s most recent book entitled “Overruling Democracy: The Supreme Court Versus the American People” at their home in Georgetown, Washington, D.C.

Fox was a former Miss America (1951) from Alabama. Cherif Guellal was a former top lieutenant to Algerian revolutionary leader Ahmed Ben Bella – winner of the 1964 Lenin Peace Prize. Guellal also had ties to the British Fabian Socialist Society in the early 1960s. During the 1967, Six-Day War, Algeria severed diplomatic relations to protest United States support for Israel. Instead of returning to Algeria, Guellal became a Fellow at IPS.

Other attendees included Jamie’s father and Marcus Raskin, , James L. Hudson and Ira Lowe.

Cherif Guellal, Marcus Raskin, James L. Hudson

Jim Hudson, a long time Washington “insider’ was recently appointed by President Obama to the Directorship of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

Ira Lowe is a trial lawyer and IPS supporter. He formerly represented IPS affiliate and Progressives for Obama founder Tom Hayden.

Incidentally, IPS Trustee , Democratic Socialists of America member and Progressives for Obama co-founder Barbara Ehrenreich said of Raskin’s book “This brilliantly argued and meticulously researched book both alarms and inspires”

Sarah Bloom has no known direct ties to the Institute for Policy Studies, but she did work for IPS connected Washington law firm Arnold & Porter from 1988 to 1993.

A current Arnold & Porter partner , Jeremy Karpatkin, is a former Democratic Socialists of America youth organizer. In 1992, in Chicago Karpatkin directed field operations during the successful Senate run of far left Democratic Party operative Carol Moseley Braun. Coincidentally Barack Obama ran the Project Vote voter registration drive that year that helped Moseley Braun to win. In 2004 Obama took over the same Senate seat.

Nearly three decades earlier, pioneering trial lawyer Charles Halpern became involved with IPS through Arnold & Porter. The firm handled IPS’s legal work and partner Thurman Porter had been an IPS trustee.

Halpern became corporate secretary to IPS, keeping minutes and records. he began to attend IPS seminars and parties at the Institute and at the home of founder Marcus Raskin, where he met radicals “like Paul Goodman and Ivan Ilich”.

When Raskin and several other activists were arrested for conspiring to obstruct the military draft, Halpern helped with the defense. Halpern flew with Raskin to a meeting with the other defendants and their lawyers at the Greenwich Village home of radical lawyer and secret Communist Party USA member Leonard Boudin – father of Weather Underground terrorist Kathie Boudin. Fellow terrorist Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn would later raise Kathie Boudin’s son Chesa Boudin after she was jailed for her terrorist crimes.

The radical Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) was founded in 1968 by Charles Halpern and three other lawyers, with the assistance of former Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, who chaired the CLASP board.

A veteran of several communist fronts, Goldberg was, in the late 1940s, a Chicago law partner of Abner Mikva. A life long time associate of communists and socialists and an IPS affiliate, Mikva went on to employ a young law clerk named Elena Kagan and to mentor and befriend a young Chicago lawyer named Barack Obama.

In 1999 Charles Halpern went on to found a New York based “think tank” Demos, an official partner organization of IPS. Among those recruited to set up and join the first board of Demos was a then obscure Illinois State senator named…….Barack Obama.

Several years later a young San Francisco communist named Van Jones was also recruited to serve on the Demos Board.

Strangely, Jones was suggested as a possible “Green Jobs Czar” for the Obama administration by Demos and IPS staffer Chuck Collins, in an article written several months before the 2008 Presidential elections.

Robert Kuttner is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Demos and serves on the board of the Economic Policy Institute with Larry Mishel. He is closely aligned to to Democratic Socialists of America, which has described Kuttner as a “socialist”.

Kuttner was very pleased when Obama nominated Sarah Raskin to the Fed. He wrote in the Huffington Post March 14, 2010;

Obama has also just appointed three relative progressives to the Federal Reserve, including Sarah Bloom Raskin of Maryland, widely considered the best of the state financial regulators. There is not a single businessman or banker in the lot…

Will Sarah Bloom Raskin sail into fourteen years at the helm of the U.S. economy, on a pleasant face and zero scrutiny?

Or will Senate Republicans and the media do their job and ask some serious questions?

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Joelle Fishman, from Connecticut is chair of the Communist Party USA‘s political action commission, the Party organ dedicated to coordinating the communist’s electoral work with their labor union, “community organization” and Democratic Party allies.

She is also the daughter-in-law of WW2 era Soviet spy, Victor Perlo.

At the Communist Party convention over the weekend, Fishman told delegates that the “party plans to focus on key House and Senate races around the country” to “decisively defeat the extreme right…”

From the Peoples World

“The 2010 elections are the next step of our continuing project to decisively defeat the extreme right and expand democratic rights, including ridding the federal government of entrenched corporate interests,” Joelle Fishman, chair of the party’s political action commission told the delegates.

“Newt Gingrich is attempting to frame the 2010 elections with a new “Contract ON America,” to whip up hysteria that government spending for social needs is against the interests of working people.”

The CPUSA, like many progressive economists, has been saying that it is precisely massive government spending that can create the millions of jobs needed to solve the economic recession and cure deficit problems over the long term. The party says nothing less than a new WPA type program is needed immediately.

Fishman said there were many encouraging signs already in the electoral arena.

She noted how the International Association of Machinists played a critical role in Pennsylvania where voters turned Sen. Arlen Specter out in favor of Rep. Joe Sestak. Specter had double crossed the labor movement on election law reform by his waffling on support for the Employee Free Choice Act.

“In Western Pennsylvania, Republicans poured $10 million into capturing the seat held by Rep. John Murtha, but they did not succeed,” said Fishman. “They rejected slanders against Democrat Mark Critz and attacks on Nancy Pelosi and President Obama.”

Fishman also noted how conservative Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas was forced into a runoff election with labor-backed Bob Halter after she voted against health care reform.

The party plans to focus on key House and Senate races around the country, she said.

Up for election this year are 435 House seats and a third of the Senate seats. For the GOP to gain control of the House there would have to be a shift of 45 seats. For Republicans to gain control of the Senate 6 seats would have to shift.

The top “battleground states,” according to Fishman, are California, Florida, Illinois, Missouri and Ohio, all states where there are large Communist Party organizations.

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Hatred for the “Tea Party” movement was very evident at the Communist Party USA convention over the weekend.

From the Peoples World

Speaking about the Tea Party movement today at the Communist Party’s 29th National Convention in New York, Jarvis Tyner, the party’s vice chairman declared, “If you can’t smell the stench of fascism, you may need some aroma therapy.”

The remarks were made during a morning session in which Tyner called upon the party to mobilize against what he said is a resurgence of racism that aims to derail the progressive movements in the country. Also during that morning session party leaders put forward a plan to make the 2010 elections the focus of the organization’s work for the coming year.

Tyner said that a “new racist counteroffensive” after the election of the nation’s first African American president threatens the progressive labor-led coalition that formed during the 2008 elections and is continuing to make its mark today.

“Once a Black president and a reformer was elected and presented his program, the fight against racism assumed an even greater importance because it, along with anti-communism, is the main weapon the right is using to defeat progressive change,” he said.

Tyner blasted Sarah Palin for her insistence that Teabaggers are not racist but just “angry.”

“You ever met a racist that wasn’t angry?” he asked. He noted that the Teabaggers, an all white group, are lashing out at immigrants and calling for “taking back our country,” not from corporate control but from the first African American president.

Citing not just Palin but also Rand Paul, the teabagger who won the GOP primary in Kentucky and the designers of Arizona’s draconian anti-immigrant law, Tyner said “these people are to the right of George Bush” and that defeating racists was key to advancing the struggles of all workers.

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Party Chairman Sam Webb opened the 29th Convention of the Communist Party USA, May 21 in New York.

From the Peoples World;

Saying the far-right political forces in the United States have launched a “new racist counteroffensive” in order to “strip away popular support for the first African American president,” Webb said, “if unchallenged” it could lead to a “much uglier version of the Bush-Cheney administration.” But if the “racist barrage runs into a powerful anti-racist response coming not only from people of color, but also from the white majority and white workers” it can be stopped.

“My guess,” said Webb, “is that the Republican Party, which has turned into an instrument of unabashed racism … will not be successful” in 2010 or in 2012.

Webb called on the delegates to step up their involvement in the fights for jobs, anti-racism and grassroots election work.

Webb also expanded on a vision for socialism. Calling it a “work in progress” Webb spent time on developing a vision for socialism based on U.S. culture, history, democracy and traditions. And that socialism has to be sustainable – environmentally/economically – and given the huge dangers of global warming, socialism is a necessity.

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Michigan Democratic Party chairman Mark Brewer, has come under attack by conservative commentator Kyle Olson, over an allegedly bogus new “Tea Party” group with leftist ties.

You have to live in Michigan and pay attention to the political news to understand how obnoxious the Michigan Democratic Party and its chairman Mark Brewer really are. While we all expect such behavior from hyper-partisan outfits, Brewer gives it a whole new meaning.

He was behind the famous “sleeping justice” ads – photos of a now-former Michigan Supreme Court justice allegedly sleeping during a hearing. He has now supposedly is putting up money for similar “evidence” against another conservative justice.

So it comes as no surprise that the entrance of a “new” political party in Michigan, The Tea Party, might have Democratic Party fingerprints all over it.

For a better part of the last decade, Michigan has been in the true-blue column. It was so hopeless in 2008 the McCain campaign actually pulled out of Michigan many weeks before Election Day.

And this year, given displeasure with Obama, the Democratic Congress and more so Gov. Jennifer Granholm, Republicans’ prospects look pretty good.

So leave it to Mark Brewer and the Democratic Party to pull out all the stops in their cynical ploy to cling to power.

OutsideLansing.com brings news that paid petition circulators are collecting signatures to create ‘The Tea Party.’ According to site proprietor Chet Zarko, the paid circulators have ties to the Democratic Party.

True Tea Party leaders have no knowledge of such an effort, which makes one think the stench wafting from the left side of the political spectrum is that of a rat.

Zarko’s follow-up research finds that the Soros-connected “Progressive Campaigns Inc.” is behind the signature gathering.

Situations like this were bound to happen, given the outrage seen in Americans today and the unhappiness with the Obama administration. But to see such a cynical campaign in the offing is no surprise, give the left appears to be behind it.

Guilty or not, Mark Brewer, is certainly no  moderate Democrat. He is on the far left of the Party and is a key player, both  his native state and nationally .  Until 2009, Brewer was President of the Association of State Democratic Chairs and was DNC Vice-Chair 3 times, serving from 2003 until 2009. During that time, he led the Association of State Democratic Chairs to its endorsement of leftist Howard Dean as DNC Chair and he worked with Dean to implement his very successful 50-State Strategy.

Brewer was a delegate to the 1996, 2000, 2004, and 2008 Democratic National Conventions and served as Chair of the Michigan delegations at all of those Conventions. He is a key ally of Michigan’s leftist Senator, Debbie Stabenow, a friend and protege of Democratic Socialists of America leader and United Auto Workers official, the late Mildred Jeffrey.

Brewer himself is close to Democratic Socialists of America. He began worked for long time Michigan Congressman David Bonior in 1977 and was involved in every reelection campaign of the Congressman Bonior until 2000. Bonior has been a long time DSA supporter has become an member of the organization since leaving Congress – a fact which has not barred him from serving the Obama Administration.

The Michigan Democratic Party works closely with the Marxists of Democratic Socialists of America, especially in their Detroit stronghold. According to Seth A. Maxon of the DSA linked , Chicago based journal In These Times;

Democratic socialists in southeastern Michigan can do something most of their counterparts across the nation cannot: they can boast of electoral victories. Moreover, they possess a level of influence within the Michigan Democratic Party of which many American leftists dream. And they’ve done it all without compromising their beliefs or values.

Their success has come from working with, instead of against, local Democrats.

“It starts out with relationships,” says David Green, the chair of the Detroit chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America… He continues, “Mark Brewer, the chair of the Michigan Democratic Party, has a very good relationship with us. He’s spoken to our local several times. The chairs of the county parties, several of them are close friends as well.”

Michigan DSA   held  a meeting at the Kulick Community Center in Ferndale on Sunday, June 4th, 2006.  The subject of the forum was “Democrats and Socialists: Building the Alternative.” The speakers were DSA steering committee member and Wayne State University Distinguished Professor Ron Aronson, Labor Notes editor Chris Kutalik and Michigan Democratic Party Chairman Mark Brewer.

Ron Aronson argued that in building an alternative to the dominant neo-liberal ideology, the Democratic Party must once again “become friendly” with many of the basic tenants of socialism—particularly those dealing with social provision (e.g., Social Security, national health insurance, public education). Mark Brewer argued that in order to avoid even more egregious setbacks for poor and working people, it is essential for socialists and Democrats to work together in the electoral arena. Chris Kutalik cited examples of direct worker actions on the job as a means of challenging capitalist hegemony and suggested that this may be preferable to participation electoral politics.

Brewer was back in November 2007, speaking at a    Detroit DSA General Membership Meeting on the “prospects for the 2008 elections in Michigan as well as the upcoming presidential caucuses”.

Michigan is the most a blighted state in the union , for a reason. Detroit based communists, socialists and unionists have infiltrated and dominated the state’s Democratic Party for decades, with disastrous results. Mark Brewer and his socialist comrades mean to keep it “business as usual” at any cost.

Unless the Mark Brewer and his allies are defeated in November, the Obama Administration may well succeed in duplicating the “Michigan model” across the entire U.S.A.

Lord knows, they are trying.

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For a Party with only a few thousand members and supporters, centered in about a dozen major cities, the Communist Party USA has a significant amount of influence.

This is achieved by infiltrating and controlling much larger groups, including several major labor unions, sections of the Democratic Party, some Black and “mainstream” churches, the health care and “peace” movements and even Obama’s “private army” Organizing for America!

Links to elected officials, including several members of Congress such as John Conyers in Michigan, Hilda Solis and Barbara Lee in California and Dennis Kucinich in Ohio are also carefully cultivated.

Dan Margolis has been chair of the New York State Communist Party USA. In addition he writes for the People’s World, covering local New York City and state issues, as well as events at the United Nations.

Margolis has been active in New York City elections, including as the mid-Staten Island coordinator for the 2004 Democratic Party Congressional campaign.

Below are excerpts from a discussion paper Margolis wrote for the National Convention of the Communist Party USA which is due to begin in New York this weekend. The paper gives several examples of Party influence in New York, which can be safely assumed to be typical Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, Tuscon, St Louis, Boston, Seattle and other Party strongholds.

The main thing that the Communist Party can contribute, i.e. its main role, is in the field of strategy and tactics. It is entirely true, as the document noted, that anyone reading this would likely also be working on the fight for to support the health care plan that was put forward by Barack Obama, along with organizations like Organizing for America, HCAN, etc. But, because we have a background in the CPUSA and the YCL, we bring something different and special to this movement-a strategic concept of who the main players are, who the main enemies slowing down the process of change are, what is possible and so on.

Margolis notes that his local branch of Organizing for Obama, a claimed Party “friend” , was held together by Party comrades. He also calls on the party to fight for fully socialized health care;

When there were setbacks in the fight for health care, there was demoralization and frustration. Our Bronx club, which was instrumental in building an Organizing for America-based local organization, helped fight this feeling and, in the process, gained a good deal of experience. It can be said that, without the Communist Party, and solid leadership from one comrade in particular, the OFA group could have easily disbanded itself. Also, the Party was able and is able to play a leadership role in the question of what we’re fighting for, and in what context: why not some kind of National Health Service, as in the U.K., right now, or for Medicare for All? Why was even the watered-down Senate bill a victory? How do any of these victories contribute to the forward motion of the struggle overall?

Putting all those questions together is a key role of the Party and YCL, as it helps to build the unity and forward motion of the progressive forces.

Margolis goes onto talk about working with local unions and Black Churches to support the President’s jobs initiatives – which are mainly schemes to funnel taxpayers money into radical controlled organizations.;

Another example would be the upcoming jobs fight. We’ve said that this is the key struggle, and that puts us in agreement with all of the major players in the core forces. There is a national coalition in place for this battle, but how do we help build it? It is our job to help bring it to life, and to localize it, bring it to the grassroots. This is something different from place to place, and it takes a Communist Party to figure this out. In New York, we have a situation in which the Central Labor Council isn’t playing a leading role in the city’s labor movement. Most of the biggest unions in the city are outside the CLC. How do we bring them together in this fight? (And in so doing, how can we contribute to overall labor unity in this city?)

At the grassroots level, how do we pull organizations and people in our periphery into this coalition? In Brooklyn, we have to consider how we can bring the large Black churches into the fight. How can we utilize the organizational connections we have, the relationships with elected officials, to do so?

Not to forget the Communist Party’s primary tactical goal – defeating the “ultra right” (Republicans) through supporting their allies the Democrats, “as part of an overall strategy on the road towards socialism”.

On the electoral front, it would be good to have more of our own candidates running for office. But right now, this can’t be our main electoral contribution. We have to be part of the fight to defeat what’s left of the ultra right, and make sure they don’t make a comeback in the mid-term elections. Others on the left see these elections either as ends in themselves or deviations from the “real” struggle. But the Communist Party can exercise a leadership role by helping to show the importance of electing or defending Democrats as part of an overall strategy on the road towards socialism.

The Communists have a plan. they always have a plan. They see great opportunities under the leadership of new AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka ;

We do have a plan, so to speak, as to which industries are our main national priorities, as well as place to place. We in New York have a special emphasis on the teachers, transit workers, health care workers, the public workers: these are the most organized and decisive sections of the New York City working class.

Also, I would take issue with the discussion of who “the left” is. We can’t narrow it down simply to the 20 percent of the population that chose “socialism” on a single opinion poll that has, in my opinion, received way too much attention. We’ve seen the beginnings of a really new left: within the labor movement under Trumka, those who have come out for some form of health reform, the new jobs coalition, the movement of activists in Organizing for America, etc. These are the newly invigorated activists on the rising left with whom we want to be associated.

The Communists are masters of leverage, of covertly using their small numbers to achieve maximum impact in the political sphere.

The Communist Party USA is one of Obama’s most important allies. It’s impact should not be under-estimated.

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The Idaho “Tea Party Express” has bucked the trend to endorse an incumbent Democratic Congressman.

Writes conservative blogger Terresa Monroe-Hamilton;

The was with a sinking heart and something akin to grief that I heard the Tea Party Express endorse Walt Minnick here in Idaho. It should be noted that the Tea Party Express is not the actual Tea Party of Idaho – they are located in Boise and do not support Minnick.

Minnick is a member of the United States House of Representatives, representing the 1st congressional district of Idaho. He will be running for office in Idaho in 2010 against primarily two Conservative opponents: Raul Labrador and Vaughn Ward.

While Minnick has a business background and a reputation for fiscal responsibility (by Democratic standards), there is little in his record to merit endorsement by a movement known for its anti “Progressive” and pro liberty, pro Constitution outlook.

According to Monroe-Hamilton;

Minnick has had numerous stances that I consider to be Progressive in nature and is supported by Progressive groups in Idaho.

He is strongly supported by the Unions in Idaho. This would include the Teamsters, the Teachers’ Union (NEA), the Carpenters & Joiners Union and a list of others as well.

Minnick was a donor to Earthjustice, a legal group that uses litigation to force far left environmental policies through the courts, while destroying good paying jobs. Earthjustice is a non-profit public interest law firm, (formerly the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund). In Earthjustice’s 2003 annual report, Minnick was listed as being a member of their “Advocates Circle,” their mid-level donor membership level.

He is a strong environmentalist and he is pro-choice with a strong record supporting NARAL and Planned Parenthood. Minnick served on the Governing Board of The Wilderness Society for 16 years as well.

Minnick has strong ties to Congressman Steny Hoyer. Hoyer has contributed substantially to Minnick’s campaigns through AMERIPAC: The Fund for a Greater America.

He seems to be getting contributions from the left and the right, but there are some heavy players on the left that give to Walt Minnick including the law firm of Arnold & Porter, LLP which is a left-wing law firm from DC. If you follow the ties that bind, this firm is connected to individuals such as Charles Halpern, Sarah Bloom Raskin, Thurman Arnold and Jeremy Karpatkin.

Check out Walt Minnick’s KeyWiki profile here

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