Obama File 87 Obama's Socialist Appointees-Where is the Spotlight?

I have written here, here, here , here, here, here, here, here, here ,here, here, here, here , here, here, here, here, here, and here about Barack Obama's long term association with Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).So what you say-they're "democratic" aren't they? they're only "socialists", not communists or militant radicals?Some facts:Quentin Young, Barack Obama, circa 2002President Obama has close personal and political ties to several DSA members including Quentin Young, Timuel Black, the late Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, the late Saul Mendelson, Lou Pardo, Congressman Danny Davis and DSA honorees Jackie Grimshaw, Jackie Kendall and Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky.DSA's several thousand strong membership has grown incresingly militant over the years until the point its policies are almost indistinguishable from those of the Communist Party USA.In an article in DSA's Democratic Left, Spring 2007, DSA National Political Committee member David Green wrote;Our goal as socialists is to abolish private ownership of the means of production. Our immediate task is to limit the capitalist class's prerogatives in the workplace... In the short run we must at least minimize the degree of exploitation of workers by capitalists. We can accomplish this by promoting full employment policies, passing local living wage laws, but most of all by increasing the union movement's power... DSA has some cross membership with the Communist Party and considerable cross-membership with the the equally militant Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism.DSA has close ties to many Congressman, including John Conyers, Danny Davis, Jan Schakowsky (all close Obama supporters) Jerrold Nadler and Bob Filner.DSA has key personnel or allies at the top of AFL-CIO, SEIU, United Auto Workers, United Steelworkers of America and other major unions.DSA has considerable influence in ACORN, Working Families Party, Green Party, Democratic Party, USAction, Jobs with Justice, Economic Policy Imstitute, Campaign for America's Future, Demos (which Obama helped found), Black Radical Congress and many other mass organisations, including some churches.DSA is affiliated to the Socialist International which now includes several "former" communist parties-Mongolia, Mozambique, Bulgaria, Latvia, Belarus, Ukraine, Estonia, Angola, Hungary and Poland, as well as the Nicaraguan Sandinistas and the still-existing Communist Parties of Laos, Cuba and China ("observer" only). Former DSA National Political Committee member Kurt Stand is currently serving a 17 year jail sentence for spying for the former East Germany and offering to spy for the South African Communist Party. His wife and co-conspirator Theresa Squillacote, a former Pentagon lawyer and a Committees of Correspondence member is serving 22 years.Several DSA members have long term ties to the Washington based Institute for Policy Studies, which was linked, some years back to Soviet and Cuban intelligence offers and many third world revolutionary movements.In 2006/7 several DSA leaders, including Paul Buhle, Barbara Ehrenreich and Bill Fletcher Jr held leadership roles in Movement for a Democratic Society-with leaders of the Communist Party USA, the Committees of Correspondence and four former key leaders of the terrorist Weather Underground, Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Jeff Jones and Mark Rudd.Ehrenreich and Fletcher Jr, together with another two MDS leaders, Carl Davidson of Committees of Correspondence and Tom Hayden, went on to form Progressives for Obama.Still think DSA is harmless, insignificant?Next I list seven menbers of the Obama administration who have had some ties to DSA/Socialist international- ranging from paid up DSA membership, to signing a DSA petiton, to addressing one DSA sponsored event, to being related to a DSA member.Some may be entirely innocent, but some may not.Do any, or all warrant further investigation?You judge.Ron Bloom Manufacturing Czar. Ron Bloom, a socialist since his teens, has worked for several DSA linked organizations including SEIU, Jewish Labor Committee and United Steelworkers of America.Bloom wrote in an article for the Fall 2006 edition of DSA's Democratic Left;In today's world the blather about free trade, free-markets and the joys of competition is nothing but pablum for the suckers.David Bonior Member of the Obama Economic Transition Team-now delegated by president Obama to negotiate the unification of the AFL-CIO and Change to Win labor federations.Former Democratic speaker of the house David Bonior, has been linked to DSA for many years and had formally joined the organization by 2006. David Bonior, Detroit DSA chair David Green, Douglass-Debs Dinner November 8th 2008 Detroit DSA celebrated the 10th Annual Douglass-Debs Dinner November 8th 2008 Co-chairs were United Auto Workers official Rory Gamble and International Union of Operating Engineers Business Manager Phillip Schloop. The Douglass-Debs Award winners were David and Judy Bonior... David Bonior served in Congress for 26 years rising through the leadership to become the Democratic Caucus Whip. During his tenure in Congress, Bonior fought to raise the minimum wage, protect pensions, support unions, and extend unemployment benefits. He led the fight to oppose NAFTA in 1993. He worked to prevent war in Central America in the 1980s and again to prevent the Iraq War in 2002. After leaving Congress, Bonior co-founded American Rights at Work, a labor advocacy and research organization, which has made passage of the Employee Free Choice Act its major legislative priority. Bonior was recently appointed to the Obama economic team. In his remarks at the dinner, David Bonior stressed the importance of building social movements...to pressure the new Obama administration for bold progressive changes such as single-payer national health insurance, significant public investment in infrastructure and green technology, fair trade, progressive taxation, massive cuts in the military budget, ending the war in Iraq, and passing the Employee Free Choice Act. Rosa Brooks Senior advisor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Michele Flournoy.Reportedly named after communist radical Rosa Luxemburg, Brooks is the daughter of prominent DSA member, Movement for a Democratic Society board member and Progressives for Obama founder, Barbara Ehrenreich. Rosa Brooks is a well known "liberal" newspaper columnist and writer on defense and international relations.Brooks has served as Special Counsel to the President at George Soros' Open Society Institute.Carol Browner Energy Czar/Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy. Until summer 2008 Carol Browner was a member of Socialist International Commission for a Sustainable World Society. Carol Browner addressing SI 13th Congress, Athens, Greece June 30th 2008 -Acting Now on Climate ChangeThe other US delegates to the Athens conference above were DSA leaders Frank Llewellyn, Corey Walker, George Roberts, David Duhalde, Alejandro Duhalde and Andrew Hammer.In the 1970s Carol Browner worked for Citizen's Action, which was founded by former Students for a Democratic Society radicals, Steve Max and Heather Booth, both later affiliated to DSA. Browner is also a financial supporter of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a socialist, openly aligned with DSA.Heather Higginbottom Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, formerly with the Obama for America campaignFrom 1999 to 2007, Higginbottom served as legislative director for Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts-who has a relationship to Boston DSA.On October 30, 2001, while working for Senator Kerry, Heather Higginbottom addressed a Boston DSA organized forum "Welfare, Children and Families: The Impact of Welfare Reform". Heather Higginbottom, William Julius Wilson, Dottie Stevens, Jack Clark and Robert J HaynesOf those listed above Jack Clark was Boston DSA Chair , William Julius Wilson is a long time DSA affiliate and in 1996 addressed a DSA forum in Chicago with Barack Obama.Robert Haynes is President of the Massachisetts AFL-CIO, with whom DSA works "frequently".Samantha Power National Security Council, as director for multilateral affairs.After the 2008 presidential election, Power was a member of Obama's Transition Team, working for the Department of State.In April 2003 Samantha Power signed her name to an open letter, initiated by prominent DSA member Leo Casey , calling for normalization of relations with Cuba.The letter is in line with DSA and Communist Party aims to remove the trade embargo on Cuba. DSA uses the subtle approach of claiming that sanctions are actually encouraging Cuba to violate human rights, so that easing restrictions would make Cuban authorities more tolerant of dissent.Democratic Left Against Cuban RepressionBelow is a statement circulating among democratic left/socialist folks, largely by members of Democratic Socialists of America, condemning the recent trials and convictions of non-violent dissenters in Cuba.The petition sharply criticized Cuba's poor human rights record, but shared the blame for Cuba's failures with "reactionary elements of the US administration..." The democratic left worldwide has opposed the US embargo on Cuba as counterproductive, more harmful to the interests of the Cuban people than helpful to political democratization. The Cuban state's current repression of political dissidents amounts to collaboration with the most reactionary elements of the US administration in their efforts to maintain sanctions and to institute even more punitive measures against Cuba. Many of the petition's 120 odd signatories were known members of DSA-including Theresa Alt, Dave Anderson, Stanley Aronowitz, Leo Casey, Bogdan Denitch, Bill Dixon, Nancy Fraser, Andrew Hammer, Richard Healey, Michael Hirsch, James Hughes, Maurice Isserman, Mark Levinson, Maxine Phillips, Michael Pugliese, Michele Rossi, Joseph Schwartz, Jason Schulman, Timothy Sears and Ian Williams.Samantha Power is married to Obama regulatory "Czar" Cass Sunstein.Hilda Solis Secretary of Labor.Before being appointed to her new role, Solis served on the board of American Rights at Work with several DSA supporters including David Bonior, then AFL-CIO president John Sweeney, labor economist Harley Shaiken and NAACP leader Julian Bond.Hilda Solis was a keynote speaker at the DSA national conference "21st Century Socialism" in Los Angeles in November 2005.Saturday evening delegates recognized the contributions of DSA vice chair and Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson, Occidental College sociologist and longtime DSAer Peter Dreier and insurgent California Congress member Hilda Solis who in turn provided in-depth perspectives of the political scene.In June 2008, the Socialist International Migrations Committee held a Migrations Reform, Integration, Rights forum in Los Angeles. DSA was represented by National Director Frank Llewellyn plus Duane Campbell and Dolores Delgado Campbell of DSA's Anti Racism and Latino networks.Hilda Solis was formally represented by Elena Henry, a caseworker from Solis' East Los Angeles Office.In 2008 Hilda Solis served on Barack Obama's National Latino Advisory Council alongside DSA honorary chair and SEIU vice president Eliseo Medina.The seven officials profiled above include some of the most powerful and influential people in America today.Several have the power to profoundly influence the future prosperity and security of the world's most powerful nation. Some have access to highly secret information.The MSM practically went through Sarah Palin's underwear drawers when she sought the US vice Presidency. Why does the media not give Obama appointees, even a cursory level of scrutiny?After the Van Jones fiasco, public faith in the Obama Administration's much vaunted vetting procedures are rock bottom.Should the spotlight now shine on President Obama's socialist affiliated appointees?If not, why not?