The Obama File 44 More On Barack Obama and the Socialist New Party by Trevor Loudon, posted October 27, 2008, on his blog, The New Zeal, is cross-posted at RBO with the author’s permission. Loudon’s first Obama File was posted January 12, 2008.
Trevor writes:
Despite documentary evidence to the contrary Barack Obama’s Fight the Smears website continues to deny that Barack Obama was a member of the ACORN/Democratic Socialists of America initiated New Party.
Let’s delve into the matter to see what more information we might find.
If you go to the website of Barack Obama’s old law firm Miner, Barnhill & Galland you will find this short profile of Madison, Wisconsin-based partner Sarah Siskind.
It seems that a few years ago Ms Suskind represented ACORN in a successful class action against sub-prime mortgage lender Household Finance Corporation.
For the last ten years, the firm (principally Sarah Siskind) has also represented individual consumers and organizational plaintiffs in class action lawsuits challenging predatory lending practices. These include a series of deceptive practices actions brought in Illinois, California and Massachusetts against Household Finance Corporation, and recently consolidated in In re Household Lending Litigation, Case No. C-02-1240 and Related Cases, N.D. Ca.) and settled for $152 million in benefits and future practice change relief…
Ms. Siskind currently represents ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) and individual plaintiffs in three deceptive practices actions against Wells Fargo Financial, Inc. in state court class actions pending in California (ACORN v. Wells Fargo and Cortazar v. Wells Fargo) and Illinois (Taylor v. Wells Fargo).
According to this November 25, 2003, press release:
Household, ACORN and consumers reach proposed settlement
CHICAGO — Household International, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of HSBC Holdings plc (NYSE:HBC), the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), and a series of borrowers from across the United States, announced today they have reached a proposed settlement of nationwide class action litigation relating to the mortgage lending practices of Household’s two U.S. branch -based businesses, Household Finance Corporation and Beneficial Corporation.
The core of the proposed settlement is a Foreclosure Avoidance Program (FAP). FAP will provide relief to Household borrowers who are delinquent on their payments and at risk of losing their homes.
Components of FAP include:
· Interest rate reductions.
· Waivers of unpaid late charges.
· Deferral of accrued unpaid interest.
· Principal reductions.
Sounds like a great deal all round. Sarah Siskind and Miner, Barnhill & Galland make money. ACORN strikes it rich and gets to force another mortgage lender to make even softer loans which will eventually help scuttle the US economy. A revolutionary win-win if ever I saw one.
According to the FEC, Sarah Siskind is a generous donor to Obama for America, Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.
- $200 01/29/2008
- $200 01/29/2008
- $1,000 01/29/2008
- $500 12/19/2007
- $1,000 10/10/2007
It also turns out that Sarah Siskind fought another important case in 1997.
It involved the New Party. Siskind took a case to the Supreme court to overturn state bans on “fusion” voting. The New Party wanted to use fusion voting, whereby candidates could run on both Democratic Party and New Party tickets, combining the vote from both.
Barack Obama signed up for this in 1996, when he ran as both a Democrat and New Party member for the Illinois State Senate.
The case failed and the New Party consequently went into sharp decline.
The case did however reveal an interesting connection.
With allusions to possible electoral chaos, justices of the U.S. Supreme Court expressed skepticism Wednesday over an effort to overturn 40 state laws that forbid nominations of the same candidate by more than one political party.
The high court heard arguments in a case from Minnesota that was orchestrated by a Wisconsin couple Joel Rogers, a University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor, and his wife, Madison attorney Sarah E. Siskind.
Rogers is a co-founder and national chair of the New Party, which describes itself as progressive and claims 10,000 members nationwide.
How about that? Obama’s legal partner and ACORN lawyer Sarah Siskind is married to Joel Rogers, the founder and chairman of the ACORN-initiated New Party — which Barack Obama didn’t join.
Many Obama supporters have argued that the New Party wasn’t socialist anyway.
Every year for decades Democratic Socialists of America ran an annual Socialist Scholars Conference, usually, but not always, at the Cooper Union in New York.
These were almost certainly the “socialist conferences at Cooper Union” that Obama wrote of attending in his 1995 autobiography “Dreams From My Father”.
Here is the introduction to the programme for the 1997 conference (emphasis added).
RADICAL ALTERNATIVES ON THE EVE OF THE MILLENNIUM
1997 Socialist Scholars Conference
March 28, 29, 30
Borough of Manhattan Community CollegeJoin Doug Henwood, Robert Heilbroner, Paul Sweezy, Harry Magdoff, Bill Tabb, Frances Fox Piven, Bob Fitch, Jane Slaughter, and Ellen Meiksins Wood as they debate changes in the labor movement, Marxist theory, the state of the economy, market socialism, and other areas where theory and practice meet.
Listen to the United States’ only independent and socialist congressman, Rep. Bernie Sanders, dialogue with Joel Rogers of the New Party and In These Times’ Salim Muwakkil on independent politics.
“In These Times” incidentally also has strong links to Democratic Socialists of America and is strongly Pro-Obama.
The Frances Fox Piven listed above is a prominent DSA member and is regarded as the brains behind ACORN. She was a leading activist in the New Party and is now an endorser of the Progressives for Obama website.
Manning Marable, Bill Fletcher and Barbara Ehrenreich, also addressed the 1997 conference. All three were DSA activists and New Party leaders. Early this year Fletcher and Ehrenreich were two of the four founders of Progressives for Obama, while Marable chairs the organisation’s parent body Movement for a Democratic Society (MDS).
Democratic Party congressman Major Owens, a DSA member, Communist fronter and avid Obama supporter, also spoke.
In 2004 Socialist Scholars changed its name to Left Forum.
Speakers at the 2005 conference included Barbara Ehrenreich, Bill Fletcher, Manning Marable and Frances Fox Piven plus Robin DG Kelly of MDS and Progressives for Obama, Gerald Horne from the Communist Party USA and MDS and of course Joel Rogers.
It’s such a small world that Barack Obama wants to rule.
“…and claims 10,000 members nationwide.”
And leftist extraordinaire, Carl Davidson, told us that the New Party never had any “members”. He may want to straighten out his pal, Joel Rogers, on that point.
After Obama is elected president and before Bush leaves office, would it be possible for Loudon to do a thorough investigative report on the ties between both Geo. H./Geo.W. and the Saudi’s?
Check his website, Arthur. Anything could be there.