DLC convention in Columbus Ohio in July("focus to be policy debate")

[Algorem]

Democratic group to have convention in Ohio

5/10/2005, 12:48 a.m. ET

By JOHN McCARTHY
The Associated Press

http://www.cleveland.com/newsflash/cleveland/index.ssf?...

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The centrist Democratic Party group that Bill Clinton used as a springboard to the presidency is planning a summer meeting in Columbus to be attended by hundreds of state and local officeholders

The Democratic Leadership Council will hold the event in July. Details were expected to be announced at a news conference Tuesday morning.

Last year's meeting in Phoenix drew presidential candidate John Kerry, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, council spokeswoman Kyra Jennings said.

The focus of the meeting will be policy debate, state Sen. Eric Fingerhut, a Cleveland Democrat said. Fingerhut, an unsuccessful candidate for U.S. Senate last year, is considering a run at governor next year, when Republican Gov. Bob Taft's office will be open because of term limits...


DLC- http://www.ndol.org /

http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=85&subid=108&contentid=253319

Press Release | May 10, 2005
Democratic Leadership Council to Host 2005 National Conversation in Columbus

For Immediate Release

Contact: Kyra Jennings/Austin Bonner
[phone]/[phone]

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) today announced that the 2005 DLC National Conversation will be held in Columbus, Ohio on Monday, July 25, 2005 . Hundreds of well-known and up-and-coming leaders from around the country will attend this annual gathering of New Democrat elected officials.

Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman will serve as the 2005 National Conversation Honorary Chair and will join DLC Founder and CEO Al From, DLC President Bruce Reed, and other DLC leaders at the event.

Each year the DLC's National Conversation brings together rising political stars from every corner of America to hear from leading national voices and to discuss the ideas that will shape the country's future. This event is a one-of-a-kind forum for governors and other statewide elected officials, legislators, mayors, county executives, council members, and business and civic leaders to come together on a national platform to compare notes and brainstorm innovative strategies for governing in their states and communities.

More detailed information regarding this annual event will be announced and available at www.dlc.org in the coming months...





personal blog of David Sirota

http://www.davidsirota.com/2005/03/no-surprise-from-dlc...


Tuesday, March 01, 2005

No Surprise From the DLC

Just when I thought the right-attacks-on-the-left within the Democratic Party were over, the Democratic Leadership Council is at it again, once again attacking Democrats. The DLC's latest daily installment of vitriol and backstabbing comes from Al From and Ed Kilgore, who are calling for a purge of the left in the party, while laying down cover for those who might bail out on the party's core principles.

Some people seem surprised by that. But let's be clear - its no secret that the DLC is a corporate-funded institution designed to stealthily corporatize the Democratic Party. Like a bad virus, they exist solely to infiltrate and destroy the party from within. As From's totally out-of-touch comments show, their insular, snarky, and self-righteous operation in Washington is increasingly threatened by the grassroots outside the Beltway to the point where they are openly demanding a purge of critical parts of the party, while defending potential turncoats.

On Social Security, for instance, the DLC is already laying down cover for people like Sen. Joe Lieberman, who is flirting with selling out and supporting Social Security privatization. But we should not forget that the DLC has pocketed cash from Wall Street - the very monied interest that stands to benefit from privatization. Lieberman and the DLC have also been on Enron's dole, so their scruples about money and politics is questionable anyway. In other words, the DLC has become about one thing, and one thing only: being a vehicle for Corporate America's cold hard cash to water-down the Democratic Party.

And it doesn't stop with Social Security. Just look at this new article from the American Prospect. The DLC and its "New" (read: corporate) Democrats, "led by former Solicitor General Walter Dellinger, have been cheerleaders for the class-action bill" which limits citizens rights to defend themselves in court against abusive corporations. "Dellinger, of course, now works for Exxon and other large companies backing the tort-reform movement...Likewise, the DLC’s Progressive Policy Institute recently teamed up with Common Good, a corporate-funded tort-reform group that refers to the justice system as 'a tool for extortion,' to push a measure that would take malpractice lawsuits out of the hands of juries.'"...


Behind the DLC Takeover
By John Nichols

http://www.progressive.org/nich1000.htm

At the national convention of a major political party, an ideologically rigid sectarian clique secures the ultimate triumph. It inserts two of its own as nominees for the Presidency and the Vice Presidency. Heavily financed by the most powerful corporations in the world, the group's leaders gather in a private club fifty-four floors above the convention hall, apart from the delegates of the party they had infiltrated. There, they carefully monitor the convention's acceptance of a platform the organization had drafted almost in its entirety. Then, with the ticket secured and with the policy course of the party set, they introduce a team of 100 shock troops to deploy across the country to lock up the party's grassroots.

This is not some fantastic political thriller starring Harrison Ford or Sharon Stone. This is the real-life version of Invasion of the Party Snatchers--with the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) burrowing into the pod that is the Democratic Party.

Founded in the mid-1980s with essentially the same purpose as the Christian Coalition--to pull a broad political party dramatically to the right--the DLC has been far more successful than its headline-grabbing Republican counterpart. After Walter Mondale's 1984 defeat at the hands of Ronald Reagan, a group of mostly Southern, conservative Democrats hatched the theory that their party was in trouble because it had grown too sympathetic to the agendas of organized labor, feminists, African Americans, Latinos, gays and lesbians, peace activists, and egalitarians.

And they found willing corporate allies, in corporate America, who provided the money needed to make a theory appear to be a movement. In the ensuing fifteen years, the DLC's impact on the American political debate has been dramatic. The group now controls much of the upper-level apparatus of the Democratic Party...

[Kolesar]

1. Eric Fingerhut would run for Governor of Ohio? ... eom

[Algorem]

2. From say Democrats try to generate own buzz on values

5/10/2005, 7:43 p.m. ET
By JOHN McCARTHY
The Associated Press

http://www.cleveland.com/newsflash/cleveland/index.ssf?/base/news-16/1115743295123770.xml&storylist=cleveland

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Democrats must not allow the Republican Party and its candidates to own the so-called values issues that helped them win the presidency in Ohio and nationwide last year, the founder of centrist Democratic group said Tuesday.

Al From, founder of the Democratic Leadership Council, said that not all values issues are wedge issues, such as the gay marriage ban proposed by President Bush and passed last year by Ohio voters.

"We've always believed it's very important to do things to help parents raise kids. We've always believed in the value of hard work. That's what welfare reform was about," From said after announcing his group would hold its annual meeting in Columbus in July. "Those reflect values."

The council is the group that Bill Clinton used as a springboard to the presidency. The convention is expected to be attended by hundreds of state and local officeholders. The group met in Cleveland in 1991 when Clinton was its chairman...