American Elephants

Listening to the news on the radio today,  as a minor item ABC reported that Van Jones, Obama’s Green Jobs Czar, had resigned.  He had, ABC reported, once “inadvertently signed a petition” requesting an investigation of the government’s involvement in 9/11.  He didn’t want any controversy over that to damage the presidency.

Wow! That is an amazing bit of spin.  Bloggers began some time ago to investigate Van Jones background.  Since the various czars are not approved by Congress, they do not get the public vetting that cabinet secretaries do when they have to appear before Congress in order to be confirmed.  Since the so-called czars report directly to the president, their influence over policy is not clear, and troubling.  They seem, in many cases, to outrank the cabinet secretaries who are responsible for policy.

From inside the White House, Jones has been developing a campaign to “greenwash” the meaning of 9/11, using federal resources and a political organization he founded. The group called “Green for All” has been one of two groups involved in a campaign called “Green the Block,” which would promote 9/11 as a “national day of service” to connect with people who were passionate about “repowering America and greening up and cleaning up America.”

Matthew Vadum has pointed out the leftist groups that are attempting to modify the meaning of 9/11 and focus instead on bicycle paths, carbon emission controls, solar panels and, of course, community organizing.    The idea is to further the goals of the radical environmental left  by convincing Americans that their fantasy world of an oil-free economy is possible.

The transformation is intended to tax wealth away from the wealthy, and return it to minority communities in the form of non-existent “green jobs.”

Jones is a self-described communist, a radical leftist activist, a “9/11 Truther”, supporter of  cop-killer Mumia abu Jamal, black nationalist and organizer of the boycott against Glen Beck (from the White House).  Also, serial liar.   In his resignation letter, he said “On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me.”  Unfortunately the “smear” came in his own words.  People in politics really need to learn about YouTube and the “Wayback Machine.” It’s a little hard to argue with film of yourself —smearing yourself.

Stories about Jones have been all over the internet, but oddly not one word appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, NBC Nightly News, ABC World News, CBS Evening News.  The first mention came in the Sunday Papers after his resignation late Saturday night, and that as soft as I heard on ABC Radio News.  And the mainstream media wonders why they are losing customers steadily.

Van Jones was anxious to “change the system.” His problems are not just his serial slurs against American society— “an apartheid regime” and capitalism, the coal industry, American farmers, the white population, the Bush administration for causing 9/11.   The Obama administration seems to have selected him with full knowledge of those qualities.

His green fantasies — that we can eliminate oil and gas and depend on such alternative energy as wind and solar— earn him a rousing “good riddance” for promoting another useless sink-hole for taxpayer money.  This article, by Jones for the organization he founded, summarizes some of his views.  It’s worth reading to get the full flavor of attitudes prevalent in the Obama administration.