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The Obama van Jones GOP Czar Revolt

September 4, 2009 | american ideals, congress, democracy, father, obama, obamacare

Those of you who get their news from the mainstream media might not know anything about this controversy; the media is quiet, not unusual, since they have been quiet about most of the scandals that should be rocking the White House, and would have been under any administrtation. 

From a Nexis search a few moments ago (11:00 AM, 4/9/2009):

Total words about the Van Jones controversy in the New York Times: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy in the Washington Post: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on NBC Nightly News: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on ABC World News: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on CBS Evening News: 0

Briefly, the President’s appointment for the position of ‘Environmental Czar’ has been simply another disaster for this administration which seems to court disaster.  Pajamas Media has a good summary.

In the past few days he’s been revealed on tape calling the president’s opponents by a vulgar term for which he apologized on Wednesday to Politico. But that’s small potatoes.

In 2005 Jones told the East Bay Express that the acquittal of Rodney King’s assailants in 1992 in that infamous police brutality case changed him significantly. “I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the verdicts came down on April 29th,” he said. “By August, I was a communist.” Jones and other young activists in 1994 formed a group called Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement, or STORM, rooted in Marxism and Leninsm[sic].

In 2004, he signed a petition which demanded an investigation into what the Bush administration knew about 9/11 before it occurred, indicating that they allowed the attack to provide a pretext for war. Denying he was a “truther” and claiming he’d signed the petition without reading it or understanding its meaning (qualifying him, I suppose, for Congress), he has been caught acting as a truther long before his signature appears on the petition.

In a statement issued Thursday evening Jones said of “the petition that was circulated today, I do not agree with this statement and it certainly does not reflect my views now or ever.” He did not explain how his name came to be on the petition. An administration source said Jones says he did not carefully review the language in the petition before agreeing to add his name.

Whoever advanced that Jones defense did so without much investigation — or under the assumption that a supine press wouldn’t check it out either. Wrong again.

Yesterday, news broke out that Barack Obama’s communist Green Czar was a 9-11 Truther. The administration much later in the day released a statement saying Van Jones was “not now or ever” involved in the 9-11 Truther movement.

Jones said the petition he signed in 2004 did not reflect his views and that he did not carefully review the language in the petition before agreeing to add his name.

Well, finally, someone is fighting back, not only against the appoitment of van Jones, but to the appointment of over 35 so-called ‘Czars’ to important White House positions that require no vetting by Congress at all. From Politico:

Over the past few weeks, White House green jobs czar Van Jones has been accused of being a communist, an old lecture video showed him calling Republicans a—holes, and he’s been connected to a Sept. 11 conspiracy group.

With that type of paper trail, Jones would have trouble surviving a Senate confirmation.

But his czar status allowed him to skip this step: Many of the high-level White House policy advisers don’t require Senate confirmation for their posts. And while liberals have hailed Jones as a pioneer in the green jobs movement, critics have labeled him a radical — and he’s become a liability for a White House that doesn’t need another distraction.

On Friday, Republicans began calling for his resignation and asked for a public hearing into how Jones slipped past the White House vetting process. And White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on Friday avoided addressing the Jones controversy directly, referring reporters back to a Jones statement apologizing for his affiliation with the Sept. 11 “truthers.”

The Jones debacle shows how czars — dozens of powerful problem solvers tapped to tackle some of the thorniest problems facing the country — could continue to cause problems for the White House. By some counts, the Obama administration has about 30 czars — a term used as shorthand for long, wonky titles such as Jones’s “Council on Environmental Quality’s special adviser for green jobs.”

Austin Hill says:

But does President Obama simply not “get it” on economics, or is there another issue in play? Certainly the President has an agenda of re-distributing wealth, taking away from “rich people” and giving to those who he believes are deserving. But his policies reach beyond mere wealh re-distribution, and if current policy trends continue, there will simply be less wealth in the United States that can be re-distributed.

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to argue that President Obama is seeking to advance American peace and prosperity – this is so, at least in terms of how “peace” and “prosperity” have customarily been defined. Does President Obama have his own definitions for these terms? And how might his agenda of “transformation” entail something entirely different from anything America has known before?

It is not a difficult question to ask, what is Obama doing. He was brought up by a Communist, Frank Davis, most of his associations in Chicago were Communists, he has espoused Communist ideals…is it any stretch of the imagination to think that is ultimate agenda is a radical overhaul of our government to fit his beliefs? We elected the first Communist President, without vetting HIS background, without asking to see his writings, or even to prove he was a citizen. Are we surprised when he doesn’t bother consulting us about his appointments?

Additional:

 President Obama’s ‘czar’ roster

 Pence calls on Van Jones to resign

 GOP Sen. calls for hearing on Van Jones