NYC Letter: Meet Mr. Jones

UPDATE 09.06.09:

GREEN JOBS CZAR VAN JONES RESIGNS

September 6, 2009 (WT/WaPo) - In a resignation letter released by the White House just after midnight on Sunday, Mr. Jones said he was the victim of a smear campaign. Mr. Jones:

On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me. They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide.

I have been inundated with calls - from across the political spectrum - urging me to "stay and fight. But I came here to fight for others, not for myself. I cannot in good conscience ask my colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explaining my past. We need all hands on deck, fighting for the future.

We are hard pressed to discover the "lies and distortions" used to "smear" Mr. Jones. Unless, of course, Mr. Jones means being held to account for his own undisputed "lies and distortions". [We fan our nose.] Mr. Jones banjaxed himself. He can't distance himself from himself. And now he is gone.

A cautionary lesson, dear skimmer, for agitprop radicals. Say anything to be a big shot among the fringe, but don't expect a buttoned-down government payday.

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Day 227 of CHOPE

Q: When nobody in the Republican Party, nobody is voting with him [scil., Mr. Obama], how are the Republicans able to push things through when they have less than 60 Senators but somehow he can't?

The answer to that is they're assholes. [Crowd laughter.] That's a technical political science term. [Mugging to audience.] And Barack Obama's not an asshole. So, um, now I will say this. [Pause.] I can be an asshole. And some of us who aren't Barack Hussein Obama are going to have to start getting a little bit uppity

Van Jones,
explaining partisanship
BERKELEY February 11, 2009 (Politico/YouTube)

Meet Anthony "Van" Jones. Shortly after the above remark,* Mr. Jones was recruited by Team Barry and on March 10, 2009 was appointed Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation on the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) -- Mr. Obama's Green Czar.

POSTPARTISAN DONKEY
Clearly Inappropriate Appointment

You might be surprised to learn Team Barry is thick with czars -- 32 at last count. A czar is an administration executive with a specialized portfolio who reports to the president or a cabinet secretary. Some of these positions are mandated by Congress, most are not. Mr. Obama has used czar appointments to end-run the bother of Congressional "advise and consent" established in the United States Constitution.**

Which brings us back to Mr. Jones. It is almost a certainty Mr. Jones would not have survived an "advise and consent" confirmation by Congress. Not merely because he is clownish and insulting, inflammatory, versed in leftish cant, and plain old stupid, but because he is an opportunistic kook.

To start, Mr. Jones is a Truther. Back in October 26, 2004 Mr. Jones was a signatory (№46) on a seminal "911 Truth Statement" by 911truth.org, "which calls for immediate public attention to unanswered questions that suggest that people within the current administration [scil., Bush] may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war". Yesterday Mr. Jones disowned his signature.

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.

Yes. But. The 911truth.org petition was not a careless one-off. Gateway Pundit outs Mr. Jones as a member of the organizing committee for the San Francisco March To Demand Congressional Inquiry Of 911 back in January of 2002.

"Not now or ever", "did not carefully review the language" -- Team Barry thinks you are this stupid.

Meanwhile, Hot Air discloses Mr. Jones' support for convicted cop-killer (upheld on appeal) Mumia Abu-Jamal.

TIMING OF PROTEST IS SUSPECT
Mumia Supporters Disrupt Youth Event

October 9, 1999 (SFC) - A supporter of a Pennsylvania death row inmate denied that demonstrators were trying to upstage a long-planned dialogue between Oakland police and local youth Thursday night.

... Supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal, a death row inmate convicted for the 1981 shooting death of a Philadelphia police officer, said the protest was called after the Supreme Court on Monday rejected claims that Abu-Jamal, a former radio journalist and Black Panther, did not receive a fair trial. Van Jones, a San Francisco civil rights lawyer who helped coordinate the protest march:

We knew there was another event going on, but the timing of the court decision is what dictated when the protest was held.

Jones said about 15 protesters occupied the rotunda at the Federal Building on Clay Street in an act of civil disobedience with the hope they would be arrested.

We waive Mr. Jones avowed communism.

Now even an "advise and consent" end-run appointment is subject to vetting by the Secret Service and the FBI. It is hard to imagine these agencies missed Mr. Jones' colorful past and present associations and remarks. A Google search suffices to discover Mr. Jones' radical history and produce a catalog of his bizarre comments, sufficient to bar a White House clearance. We are informed there are only three people who can overrule such an interdiction: the President, the First Lady, or the Chief of Staff to the President.

[Pause.] So the question is, who got Mr. Jones through the door?

This is what appointments by a community organizer look like.

CHOPE.

What?

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* Mr. Jones, caught out, apologized for this remark.

These comments, made before I joined the administration, were clearly inappropriate and I apologize for the offensive words I chose to use during that speech. They do not reflect the views of this administration, which has made every effort to work in a bipartisan fashion, and they do not reflect the experience I have had since I joined the administration.

** Article II, Section 2, paragraph 2:

[The President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments."

Posted by Damian at September 4, 2009 11:45 PM