Article below video. Didn't know anything about Van Jones until viewing the video which is replete with quotes from his past, rather than heresay and inuendo.
If a Republican president chose someone with such a radical, admittedly communist past as part of their administration we'd see marches on Washington and cities thoughtout America ..... every day until that person was sent packing.
___________
Just found this ........
"Green jobs czar signed 'truther' statement in 2004
By Amanda Carpenter on Sept. 3, 2009
Source Washington Post
"..........His name is listed with 99 other prominent signatories supporting such an investigation on the 911Truth.org website, including Code Pink co-founders Medea Benjamin and Jodi Evans, comedienne Janeane Garofalo, Democratic Rep. Cynthia McKinney of Georgia and others. He's identified as the executive director for the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights on the statement, which he founded before going to the White House. The statement is available here. Mr. Jones is number 46.
Mike Berger, a spokesman for 911Truth.org, told the Washington Times over the phone that all of the signers had been verified by their group. He said 9/11Truth.org board members “spoke with each person on the list by phone or through email to individually confirm they had added their name to that list.”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/weblogs/back-story/2009/sep/03/green-jobs-czar-signed-truther-statement-in-2004/
________
_________
"Controversial Obama Administration Official Denies Being Part of 9/11 "Truther" Movement, Apologizes for Past Comments
Power, pop, and probings from ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper
September 03, 2009 9:19 PM
Source ABC News
Van Jones, the Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, is Number 46 of the petitioners from the so-called "Truther" movement which suggests that people in the administration of President George W. Bush "may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war."
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.
"My work at the Council on Environmental Quality is entirely focused on one goal: building clean energy incentives which create 21st century jobs that improve energy efficiency and use renewable resources," Jones said in his statement tonight.
Jones also said in his statement that "In recent days some in the news media have reported on past statements I made before I joined the administration – some of which were made years ago. If I have offended anyone with statements I made in the past, I apologize."
With a history of incendiary and provocative remarks, many of them dealing with his view of how whites exploit minorities, Jones has emerged as the subject of much conservative scrutiny in recent days, particularly from Fox News' Glenn Beck. (Jones defenders point out that most of Beck's criticism came after a group Jones helped found, Color of Change, began pushing advertisers to boycott Beck after he accused President Obama of being a racist.)
Jones is the best-selling author of The Green Collar Economy and a leader in the "green jobs" movement -- the idea that clean energy jobs can create jobs, especially in poor communities. He has been praised from leaders ranging from Al Gore to former eBay CEO (and Republican) Meg Whitman, who in May said that Jones is doing "a marvelous job… I’m a huge fan of his. He is very bright, very articulate, very passionate. I think he is exactly right.”
Earlier this year a profile of Jones in the New Yorker, author Elizabeth Kolbert wrote that "the basic premise of Jones’s appeal—that combating global warming is a good way to lift people out of poverty—is very much open to debate. ... it’s not at all clear that the number of jobs created by, say, an expanding solar industry would be greater than the number lost through, say, a shrinking coal-mining industry. Nor is it clear that a green economy would be any better at providing work for the chronically unemployed than our present, 'gray' economy has been."
But those theories aren't the ones that have made Jones a lightning rod in the past few weeks.
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. Two years later, Jones launched the Ella Baker Center, an Oakland, Calif., based "strategy and action center" which states that it tries to "promote positive alternatives to violence and incarceration."
In February during a discussion on energy at Berkeley, Calif., (and prior to his joining the Obama administration) Jones referred to Republicans using an epithet for a proctological orifice, which he called "a technical, political science term."
Asked why Republicans asserted more control of the Senate when they had a smaller majority before 2006, Jones said "the answer to that is, they're a--holes." He added that President Obama is not an a--hole, but, "I will say this. I can be an a--hole, and some of us who are not Barack Hussein Obama are going to have to start getting a little bit uppity."
"I apologize for the offensive words I chose to use during that speech," Jones said in a different written statement to Politico on Wednesday. "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."
- jpt
May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 January 2013 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 March 2011 January 2011 December 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 March 2005 November 2004 October 2004