The 'Ivan the Terrible' of Obama's Czars

By

How this guy got a job in government is beyond comprehension - unless you live in the United States under Barack Obama as president.

Meet Obama's "Green Czar" Van Jones - former radical communist by his own admission, now a born again capitalist - at least when it comes to remaking the business world into an environmentally friendly sector.

World Net Daily
has the background on his past:

Jones, formerly a self-described "rowdy black nationalist," boasted in a 2005 interview with the left-leaning East Bay Express that his environmental activism was a means to fight for racial and class "justice."

Jones was president and founder of Green For All, a nonprofit organization that advocates for building a so-called inclusive green economy.

Until recently, Jones was a longtime member of the board of Apollo Alliance, a coalition of labor, business, environmental and community leaders that claims on its website to be "working to catalyze a clean energy revolution that will put millions of Americans to work in a new generation of high-quality, green-collar jobs."

(Although influential, Apollo has only 14 state affiliates nationwide. Its New York office is directed by Jeff Jones, a top founding member of the Weather Underground radical organization.

Not only a former communist but a radical green to be sure. The idea of using the business community to achieve his goals is novel considering who he was running with in the past:

[W]e are entering an era during which our very survival will demand invention and innovation on a scale never before seen in the history of human civilization. Only the business community has the requisite skills, experience, and capital to meet that need. On that score, neither government nor the nonprofit and voluntary sectors can compete, not even remotely.

So in the end, our success and survival as a species are largely and directly tied to the new eco-entrepreneurs - and the success and survival of their enterprises. Since almost all of the needed eco-technologies are likely to come from the private sector, civic leaders and voters should do all that can be done to help green business leaders succeed. That means, in large part, electing leaders who will pass bills to aid them. We cannot realistically proceed without a strong alliance between the best of the business world - and everyone else.

In truth, I would not like to see the kinds of bills Jones might support to encourage "eco-entrepreneurs." No doubt his idea of being friendly to small business and ours might differ quite a bit.

But this gentleman's radical associations as well as some of his past statements that he doesn't seem to have disowned should have disqualified him from any job where he oversees policy. And yet, the president named him to be "Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality."

Radical or not, Jones would appear to be bad news for business.

Hat Tip: Ed Lasky

 



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