by Rinku Sen & Billy Parish

Last week, the Labor Department reported that youth unemployment stands at 18.2%, nearly twice the national average of 9.8%. The percentage of young people without a job is a staggering 53.4 percent, the highest figure since World War II. Looking deeper, the statistics for youth of color are terrible and telling. 

According to the most recent data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 40.7% of black youth between 16-19 are unemployed, almost double the amount of whites teenagers (23%). For Latinos the same age, the rate is nearly 30%. Get a little older and the gap grows wider. Unemployment for black Americans aged 20-24 is 27.1%, over twice that faced by white youth (13.1%) in the same age range.

The glaring differences indicate that unemployment is not only decidedly raced, but also that the current economic condition is wholly unforgiving for young people of color. Only a massive, well-funded set of green jobs programs explicitly designed to close those racial gaps can create a truly vital, full-employment economy.

Without more opportunities for young people, those un- and under-employed will suffer in the short and long-term, especially in their ability to attend college, afford health insurance, buy homes, and save for retirement. In short, they won't be able to make a living. The great promise of the green economy to end poverty as well as environmental suffering can only be fulfilled if we’re prepared to fight, not just for green, but also for racial and economic equity.

There’s a long history of clashes between environmentalists, workers’ organizations and racial justice movements, as each operated on the assumption that they had conflicting goals. Yet, the objectives of all three are interdependent for two big reasons. First, poor economies and environmental degradation have a disproportionate impact on communities of color. People of color occupy jobs in the most hazardous industries and homes in the most environmentally degraded neighborhoods. That’s not accidental. It is a predictable result of persistent segregation, which strips communities of color of their power, facilitating the discriminatory placement of toxic incinerators, power plants, factories, and other big polluters in their communities.   

While economics has contributed to the dual degradation of the environment and communities of color, racism has accelerated environmental and economic problems. “White flight” from inner cities fueled suburban sprawl, leading to more driving, more highways, and more carbon in the atmosphere. And in industries like agriculture and food production, with prominent racial hierarchies, employers find it easy to generate competition and scapegoating between various groups of workers, killing unionization drives that could produce better wages and conditions for all of us.

Luckily, a growing number of people know better than to separate environmental and economic recovery from race. Local groups have started green jobs programs for young people that are inclusive and future-oriented. In Oakland, California, for example, the brand new Green Media Youth Center boasts a green job training program that can help create pathways out of poverty for young people in the city. Last Friday at the Center, Milani Pelley recorded her latest song in a brand new studio. Jhamel Robinson showed off the permaculture garden behind the building. And the list goes on.

But great programs here and there aren’t enough. We need to bring those programs to scale, and create both training and the actual jobs through federal, state and local policy. We need to spend real money funding job creation, and then closely monitor implementation to make sure new programs generate local hiring, affirmative action, great wages and benefits and long term career paths, among other elements that will make them work.  

This year, a national alliance of organized labor and civil rights, social justice and environmental groups has worked to create a vibrant clean energy economy that can not only improve the environment and economy, but also close the racial gap. In the House version of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), this alliance secured the eleventh-hour addition of a billion dollars for green jobs training, as well as equity provisions for access to the jobs created. The Senate version released last week maintains those provisions.

These policies are a good start, but if they’re to survive and lead us to the additional billions and effective implementation that we need to get control of unemployment, we have to be prepared to fight on the race front, as well as the green. All signs indicate that opponents will bait American racism with brutal inventiveness. If the right’s attack on Van Jones isn’t enough of a warning, then we should take our lessons from the health care debate. We can expect conservative pundits to call equity guidelines reverse racism, or to put up immigrants rather than corporate pollution as the true cause of environmental collapse.

To counter that rhetoric, we need to be able to articulate more than a “lift all boats” approach – which improves things but leaves the racial and poverty gaps in place. We need to move support for a “fix all boats” approach that ensures full recovery for all. It’s our responsibility to change the rules and structures that threaten to exclude people of color from taking part in the new, green economy.

Young people are going to have to take the lead in this because they’ve got the most at stake. The decisions we make as a country now will affect them far longer than anyone else. The powers that be like to call these Millennials the first "post racial generation." They claim that young people take racial equality so much for granted that fighting racism is low on their list of priorities. The polluters of the gray economy will take that idea straight to the bank, unless young people themselves make it clear that they understand racism shows up in all our issues, including the environment.

We should amplify and grow efforts to build an inclusive green economy. In doing so, we must always ask two key questions about new policies and programs: is it green, and is it fair

Rinku Sen is the Executive Director of the Applied Research Center, which promotes racial justice through media, research, and activism.  Billy Parish is the founder of the Energy Action Coalition, a national youth clean energy coalition.

This entry is cross-posted at The Huffington Post.

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Van Jones sent this message out to friends and supporters on Tuesday, Sept. 15.

Dear Friends:

My family and I want to thank everyone for the outpouring of love and support that we have received over the past week or so. I resigned from the White House on Sept. 6, and I have remained silent since then -- in keeping with my promise not to be a distraction during a key moment in the Obama Presidency.

Over the past several days, however, many people have been asking how they can help and what they can do.

The main thing is this: please do everything you can to support both President Obama and the green jobs movement. Winning real change is ultimately the best response to these kinds of smear campaigns.

I ask everyone to:

1. Support President Obama's efforts to fix our nation's health care, energy and education systems. His victory last fall did not represent the "finish line" in the fight to renew America; his election was just the "starting line." This autumn, it is time to make history again -- with victories on health care and clean energy.

2. Sign up to support groups that are working for green jobs.

As others seek to vilify or marginalize the movement for a clean energy economy, the leading groups deserve increased support. This is the year to ensure that the clean energy transformation creates good job opportunities for everyone in America.

3. Spread the green jobs gospel. The ideas and ideals of the green jobs movement are grounded in fundamental American values -- innovation, entrepreneurship, and equal opportunity. My true thoughts can be found in my book: The Green Collar Economy. Check it out from the library -- or order a copy and share it with a friend. See for yourself why clean energy and green jobs are good for our country.

4. Stay connected and speak up for me via your favorite blogs (e.g., Huffington Post, Grist, Jack & Jill, etc.), on message boards and all of your favorite social networking platforms (Twitter, Facebook, etc.). Supporters have set up a couple of them, to help you stay engaged, including: I Stand With Van Jones and I Love Van Jones.

In due course, I will be offering my perspective on what has happened -- including correcting the record about false charges. In the meantime, I must get my family affairs in order and sort through numerous offers and options.

I want to be clear that I have nothing but love and admiration for President Obama and the entire administration. White House staffers are there to serve and support the President, not the other way around. At this critical moment in history, I could not in good conscience ask my colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explaining my past. The White House needs all its hands on deck, fighting for the future.

Of course, some supporters actually think I will be more effective on the "outside." Maybe so. But those ideas always remind me of that old canard about Winston Churchill. After he lost a hard-fought election, a friend told him: "Winston, this really is just a blessing in disguise." Churchill quipped: "Damned good disguise." I can certainly relate to that sentiment right now. :)

Nonetheless, we must keep moving forward. Let's continue our work to make an America as good as its promise. These are historic times. And we have a lot more history to make.

Sincerely,

Van Jones

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Eight years ago today, two planes flew into the World Trade Center, another crashed into the Pentagon, and a fourth landed in a Pennsylvania field. The raw power of that day came to be symbolized by a date composed of three numbers. Three numbers that evoked the shock of being attacked, the horror of the sounds and images on our television sets, and the heroism of so many men and women. Three numbers that framed the events of the last decade and seemed like they would define my generation.

But eight years ago, many in my generation couldn't vote. We didn't choose the President, his wars, or his policies. In fact, young Americans have largely rejected the politics of fear and division that dominated those formative years of our political consciousness -- voting 2 to 1 in favor of Barack Obama. Today we remember the victims and honor our heroes, but we also have a new President, new crises, and three new numbers: 3-5-0. 350.

350 is the most important number in the world. 350 parts per million (ppm) is the safe upper limit of carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere. It's the number agreed upon by many of the world's leading scientists and recently endorsed by 80 countries, but it's not the number in the current version of the climate and energy bill under debate in Congress or the target that seems likely to be set at the international climate negotiations in Copenhagen this December.

350 is where we need to be "if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted," as James Hansen, NASA's top climate scientist so dryly puts it. The bad news is that we're already at 390 ppm and climbing. So, is it too late?

Is it too late for the obese man to quit junk food and start exercising? Is it too late for him to lower his cholesterol and prevent a heart attack? Absolutely not. But until he changes his lifestyle, he remains at a higher risk. And until we change our lifestyle, the Earth will remain in the danger zone. There is still time to bring carbon dioxide levels back down, but it's going to take a major transformation in how we think and act. Getting back to 350 means developing a thousand different solutions. It means building wind farms, not coal plants. And it requires that world leaders recognize our interdependence and work together like never before.

Eight years ago, I felt a swirl of emotions. I was scared for my family and friends in New York City, where I was born and raised. I was angry at the people who had done this to us. I was hurting for the victims and their families, especially those from Hook and Ladder Company 25, the firehouse where I used to play when I was a child. And I radiated with the patriotism that swept America, reveling in our shared sense of purpose. That night, I gathered with friends in my Yale dorm to mourn together and mark the immensity of the day. We knew our world had fundamentally changed and that that day marked a turning point for our nation.

Six weeks from today, on October 24, I hope for a similar turning point. The largest ever global grassroots action on climate change will take place, calling on world leaders to make 350 ppm the target in the global climate treaty to be negotiated in Copenhagen. I'll be in Flagstaff, AZ, where I live, spreading the word about 350 and joining with over 1,400 groups in 110 countries (so far), from the Great Barrier Reef to the Taj Mahal, who are organizing on behalf of our planet. Anyone can join a group or start their own by going to 350.org.

While October 24 is a day of hope, America is still being threatened by a politics of fear, hatred, and division. Witness Glenn Beck's vicious smear campaign that led to the resignation of Van Jones, my friend and one of the most visionary leaders in the nation. We need fewer Glenn Becks and more Van Joneses. People, ideas, and events that inspire hope, justice, and collective action.

That's why I love 350. 350 is a bright line to which we must return. It doesn't belong to one group or one nation -- it belongs to all of us alive today and those yet to be born.

350 slices through all the confusion and misinformation around the climate crisis. It's about being prepared. Eight years ago, we were caught off guard. This time there is no secret memo. Everything we need to know is for all to see, out in the open.

I can't wait to live in a post-350 world where the disastrous affects of climate change have been averted, and a thriving clean energy economy unites the planet. I hope some day my now one-and-a-half year old daughter looks back on my work with pride, and that she and her generation are up to the finishing the job. This is an intergenerational challenge and the stakes couldn't be higher.

This entry is cross-posted at The Huffington Post.

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Cross-posted from Wonk Room.

Joe Klein, the prominent Time Magazine liberal columnist, has embraced the right-wing assault on Van Jones, the White House green jobs advisor who resigned this weekend. Stung by a successful boycott for calling the president a “racist,” Glenn Beck led a campaign against Van Jones as a “self avowed communist” who is a “danger to the republic.” Yesterday, Klein said “good riddance” to the “too-angry blowhard” Van Jones, comparing him to a “white supremacist” and a “Nazi”:

Anyway, Jones: He has, in recent years, done some valuable work trying to steer green jobs into poor communities…but there is a bright line in American political life: Self-proclaimed “communists” need not apply. Communism is too odious and foolish a philosophy for anyone reasonable to believe in, or even to use as red-flag hyperbole, as Jones did after the Rodney King riots of the early 1990s, when he said that he’d been a [black] nationalist, but was now a communist. It’s sort of like a Republican President appointing someone who had said, “I used to be a white supremacist, but now I’m a Nazi.” So, good riddance. The work of this presidency is too important to be side-tracked by a too-angry blowhard spouting foolish radicalism.

In the past decade, Van Jones has been at the vanguard of a green capitalism that combines progressive and conservative ideals, “focusing on job, wealth and health creation” in poor and minority communities while healing the planet. His work has helped establish the Oakland Green Jobs Corps, the Green Jobs Act, and community partnerships for job training and retrofit programs in cities across the nation.

Before becoming a leading green capitalist, Jones was a progressive leader in the Bay Area. The “communist” smear hinges on a 2005 interview with the East Bay Express, in which Jones described how he had “renounced” his radicalist politics of the 1990s, when he participated in STORM, a utopian, anti-racist peace collective in Berkeley, CA that drew from Marxist teachings. Jones was radicalized by the 1992 Rodney King trial, in which four LAPD officers were acquitted of police brutality although their beating of Rodney King was caught on videotape. While acting as a legal observer for a non-violent rally in San Francisco protesting the trial and its aftermath, Jones was caught in a mass arrest for which the city later apologized.

Klein’s comparison of Jones to a “Nazi” “white supremacist” is both repugnant and ironic, considering Jones’s record of fighting racism and embracing compassion for all people. Following the Rodney King verdict, Jones worked effectively against police brutality, establishing first the Bay Area PoliceWatch and then the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. The Ella Baker Center successfully campaigned against San Francisco police officer Marc Andaya, who led a team of cops in beating Aaron Williams, “emptying three cans of pepper spray into his face, and hogtying him in an unventilated police van where he died.” With its “Books Not Bars” campaign, the Center also stopped the construction of the Alameda County “Super Jail for Kids” in 2001.

Klein — a compelling writer who has argued for legalizing marijuana, a war crimes tribunal for the Bush administration, and the same green-jobs vision as Van Jones — should be the last person to promote a McCarthyite purge of “left-extremists” from the Obama administration.

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If you thought the targeting of Van Jones for vilification by the right was about his race, his youthful flirtation with socialism, or a petition he signed about the 9/11 attacks, you'd only be a little bit right. And if you think it was about the Color of Change campaign against Glenn Beck's show on FOX NewsChannel, you'd really miss the mark.

The racism and red-baiting suffered by Jones at the hands of Beck and his admirers are simply key elements in a marketing strategy designed to serve Very Big Business -- the oil and other business interests that support the astroturfing group Americans for Prosperity. The strategy is simple: prey upon the worst fears of the right-wing folks who live next door in order to get them to organize against their own interests.

When word of Van Jones' resignation from his White House post hit the airwaves, Americans for Prosperity's Phil Kerpen, the group's policy director, wasted no time in taking personal credit. In his column on FOXNews.com, Kerpen wrote, "The Van Jones affair ... is one of the most significant things I've ever had the honor of being involved in."

Progressives first became familiar with Americans for Prosperity because of its role, along with Glenn Beck's 912 Project, in organizing the disruption of town-hall meetings across the country at which members of Congress were scheduled to discuss pending health-care reform legislation with their constituents. Many assumed the AFP astroturfers, who are not required to disclose their funding sources, were aligned specifically with health-care interests -- and indeed they may be aligned with some. Look a little closer, though, and you'll find at the top of their agenda the derailment of energy reform, especially the cap-and-trade formula for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Naming defeat of clean-energy legislation his "number one legislative priority," Kerpen, in his FOX News column, details his role in demonizing Jones in the right-wing echo-chamber from which Jones, as an Obama aide, could not escape.

By his own account, Kerpen's quest to fell Van Jones began on July 9 -- weeks before Color of Change began to organize against Beck -- when he was asked to appear on FOX & Friends to explain "what green jobs are" and to discuss Obama's green-jobs "czar," Van Jones. A little research revealed Jones' involvement, early in his activist career, with a group that embraced socialist values. From there, Kerpen extrapolated, "the ‘green jobs' concept was merely a new face on the old ideology of central economic planning and control, an alternative and a threat to free market capitalism."

The month before, Kerpen explains, he and Beck had dubbed the cap-and-trade energy reform legislation embraced by the Obama as "a watermelon" -- "green on the outside but Communist red to the core." (No racist intent in that characterization, of course.) Cap-and-trade is a mechanism through which industrial plants are given permits to produce X amount of pollution. After they've used up their allotment, they can only pollute more by buying the unused permits of other permit-holders. This creates incentives for certain businesses to limit their greenhouse gas emissions for the monetary payoff of selling their permits.

In Kerpen's August 28 appearance on Beck's show, he broadened his attack to include the Apollo Alliance, on whose board Jones once sat. The Apollo Alliance seeks to build public-private partnerships on green jobs, working with business, labor unions, government officials and activists. After that, Kerpen brays, Beck "began pounding away" on Jones.

Americans for Prosperity, FOX News and the Murdoch Agenda

Americans for Prosperity, as AlterNet reported, works closely with the personalities of FOX News, and has long received substantial funding by the oil money of David Koch, who serves as chairman of the board of directors of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation. But even that fun fact offers too narrow a view of the agenda advanced by Americans for Prosperity with the mighty assistance of Glenn Beck's uber-boss, Rupert Murdoch, owner of FOX and the Wall Street Journal, and chairman of the colossal News Corporation. Together, these two entities oppose any form of regulation that would disturb the status quo for Very Big Business -- conglomerates that range in sector from nuclear power to the for-profit prison industry.

To these entrenched interests, Van Jones is a very dangerous man, indeed -- even as a mid-level White House aide. (Now that he is "liberated" by his White House resignation, as AlterNet Executive Editor Don Hazen writes, they may soon rue the day they sought to turn Jones out of the government.)

As inspirational speakers go, it's hard to find an equal to Jones, who has already helped to broaden the clean-energy and environmental movements far beyond their white, crunchy-granola base. Adept at building coalitions and finding interdisciplinary approaches, Jones is just the person to sell an abstract concept like cap-and-trade to regular, cash-strapped Americans.

Jones' approach includes the greening of American cities, the development of green jobs for inner-city citizens -- and especially for repatriating ex-convicts into civil society -- as well as wonky remedies like cap-and-trade. It's a fully integrated vision. As Jones told me in an interview last year, "If you ... have to break up with oil and coal, you may as well break up with poverty and a bunch of other stuff."

Actually, in his FOX News column, Kerpen gets the Jones agenda pretty well:

Kerpen's problem with this agenda?

Kerpen goes on to complain that "cap-and-trade…could send these Green groups trillions…" And they stand to gain "billions," he writes, from "the unspent portion of the stimulus bill," which he wants to see repealed.

In essence, Kerpen's modus operandi is the latter-day equivalent of the "Defund the Left" campaign embarked on by Howard Phillips, a founder of the religious right, during his short stint in the Nixon administration.

In addition to Glenn Beck and Americans for Prosperity, a less-noticed player in the health-care drama is Grassfire, another astroturfing outfit, which, as AlterNet reported, organized town-hall disrupters through its ResisNet site. Grassfire is endosed by Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana, who on September 4, called upon Van Jones to resign, citing Jones' "extremist views."

ResistNet is a social-networking hub for the armed patriot movement, as well as racists and paranoids of all stripes. (On the day we visited, we found one video comparing Obama to Hitler, and another featuring a preacher who called him "a half-breed MacDaddy" and called upon "white folks" to "riot in the streets.") Grassfire is also organizing its members for a ground assault on cap-and-trade.

The Stop-Obama Alliance

Make no mistake: Van Jones' resignation from the White House was the work of the very same forces that brought you the rage of August's town-hall meetings, where a rude and sometimes violent minority, using the tactics of thugs, convinced mainstream media that the American people rejected efforts by Obama and congressional Democrats to reform health care. (Played over and over, that theme began to convinced even Americans who thought they had wanted health-care reform began to doubt themselves, thanks to the lies advanced by the town-hall screamers.)

Though these forces are most recognizably felt in the health-care debate, stopping health-care reform is likely a means to a greater end. It's far easier to upset people over their personal health care than it is to get them ginned up over something as esoteric as cap-and-trade or net neutrality (also targeted for legislative defeat by Americans for Prosperity). But once you've used health-care reform to convince the frightened and paranoid that the president is a white-people-hating socialist (or fascist, depending on the day) who wants to kill off Grandma, it's a lot easier to get them to oppose just about anything he might propose.

A very powerful alliance, designed to motivate various iterations of the grass roots of the right wing, is taking shape, and its players are determined to win by any means necessary -- be they racism, red-baiting, violence or lies. Americans for Prosperity, Grassfire, Freedom Works (the Astroturf group led by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey) and the Murdoch empire -- especially as represented by Glenn Beck -- have teamed up to keep the air dirty, the poor in their place and more people dying every day for lack of health care. But more than anything, they've joined hands to keep the preponderance of the earth's riches in the hands of a very few -- the rest of us be damned. They're determined to die with the most toys, leaving a poisoned and impoverished planet as their legacy.

This piece was originally posted at AlterNet.

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Having taken Van Jones down, the job destroyers and climate destroyers of the right wing most certainly smell blood.

Now Phil Kerpen, policy director for Americans for Prosperity, has laid out the right-wing strategy for how “the Van Jones affair could be an important turning point in the Obama administration,” in a piece on FOXNews.com. AFP is “pro-tobacco industry” group that “worked around the U.S. in recent years to defeat” smokefree workplace laws (as SourceWatch notes) — and is now fighting for the big corporate polluters to block climate and clean energy action. Brad Johnson at WonkRoom has documented how Americans for Prosperity (AFP) is a front group for billionaire polluters, pushing the most inane pro-pollution ads you’ll ever see.

But what Fox News and AFP would like to achieve is no joke:

The Van Jones affair is, as President Obama likes to say, a “teachable moment,” and we need to put not just him but the whole corrupt “green jobs” concept outside the bounds of the political mainstream.

Conservatives hate the notion of green clean energy jobs because their entire anti-science, anti-climate, anti-environment message is built around the (false) notion of a trade-off between reducing pollution and jobs. If you don’t care about the health and well-being of future generations, you certainly don’t care if they have good jobs (or any jobs, for that matter).

Progressives are going to have to redouble our efforts if we’re to have any chance whatsoever of creating 1.7 million clean energy jobs while averting catastrophic global warming. Here is an excerpt of the FoxNews/AFP opinion piece strategy document, “How Van Jones Happened and What We Need to Do Next,” which seems like a parody, but, sadly, isn’t:

The Van Jones affair could be an important turning point in the Obama administration if we use it as a window to understand the structure of the left and to stop the huge power-grab now taking place in the name of green jobs. It’s also one of the most significant things I’ve ever had the honor of being involved in. Here’s how, from my perspective, it happened and what it means.

I was an unlikely Van Jones expert. It started July 9, when “FOX & Friends” asked me if I’d come on the show the morning of July 10 to explain what “green jobs” are. It meant an early morning the next day, but I was glad to do it, because exposing the green jobs scam is critical to fight cap-and-trade, my top legislative priority for the year. The producer asked me if I knew anything about green jobs “czar” Van Jones. I didn’t but said I would find out.

I e-mailed a friend who follows the green groups and he said he thought Jones was socialist – I doubt he had any idea how deep it went. A couple Web searches later, I couldn’t believe what I found in an article from the alternative San Francisco newspaper the East Bay Express. The man was a self-professed communist, with ties to ACORN ... His real name was Anthony, with “Van” made up in college because he thought everyone cool has a one-syllable name.

Seriously. His real name was “Anthony.” String him up, already!

There was so much material there, but what really stood out is what I used the next day on F&F: the “green jobs” concept was merely a new face on the old ideology of central economic planning and control, an alternative and a threat to free market capitalism.

The only central economic planning control we have in this country is the massive subsidies and regulatory favoritism for polluters.

As soon as I got back to the office, I e-mailed the East Bay Express article to one of Glenn Beck’s producer, saying: “Please share with Glenn this article about green jobs czar Van Jones, a self-described communist who was radicalized in jail. Confirms “watermelon” hypothesis.” (I was referring to an explanation we had offered on his show of the cap-and-trade bill as a “watermelon,” green on the outside but Communist red to the core.)

No, this is NOT an Onion parody. The cap-and-trade bill is a watermelon, a watermelon, I tell you, not a mango, for Chrissakes!
Here is a video of Kerpin and Beck eating a friggin’ watermelon before the House vote.

The rest is history. I spent the next two weeks researching everything I could find about Jones and the Apollo Alliance (much of which is still to be published, including a forthcoming paper from the Capital Research Center next month), the national umbrella organization for coordinating between the environmentalists, the labor unions, and the social justice street organizers that Jones has served as a board member and a primary national spokesman for. Beck had me on his show to explain Apollo on July 28, and several more times thereafter, while he began pounding away.

Two days later, the stakes got higher when another Jones-founded organization, Color of Change, called for a boycott of the Beck show. Amazingly, many in the mainstream media would report the fiction that Beck’s coverage of Jones was retaliation for the boycott, even though coverage of Jones started first. Given the chronology, if there is any connection we should consider whether the boycott was retaliation for the coverage.

The mainstream media completely ignored the controversy, but the Internet kicked into high gear, with so many people doing great work that it was hard to keep track of. This week, when Gateway Pundit the broke story that Van Jones actually blamed George Bush for the 9/11 terrorist attacks, some of the mainstream media (but only some) finally began paying attention. Rep. Mike Pence stepped up and called for his resignation. And early today Jones made his exit.

Now Van Jones has left the administration, but we can’t afford to stop thinking about him and what he represents. Clearly, he was far less cautious than many of the left-wing radical currently influencing the direction of policy in this country. Less cautious but not ideologically distinct.

The agenda laid out in Van Jones’s book, The Green Collar Economy which we now know is an attempt to achieve radical ends, is squarely within the mainstream of the political left and the Democratic Party. He urged adoption of a carbon cap-and-trade program, renewable electricity mandates– including Al Gore’s outlandish and impossible goal of eliminating fossil fuel use by 2018, large taxpayer-funded green jobs programs, a so-called smart grid for electricity, more mass-transit subsidies, higher fuel efficiency standards for automobiles, federal funding for organic farms, a ban on new coal plants, expanded ethanol mandates, and even a spirited, multiple page pitch for a cash-for-clunkers program–he called it “Hoopties for Hybrids.”

Even if Apollo is properly tainted by the Van Jones scandal, it’s only the tip of the iceberg, as this chart shows. In fact most of the action has already moved to the Center for American Progress, the hyper-politicized think tank that’s advancing most of the left’s agenda, especially the push for green jobs and all of the policies from Van Jones’s book.

I will concede that many people call me hyper, but I like to think of the Center’s energy and climate “agenda” as hyper-scientific.

Here is the chart -- the 21st century version of Nixon’s enemies list. I just don’t understand why I didn’t make it, even if CAP did. I guess I’m not hyper enough.

As I explained previously on the FOX Forum, the push for “green jobs” has everything to do with funding the far-left political activities that Van Jones so adamantly believed in. Green jobs are not economic jobs but political jobs, designed to funnel vast sums of taxpayer money to left-wing labor unions, environmental groups, and social justice community organizers.

Now that Jones has resigned, we need to follow through with two critical policy victories. First, stop cap-and-trade, which could send these green groups trillions, and second repeal the unspent portion of the stimulus bill, which stands to give them billions. The Van Jones affair is, as President Obama likes to say, a “teachable moment,” and we need to put not just him but the whole corrupt “green jobs” concept outside the bounds of the political mainstream.

Even though I have mocked this too-mockable piece of mockery, what happened to Van Jones makes clear that we have to take these folks seriously, even if one of the many necessary response strategies is to mock them for their paranoid fantasies and anti-scientific beliefs.

I will discuss strategic responses later, but for now, let’s remember what we are fighting for. President Obama has cut through conservative myths better than anyone:

“The choice we face is not between saving our environment and saving our economy. The choice we face is between prosperity and decline … We can allow climate change to wreak unnatural havoc across the landscape, or we can create jobs working to prevent its worst effects…. The nation that leads the world in creating new energy sources will be the nation that leads the 21st-century global economy.”

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Following Van Jones’ resignation Saturday night, Glenn Beck has released a statement vowing to go after “other radicals in the administration.”

What could be scarier than the nation’s clean energy and climate policy being affected by uber-wingnut Glenn Beck. In a January attack on Obama’s energy and environment adviser, Carol Browner, Beck said on his national radio show:

It’s just that almost everyone who does believe in global warming is a socialist. I mean, believes in manmade global warming that now can be fixed and reversed or whatever. And we’ve got the tools to fix it. Almost everybody who says, “I’ve got a plan to fix it” is a socialist.

Yes, “billions of people will be condemned to poverty and much of civilisation will collapse” — but if you understand the science of human-caused climate change or want to do something to stop it, you’re a socialist. Klein was right, Beck and his buddies are “nihilists.”

Beck doesn’t belong on TV, well, except maybe on a show like “Cops,” getting hauled off to jail like any other incoherent babbler.

What follows is a Think Progress repost.

John Podesta, the President and CEO of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, released this statement following the resignation of Van Jones:

Van Jones is an exceptional and inspired leader who has fought to bring economic and environmental justice to communities across our country.

He has chosen to resign because he believed he was serving as a distraction to the president’s agenda. I respect that decision.

Van was working to build a common ground agenda for all Americans, and I am confident he will continue that work. Unfortunately, his critics on the right could find no common ground with him.

Clearly, Van was the subject of a right-wing smear campaign shrouded in hypocrisy. Van’s chief tormentor Glenn Beck, who spent weeks engaged in vicious name-calling, retains his perch at Fox News after calling the president a racist who has “a deep-seated hatred for white people.” Van has set a standard that Beck would never impose upon himself.

I look forward to working with Van to move our country towards a clean energy economy that empowers and lifts up all Americans.

The American people stood up and demanded answers. Instead of providing them, the Administration had Jones resign under cover of darkness. I continue to be amazed by the power of everyday Americans to initiate change in our government through honest questioning, and judging by the other radicals in the administration, I expect that questioning to continue for the foreseeable future.

David Weigel writes that Cass Sunstein is likely to be Beck’s next target.

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The end of Van Jones' brief career as a White House insider, in the semi-obscure position of special adviser for green jobs at the Council on Environmental Quality, is likely good for Van Jones and very good for progressives.

Yes, currently it seems as if Fox News' Glenn Beck -- who spent the past few weeks viciously smearing Jones -- has won one. In fact, Beck has done Jones, and all of us, a mitzvah.

And considering that the White House, and for that matter Washington's liberal establishment, failed to come to his defense in the face of relentless attacks by the right-wingers at Fox (very similar to what Fox did to Barack Obama leading up to the election), Jones's liberation should make him a happy camper.

Early Skepticism

Much of Jones' broad base of fans was excited when word spread that he would be taking his prodigious talents to the White House, working on the inside to spread the gospel of green jobs. Many were surprised and pleased to see Obama, ever the centrist, willing to bring in a firebrand like Jones to shake things up.

But more than a few wondered, "Jeez, how is that going to work?" They knew that Jones, arguably the most effective communicator in Democratic and progressive politics -- and yes, that includes  Obama -- was going to have to control his tongue, and in many cases shut his mouth.

Part of what made Jones popular was telling it like it is. Jones inspired audiences, especially young people, with the notion that a radical vision, combined with innovative ideas and fundamental organizing, could work in tandem with our political system.

And some also wondered, was green jobs enough when it was health care, the banks and economic crisis, the escalation in Afghanistan, and the battles with the right that were dominating the national discourse? We knew he was the "green jobs czar," but there were 30 czars in the White House -- so many that Obama was known to joke about a show called "Dancing with the Czars."

Why was Jones going indoors, when there were big fights outdoors, all across the country?

As it turns out, the White House may have taken him in with open arms, but apparently was glad to see him go.

FireDogLake's Jane Hamsher wrote: "Now he's been thrown under the bus by the White House for signing his name to a petition expressing something that 35 percent of all Democrats believed as of 2007 -- that George Bush knew in advance about the attacks of 9/11. Well, that and calling Republicans 'assholes.'"

So where are all the statements defending Van Jones by those who were willing to exploit him when it served their purpose? Why aren't they standing up and defending one of their own, who has done nothing that probably the majority of people in the Democratic Party haven't done at one time or another? Is he no longer "one of their own"?

So yes, Jones tried the inside, but now he's back on the outside. Here are five reasons why we are all better off:

1. Now he's a household name: Beck has increased Jones' visibility and name recognition immeasurably. Although he has been wildly popular in progressive circles, and a headliner at progressive conferences like Take Back America and the Netroots Nation, Jones was still a relative unknown for the population at large. Now he has a national stage.

2. He's been rescued from obscurity: Special adviser to the Council for Environmental Quality. Hmm. That doesn't quite have the ring of power and influence. Jones took one for the team by taking an obscure position in the first place. And he took another one for the team by realizing quickly that the right-wing smear campaign against him was going to be a distraction.

Now Jones is free to climb to a much higher level of visibility and influence millions of people in ways he couldn't at that White House job.

3. He's the leader progressives need: Let's face it. For reasons not altogether clear, there is no single powerful, articulate leader of progressive forces, which include many millions of Americans. It's time we have such a leader.

With key elements of the union movement squandering enormous resources and time fighting each other, and many issues competing for air space, a credible, charismatic strategic leader like Jones could help to give direction, set priorities and generally give shape to what has so far been an anemic progressive presence in the Obama era.

Those with the most popularity and name recognition among progressives -- Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, Bill Moyers and Robert Reich to mention a few -- can't do what Jones can do. Donna Edwards and Keith Ellison are emerging in Congress as national leaders, and they will be strong complements to Jones -- in fact, the three represent a new progressive generation, one less lily white than the one that preceded it. But Van is the Man.

4. He has a renewed charge to speak the truth: Jones was attacked by the right for basically saying what is true: that Republicans are assholes (but he also said: "I, Van Jones can be one, too."); that green-jobs organizing has to go far beyond solar panels; that African Americans are victimized by environmental racism by "white polluters, and the white environmentalists are essentially steering poison into the people of color's communities because they don't have a racial justice frame"; and the biggie -- that the Bush administration had to be challenged on 9/11.

At a minimum, given all the information they had, Bush, Cheney and Co. were colossally, and perhaps criminally, inept leading up to 9/11, and no doubt there is much more to be told about their story.

5. He can provide real vision and organizing framework: Jones' book, The Green Collar Economy, was briefly a New York Times best-seller, and now it just might make it back on the list (just as Jeremy Scahill's book on Blackwater has reappeared on the N.Y. Times extended list for the third time due to Blackwater staying in the news).

The liberation of Van Jones will give him the opportunity to fully explain his blueprint on green jobs, but also connect it to the political economy and the need for resources to train young people in the skills needed to bring a green economy to the U.S.

But perhaps even better is that Jones will be free to draw out the complex connections between various issues, such as the huge waste of resources and lives in the war on Afghanistan and how that affects jobs and the environment -- here in the U.S. and in that war-torn, abysmally poor country.

And Jones will be free to mobilize people in support of climate-change protection. As my colleague Addie Stan notes:

The right-wing attacks on Jones may well be linked to organizing against Obama and the Democrats' plans on the environment. GOP Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana, who lends his endorsement to Grassfire, an organization that organizes members of the armed patriot movement through its ResistNet site, called on Jones to resign, saying, "His extremist views and coarse rhetoric have no place in this administration or the public debate.

Grassfire is currently organizing ground-level opposition to the clean-energy legislation -- especially its cap-and-trade mechanism -- supported by the White House."

Jones Will Be Stronger

Some may think that the relentless red-baiting and piling up of distortions and lies by the right-wing media machine might leave Jones politically wounded. I doubt it.

Fame is a valuable commodity in our society. And now, it is clear that Jones is a celebrity. In a short time, people will have a hard time remembering exactly what made Jones famous, but famous he will be. And he will have a major pulpit -- thanks to his oratory gifts and to how the media treats notorious celebs.

There is a long history of political resurrection in America. Remember that the Rev. Al Sharpton was sued for slander and ordered to pay $345,000 in damages after he was deemed guilty for making defamatory statements about the Dutchess County, N.Y., prosecutor, Steve Pagones, after Sharpton insisted in the infamous Tawana Brawley case that Brawley's fabricated story of rape was true.

And according to Wikipedia, on May 9, 2008, the Associated Press reported that Sharpton and his businesses owed almost $1.5 million in unpaid taxes and penalties. Sharpton owed $931,000 in federal income tax and $366,000 to New York, and his for-profit company, Rev. Al Communications, owed $176,000 to the state. Yet few would disagree that Sharpton is currently one of the 10 most influential African Americans in America.

Consistently, fame seems to trump radicalism and scandal.

Yes, Jones was a leader in the retro-named, radical group STORM: Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement. But that is nothing compared to Germany's Joschka Fischer. Fisher was able to become foreign minister, despite the fact that Fischer was a leader of a radical group called the Putzgruppe, which had fought in several violent street battles with the police.

A series of photographs taken at a street battle in 1973 clearly show Fischer clubbing a policeman, to whom Fischer later apologized. This was but one of a range of politically radical acts by Fischer.

Seeing what happens next in the trajectory of Jones will be very interesting. But the betting on this end is that Jones will return to his role as visionary leader of progressive forces, and he will be in a stronger position to promote change, provide inspiration and rally the troops.

This piece was originally posted at AlterNet.

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How easy to be cynical on this Labor Day, and declare it a day that will live in infamy for coal miners and coalfield residents and green job advocates across the nation.

But thanks to United Mine workers like Terry Steele, and West Virginia military veterans like Chris Carey, and green job advocates like Van Jones and Eric Mathis in Mingo County, Labor Day remains a hopeful reminder of the resiliency and epic campaigns by coalfield residents for economic and environmental justice.

Less than 48 hours after a bizarre witch-hunt by right-wing Fox News commentator Glenn Beck brought down our nation's hardest-working and respected green jobs advocate, Van Jones, Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship will host an equally bizarre Labor Day spectacle--or Don-A-Pullute-Za, as West Virginia Blue activists say--in the name of union-busted jobs and climate-change denial in Logan County, West Virginia.

Keep in mind: Verizon Wireless is not only a defiant sponsor of Massey's mountaintop removal-climate change-denying carnival, but now says Verizon Wireless didn't pull its ads on Glenn Beck as reported.

Coal miners--and coalfield residents around the country--have lost one of their greatest advocates in Van Jones; and coal miners, in the hands of Big Coal and Massey Energy's mountaintop removal operations, will continue to lose their jobs, livelihoods and communities.

Not for the first time. Eighty-year years ago this same weekend, brave World War I veterans and coal miners endured bombings by hired coal company thugs to march on and liberate the same Logan County residents in West VIrginia from the stranglehold of union-denying Big Coal. The Battle of Blair Mountain was the largest armed insurrection since the Civil War--and today it's hallowed ridges are once again threatened by destruction, mountaintop removal.

Does Fox News Sean Hannity or Ted Nugent, the speakers for today's Massey gathering, know the level of Big Coal ruthlessness that forced thousands of armed miners to march for union rights along the very roads they drove today? Do Hannity and Nugent know the despair and lack of economic development due to the same stranglehold of Big Coal on the coalfields today?

Heroic UMWA coal miner Terry Steele understands the importance of Blair Mountain, and the shared fate of coalfield residents. Yesterday, he wrote:

"What the UMWA had better realize is that some of its strongest union men are fighting with the environmentalists against MTR. These miners, like this writer, have lived and worked all their lives in W.Va. We have watched the deep mines close; MTR mines take our jobs, our land and our union. More recently, we watched the muddy flood waters pour off these sites, as it took roads and homes. Just a few MTR mines chained the union to the real enemy.

There are only two sides to this issue. On the right is Don standing at Logan, wrapped in the pretense of American freedom, with his bought judges, DEP agents and many misled souls. Don stands with promises of jobs and security. In one hand, is a new mining permit, and in the other is dynamite. In his heart and mind is power to put down the UMWA, the environmentalist, and to mine coal his way: nonunion, unregulated, any way he wants!"

In truth, despite Massey's anti-environmental rants and climate-change-denying manifestos, more jobs have been lost or subjected to the whims of the volatile energy market, super mechanization, including the often overlooked bane of longwall mining in the northern panhandle, and mountaintop removal than any environmental regulations.

Two brave security guards hired last week at a Massey Energy mountaintop removal site understand this reality. In the tradition of courageous Blair Mountain war veterans and Appalachian natives, Navy veteran Chris Carey and Patrick Curry walked off the Massey site last week after been offended by the brutal harassment and lawlessness of Massey thugs against two nonviolent tree-sitters, who sought to protect local coalfield residents from reckless blasting, fly rock, silica dust and mountain devastation.

In a rare interview, Carey and Curry delivered an insightful analysis of the stranglehold of Massey on the region:

When Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship was born in 1950, 130,000 West Virginians worked in the coal mines. Today, roughly 20,000 actual coal miners saddle up on heavy equipment to strip mine the ridges, or head into the underground mines.

In Blankenship's native Pike County in eastern Kentucky, nearly 50 percent of the coal mining jobs have been eliminated over the past 25 years, thanks in large part to highly mechanized strip mining. Here's a chart:

Not that Massey has lost any profits. During their 4th quarter 2008 Earnings Call last spring, Massey Energy executives crowed that "2008 was a very exciting and successful year for Massey, by many measures, the most successful in our history." Massey turned a $20 million profit in its last quarter in 2009.

And yet, these are the headlines from Massey:

Massey Energy Black Castle Mine, 300 Affected: Due to Market Conditions

Massey Pays Largest Settlement in Coal Industry History: Massey Pays $4.2 million for miners deaths

Massey cited in miner's fatal conveyor belt fall

Massey Energy to Pay Largest Civil Penalty Ever for Water Permit

Is this world of Massey violations that future for coalfield residents?

Even Big Coal's biggest supporter, Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV), recently noted that "the state's most productive coal seams likely will be exhausted in 20 years. And while coal will remain an important part of the economy, the state should emphasize green job development."

Unlike Don Blankenship, Van Jones and West Virginia-based green jobs advocate Eric Mathis not only understand and respect the rights of coal miners, but they also have a plan for a sustainable economy and future for coalfield residents.

Jones told an interviewer in 2008:

"I think it's important that we be respectful of all the contributions that have been made by all workers. Even our coal workers are heros in a way... in that they've been asked to sacrifice their lungs, their health, their communities. We're now asking our coal miners to blow up their grandmother's mountains! Awful... Mountain top removal and strip-mining... Those coal miners don't set the energy policy in this country but they have to make the sacrifices to carry it out. I think that sometimes we aren't respectful enough, that we're not as encouraging and honoring of the people who have gotten America to this point."

On this Labor Day, I honor Van Jones, the rednecks of Blair Mountain, honest security guards Chris Carey and Patrick Curry, the United Mine Workers and Terry Steele and green job advocates Eric Mathis.

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In his decade-long obsession with Dr. Martin Luther King, J. Edgar Hoover revealed himself as one of American history's most reprehensible figures.  Feeding on a stew of racism and anti-communism, Hoover used his considerable power as FBI Director to try to torment King into leaving public life.   His tactics were noxious - illegally taping King in his most private moments - and inexcusable - he refused to report legitimate assassination threats to King's security team.  Most notably, as he realized that King was made of steely stuff, he went after his allies.  Stanley Levison and Bayard Rustin, two indispensable advisers to King, were mercilessly targeted by Hoover.  Their previous associations with communist causes were more than enough grist for Hoover's malicious mill.

What Hoover was to law enforcement during the King years, Glenn Beck is to a free press during the Obama years.  For each of these demagogues, a sacred foundation of democracy is nothing more than a means to a twisted end: promoting racially-driven paranoia in order to serve their own vanity.  Hoover's insights into the vulnerabilities of others helped him become a consumate bureacrat; Beck's channeling of 'the paranoid style of American politics' has helped him become a highly popular broadcaster.  Differences abound: Hoover did his bidding in private, while Beck is embarrasingly public. But in the end, each leads the same futile fight: trying to stop the steady growth of a more just, more diverse and more hopeful America.

Hoover came to mind this weekend with the announcement that Van Jones had resigned from Obama's CEQ. Viewed one way, this was a victory for Beck and his Fox News patrons, and it was right out of the Hoover playbook.  Find a few seemingly embarrassing moments from your target's vibrant past, cast them in the most damning light, and then let a well-oiled system take over.  And as the targeting of Levison and Rustin were meant to weaken King, so with Jones and Obama.  Progressives and climate-movement activists are rightfully outraged by all of this.

But with reflection, we can find solace in history.  It's true that Levison and Rustin were each 'thrown under the bus' at key moments in the fight for civil rights.  Just as Hoover had hoped, disclosures about their past led King and his other advisers to shun these two for a time.  But you know something: it didn't last.  After being cast aside, Rustin went on to co-organize the 1963 March on Washington; Levison was soon back in King's inner circle.  Hoover, simply, could not stop them from shaping history's grand push toward freedom. 

So I'm sure it will be with Beck, Jones and Obama.  Does anyone really think that Van Jones won't be leading again soon, with renewed vigor? And does anyone really think that Glenn Beck's vision for America - too grizzly to even detail! - will triumph over that of Jones? 

Indeed, what Jones has lead so brilliantly over the last several years, as the climate movement has come into its own, is the development of a new vision of a greener and more just America.  'Green jobs' is not just a slogan.  It captures the muscular idea that our urban centers can be revitalized as we build a clean-energy economy.  In this Step It Up montage, one can bear witness to Jones's vision - and how a new generation has worked alongside him to make it their own.  And it is this generation that will, as the years pass, implement Obama's higher call.

To get there, what should we do right now?  For climate activists, two lessons from the Hoover-Beck analogy should ignite action.  First, note that the FBI head was allowed to corrupt national politics for way too long.  Amazingly, Hoover was in that position for almost half a century.  Beck is a relatively young man with, disturbingly, what might be called a 'promising' future.  Millions read his books and watch his show. It is right, therefore, for climate activists to re-double their efforts to stop him, so that his moment in history, unlike Hoover's, is fleeting. 

To take away Beck's power, we should start by supporting the consumer boycott led by the Color of Change.  By every account, it's working.  And of course, we need to shed light on Beck's despicable ways with our own research and words: here's a great post from Juliana Williams and a new website that she has co-founded.  These and related online efforts will have a cumulative effect.

Getting Beck, though, is not the most important action for us now.  In fact, pursuing Beck in isolation might well play to his hand.  For what he and Limbaugh and others really thrive on is vitriol, bitterness and hate - whether provided by them or their opponents.  When opponents of birthers yell, it reinforces the Beck worldview that created the birthers in the first place.  If we just attack and yell, Beck wins.

Ultimately, what King, Levison, Rustin and all of the other civil rights leaders teach us is the power of anti-Hooverism, of anti-Beckism.  Indeed, it's a lesson that cuts across the centuries.  When President Lincoln, in his second inaugural address, re-affirmed his faith in "the better angels of our nature," he was reaching out to us now, reminding us now of the "mystic chords of memory" that bind us as we work to create a better future. 

Van Jones surely binds us from one age to the next, to the visions of Lincoln and King and to the leadership of so many of today's young leaders.  We can thank him, we can honor him best by redoubling our own efforts to begin the world anew.

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The resignation of President Obama’s green jobs adviser was touched on during several of the TV networks’ Sunday morning political gabfests. Here are the relevant excerpts:

NBC’s “Meet the Press”

HOST DAVID GREGORY: Another domestic matter—Van Jones, who has been an advisor to the White House on environmental policy, resigned overnight because of some inflammatory comments he has made, over time, including a petition he signed that blamed the government for the 9/11 attacks. Was this an issue that got to the president? Did he personally order that he be fired?

OBAMA ADVISER DAVID AXELROD: Absolutely not. This was Van Jones’s own decision. You know, he is internationally known as an advocate for green jobs, and that’s the basis on which he was hired. He said in his statement that he didn’t want his comments to become a distraction from the issue, which is so important to the future of our economy and communities around the country. And I commend him for making that decision.

MR. GREGORY: Was he the victim of a smear campaign, as he alleges?

MR. AXELROD: Well, look, this is a—you know, the political environment is rough, and so, you know, these things get magnified.

But the bottom line is that he showed his commitment to the cause of creating green jobs in this country by removing himself as an issue, and I think that took a great deal of commitment on his part.

MR. GREGORY: But was the president offended by what he said?

MR. AXELROD: I haven’t spoken to the president about this. As you know, this thing has bubbled up in the last few days and, frankly, my conversation with the president has mostly been about health care, which is where our focus should be right now.

MR. GREGORY: Do you find what he said objectionable?

MR. AXELROD: Well, I haven’t read all of his comments, either, David. Again, I’m focused on how well we get health security for our all Americans; how we get this economy moving in the right direction. We’ve pulled back from the abyss of a potential collapse, and now we have to build for the future and get people back to work. I think those are the things that we should be focused on, and that’s what I am focused on.

Fox News Sunday

HOWARD DEAN: Well, I was just going to say this guy’s Yale-educated lawyer. He’s a best-selling author about his specialty. I think he was brought down. I think it’s too bad.

Washington’s a tough place that way, and I think it’s a loss for the country.

HOST CHRIS WALLACE: Governor, how about the fact that he had made a series of statements and had signed this petition in 2004 indicating—suggesting that the government might have some role or some complicity in 9/11?

DR. DEAN: Well, he was told by the people waving those clipboards around that he was signing something else, so I think that’s too bad.

Look, all of us campaigning for office have had people throw clipboards in front of our face and ask us to sign, and he learned the hard way you ought not to do that.

But I don’t think he really thinks the government had anything to do with causing 9/11.

MR. WALLACE: Senator Alexander, your reaction to the Jones resignation?

SEN. LAMAR ALEXANDER: Well, I don’t think he’s the issue. I think the czars are the issue. We have about two dozen so-called czars—the pay czar, the car czar, all these czars in the White House.

And that really is an affront to the Constitution, because the Constitution was set up to say that the president is the executive, but the people who manage the government the secretaries, the Cabinet members, of which I was one, have to be approved by the Congress and have to report to the Congress.

So when you take all these people and make policy close to the president and the White House to people who don’t go to the Congress and aren’t approved by the Congress, you’re just adding fuel to the fire by those who think Washington is taking over everything.

ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos”

HOST GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Does the president believe that he is the victim of a smear campaign or does the president think that Jones actions and words merit resignation?

WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY ROBERT GIBBS: Well what Van Jones decided was that the agenda of this president was bigger than any one individual. The president thanks Van Jones for his service in the first eight months helping to coordinate renewable energy jobs and lay the foundation for our future economic problem…The president accepted his resignation, but Van Jones as he said in his statement he was going to get in the way of the President.

STEPHANOPOULOS:  So the president doesn’t endorse in any way the things that Van Jones said before but the president doesnt want him to go?

GIBBS: He doesn’t but he thanks him for his service.

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Around the web:

WASHINGTON, Sept 6, 2009 (AFP)—President Barack Obama’s special adviser for green jobs has resigned under pressure from leading Republican politicians and revelations about his controversial past statements.

Van Jones, a former civil rights activist from California, had been working for the White House Council on Environmental Quality since March.

“I am resigning my post at the Council on Environmental Quality, effective today,” Jones said in a statement dated September 5 but released shortly after midnight on September 6.

Jones went on the say that on the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, “opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign” against him.

“They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide,” he continued. “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.”

Jones became the focus of public attention last week when it was revealed that he had signed a petition that questioned whether officials in the administration of former president George W. Bush “may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war.”

It was also revealed that Jones used a crude term to describe Republicans in a speech he gave before joining the administration.

As a result, several prominent Republicans demanded action against Jones. Republican Representative Mike Pence on Friday called on Jones to resign or be fired.

Jones’ “extremist views and coarse rhetoric have no place in this administration or the public debate,” Pence said.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said on the ABC show “This Week” that Obama thanked Jones for his service, and for “helping to coordinate renewable energy jobs that are going to lay the foundation for our future economic growth.”

When asked whether Obama had wanted Jones to resign, Gibbs was evasive.

“The president and the CEQ accepted his resignation because Van Jones, as he says in his statement, understood that he was going to get in the way of the president and ultimately this country moving forward on something as important as creating jobs in a clean energy economy.”

Howard Dean, former Democratic National Committee chair, said he spoke to Jones, a Yale-educated lawyer and bestselling author, about the controversy and lamented his departure.

“I think he was brought down. It’s too bad,” Dean, a former presidential contender, told Fox News.

“Washington is a tough place that way and I think it’s a loss for the country.”

With respect to the petition, Dean said that Jones had made the mistake of signing it without reading it carefully.

“He was told by the people waving those clipboards around he was signing something else,” the former Vermont governor said.

“I don’t think he really thinks the government had anything to do with causing 9/11.”

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Van Jones had to resign. It became inevitable when Gibbs offered no support.

Much of the blame for this incident lies squarely on the White House. The information used against Jones was freely available on the web. All it took was a search. I thought by hiring Jones they intended to take a chance on a real left progressive, but now it appears they were simply caught flat-footed. Either Valerie Jarrett -- Jones' champion in the upper echelons of the administration -- didn't know much about him or didn't widely share what she knew. They certainly seemed disinclined to mount a vigorous defense with Glenn Beck gnoshing on his favorite new chew toy and the health care reform battle about to heat up again. No distractions.

For the record, Jones isn't a truther. Five years ago, at the end of a busy paternity leave, he was asked to support the calls of 9/11 families for further investigation of the attacks (reflecting the concerns of millions of Americans). He agreed and his name ended up on a petition that contained language he didn't support. Three others who signed the petition have also come forward to say they were deceived about its final contents. But the truth of it hardly matters at this point. Jones has always spoken freely, not in the clipped, narrow confines permitted of those who aspire to public office. He talks real talk, in colorful, provocative language. There's plenty in his copious past writing and speaking that can be demagogued. This isn't a civic discussion among people who care who Van Jones really is or what he really believes, after all. It's a head hunt.

On substantive grounds, the resignation is not that significant. Part of the absurdity of all this is that Jones was basically a low-level functionary. By yesterday the dimwit conservative hack Dick Morris had him "in charge of running the cap-and-trade legislation" -- ignorant on too many levels to catalog -- but I doubt if Jones has ever so much as been in a meeting with Obama. By all accounts he was frustrated by the difficulty of getting even the smallest things done from the bottom of a massive bureaucracy. Even if he'd had the hidden intentions Beck and his pant-wetting audience attribute to every black liberal, he couldn't have done anything about it.

But policy, reality, that's not what bottom-feeders like Beck care about. The right governed the country for eight years and ran it into a ditch. Conservatives have no plausible health care solution, no climate solution. They have nothing to offer in response to the nation's pressing problems. What they have is affect. They have the amygdala, the fight-or-flight reflex. They have deep threads of racism, fear, and resentment.

In other words, they don't care what Van Jones does, they care what he is. Beck peddles a message that's been around since America was born: They're taking your country away. They -- the non-white races, the immigrants, the urbanites, the communists, the elites -- are stealing the country from nice, simple white Christians. They're taking what rightfully belongs to us, to Real Americans.

This basic, gut-level fear of loss, fear of tribal obsolescence and irrelevance, is all the 25%-and-shrinking right has left. It has been overwhelmed by its most paranoid, bigoted elements. Not activists, not online petitioners, but U.S. senators and Republican thought leaders say the president wasn't born in the U.S.; that he wants to kill old people; that he is not fit to speak to school children. They are banging drums and chanting just outside the campfire circle of rational civic discourse. Their din makes it impossible to think, to plan, to govern. They can not lead, but in their twisted fear they can prevent the rest of us from going anywhere either.

Our civic immune system has grown weak. There are no filters, no longer shared standards of evidence, truth, or decency. The poison courses unhindered through the body. Nothing, no matter how factually insane or morally repugnant, can be repelled.

Like I said, Beck's more greasy huckster than true believer. He went after Jones to get revenge on Color of Change, a group Jones co-founded, for targeting his advertisers (which are dropping like flies). Rupert Murdoch will only put up with the stench as long as money's coming in.

But make no mistake, it's racial resentment that blew this story up. The worst outcome of all this is that it will validate Beck and his long history of paranoid conspiracy theories and repugnant allegations. It will be like chum in the water, almost as invigorating to the crazies as bagging Dan Rather. Much, much more ugliness will ensue, and it will become that much harder to focus on the multiple crises converging on the country.

The White House will find someone else to tend green job-training programs; Jones will go back to his much more effective role as an activist. He will do much good in the world in his life, far, far more than a pissant charlatan like Glenn Beck. But I'm not as sanguine about the direction the country is headed.

Related Links:

Approaching Copenhagen with a Portfolio of Domestic Commitments

On ‘climategate’

For McCain, it’s really all about the fake snow

Cross-posted from Wonk Room.

White House green jobs advisor Van Jones is under attack from Fox News as an “avowed radical revolutionary communist” and from ABC News as a “truther” with a “history of incendiary and provocative remarks.” In an attempt to assassinate the character of Van Jones, the right-wing media are distorting his past political activism and cherry-picking Jones’s critiques of the pollution and injustice that still haunt this nation. However, Jones’s true record is one of turning away from anger and finding hope, abandoning division and seeking consensus.

Speaking at the National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas this August, Van Jones argued that “for all of the battleground politics that’s going on,” energy policy should be “the one place that should be a safe harbor for all of us.” Van Jones praised the “bipartisanship” of Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, who as a representative from Los Angeles succeeded in getting “the first president ever to sign into law a green jobs act, President George W. Bush.” He recognized that the summit participants came to find a “healing for our politics” in a “common ground agenda”:

Many of you have taken chances to start companies, you’ve written books, you’ve been grassroots champions for the change that we need. And I think you’re seeking not just a healing for our economy or a healing for our planet, but a healing for our politics. And I want to acknowledge that many of us are here because we are seeking something deeper. This is the common ground agenda. It should be the common ground agenda. We should be able to come together as a country on this one. Finally.

Watch it:

Jones then explained that “the values that underlie this clean energy conversation” are “the common ground values of America.” Underlying the call for clean energy is the value that “clean air is better than dirty air for the health of our children.” Underlying the call for energy efficiency is that value that treating our country’s resources “with wisdom and respect is more important than wasting them.” And “if we have the opportunity to fight both poverty and pollution by putting people to work in these new industries, we would be wise as a country to do that.”

To extended applause, Van Jones explained that the Obama administration has committed $5 billion to improving the energy efficiency of low-income households because the same investment “that cut unemployment and cut an energy bill and cuts greenhouse gases is also going to cut asthma, and take asthma inhalers out of little girls’ and boys’ pockets.”

Jones discussed in further detail how President Obama’s clean energy agenda tears down traditional ideological divides by “asking questions progressives like” but “giving answers that conservatives should like”:

We’re asking questions progressives like but we’re giving answers that conservatives should like. We’re asking questions about how to move the needle on poverty and pollution and how we create more economic opportunity especially for people in the lower part of our economy. But the answers are answers that conservatives should like. We’re not talking about expanding welfare, we’re talking about expanding work. We’re not talking about expanding entitlements, we’re talking about expanding enterprise and investments. We’re not talking about redistributing existing wealth, we’re talking about reinventing an existing sector, and creating new wealth by unleashing innovation and entrepeneurship. This should be common ground. We should be able to stand together and be one country on this.

Jones concluded by again making the call for us to “be one country” and connect “the people that most need work” to the “work that most needs to be done”:

There is so much work that needs to be done in this country to retrofit America, to cut these energy bills. And there are so many people who need work. This is our opportunity as a country -- and it comes around very rarely -- to take the people that most need work, and connect them to the work that most needs to be done, to fight pollution and poverty at the same time, and be one country. Let’s be one country.

During the applause at the conclusion of Jones’s speech, prominent Republican oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens -- who in 2004 funded the Swift Boat attacks on Sen. John Kerry -- turned to Jones and shook his hand.

Transcript:

First of all, it’s good to be here. I want to honor my friend and hero Vice President Gore. It was a brilliant summation, graceful, et cetera.

I also want to honor Senator Reid, who has been such a huge and steadfast champion on this. You haven’t gotten the credit, so I’ll put it on the table. Not only is Las Vegas going to be a leader in generating energy, but there’s also going to be a $5.7 million smart grid demonstration project so we can use that energy better and smarter here. Congratulations on that. It’s a big deal for the whole country. [APPLAUSE]

Senator Wirth and Senator Cantwell, I thank you also for your leadership and effectiveness on these very very important issues.

I also want to thank John Podesta. He sicced -- this is a very tough set of problems -- he sicced two of the best minds in the country on it, in Bracken Hendricks and in Benjamin Goldstein. This report, I think, is very challenging and visionary in pushing us to think even bigger and bolder. I thank you for that.

I also thank Secretary Chu for making energy efficiency cool again. We get a chance to quote you on that “fruit on the ground” thing four or five times a day. So thank you for saying it’s the “fruit on the ground.”

And also, I’m looking forward to hearing the comments of Secretary of may Labor Hilda Solis, the champion, which I think people sometimes forget, of the first ever federal legislation ever to codify the concept of green jobs, the Green Jobs Act. Not only she able to get it through Congress, she was able to get the first president ever to sign into law a green jobs act, President George W. Bush. So I give you credit for that, for being able to be a leader in bipartisanship and bringing us forward together. [APPLAUSE]

There’s genius around this table.

There’s also genius around this room. I want to acknowledge that there are so many people here who are listening who could easily come up here and talk, and teach us a great deal. I think that you are here, many of you -- you wake up in the morning, this issue’s the first thing on your mind. Many of you have taken chances to start companies, you’ve written books, you’ve been grassroots champions for the change that we need.

And I think you’re seeking not just a healing for our economy or a healing for our planet, but a healing for our politics. And I want to acknowledge that many of us are here because we are seeking something deeper. This is the common ground agenda. It should be the common ground agenda. We should be able to come together as a country on this one. Finally. [APPLAUSE]

The reason for that is the values that underlie this clean energy conversation, which we don’t speak to directly enough, are the common ground values of America. Clean air is better than dirty air for the health of our children. That’s common ground. That’s why we need clean energy.

We have been blessed in this country with so many resources. Conserving them, saving them, treating them with wisdom and respect is more important than wasting them. That’s why energy efficiency is so important.

And if we have the opportunity to fight both poverty and pollution by putting people to work in these new industries, we would be wise as a country to do that. That is common ground. That is common ground.

And that is why this administration is so committed to energy efficiency. We think that this is the most fiscally conservative thing that we can do with the federal dollars.

Why do I say that?

I say that because the money that we invest in energy efficiency -- these are humble, hard-working dollars. They work double time, triple time, quadruple time. If you take a worker, someone who right now needs work, someone who’s sitting on the bench but has skills or the desire to learn skills, And you give that person an opportunity to stand up and to be an energy efficiency specialist and walk across the street, you put a dollar in that person’s hand. That dollar just cut unemployment. But when she walks across the street and begins to blow in that clean, non-toxic insulation. When she begins to replace those windows and doors. When she begins to do the work of improving and upgrading our homes. That same dollar that cut unemployment is also going to cut somebody’s home energy bill.

And it gets better.

That same dollar’s also going to cut pollution. Somewhere there’s often a coal-powered plant that’s working overtime because our homes are so leaky and waste so much energy. But if we can cut that energy bill by 30 percent, we can cut that pollution by 30 percent. That cuts not just greenhouse gas emissions, that cuts asthma. That some dollar that cut unemployment and cut an energy bill and cuts greenhouse gases is also going to cut asthma, and take asthma inhalers out of little girls’ and boys’ pockets. That’s the kind of double, triple, quadruple benefit that we’re talking about. That’s common ground. [APPLAUSE]

And I think it’s important that we recognize that for all of the battleground politics that’s going on, this is the one place that should be a safe harbor for all of us. We should be able to stand together.

We’re asking questions progressives like but we’re giving answers that conservatives should like. We’re asking questions about how to move the needle on poverty and pollution and how we create more economic opportunity especially for people in the lower part of our economy. But the answers are answers that conservatives should like. We’re not talking about expanding welfare, we’re talking about expanding work. We’re not talking about expanding entitlements, we’re talking about expanding enterprise and investments. We’re not talking about redistributing existing wealth, we’re talking about reinventing an existing sector, and creating new wealth by unleashing innovation and entrepeneurship. This should be common ground. We should be able to stand together and be one country on this. And that’s why the administration has been so committed.

That’s why we have $5 billion on the table, up from 200 million last year in 2008. Five billion dollars on the table this year to cut energy bills for low-income people by unleashing a tidal wave of energy efficiency workers. That’s why GSA has literally billions of dollars to retrofit our government buildings. That is why HUD has billions of dollars in our recovery package to cut energy costs for public housing. That is why you see with our Recovery Through Retrofit program -- which the Vice President asked us to start -- 12, 13 different agencies and departments standing together for the first time coming up with new ways forward. I mean Treasury. I mean Commerce. I mean the Small Business Administration. Because we know, as Secretary Chu has said so many times, because this is the fruit on the ground.

There is so much work that needs to be done in this country to retrofit America, to cut these energy bills. And there are so many people who need work. This is our opportunity as a country — and it comes around very rarely — to take the people that most need work, and connect them to the work that most needs to be done, to fight pollution and poverty at the same time, and be one country. Let’s be one country. Thank you very much. [APPLAUSE]

Related Links:

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New Energy Finance: Solar power 50% cheaper by year end

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

SEE UPDATE BELOW

Glenn Beck still can't believe American voters voted for a black man.

A couple days ago I ran a post defending Van Jones from some of the more absurd charges leveled at him by noted race-baiter Glenn Beck over the last month. Jones is not an "ex-con," he's not a communist, he's not even a czar. He's not, to pick just one of Beck's darkly hinted smears, on a top-secret mission to commandeer the U.S. Treasury and dispense slavery reparations. He is, however, two things that scare the whitey tighties off of Beck and his tighty-whitey audience: black and liberal.

It was mostly a tempest in a teabag until the last couple of days, when Jones got tagged with a few things that could very well end up spelling the end of his career in the executive branch.

The first and less consequential is a video of Jones answering the question of why Republicans in Congress continually vote against clean energy as follows: "Because they're assholes." That is a) pretty funny and b) a little difficult to get worked up about. When he said those words, Jones was an activist speaking to an activist audience, not a government official. When a Republican vice president told a senior Democratic senator to "fuck himself", the rightosphere responded with enthusiasm that bordered on tumescence. Republicans -- not activists, but senior politicians -- spent years cavalierly calling everyone to the left of Genghis Khan a traitor. Call the waahbulance.

Anyway, let's face it, blocking progress on the signal challenges of our time for partisan political gain does kind of make you an asshole. Jones issued an apology anyway.

Yesterday brought a more disturbing discovery: that Jones had signed a Oct. 24, 2004, petition from the 9/11 Truth organization. The so-called "truthers" come in many varieties. At the far end are the loony tunes who believe the Bush administration rigged the whole thing using some combination of thermite bombs, missiles, and holograms. Ever so slightly less loony, though much more widely believed, is the notion that Bush officials knew the attack was coming and looked the other way. Not loony tunes at all -- in fact shared by tens of millions of Americans -- are concerns that warnings were insufficiently heeded, reaction to the event was riddled with incompetence, and official investigations have answered many questions poorly, if at all.

It was in this latter vein that the petition was written, with some political flourishes tossed in, reflecting the political context of the time. Many of the questions raised by the petition were banal, if anything, about topics addressed (adequately or not) in the official 9/11 commission report. What made it so toxic was a part of the preamble, which "calls for immediate public attention to unanswered questions that suggest that people within the current administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war."

That's bona fide crazy town. Did all 100 of the signatories notice it? I have trouble believing they did, even in the angry panic that preceded the 2004 election. There are some fairly prominent names, members of 9/11 families, heads of NGOs, professors, authors-- Paul Hawken and Richard Heinberg among others. People who have reputations to risk (alongside predictable cranks like Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader, of course). Were they mostly concerned with the unanswered questions or did they really want to associate with the notion that Bush officials knowingly let 3,000 people die? A source says Jones said he didn't read the petition closely -- thought it was just a petition to support the families' questions -- and I suspect that's true for many of the signatories. In a released statement Jones disavowed it:

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. As for the petition that was circulated today, I do not agree with this statement and it certainly does not reflect my views now or ever.

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.

Paul Hawken also released a statement corroborating Jones take on it:

In the fall of 2004, I was approached by 911Truth.org to support the grieving families of the 9/11 tragedy. Family members who had lost a loved one, and many American citizens, felt that the 9/11 Commission had not fully explored key questions involving that fateful day.

My concern then and now was for the victims. I felt that a deeper inquiry into policies and security would be helpful to reach a fuller understanding of the cause of 9/11 and how to prevent future terrorist attacks.

I do not recollect any of the questions that are posed on the website, never saw the subsequent press release of Oct 26, 2004, and never signed such a statement. I was interested in questions, not blame; inquiry, not jumping to conclusions.

It is unfortunate that Van's name has been used in this way as I know he would not knowingly endorse a statement that would place blame or create divisiveness.

That would probably be that, except: Today, it emerged that Jones was on the organizing committee of a 2002 march also geared at demanding an inquiry into 9/11-- again, the document combines sensible questions and objections to the way the Bush administration used 9/11 ... with some slightly crazy implications of conspiracy. The explanation's likely the same -- signing on before reading all the details -- but in D.C., two is a trend.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was asked today if Jones still has the confidence of the president, and he basically refused to answer, saying only that Jones is "still employed at the White House." That doesn't bode well -- even money has Jones out by the end of the day.

Is it just? Of course not. Jones is certainly guilty of poor judgment: As a lefty activist fighting a malign administration, he basically signed on to anything that came across his desk, without always reading closely or thinking it through. He was far, far from alone at that time. But he's had nothing at all to do with the truthers outside of having his name on these documents. By no even mildly charitable interpretation is he "a truther" like the lazy-ass media is now saying.

Of course the right will offer no charity, and the media will echo whatever the right says. Politics ain't beanbag.

Kate Sheppard observes that ...

... when Jones joined the administration last March, many environmentalists worried they were losing their most charismatic and visible spokesman.

Instead of playing a public role in drumming up support for clean-energy polices—something he was extremely effective at—[Jones] is now a relatively low-level bureaucrat struggling to steer stimulus funding toward green-job programs. In all honesty, Glenn Beck may have more to worry about with Jones outside the White House than in it.

It may be true that Jones can be more effective on the outside, but this is about a lot more than him. It's about whether an outspoken progressive can work in government. About whether the likes of Glenn Beck, a revanchist, fear-mongering huckster who would have no place in the public sphere of a sane country, can collect a scalp.

Next week Obama will give an address to school children, encouraging them to stay in school and study. In response to yet another outbreak of mendacious bullying, the administration just changed the wording on its press release. It was a gutless move, evincing the kind of news-cycle jumpiness the Obama team eschewed so well during the campaign. Dumping Van Jones would be the same kind of thing.

This is all about bitch-slap politics. If Jones drops out, think Beck or the right-wing slime industry will stop? Think they won't keep going after Carol Browner, John Holdren, and the rest -- twisting and attacking every word and gesture from the Obama administration? "Uncovering" people as wildly caricatured leftists? Faux-populist fear merchants are like sharks; they have to keep moving, keep eating. There's no sating them. Letting Beck bag Jones would be like chum in the water.

Jones will end up on his feet and doing good in the world no matter what. But the resolution of this fight will tell us a great deal about the balance of power between the Obama administration and the toxic 25 percent. The wingnuts have an active propaganda network, including a devoted cable news channel, but Obama still has the trust of the American people and a popular agenda. He needs to get his mojo back.

UPDATE: Ben Smith of Politico reports that two more signatories to the petition -- Rabbi Michael Lerner and historian Howard Zinn -- also claim to have been misled, and to have signed onto something much narrower. Both claim never to have seen, and denounce, what ended up in the final press release.

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Van JonesA while back I lampooned a Glenn Beck segment on Van Jones, who's an advisor to the White House Council on Environmental Quality. According to Beck, Jones is the man on the inside for a vast cryptosocialist conspiracy involving the Apollo Alliance, Color of Change, the Center for American Progress, George Soros, ACORN, Al Queda, and the Trilateral Commission. Everything that goes bump in Beck's closet at night.

Back then I still thought the Gomer Pyle meets Father Coughlin shtick was harmless, too clownish to be taken seriously. Ah, those innocent days before the nation was locked in a room with frantic teabaggers.

Since then Beck's fruitcakery has taken off all over the rightosphere and gotten him what every demagogic infomercial host craves above all else: attention. Advertisers have sprinted away by the dozens, but there are more than enough angry old white people to boost cable ratings.

I suspect his effort to slime Jones will have little effect, as long as the White House doesn't get jumpy. Nobody who isn't already around the bend buys this stuff. It's a game Rupurt Murdoch's playing. He knows it will implode sooner or later, but he's going to suck every last Nielson point out of it.

Meanwhile, Beck is selling fear like hotcakes, effectively inciting people to violence, telling them their country is being taken from them by blacks and commies. Even black commies! The longer Beck goes on, the higher the chances that a Fox viewer with a screw loose will take him seriously and hurt someone. Think Murdoch's ratings will take a hit if that happens? Me neither. It's morally reprehensible, but what can you do? It's a free country and people are free to be two-bit hucksters.

Anyway, just for the record, let's address a few of the Not-Too-Swift Boat attacks. (Where you're done here, you might also check out some similar fact-checking from Eva Paterson, Jones' old boss.)

• Van Jones is not a "Green Jobs Czar." There is no such thing. There has never been a job with that title. No one in the administration has ever used that term. Jones is special advisor for green jobs, enterprise and innovation at CEQ. "Green Jobs Czar" a title made up by the media. Beck's obsession with the term -- common parlance in politics since Nixon -- is as inexplicable in substance as it is creepy in intensity. Regardless, Jones doesn't have mysterious and unaccountable powers to shape the economy. In fact he's a newbie, a low-level political appointee with two Senate-confirmed layers between him and Obama.

But of course, he's black. And Beck's audience just knew a black president would bring in more of his kind. You know how those people behave. There goes the neighborhood.

• Jones is not a "criminal" or an "ex-con" (speaking of barely sub-rosa racism). In 1992, while still attending Yale Law School, Jones volunteered as a legal monitor at a peaceful protest in the wake of the Rodney King verdict. It was in San Francisco, not L.A. He, some other legal monitors, and some protesters were briefly and illegally arrested. They were released in four hours, and later received a legal settlement over the violation of their rights. They were never charged with a crime, much less convicted. The same thing -- improper arrest during peaceful protest -- happened to Jones twice more; again, no charges were ever filed. That is the basis on which Sean Hannity called Jones an "ex-con" on national television. Stay classy, Sean.

• Jones is not a black nationalist or a communist. Beck's entire fevered fantasia is spun out of a single article about Jones, based on an interview he did with a local paper in 2005 -- long before he or anyone who knew him thought he'd ever work for the government. It's actually a fascinating story on a human level. It recounts Jones' evolution as a progressive from angry young radical protester to community organizer to activist bent on a strategy of unity and comity. It's subtitled, "Van Jones renounced his rowdy black nationalism on the way toward becoming an influential leader of the new progressive politics." If you're interested in anything deeper than cable gimcrackery, I recommend giving it a read.

If you know Jones, you know he's extremely candid; you also know the guy absolutely loves talking, loves the richness and drama of language, loves a funny or dramatic turn of phrase. (Would that more progressive leaders loved language the same way.) So things like this, when he talks about his anger at police overreaction --

Convinced that American society needed a wake-up call on race, Jones abandoned his plan to become a journalist, concluding that he would rather make news than report it. "If I'd been in another country, I probably would have joined some underground guerrilla sect," he said. "But as it was, I went on to an Ivy League law school."

-- are just funny to me. But they're easy to demagogue. Of course it's true that Jones was a self-styled radical in his youth. Hell, I was once a "self-avowed" libertarian. People grow up.

Around 2000, faced with a fractured and infighting movement, he had something of a breakdown/epiphany. He turned his back on radicalism and focused on finding a political program that inspires and unifies. If there are two signal features of Jones' subsequent activism, one is that it builds bridges among demographics that have historically approached one another with suspicion; the other is that it relies crucially on both the private and public sectors. It reclaims what conservatives have stolen and perverted: respect for free markets, patriotism, and family values. Indeed, when Jones talks about targeting jobs and economic development at struggling urban areas, he sounds like nobody so much as the late Jack Kemp. I once saw him deliver a short talk to a crowd of largely white, middle-aged, besuited businessmen at a Wall Street Journal business conference; he was sandwiched in the middle a long line of droning talks. Within 10 minutes, he had the executives on their feet in a standing ovation. They don't do that for communism.

If you want to know what Jones thinks now, instead of what he thought in his early 20s, read his book: The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems. He's out to save America's free-market economy and get its people working. If the conservative movement were smart it would take yes for an answer and claim him as one if its own. But then, it's not smart. It's Beck.

If it's not going to claim him, the right is correct to fear him, though. He has synthesized the best of environmentalism, progressivism, and capitalism into a program with appeal both broad and intense. It's particularly notable among young people, but Jones gets acclaim from virtually everyone who's met him or seen him speak. The more his kind of can-do, entrepreneurial, win-win green solutions spread, the more modern-day conservatives look like panicked, lumbering dinosaurs.

Sooner or later the American public will see something like this:

They'll see that Jones bears no resemblance to the caricature painted by the right. That caricature is just another shadow on the wall of Plato's cave (or Fox's studio, as the case may be). It's another campfire story, another cloud for righties to shout at, another adrenalin boost for a frightened, angry, shrinking audience. This too shall pass.

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Glenn Beck has uncovered a plot! (Yes, another one.)

Turns out Van Jones, President Obama's green jobs czar, is going to coordinate a vast radical/communist/black nationalist takeover of our sweet, virginal land of liberty. Most diabolical of all, he's going to do it by organizing efforts to train and employ low-income people in private sector jobs. Don't you understand? They're going to take over from the inside! You know: them.

Admit it, it's brilliant. Here Beck exposes the cabal of Big Labor, Big Green, Big Business, and Big Commie, orchestrated by the many-tentacled Apollo Alliance:

Can you talk me out of the crazy tree?! No. No, I'm afraid not. You've found them. Right in the last place they thought you'd look.

Jones was undercover for a while, collecting degrees from University of Tennessee at Martin and Yale Law. But then he became an advocate. A (shudder) community organizer. We all know what that means, right Sarah?

Recently he tried to throw tireless commie-hunters like Beck off his trail by writing a book -- 2008's The Green Collar Economy -- that argued for saving the US free-market economy from stagflation by investing in green innovation, infrastructure, and industries, creating millions of jobs in the private sector. But don't be fooled. It was all in the name of bringing down The Man!

Here he is, talking about destroying capitalism by greening the economy:

Scary, right? You gonna trust this guy ahead of Glenn Beck? I didn't think so.

Of course, the shadowy Apollo Alliance ... are they Soros-funded? Probably! ... wants the government to support the evolution of a clean energy economy. Yeah, you heard right: They want the government to provide incentives to businesses to invest in green technologies and services. Needless to say, this kind of Stalinistic, top-down central planning leads only to disasters like the internet, the Interstate Highway System, the polio vaccine, and velcro. And, my god, flouridation. Don't forget flouridation.

The sinister plan was going perfectly well until the radios in Glenn Beck's teeth told him how much danger we're in. And thank Reagan they did!

Never be afraid to shout at the clouds, Glenn. They're looking at you funny.

--

Related on Huffington Post: Eva Paterson looks at "Glenn Beck's Attack on Van Jones -- Fantasies and Falsehoods" (Aug. 28, 2009)

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