Green Jobs 'Czar' Apologizes For 'Truther' Statement ( Van Jones )

The Washington Times ^ | Thursday, September 3, 2009 | Amanda Carpenter

[kristinn]

President Obama’s “green jobs czar” Van Jones is apologizing for the second time in two days, this time for signing a 2004 petition for an organization that seeks to expose the "official lies and cover-up surrounding the events of 9/11."

This comes after a video that recently surfaced in which Mr. Jones called Republicans a disparaging name at an energy lecture in Berkeley, California last February. He apologized for doing that on Wednesday....

Mike Berger, a spokesman for 911Truth.org, told the Washington Times over the phone Thursday morning all of the signers had been verified by their group. He said 9/11Truth.org board members “spoke with each person on the list by phone or through email or individually confirm they hae added their name to that list.”

“I think in most cases they spoke to them personally,” he added. “No one’s name was put on that list without them knowing it.”

By Thursday evening, Mr. Jones apologized for signing the statement and said he doesn't feel that way today and never has had such thoughts, although the 911Truth group claims to have personally confirmed support from all of their signers.

"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," he said in a statement provided to the Washington Times. "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,” he added.

[kristinn]

Van Jones is from the Bay Area Marxist Mafia. You know, ANSWER, Code Pink, Global Exchange, etc.

Obama's going to have a hard time throwing him under the bus.

[R0CK3T]

All I will accept is a short good bye.

This clown is a threat to my rights and El Bamadente for life is the reason he’s even here.

[BunnySlippers]

Gee whiz, I’d get a hernia from apologizing so much.

[ETL]

From David Horowitz's
FrontPageMag.com/DiscoverTheNetworks.org
PROFILE: VAN JONES

• Became a Communist in the aftermath of the 1992 "Rodney King riots" in Los Angeles
• Founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in 1996
• Was active in the anti-Iraq War demonstrations organized by International ANSWER
• Served as a board member of the Rainforest Action Network and Free Press
• In March 2009, President Barack Obama named Jones to be his so-called "Green Jobs Czar."

Born in 1968 in rural West Tennessee, Van Jones earned a B.A. degree from the University of Tennessee at Martin and then attended Yale Law School. During his years at Yale, Jones served as an intern with the San Francisco-based Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights (LCCR), which views the United States as an irredeemably racist nation and "champions the legal rights of people of color, poor people, immigrants and refugees, with a special commitment to African-Americans."

Jones says that he first became politically radicalized in the aftermath of the deadly April 1992 Los Angeles riots which erupted shortly after four L.A. police officers who had beaten the infamous Rodney King were exonerated in court. "I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th," says Jones, who is black, "and then the verdicts came down on April 29th. By August, I was a communist."

Jones was arrested during the L.A. riots and spent a short time in jail. "I met all these young radical people of color," he recalls, "I mean really radical: communists and anarchists. And it was, like, 'This is what I need to be a part of.' I spent the next ten years of my life working with a lot of those people I met in jail, trying to be a revolutionary."

After earning his Juris Doctorate from Yale in 1993, Jones relocated to San Francisco, where he helped establish Bay Area PoliceWatch, a hotline and lawyer-referral service that began as a project of LCCR. In 1996 he founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, which, claiming that the American criminal-justice system is infested with racism, seeks to promote alternatives to incarceration. According to the Baker Center:

"Decades of disinvestment in our cities have led to despair and hopelessness. For poor communities and communities of color it's even worse, as excessive, racist policing and over-incarceration have left people even further behind."

By the late 1990s, Jones was a committed Marxist-Leninist-Maoist who viewed police officers as the arch-enemies of black people, and who loathed capitalism for allegedly exploiting nonwhite minorities worldwide. He became a leading member of Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), a now-defunct Bay Area Marxist-Maoist collective that was staffed by members of various local nonprofits, a number of whom had ties to the Ella Baker Center.

In the early 2000s, Jones and STORM were active in the anti-Iraq War demonstrations organized by International ANSWER, a front group for the Marxist-Leninist Workers World Party. STORM also had ties to the South African Communist Party and it revered Amilcar Cabral, the late Marxist revolutionary leader (of Guinea-Bissau and the Cape Verde Islands) who lauded Lenin as "the greatest champion of the national liberation of the peoples." (In 2006 Van Jones would name his own newborn son "Cabral" -- in Amilcar Cabral's honor.)

During his tenure with STORM, Jones collaborated on numerous projects (including antiwar demonstrations) with local activist Elizabeth "Betita" Martinez, who served as a "mentor" for members of the Ella Baker Center. Martinez was a longtime Maoist who went on to join the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS), a Communist Party USA splinter group, in the early 1990s. To this day, Martinez continues to sit on the CCDS advisory board alongside such luminaries as Angela Davis, Timuel Black (who served on Barack Obama's 2004 Senate campaign committee), and musician Pete Seeger. Martinez is also a board member of the Movement for a Democratic Society, the parent organization of Progressives for Obama. Martinez and Van Jones together attended a "Challenging White Supremacy" workshop which advanced the theme that "all too often, the unconscious racism of white activists stands in the way of any effective, worthwhile collaboration" with blacks.

In 2005 Jones and the Ella Baker Center produced the "Social Equity Track" for the United Nations' World Environment Day celebration, a project that eventually would evolve into the Baker Center's Green-Collar Jobs Campaign -- "a job-training and employment pipeline providing 'green pathways out of poverty' for low-income adults in Oakland."

Soon after attending the Clinton Global Initiative in September 2007, Jones launched "Green For All," a non-governmental organization "dedicated to building an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty … advocating for local, state and federal commitment to job creation, job training, and entrepreneurial opportunities in the emerging green economy - especially for people from disadvantaged communities."

In 2008 Jones published his first book, The Green Collar Economy, which focused on environmental and economic issues. The book received favorable reviews from such notables as Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, Laurie David, Winona LaDuke, environmentalist Paul Hawken, and NAACP President/CEO Ben Jealous.

Jones has served as a board member of numerous environmental and nonprofit organizations, including the Rainforest Action Network; Free Press; Bioneers (which accepts the United Nations Millennium Ecosystem Report's warning that "[h]uman activity is putting such strain on the natural functions of Earth that the ability of the planet's ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted"); the National Apollo Alliance (which seeks "to catalyze a clean energy revolution that will put millions of Americans to work in a new generation of high-quality, green-collar jobs"); the Social Venture Network (which aims "to build a just economy and sustainable planet"); and Julia Butterfly Hill's "Circle of Life" environmental foundation.

Jones was also a Senior Fellow with the Center for American Progress and a Fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences.

In March 2009, President Barack Obama named Jones to be his so-called "Green Jobs Czar." Jones' formal title is "Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation" for the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

In a July 2009 interview with Newsweek magazine, Jones said he could not explain exactly what a "green job" is:

"Well, we still don't have a unified definition, and that's not unusual in a democracy. It takes a while for all the states and the federal government to come to some agreement. But the Department of Labor is working on it very diligently. Fundamentally, it's getting there, but we haven't crossed the finish line yet."

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2406

[Sarah Barracuda]

Obama will NEVER throw Van Jones under the bus. I keep on hearing Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity ask how this guy and his other czars could have gotten in..DUH, because Obama AGREES with them

[GOP_Lady]

An apology won’t work.

We all know he’s a radical.

He’s apologizing for two reasons:

1. He’s been exposed for what he is; and

2. To save face for BHO.

[Tublecane]

It would be nice if he’d get chucked outfor being a commie rather than a Truther. The former is much nuttier and more dangerous than the latter.

[kalee]

Saying I am sorry if you are offended is not the same as saying I am sorry for what I said or did to cause that offense.

Jones issued a typical democrat non-apology apology.

[ryan71]

They’re going to fire him and I’m gonna hate to see him go. He’s a poster boy for this America-hating administration.

Glenn, continue exposing the rest of these traitors.

[RushIsMyTeddyBear]

After ‘Van the Man’ is (if) gone.....make sure we go after the rest of these kooks who have by-passed ALL security and congressional hearings that are surrounding this ‘president’.

[Fester Chugabrew]

How can such blatant falsehoods be spoken with such levels of comfort and confidence? This guy is a natural.

[ilgipper]

I hope Beck and the few non-radicalized media members out there continue to pick these people apart, one by one. Obama is a radical, and an absolute devout Marxist. We need to reduce him to 20% approval and destroy the left wing of his party for the next two decades. What an absolute embarrassment that the American people put this piece of garbage into the White House.

[RushIsMyTeddyBear]

EXACTLY. My husband uses that same tactic all the time.

“I’m sorry if you think I offended you.”

Bollocks.

[buccaneer81]

My bet is the announcement comes at 4:00 PM EDT tomorrow that Jones has withdrawn from the appointment. Labor day weekend, late Friday afternoon, holiday Monday, Obama school propaganda speech Tuesday, Congressional address Wednesday.

One week from tonight, the only people who remember Jones will be FReepers and Glenn Beck.

[denydenydeny]

All of this would have been addressed in a Senate confirmation hearing. Yet another reason why “czars” are a stupid idea.

[mojo114]

This is going to be very interesting to watch.
Of course if Van Jones goes so should the rest of the Czar’s or Advisors that have the same leanings.

[GOP_Lady]

Indeed.

[buccaneer81]

Yet another reason why “czars” are a stupid idea.

Stupid? More like unconstitutional. And yes, I include the "Drug Czar" position created by Reagan.

[hole_n_one]

Tapper says Jones failed to address how his name came to be signed on the petition, Carpenter says Jones apologized for signing the petition and Gateway Pundit says Jones denies having signed the petition.

wtf?

[CriticalJ]

Van Jones is the gift that keeps on giving.

Everyday, more info about his past comes out and it is always off the deep end.

0bama opponents should continue to hitch Jones’s wagon to Obama.