Barack Obama has found a loophole he loves.  By appointing “special advisors”, otherwise known as “czars”, he completely bypasses Nancy Pelosi and the rest of Congress.  He doesn’t have to worry about those annoying confirmation hearings by doing that.  I’m sure he feels that by eliminating public hearings, he’s doing us all a favor.  I’m sure he’s right.  For instance, if he’d followed traditional protocol, we would have had to listen to a lot more of a “special” candidate Van Jones.  I had never heard of Van Jones before.  So, I looked up some pros and cons of this guy.  First, the pro:

Van Jones is a globally recognized, award-winning pioneer in human rights and the clean energy economy. He is a 1993 graduate of the Yale Law School and an attorney.

Van wrote the definitive book on “green jobs”: The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems. In 2008 — thanks to a low-cost, viral marketing campaign — his book became an instant New York Times bestseller. It is today being translated into six languages.

As a tireless advocate for disadvantaged people and the environment, Van helped to pass America’s first “green job training” legislation: the Green Jobs Act, which George W. Bush signed into law as a part of the 2007 Energy Bill. He is the co-founder of a number of successful non-profit organizations, including the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and Green For All.

Van is the recipient of many awards and honors, including: the Reebok International Human Rights Award; the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leader designation; the prestigious, international Ashoka Fellowship; and many more. Van was included in the Ebony Magazine “Power 150″ list of most influential African Americans for 2009. In 2008, Essence magazine named him one of the 25 most inspiring/influential African Americans. TIME Magazine named him an environmental hero in 2008. In 2009, TIME named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

In March 2009, Van went to work as the special advisor for green jobs at the White House Council for Environmental Quality.

Pretty lofty accolades.  That was written by Van Jones himself.  He really likes himself.  That’s good I suppose.  You can fix two problems at one time by buying his book via my link.  Win-win for Van and myself.  Although it was an instant New York Times bestseller, it’s currently at 13,475 in Amazon’s book listing.  Better get it quick then while it’s still printed in English.

He then founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in his spare time.  On their main page, you can read about Van Jones being on Time’s list of influential people.  In addition, they advocate:

1. Close the Dangerous and Dysfuctional Division of Juvenile Justice Youth Prisons and shift responsibility and funding to local programs proven to work — Californians will save $1 Billion of 5 years.
2. Convert all current death sentences to life without possibility of parole and temporarily suspend new death sentences for a savings of $1 Billion over 5 years.  ( Be sure to support the ACLU!)
3. Shift California to a community-health based response to minor drug offenses.
4. Limit 3 strikes penalties to those convicted of violent crimes.

OK, so it seems Van’s primary focus is green energy and human rights.  So, it only seems natural Obama would appoint him as his “green energy czar”.  However, as usual for Obama’s administration, this guy comes with some baggage:

• Jones joined the “9/11 truther” movement by signing a statement in 2004 calling for then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and others to launch an investigation into evidence that suggests “people within the current administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war.”  Fox points out that fellow members include Code Pink founder Jodie Evans and former Representative Cynthia McKinney.  Anyone who knows me knows what I think of Cynthia McKinney.  In addition, another member of that site is James von Brunn.  He’s the guy who shot up the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
• Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), the revolutionary group formed by self-described “communist” and “rowdy black nationalist” Van Jones, held a vigil in Oakland, California, “mourning the victims of U.S. imperialism around the world” on the night after Sept. 11, 2001.  STORM has purged most of it’s records, however, a copy can be found here.  They blamed the US for 9/11.
• Van Jones, the Obama administration’s “green jobs” adviser, apologized Wednesday for calling Republicans “assholes,” saying the comments were made before he joined the administration and “were clearly inappropriate.”   Jones had told a group of listeners earlier in the year that the reason Republicans are stonewalling the president is because they’re “assholes,” remarks that were recorded in a video and posted to YouTube.  “I apologize for the offensive words I chose to use during that speech,” Jones said in a written statement to Politico. “They do not reflect the views of this administration, which has made every effort to work in a bipartisan fashion, and they do not reflect the experience I have had since I joined the administration.”
• Another fairly Youtube video is the one where Van Jones claims whites are intentionally poisoning blacks by sending all of the bad “green economy” poison into poor neighborhoods.  I’m not sure exactly who did the research to support his assumption.
• He has very extensive ties to Communist organizations within the US.  I was going to list those ties, but it’s rather lengthy. And no, I’m not citing Glenn Beck. Glenn Beck simply read the news.
• He has openly advocated, ok, here comes the word all liberals hate to hear, socialism.  He even claims that liberals are basically closet socialists. No way!
• In a 2004 Yes article claimed “Bush will work to intensify the borrow-and-spend tax policies, drill-and-burn energy policies, and lie-and-die military misadventure in Iraq. A draft is a real possibility, The GOP will unleash a fearsome assault on civil liberties, especially targeting Arabs. And Team Bush will carry out its own 21st century Christian jihad, persecuting Muslims, feminists, and “sexual deviants” wherever it can. Bush will try to stack the courts, including the Supreme Court, with right-wingers, and He will try to reward big business by privatizing social security and ramming through “tort reform” to shield corporations from lawsuits“.

It goes on and on.  He basically rose to fame in Oakland by harassing their cops with his STORM organization through a program called Copwatch.  STORM was openly communist.

This is the guy Obama has handed a $30 billion budget to.  And, to me personally, the most ghastly fact about Van Jones, something so disgusting and vile it nauseates me to think that in order to support my point that this guy’s not the best idea for this un-Constitutional Executive power grab.  Van Jones is openly…….

Sheez, I’m not sure I can say it here.  I’ll look slightly to the side of the screen and type.  Of course I’ll look to the right, there is nothing to the left of this guy.  That’ll make it ok.

He openly admires Nancy Pelosi.

What the hell was Obama thinking with this guy?  Van Jones is the best reason “csars”, ie special advisors to the President, should be banned.

Tags: 9/11, black, borrow and tax, christian jihad, civil liberties, communism, communist, congress, copwatch, csar, cynthia-mckinney, drill and burn, ella baker, feminists, green, green collar, green csar, human-rights, james von brunn, jodie evans, liberal, lie and die, muslims, nancy pelosi, obama, poison, sexual deviants, social-security, socialism, socialist, special advisor, storm, truther, unconstitutional, van jones