Posted on 09/04/2009 12:42:04 AM PDT by BradtotheBone
A top environmental official of the Obama administration issued a statement Thursday apologizing for past incendiary statement and denying that he ever agreed with a 2004 petition on which his name appears, a petition calling for congressional hearings and an investigation by the New York Attorney General into "evidence that suggests high-level government officials may have deliberately allowed the September 11th attacks to occur."
Van Jones, the Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, is Number 46 of the petitioners from the so-called "Truther" movement which suggests that people in the administration of President George W. Bush "may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war."
In a statement issued Thursday evening Jones said of "the petition that was circulated today, I do not agree with this statement and it certainly does not reflect my views now or ever."
He did not explain how his name came to be on the petition. A source said Jones did not carefully review the language in the petition before agreeing to add his name.
"My work at the Council on Environmental Quality is entirely focused on one goal: building clean energy incentives which create 21st century jobs that improve energy efficiency and use renewable resources," Jones said in his statement tonight.
Jones also said in his statement that "In recent days some in the news media have reported on past statements I made before I joined the administration – some of which were made years ago. If I have offended anyone with statements I made in the past, I apologize."
With a history of incendiary and provocative remarks, many of them dealing with his view of how whites exploit minorities, Jones has emerged as the subject of much conservative scrutiny in recent days, particularly from Fox News' Glenn Beck. (Jones defenders point out that most of Beck's criticism came after a group Jones helped found, Color of Change, began pushing advertisers to boycott Beck after he accused President Obama of being a racist.)
Jones is the best-selling author of The Green Collar Economy and a leader in the "green jobs" movement -- the idea that clean energy jobs can create jobs, especially in poor communities. He has been praised from leaders ranging from Al Gore to former eBay CEO (and Republican) Meg Whitman, who in May said that Jones is doing "a marvelous job… I’m a huge fan of his. He is very bright, very articulate, very passionate. I think he is exactly right.”
Earlier this year a profile of Jones in the New Yorker, author Elizabeth Kolbert wrote that "the basic premise of Jones’s appeal—that combating global warming is a good way to lift people out of poverty—is very much open to debate. ... it’s not at all clear that the number of jobs created by, say, an expanding solar industry would be greater than the number lost through, say, a shrinking coal-mining industry. Nor is it clear that a green economy would be any better at providing work for the chronically unemployed than our present, 'gray' economy has been."
But those theories aren't the ones that have made Jones a lightning rod in the past few weeks.
In 2005 Jones told the East Bay Express that the acquittal of Rodney King's assailants in 1992 in that infamous police brutality case changed him significantly. "I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the verdicts came down on April 29th," he said. "By August, I was a communist."
Jones and other young activists in 1994 formed a group called Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement, or STORM, rooted in Marxism and Leninsm. Two years later, Jones launched the Ella Baker Center, an Oakland, Calif., based "strategy and action center" which states that it tries to "promote positive alternatives to violence and incarceration."
In February during a discussion on energy at Berkeley, Calif., (and prior to his joining the Obama administration) Jones referred to Republicans using an epithet for a proctological orifice, which he called "a technical, political science term."
Asked why Republicans asserted more control of the Senate when they had a smaller majority before 2006, Jones said "the answer to that is, they're a--holes." He added that President Obama is not an a--hole, but, "I will say this. I can be an a--hole, and some of us who are not Barack Hussein Obama are going to have to start getting a little bit uppity."
"I apologize for the offensive words I chose to use during that speech," Jones said in a different written statement to Politico on Wednesday. "They do not reflect the views of this administration, which has made every effort to work in a bipartisan fashion, and they do not reflect the experience I have had since I joined the administration."
Well I’m glad he put that to rest. /s
the media always run with democrats denial or defence, but never run on rumors/scandals that attack/hurt democrats e.g Obama called Palin a pig on lipstick. Instead of showing us the clip where he says it, they run the clip of his denial
I wonder if the FBI or the Secret Service ever vetted this guy.
The check is in the mail...
“He did not explain”
Why would he? He reports only to king obama, his protector in chief.
What I’d like to know is how the guy got past the vetting process? Did the WH know this stuff and just not care, or did they forego a background check?
Does anyone believe this fool when he says that he did not know what he was signing?
It is worse than that. The WH knew this stuff and approved.
Jones in no way apologizes for or retracts the content of remark. He says he’s sorry “if” he offended anyone. But of course, ABC knows that and chooses to pretend along with him.
Jones claims he doesn’t agree with the position of the truthers petition. But he doesn’t deny signing it. So, he signed a document he knew to be a libelous lie
or, he’s lying now about not believing it. Probably both.
He was the 46th signer. That suggests he was in on it from the beginning, as one of the organizers and instigators.
So, he’s either a self-serving liar willing to signed the thing for purely political purposes or He’s s the 46th name on the petition.
This is a perfect opportunity for the GOP to go on an all out attack on the czars as an undemocratic institution being set up by a President trying to circumvent Constitution requirements for Congressional review of key Executive branch appointments. GOP congressional leaders should be on every news show for the next few weeks with the same message — get rid of the czars. They should be on the floor of the House and Senate demanding investigations and an end to funding the czars.
Instead, all we hear is Glen Beck. Silence from the opposition party leadership.
He was vetted. He passed with flying colors. He’s exactly what they wanted.
Glenn Beck has been exposing quote after quote from this radical communist. All the media (audio/video) shown by Beck has been from 2009.
How long before the van goes under the bus?
“White polluters and the white environmentalists are essentially steering poison into the people of color communities.”
— Van Jones
Editor’s note: This clip is taken from a YouTube post from January of 2008. Van Jones was then the Executive Director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. The full clip is fourth in this playlist.
In one of the Van Jones video clips floating around, he is introduced to a liberal audience at some event by Obama mentor Valerie Jarrett, and it is eminently clear from her comments that not only has he been he vetted, but that he also is known, lauded, and completely embraced by other lefties, Marxists, and Communists.
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