NYtimes: White House Official Resigns After G.O.P. Criticism

NYtimes:

White House officials on Sunday tersely accepted the resignation of the administration’s special adviser for environmental jobs after a number of his past statements became fodder for conservative critics and Republican officials.

The adviser, Van Jones, a controversial and charismatic community organizer and “green jobs” advocate from the San Francisco Bay Area, signed a petition in 2004 questioning whether the Bush administration had allowed the terrorist attacks of September 2001 to provide a pretext for war in the Middle East.

He also used a vulgarity to refer to Republicans just before being appointed to his White House post early this year, and he has publicly supported Mumia Abu-Jamal, who is on death row for the murder of a Philadelphia police officer.

Mr. Jones was a relatively minor figure in the administration, in charge of a small White House program advocating for jobs in energy-efficient industries. But he threatened to become a significant distraction as President Obama is planning a prime-time address on health care to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night in an effort to regain traction on the issue.

The timing and manner of Mr. Jones’s departure were unusual, coming in a pair of written statements just after midnight Saturday on a holiday weekend after the controversy over him, fueled on conservative talk radio and television, seemed to catch the Obama administration by surprise.

Mr. Obama’s plan to speak to public school students on Tuesday has also drawn the ire of conservatives, and critics of his health care proposals have vocally expressed their opposition throughout the summer.

Mr. Jones’s hiring and departure again raised questions about the quality of the White House personnel vetting process and the proliferation of so-called policy czars who are not subject to Senate confirmation or legislative oversight.

The Obama administration entered office promising the most thorough scrutiny ever of candidates for senior jobs, including an extensive questionnaire and time-consuming background checks that have left many senior posts vacant for months. But the process seems to have missed Mr. Jones’s most inflammatory comments and associations, as well as the tax problems that scuttled the nominations of former Senator Tom Daschle to two top health policy posts and Nancy Killefer as chief performance officer.

A White House official suggested that Mr. Jones’s post was not seen as senior enough to warrant the full vetting given other officials. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the authorized White House account was delivered by administration officials in televised interviews on Sunday.

Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said that Mr. Obama did not endorse Mr. Jones’s views and that he had quickly accepted Mr. Jones’s resignation so the controversy did not swamp the administration’s larger mission.

“Well, what Van Jones decided was that the agenda of this president was bigger than any one individual,” Mr. Gibbs said on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” on ABC. “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 growth.”

It was as cool a goodbye as is seen in Washington, intended to put an end to a week of intense criticism of Mr. Jones — who has been associated with a number of radical protest movements, including one rooted in Marxist theory — on television and radio talk shows and on the Internet.

Chief among those keeping the story alive was Glenn Beck, the conservative host of a Fox News Channel program. Mr. Beck began criticizing Mr. Jones in July, first in segments on his syndicated talk radio show and then, on July 23, on his Fox News program, said Christopher Balfe, the president of Mr. Beck’s production company.

Mr. Beck, who regularly draws almost three million viewers on Fox News, called Mr. Jones a “communist-anarchist radical.” A few days later, Mr. Beck called Mr. Obama a racist on a Fox News show, leading Color of Change, an activist group co-founded by Mr. Jones four years ago, to call on Mr. Beck’s advertisers to stop sponsoring his television program. Color of Change says Mr. Jones is no longer affiliated with the group.

Mr. Balfe emphasized that Mr. Beck had spoken about Mr. Jones’s background before Color of Change “began targeting Glenn.” In a statement Sunday, Mr. Beck said that Americans had demanded answers about Mr. Jones, but that “instead of providing them, the administration had Jones resign under cover of darkness.”

As the advertiser campaign heightened, Mr. Beck devoted more time to Mr. Jones’s past remarks. Dozens of advertisers issued statements to distance themselves from Mr. Beck’s show in the past month, but Fox said no revenue had been lost.

Though Mr. Jones, 40, had apologized twice during the week for earlier comments, he was combative in his resignation letter. “On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me,” Mr. Jones said. “They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide.”

He said he had received numerous calls and notes from supporters urging him to stay and fight. But, he said, “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 our future.”

Mr. Jones could not be reached for further comment.

Mr. Jones’s boss, Nancy Sutley, chairwoman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, unsentimentally accepted her aide’s departure. “Over the last six months, he has been a strong voice for creating 21st-century jobs that improve energy efficiency and utilize renewable resources,” Ms. Sutley said in a statement. “We appreciate his hard work and wish him the best moving forward.”

On Friday, Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, chairman of the House Republican conference, called on Mr. Jones to resign, and Senator Christopher S. Bond, Republican of Missouri, called for a hearing on Mr. Jones’s appointment. Mr. Obama has appointed more than two dozen special advisers, or “czars,” who are not subject to the confirmation process.

Before joining the Obama administration, Mr. Jones wrote a book on environmental issues called “The Green Collar Economy” and co-founded several nonprofit groups, including the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, which promotes alternatives to violence and prisons, and Green for All, which works to bring energy-related jobs to inner cities.

Former Vice President Al Gore and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, among others, endorsed his environmental work, and he has been a sought-after motivational speaker.

Howard Dean, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, defended Mr. Jones on Sunday, saying he was being penalized for not realizing what the petition he signed in 2004 was.

“This guy’s a Yale-educated lawyer,” Mr. Dean said on “Fox News Sunday.” “He’s a best-selling author about his specialty. I think he was brought down, and I think it’s too bad. Washington’s a tough place that way, and I think it’s a loss for the country.”

Van Jones resignation

I need to get my thoughts together before I write a full post on the whole Van Jones situation, because frankly, I don't want my words and actions to be misconstrued against me like Mr. Jones' were.

Personally, as a black environmentalist, this is one of the most discouraging things I have seen in a while. I really looked up to this guy. I recommend that everyone read his book. I plan to write to Mr. Jones and offer my strong support.

WP:

The resignation of White House environmental adviser Van Jones has revealed a lapse in the administration's vetting procedures that, nearly eight months into his tenure, delivered President Obama with an unwelcome distraction as he begins an important week on behalf of his health-care reform initiative.

Jones's resignation late Saturday came as calls for his ouster increased from Republican leaders, who have been critical of past statements and associations that have also taken the White House by surprise. His departure as a top adviser to the White House Council on Environmental Quality leaves Obama's push to create "green" jobs, which he has called an essential element of the more stable economy he is trying to build, without a leader.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs on Sunday explained the resignation on ABC's "This Week With George Stephanopoulos," saying Jones "decided that the agenda of this president was bigger than any one individual." Obama does not endorse Jones's past statements and actions, Gibbs said, "but he thanks him for his service."

Jones, a towering figure in the environmental movement, had issued two public apologies in recent days. One was for signing a petition in 2004 from the group 911Truth.org that questioned whether officials in President George W. Bush's administration "may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war," and the other for using a crude term to describe Republicans in a speech he gave before joining the administration.

His involvement with the now-defunct Bay Area radical group Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), which had Marxist roots, also emerged as an issue. And on Saturday, his advocacy on behalf of death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was convicted of fatally shooting a Philadelphia police officer in 1981, threatened to further deepen the controversy. A White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a personnel matter, said Sunday that Jones's past was not studied as intensively as that of other advisers because of his relatively low rank.

While some conservatives tried to portray Jones as one of Obama's many issue czars, he was not. Nancy Sutley, head of the White House environmental council, hired him as her "special adviser for green jobs, enterprise and innovation" in mid-March, and he reported to her rather than to Obama. Because Jones's position did not require Senate confirmation, he avoided the kind of vetting that Cabinet officials were subjected to. "He was not as thoroughly vetted as other administration officials," the official said. "It's fair to say there were unknowns."

Those procedures were tightened during the transition after a history of unpaid taxes emerged during the confirmation hearings of two high-profile nominees -- Timothy F. Geithner and Thomas A. Daschle. Geithner was later confirmed as Treasury secretary, but Daschle withdrew from consideration as secretary of Health and Human Services.

Jones's skill in conveying how clean energy could provide economic opportunities for Americans across social strata earned him a prominent place in the green movement. In his six months at the CEQ, he delivered about two dozen speeches nationwide, as varied as an address in Indianapolis to trainees for a weatherization drive and a talk at a sustainability event in Philadelphia.

Kate Gordon, who serves as both a senior policy adviser for the Apollo Alliance and vice president of energy policy at the Center for American Progress, said Jones managed to make the idea of embarking on "a new industrial revolution . . . really compelling." He served as a senior fellow at the CAP, a liberal think tank, and as a board member of the Apollo Alliance, a clean energy coalition.

"He really transformed it from an idea to a movement," Gordon said. "He was very much in a spokesperson role. Van himself would say he's not a policy wonk."

Jones, who wrote the best-selling 2008 book "The Green Collar Economy" and graduated from Yale Law School, drew the attention of administration officials for his ability to forge alliances between people of color and a variety of groups such as labor unions to corporations.

"It didn't take work to find him," said Bracken Hendricks, a senior fellow at the CAP. "If you actually look at the substance of this [clean energy work], it's Chamber of Commerce stuff."

Jones informed Sutley on Saturday night that he was stepping down; the formal announcement came minutes after midnight Sunday morning. In a written statement, Jones said: "On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me. They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide." He continued: "I have been inundated with calls -- from across the political spectrum -- urging me to 'stay and fight.' 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."

Fox News Channel host Glenn Beck began the drive against Jones. Beck's campaign grew more vitriolic after a group Jones founded in 2005, ColorofChange.org, led an advertising boycott against his show to protest Beck's assertion that Obama is a racist. Republican calls for Jones to step down grew over the weekend. Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) called on Jones to resign Friday, saying in a statement, "His extremist views and coarse rhetoric have no place in this administration or the public debate."

Environmentalists said they hope Obama will press for the clean energy priorities Jones championed.

David Axelrod, an Obama senior adviser, suggested on NBC's "Meet the Press" that the president would continue to do so. "The political environment is rough, and so these things get magnified," he said. "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."

The Words Behind the Controversy

Monday, September 7, 2009

THE STATEMENT: Van Jones was listed as a signatory on a petition released by 911Truth.org on Oct. 26, 2004. It called "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," an investigation by then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and congressional hearings into failings prior to the attacks.

THE WALK-BACK: "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," Jones said in a Sept. 3 statement issued by the White House Council on Environmental Quality after the petition was unearthed by blogger Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit.

STATEMENT: After a Feb. 11, 2009, a speech in Berkeley, Calif., Jones was asked by an audience member how Republicans were able to achieve greater legislative success with a smaller congressional majority than Democrats now have.

"The answer to that is: They're a--holes," Jones said to laughter in remarks posted on YouTube on Sept. 1 by supporters of Glenn Beck. "That's a technical political science term. And Barack Obama's not an a--hole. So, now, I will say this, I can be an a--hole. And some of us who are not Barack Hussein Obama are gonna have to start getting a little bit uppity."

THE WALK-BACK: The comments were "clearly inappropriate," Jones said in a statement. "I apologize for the offensive words I chose to use during that speech. 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."

Van Jones - Green 'Czar' Pushes Jobs, Community-Building

Van Jones has been on a crusade to, in his words, "green the ghetto" by killing two birds with one stone: reducing poverty and saving the environment.

Recently appointed as President Obama's special adviser for green jobs, enterprise and innovation, Jones now has an opportunity to implement his vision. Check out his book, The Green Collar Economy on my reading list to the left.

Listen to NPR Interview.

NPR:

Van Jones has been on a crusade to, in his words, "green the ghetto" by killing two birds with one stone: reducing poverty and saving the environment.

Recently appointed as President Obama's special adviser for green jobs, enterprise and innovation, Jones now has an opportunity to implement his vision.

"I've been accused of being the green jobs czar — I consider myself to be the green jobs handyman," Jones tells NPR's Renee Montagne. "We've got about $40 billion in the recovery package that is targeted toward renewable energy, green-job training, energy efficiency, and part of my job is to help to coordinate getting all that money out into the economy, making jobs for people."

Jones, who is author of The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems, describes green jobs as "a blue-collar job that's been upgraded or up-skilled to better respect the environment."

"So you think about an electrician who now knows how to deal with solar panels or a plumber who can deal with solar hot water," he explains. "You want to think about jobs that are good for an individual's wealth — in other words they pay well, but they're also good for the community and the planet's health."

These new jobs, Jones says, help break the age-old war between people "who said either you can do well economically for our children, but then sacrifice our grandchildren ecologically, or we can look out for our grandchildren ecologically, but we have to hurt our kids economically by not growing the economy."

It also helps in the conversation about what green means to include "green for your pocket" in the discussion, he says.

"When you think about green, you often think about people who have a lot of money and who can afford a certain lifestyle," Jones says. "But really what the green economy represents is a massive opportunity for new work, new wealth and better health for all Americans."

In response to criticism that many of the Obama administration's proposed shovel-ready projects could hurt the environment, Jones says the efforts are focused primarily on jobs that make our buildings more efficient.

"We have millions of buildings across the country that are wasting energy," he says.