Voices of Power: Adviser Sets Sights on Developing Green-Collar Jobs

[sfc_oliver]

Well that pretty much wraps it up ; we have a communist in the Executive office of the president of the United States.

Way to go people.

I didn't vote for the current administration; not my fault.

[Towntalk]

White House Council on Environmental Quality


Nancy Sutley is the Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality

CEQ STAFF
Chief of Staff: Jon Carson
Deputy Chief of Staff: Nikki Buffa
General Counsel: Ted Boling

Associate Directors
Land and Water Ecosystems: Mike Boots
Climate Change: Jason Bordoff
NEPA Oversight: Horst Greczmiel
Communications: Christine Glunz
Green Jobs: Van Jones
Legislative Affairs: Jessica Maher
Policy Outreach: Amy Salzman
Federal Environmental Executive: Michelle Moore

The Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) is a division of the Executive Office of the President that coordinates federal environmental efforts in the United States and in theory works closely with agencies and other White House offices in the development of environmental and energy policies and initiatives.

The United States Congress established the CEQ within the Executive Office of the President as part of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA). Additional responsibilities were provided by the Environmental Quality Improvement Act of 1970.

CEQ chairman Nancy Sutley was appointed by President Barack Obama with the advice and consent of the United States Senate. Former chairmen include James Speth.

Van Jones, an early Green Jobs visionary, was appointed to CEQ as Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation in March of 2009.

The CEQ reports annually to the President on the state of the environment; oversees federal agency implementation of the environmental impact assessment process; and acts as a referee when agencies disagree over the adequacy of such assessments.

[Towntalk]

From the Communist Party USA web site:


A Labor and People's Landslide is Necessary and Possible
http://www.cpusa.org/article/view/927/

Environmental Voters

Environmental voters could have a big impact. The global climate change affecting our planet will not wait. Young voters, and voters in general want action. The Take Back America conference featured the Apollo Project and others including Van Jones who are organizing support for a massive infrastructure program to green the buildings in our country while creating good jobs with union rights and affirmative action in hiring as well as in selection of communities to be rebuilt. The Bush administration has taken an anti-science, arrogant and dangerous course. John McCain has a zero rating from the League of Conservation voters for missing every environmental vote of consequence in the Senate. Many environmental organizations will be involved in voter registration. We should participate.

[Towntalk]

Speaking to the East Bay Express, Jones said he first became radicalized in the wake of the 1992 Rodney King riots.

"I met all these young radical people of color -- 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. I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the verdicts came down on April 29th. By August, I was a communist."
[18]

Jones was still a law student at Yale Law School at the time. While volunteering as a legal monitor during a peaceful protest following the Rodney King riots, Jones was arrested along with other legal monitors and some protesters. He and the other detainees were released no more than 4 hours after being illegally arrested and Jones was never convicted of a crime.

In the late 90s, Van Jones was involved in Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), a multi-racial activist collective with Marxist influences. While never large, STORM was an influential group in the Bay Area, working with numerous organizations including Bay Area Police Watch, School of Unity and Liberation (SOUL), and People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER). Jones and STORM were also active in the anti Iraq War demonstrations of the early 2000's.[citation needed]

[sfc_oliver]

I do not know if Mr Jones is a communist but it seems to me that he says exactly what I tried to explain to Dennis. That the scientists and not the government need to deal with energy.

"[W]e are entering an era during which our very survival will demand invention and innovation on a scale never before seen in the history of human civilization. Only the business community has the requisite skills, experience, and capital to meet that need. On that score, neither government nor the nonprofit and voluntary sectors can compete, not even remotely."


Do you read your own books Dennis?

[Towntalk]

Van Jones Bio:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Jones

[irishbobcat]

I own a copy of Van Jones Book, "The Green Colar Economy." Robert Kennendy Jr writes in the forward that "Van Jones articulates the urgency and importance of the task and the opportunity before us."

I do not believe your accusations, because they are just that, accusations.

Van Jones is more of an American than you are Dan Moadus because he is trying to help inner city youth, the poor, and working class find Green Collar jobs, smething you have no intention of doing in your conservative republican quest for Congress.

[Dan Moadus]

Dan, and you jazz up on keeping the status quo on a failing health care system...

you don't want to help the poor or working class in the district.....

you support the top 1% of income folks, even though none live in this valley....

and you want the democrats to turn into republicans.... what did you smoke in nam,?

Notice how Dennis resorts to juvenile retorts instead of answering my accusation that Van Jones, Obama's new green job czar, is an avowed communist.

Come on Dennis, you don't get off that easy. What say you? Do you support having a self proclaimed communist in that position? What's your feeling about Van Jones?

[sfc_oliver]

The top 1% doesn't live in the valley?

Really?

I wonder who those people are that live in those million dollar homes I used to work on?


SFC
US Army
Retired

[irishbobcat]

Dan, and you jazz up on keeping the status quo on a failing health care system...

you don't want to help the poor or working class in the district.....

you support the top 1% of income folks, even though none live in this valley....

and you want the democrats to turn into republicans.... what did you smoke in nam,?

[Dan Moadus]

Wow! What a puff piece on Van Jones. When reading this paragraph by Jones:

"When you're working in communities where people don't have a lot of hope for opportunity, you say, geez, [do you] you want to fight, but hard, to get people jobs that you know are going to be dead end, or can you find them a job in a part of the economy that's going someplace. . . . And so then I saw that these firms were going places, that's when I got totally jazzed."

You really wonder about his "Yale Law School" education.

Dennis is "jazzed" about Jones, even though Jones was a black nationalist who went to jail during the Rodney King riots and is now a self proclaimed communist. Yep, just the type person that "jazzes" Dennis all right.

[irishbobcat]

Voices of Power: Adviser Sets Sights on Developing Green-Collar Jobs
 

  Aug 11, 2009
Washington Post
   
Lois Romano

Van Jones may have one of the hottest assignments in the Obama administration -- selling the notion of a new "green-collar" economy -- but in a country burdened with a 9.4 percent unemployment rate, it's not easy.

How do you tell an unemployed construction worker that it's time to start thinking about installing solar panels instead of aluminum siding? "I think some of these ideas are complicated for people when they first hear them," said Jones, senior green jobs adviser to the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Most people "don't know what retrofitting a building means, or they haven't heard of . . . a smart biofuel. And so a lot of times, people just sort of go yes, yes, but they aren't really following you."

Jones, 40, has been a leader in a growing movement that aims to hit two major social and policy challenges -- the struggling economy and environmental quality -- with one boulder. It's a vision that has been embraced by various industries and advocacy groups intrigued by the promise of thousands of new green jobs as the country invests in energy efficiency and confronts climate change.

But skeptics say the reality of creating a "green economy" is more complex. As with any new business, start-up costs are high -- and money is tight these days. And although the administration has allocated as much as $80 billion through the stimulus package to create more than 6 million green jobs, it is impossible at this point to quantify success. For one, there is no official federal definition of a green job -- though the president's budget includes money for the Bureau of Labor Statistics to work with other agencies to define the green economy and produce data on green-collar jobs by 2011.

Jones said anecdotal evidence is strong that the strategy is working, and he dismissed as "myth" reports that the plan merely moves jobs around the economy without creating new ones. "If you get people in on the ground floor of a growing industry, they can grow that industry," he said.

His career path was not unlike President Obama's. After graduating from Yale Law School, Jones worked as a community activist in Oakland, Calif., and founded the Ella Barker Center for Human Rights. A few years ago, he saw an opportunity to combine his commitment to racial and economic parity with work to solve the environmental crisis. He soon became a hero of the green movement as he talked about "greening the ghetto," appearing on hip shows such as "The Colbert Report" and sending out his message on YouTube.

"I think sometimes when we think about ecological solutions, we think about very high-end stuff, you know, maybe space-age technology, way off in the future," he said. "What we forget is most of the things we need right now to reduce pollution, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, don't require fancy technology. You know what it requires? A caulking gun."

He launched a Green-Collar Jobs Campaign, which led in 2007 to Green for All, an organization he created to help create and find jobs in the green economy for the poor and disadvantaged. "People need to have the opportunity to be a part of industries that are going someplace," he said in an interview at his office across the street from the White House.

"When you're working in communities where people don't have a lot of hope for opportunity, you say, geez, [do you] you want to fight, but hard, to get people jobs that you know are going to be dead end, or can you find them a job in a part of the economy that's going someplace. . . . And so then I saw that these firms were going places, that's when I got totally jazzed."
   
   

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We need to bring green jobs to the poor and working class of America to turn this economy around!


Dennis Spisak

Mahoning Valley Green Party

Ohio Green Party



www.ohiogreens.org

www.votespisak.org/thinkgreen/