COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Saturday, September 05, 2009

NY Times, Tom Friedman and Van Jones- Asshole Buddies.


Anchorwoman Maureen Bunyon; Writer and Columnist Thomas Friedman, and Wade Henderson with Van Jones at 2009 Hubert H. Humphrey Awards Dinner

Audio clip made by cop killer Mumia abu Jamal, in prison for killing Philly Cop Daniel Faulkner, has Van Jones appearing at the 3:40 minute part. How did this guy get a White House security clearance? Audio clip is at the bottom of this post.

Some of you will recall a post we did some time ago about Tom Friedman and his visit to Costa Rica.

Friedman wrote in glowing terms about the environment in Costa Rica, and it was obvious to me he had no clue about what was happening in Costa Rica. Friedman is lazy in his research and by any measure a mediocre journalist that always has plenty to say about things he knows little about.

For your amusement, I reprint a column written in 2007 by Tommy boy and the obvious tingle that ran up his leg when he met our man Van. In a previous post, we heard Van say that he was an asshole. Tom has yet to report in. The NY Times has had not much to say about Van Jones.

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OP-ED COLUMNIST

The Green-Collar Solution

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: October 17, 2007 NY Times

Van Jones is a rare bird. He’s a black social activist in Oakland, Calif., and as green an environmentalist as they come. He really gets passionate, and funny, when he talks about what it’s like to be black and green:

“Try this experiment. Go knock on someone’s door in West Oakland, Watts or Newark and say: ‘We gotta really big problem!’ They say: ‘We do? We do?’ ‘Yeah, we gotta really big problem!’ ‘We do? We do?’ ‘Yeah, we gotta save the polar bears! You may not make it out of this neighborhood alive, but we gotta save the polar bears!’ ”

Mr. Jones then just shakes his head. You try that approach on people without jobs who live in neighborhoods where they’ve got a lot better chance of getting killed by a passing shooter than a melting glacier, you’re going to get nowhere — and without bringing America’s underclass into the green movement, it’s going to get nowhere, too.

“We need a different on-ramp” for people from disadvantaged communities, says Mr. Jones. “The leaders of the climate establishment came in through one door and now they want to squeeze everyone through that same door. It’s not going to work. If we want to have a broad-based environmental movement, we need more entry points.”

Mr. Jones, who heads the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland, which helps kids avoid jail and secure jobs, has an idea how to change that — a “green-collar” jobs program that focuses on underprivileged youth. I would not underestimate him. Mr. Jones, age 39 and a Yale Law School grad, exudes enough energy to light a few buildings on his own.

One thing spurring him in this project, he explained, was the way that the big oil companies bought ads in black-owned newspapers in California in 2006 showing an African-American woman filling her gas tank with a horrified look at the pump price. The ads were used to help bring out black votes to defeat Proposition 87. That ballot initiative proposed a tax on oil companies drilling in California, the money from which would have gone to develop alternative energy projects. The oil companies tried to scare African-Americans into thinking that the tax on the companies would be passed on at the pump.

“The polluters were able to stampede poor people into their camp,” said Mr. Jones. “I never want to see an N.A.A.C.P. leader on the wrong side of an environment issue again.”

Using his little center in Oakland, Mr. Jones has been on a crusade to help underprivileged African-Americans and other disadvantaged communities understand why they would be the biggest beneficiaries of a greener America. It’s about jobs. The more government requires buildings to be more energy efficient, the more work there will be retrofitting buildings all across America with solar panels, insulation and other weatherizing materials. Those are manual-labor jobs that can’t be outsourced.

“You can’t take a building you want to weatherize, put it on a ship to China and then have them do it and send it back,” said Mr. Jones. “So we are going to have to put people to work in this country — weatherizing millions of buildings, putting up solar panels, constructing wind farms. Those green-collar jobs can provide a pathway out of poverty for someone who has not gone to college.”

Let’s tell our disaffected youth: “You can make more money if you put down that handgun and pick up a caulk gun.”

Remember, adds Mr. Jones, “a big chunk of the African-American community is economically stranded. The blue-collar, stepping-stone, manufacturing jobs are leaving. And they’re not being replaced by anything. So you have this whole generation of young blacks who are basically in economic free fall.” Green-collar retrofitting jobs are a great way to catch them.

To this end, Mr. Jones’s group and the electrical union in Oakland created the Oakland Apollo Alliance. This year that coalition helped to raise $250,000 from the city government to create a union-supported training program that will teach young people in Oakland how to put up solar panels and weatherize buildings.

It is the beginning of a “Green for All” campaign (greenforall.org) that Mr. Jones — backed by other environmental activists like Majora Carter from Sustainable South Bronx — is launching to get Congress to allocate $125 million to train 30,000 young people a year in green trades.

“If we can get these youth in on the ground floor of the solar industry now, where they can be installers today, they’ll become managers in five years and owners in 10. And then they become inventors,” said Mr. Jones. “The green economy has the power to deliver new sources of work, wealth and health to low-income people — while honoring the Earth. If you can do that, you just wiped out a whole bunch of problems. We can make what is good for poor black kids good for the polar bears and good for the country.”


Van Jones shows up on minute 3:50

9 comments:

  1. well hell...

    Good ole tom HIMSELF could hire about 12,000 inner city gang-bangers to caulk his house alone!

    I wonder, how much of Van Jones's undergrad and Yale school was paid from Van Joneses pocket?

    can we say LOOTER?

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  2. Obama chose soul brother, Van Jones to serve as one of his czars.

    Mumia abu Jamal, who sponsored this recording, obviously from prison, is a field negro in prison for murdering Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner.

    Barack Hussein Obama is President of the United States.

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  3. We have no chance of ever getting back into the library.

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  4. After being separated from the military and then going back in, I had to wait eight weeks to get the security clearance necessary to do the work I was assigned.

    How did this asshole get a security clearance at all?

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  5. sorry, i missed the video (by the cop MURDERER)

    listen to the voices of the looters... those that wish to right the wrongs that America has created..

    maybe a world without America is what they wish..

    one palestine, one marxist china, one revolution...

    all jews dead, all christians dead, all those who oppose them, dead...

    the louder they get? the better chance we can defeat them, so many just think that those voices come from just "another point of view", they are evil

    i have seen them before in the camps.. in the killing fields,,

    they are EVIL...

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  6. I am not surprised that he denied it. Why wouldn't he read something he signed?

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  7. Without a doubt, Van Jones is the kind of public sector looter/pirate that makes you want to take his diploma and use it to clean up after yourself... I'd love to analyze the actual efficacy of his inner-city efforts, his noble and selfless crusade for the environment. Undoubtedly, it all amounts to giving him a salary, some notoriety, and not much else. I'm acquainted with this kind of liberal narcissist, and primarily they are interested in their own self-aggrandizement. They contribute when doing so shines a beatific light onto their faces. In Jones' case, he's also a dangerous radical. Thomas Friedman is just an a**hole.....

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  8. I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I think I will leave my first comment. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

    ReplyDelete