Morning Bell: The Obama Czar State

Conn Carroll / September 08, 2009

Late this Saturday night President Barack Obama’s Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Van Jones, resigned amid what the Washington Post calls another “lapse in the administration’s vetting procedures.” That’s putting it mildly. Jones is an admitted former communist and black nationalist. His Ella Baker Center for Human Rights produced a rap record in 2005 “hosted by” cop killer Mumia Abu Jamal, in which Jones links the Palestinian fight against Israel as part of the “global struggle against the U.S. led security apparatus” that “we need to see linked” to “our problems here.”

His more recent advocacy for green jobs fits perfectly into Jones’ racial/Marxist worldview. In a 2008 interview Jones said: “The white polluters and the white environmentalists are essentially steering poison into the people of color’s communities because they don’t have a racial justice frame.”

So how did someone with views as radical and inflammatory as Jones’ get into a position where he would control one of the “five pillars” of President Obama’s plan to rebuild the entire economy? The short answer is that Jones was never vetted. Jones was never asked to fill out the exhaustive 7-page 63-question form White House officials require of every Cabinet-level secretary and deputy-secretary position. And why did he not fill out the questionnaire? He did not have to. His official “czar” job, Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, does not require Senate confirmation. To be fair, President Obama did not create the first Executive branch czar, but his administration has authored an explosion of them. In fact, President Obama just appointed another czar, former steelworkers union official Ron Bloom, to oversee his manufacturing and automotive policy yesterday. (more…)