It’s Getting Hot In Here

In the latest development of the events leading to Van Jones’ resignation as Special Adviser to the President on Green Jobs, it has emerged that the effort was spearheaded by Americans For Prosperity (AFP).  Adele Stan of AlterNet writes:

If you thought the targeting of Van Jones for vilification by the right was about his race, his youthful flirtation with socialism, or a petition he signed about the 9/11 attacks, you’d only be a little bit right.

And if you think it was about the Color of Change campaign against Glenn Beck’s show on Fox News Channel, you’d really miss the mark.

The racism and red-baiting suffered by Jones at the hands of Beck and his admirers are simply key elements in a marketing strategy designed to serve Very Big Business — the oil and other business interests that support the astroturfing group Americans for Prosperity.

The strategy is simple: Prey upon the worst fears of the right-wing folks who live next door in order to get them to organize against their own interests.  Continue reading ‘Big Business Targeted Van Jones in Plot to Stop Climate Legislation’

The resignation of Van Jones is about more than Van Jones, more than Glenn Beck.  It is part of a concerted effort to neutralize progressive champions who are trying to fix the problems that are ripping this country apart.

First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me. -Martin Neimoeller

McCarthyism is the politically motivated practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence…The term is also now used more generally to describe reckless, unsubstantiated accusations, as well as demagogic attacks on the character or patriotism of political adversaries. -from that communist source, Wikipedia

The resignation of Van Jones last night is the culmination of a deeply disturbing pattern from the last several months. The spokespeople for the right have made it acceptable to spout hate-filled speech and unfounded accusations to the American public.  This must stop. Continue reading ‘Glenn McCarthy Beck is Hurting America’

A guest post from Nate Loewentheil, Executive Director of The Roosevelt Institution.  Nate is liveblogging from Power Shift ’09.

I’m sitting at a panel at Power Shift 2009 on “Getting to the Truth: Pulling the Curtain Back on False Solutions to Our Energy Crisis.” The panel is an overview of various myths in the environmental movement and how we can best combat them: the true cost of nuclear, the utter absurdity of claims for “clean coal” and the dark side of carbon offsets.

But there are deeper questions at stake. Most people at PowerShift would agree that climate change is urgent, action is needed and any step in the right direction is worth exploring. But some steps are better than others, and not all of them take us in the right direction.  Julian Drix of Rising Tide opened the panel with a critical insight: before we know if we’re taking a step on the right path, we need to know where we’re going. And if we don’t have a destination in mind, we’re going to get mighty lost.

Some options are clearly wrong while others may appear promising; we need to think clearly of all of the costs involved in a given technology or strategy before embracing it. We can smell out these “false solutions” with five criteria, according to Drix; solutions that appear to be move us forward might be:

• Environmentally and racially unjust
• Disguised corporate strategies
• Not actually effective in reducing carbon emissions
• Not scalable
• Encouraging of destructive behavior

Continue reading ‘Getting to the Truth: Pulling the Curtain Back on False Solutions to Our Energy Crisis’