What's Next After Taking Out Van Jones? Fox News Blurts Out Agenda to Sabotage the Environment

By Joseph Romm, Climate Progress. Posted September 8, 2009.

Having taken Van Jones down, the job destroyers and climate destroyers of the right wing most certainly smell blood.

Now Phil Kerpen, policy director for Americans for Prosperity, has laid out the right-wing strategy for how "the Van Jones affair could be an important turning point in the Obama administration," in a piece on FOXNews.com.  AFP is "pro-tobacco industry" group that "worked around the U.S. in recent years to defeat" smokefree workplace laws (as SourceWatch notes) — and is now fighting for the big corporate polluters to block climate and clean energy action.  Brad Johnson at WonkRoom has documented how Americans for Prosperity (AFP) is a front group for billionaire polluters, pushing the most inane pro-pollution ads you'll ever see (here).

But what Fox News and AFP would like to achieve is no joke:

The Van Jones affair is, as President Obama likes to say, a "teachable moment," and we need to put not just him but the whole corrupt "green jobs" concept outside the bounds of the political mainstream.

Conservatives hate the notion of green clean energy jobs because their entire anti-science, anti-climate, anti-environment message is built around the (false) notion of a trade-off between reducing pollution and jobs (see "Mything in action: Why conservatives hate green clean energy jobs").  If you don't care about the health and well-being of future generations, you certainly don't care if they have good jobs (or any jobs, for that matter).

Progressives are going to have to redouble our efforts if we're to have any chance whatsoever of creating 1.7 million clean energy jobs while averting catastrophic global warming.  Here is an excerpt of the FoxNews/AFP opinion piece strategy document, "How Van Jones Happened and What We Need to Do Next," which seems like a parody, but, sadly, isn't:

The Van Jones affair could be an important turning point in the Obama administration if we use it as a window to understand the structure of the left and to stop the huge power-grab now taking place in the name of green jobs.  It's also one of the most significant things I've ever had the honor of being involved in.  Here's how, from my perspective, it happened and what it means.

I was an unlikely Van Jones expert.  It started July 9, when "FOX & Friends" asked me if I'd come on the show the morning of July 10 to explain what "green jobs" are.  It meant an early morning the next day, but I was glad to do it, because exposing the green jobs scam is critical to fight cap-and-trade, my top legislative priority for the year.  The producer asked me if I knew anything about green jobs "czar" Van Jones.  I didn't but said I would find out.

I e-mailed a friend who follows the green groups and he said he thought Jones was socialist. –  I doubt he had any idea how deep it went. A couple Web searches later, I couldn't believe what I found in an article from the alternative San Francisco newspaper the East Bay Express.  The man was a self-professed communist, with ties to ACORN….  His real name was Anthony, with "Van" made up in college because he thought everyone cool has a one-syllable name.

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