Amy left out one important point. obama didn't fight for Van Jones. Rahm must have considered him a little too radical for his taste, and for the welfare of his masters.

Let me get this straight, Beck calls Obama a racist and the administration responds with silence, and silence again when Van Jones is forced to resign?

Someone get to the White House fast and take an xray of Obama's back. I'm sure he's missing a spine.

I agree that Jones' resignation from the White House will turn out to be a good thing.

I'm certain that Jones realized that he was simply a figurehead, exploited by Obama to make the White House appear to be progressive.

Jones also knew that he would never be able to accomplish anything while working under the sleazy Emanuel (someday, we'll need to have a debate on this board over who is the bigger piece of shit - Emanuel or Rove).

Whatever he does now, Jones deserves the support of the Progressive community.

Beck, on the other hand, is simply a cultural marker for the insanity of the right wing of American politics.

q

Does Beck know that Single-Payer covers mental health care?

So corporate America exercises its muscle again, this time to good advantage. Corporations have way too much power.

We, the people, could never get Fox News to do anything we want. We have no money with which to "vote" for change.

While I applaud the major corporations for pulling their advertisements to object to Mr. Beck, I am appalled that this is what it takes to get anything accomplished.

For instance: we want Health Care for all the people, Medicare for All, which is exactly what the bill John Conyers and Dennis Kucinich wrote, HR 676, accomplishes.

Hard-headed believers in democracy think that the way we will achieve Medicare for All is to organize and take action in our communities to effect real change at a state and national level.

But it just aint so. Senator Baucus, who came up with the idea of fining uninsured Americans $3,800 per year for not buying corporate health insurance, has a terrible record. From 2003 to 2008, Baucus received $3,973,485 from the health sector, including $852,813 from pharmaceutical companies, $851,141 from health professionals, $784,185 from the insurance industry and $465,750 from HMOs/health services, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.[from Wikipedia] I think Mr. Obama himself has taken so many corporate dollars that he's a lost cause--belongs to the corporate hogs at the public trough.

Corporations out-vote the public with money.

Thank you Amy Goodman for your informative article about the work Van Jones has done and for the names of the companies that have pulled their advertising from Beck's show. Effective grassroots organizing works. Good for Van Jones resigning. He'll be much more effective now.

Beck didn't claim Van Jones was a "former Communist." He claimed that Van Jones is currently part of Obama's radical cadre in the White House, and was leading Obama's efforts to build a radical citizen revolutionary force.
I'm not joking here: I watched his show every day.
So the scared right-wingers are it up, not realizing that it was all a cynical ploy by Beck and Fox, a personal vendetta against Van Jones because the Color of Change campaign cost them some advertising dollars.
Personally, I don't think Beck or O'Reilly believe half of what they say. It's all just conspiracy theory showbiz, a nice opportunistic way to make some big bucks.
Isn't America great?

Why did President Obama allow Glenn Beck to dictate his actions by having Van Jones resign? Rolling over for the right wingnut crazies is outrageous! We elected him to lead, not to just react to those who oppose him by doing what they want.

I agree with those above that Rahm is bad news for this administration. He's presiding over a one-term presidency and making it happen.

This shameful episode tells us what we already know about Obama the Abysmal. He's far more concerned with appeasing the far right than he cares to respond to any progressive on any issue. As quickstepper says, Jones was merely a figurehead in the White House to make it look as if Obama gave a damn about "green" anything. Let any psycho like Beck start raving about "communism" in the White House, and Obama is mute. Emanuel, the new Karl Rove, probably advised Obama to cut Van loose. Can't afford to alienate our real base--the far right lunatics who give Israel a free pass on every atrocity it commits. Progressives? Liberals? Who the hell are they? They don't have any power. Throw Van Jones under the bus.

Who would believe that loud mouth Beck could tell the truth about anything? Its time that the weak A.G. start doing something. Jones should sue Fox (the loud mouth sissy station) for everything. What are these Nation destroyers after. They have totally destroyed this country in every way.The democrats should be the ones mad as hell. We were robbed of everything. Our jobs, our rights,our money, our insurance and freedom of speech. Now ass hole Beck I agree with mr Jones all the way. aLL THE REPUGS ARE ASS HOLES. You are the racist and a liar. I am a white man now go for that you skunk.

Like Wall $treet, Glenn Beck expected another bailout from Obama after Van Jones lead the way to whittling down Beck's advertisers for bad behavior. The procedure? Get rid of Van Jones and then give Faux Noise billions in taxpayer money but silently ! Glad I voted for Nader !

Well, we all have to remember that the United States Constitution protects Glen Beck's God-given right to be an idiot. However, I still have the right to boycott the products of any corporation which I remotely suspect may be sponsoring any program featuring Glen Beck.

I must point out, Beck started attacking Van Jones before the Color of Change boycott, but it went into overdrive after the advertiser campaign started getting results.

Welcome to the new McCarthy era.

It's sad that a "real" leftist like Amy Goodman can convince herself that Van Jones will emerge more powerful from this episode. That's not how it is at all. Beck has won. An entertainer whose market corresponds to at most 20% of American popular opinion has forced the weakling Obama to his knees, even though that market will not only come to support Obama for the firing, and has no sway over those who would support him without it. Instead, he has thrown bloody meat to sharks, and shown them what they have to do to break him.

If Van Jones couldn't be defended for a stupid petition and some salty and all-too-accurate remarks before a friendly audience by the President of the United States, he has no prospects outside his former post. He may make a living by getting a good college lecture circuit agent, but his political influence is over. Beck and his racist mob win, Color of Change, Obama, and the future of America lose.

Wake up, Amy. This rationalization on your part is to comfort yourself, not to cogently forecast Jones' real future. I expect that from liberals (explains their false expectations for Obama, instead of an honest "I knew who he was but we needed to defeat Bush" and all the pain they're claiming to now suffer). but I don't expect it from you. This is bad. There is no silver lining. This gray cloud has a much darker lining. We can sit around and wait for it, or we can get out and fight. They are fighting, and we are analyzing and even laughing at their fight instead of defending against it and seizing the initiative. That equation adds up to total defeat.

Wake up, everyone. This is not a joke. The "birthers" are not a joke, nor are the "deathers," or anyone else. They're carrying assault rifles to assemblies. What does it take to wake you people up?

"Beck alleged Jones was a former black nationalist and communist, that he signed a petition calling for a congressional investigation into the events of 9/11, and that Jones referred to Republicans as 'assholes' in a February 2009 talk."

So a charismatic, articulate African American Ivy Leaguer with a background in grassroots community organizing around issues like police brutality and greening the US economy as an working class/anti-poverty mechanism only made it inside the Obama administration from March to September, 2009 (6 months), before being targeted by right wing demagogues and gracefully bailing out. I wish Van Jones all the best back in the private sector.

Sure, Glenn Beck and Faux News were retaliating for the successes Color of Change had in using the power of the marketplace (the advertisers' boycott tool) to combat racist rhetoric. Yet look closely at the actual, specific content of the mud thrown at Van Jones by the right wing ideologues who eventually succeeded in driving this singular, progressive voice for change out of a policy making role within the executive branch of the federal government.

Former black nationalist? Communist? Occasional potty mouth? Scarcely accusations (even if nominally true) that would induce the Rahm Emmanuel/DLC gatekeepers inside the DC beltway to shun Jones and leave the man twisting in the wind.

The mortal sin? Oh, yes - Mr. Jones signed a petition supporting further investigation into the 9/11 attacks, as if the official narrative crafted by the 911 Commission was, just perhaps, something less than the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Such heresy or whispered skepticism has become the new third rail of domestic US politics, apparently. So much as graze it, and you join Reverend Wright down under the bus.

Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and CIA director Leon Panetta could declassify and make public everything with held from the 911 Commission by the Bush/Cheney White House tomorrow, if they wanted to. Heaven forbid anyone anywhere near the inner circle of real decision making should dare suggest this was an option on the table fit for candid, open discussion.

Bill from Saginaw

Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."

The Dimocrats have miserably failed to counter the growing media and propaganda machine of the far-right for three decades. George Soros, Ted Turner and others have the money and connections to build opposition think-tanks and media channels but lack the political eye of the tiger for the fight. There are thousands of outstanding, unemployed progressive print media journalists and writers who desperately need such jobs in this economy. FDR's New Deal created jobs for writers, artists and photographers. We would not have the famous images of the Dust Bowl and conditions in the Great Depression without their work. We have no famous commonly known images of the homelessness and suffering taking place in the current Depression because the Dims are now too stupid and ignorant of their own Party's more successful history to call the rest of America's attention to their plight. Instead they let bloviating 'shits on a shingle' like Glenn Beck and Max Baucus reveal the president and his entire Party as a bunch of soggy sold out milque toasts.

If the Obama administration (or any Democratic administration) had its act together they would already have had at least three potential appointees for every major policy position prepared to immediately replace the appointees picked off by the far-right noise machine. The task Van Jones was about is too important to stand idle while Team Obama takes months to find a replacement. The policy objective--green jobs for a greener economy--is the real target. The real unexamined story here is why the far-right hates ANY substantive move toward a greener economy--that and the scale of greenwashing in which all the oligarchs prime themselves. Anyone noticed how many green prototypes and technologies the big oil and car companies have dabbled in for 40 years but NEVER mass produce? Ever noticed how when PBS or some magazine interviewer asks one of these company's McScientists when this technology will be mass produced the answer is always: "Oh, it's probably still decades away." GM was saying that decades before and one decade after it sold electric cars and then crushed them.

We didn't always used to be such a nation of suckers constantly falling for the same corporatist garbage over and over again. You'd think that if so many Amurkans are too preoccupied or lazy to pick up a history book now and then that they'd at least listen to some books on tape or on MP3 files on their daily commute instead of always opting for the lowest common denominator on the AM rant radio pile.

Everyone's trying to console themselves by acting like Jones can be more powerful as an advocate than as an emissary of the world's seat of power. That's preposterous on the face of it.

Anyone remember Ralph Nader? I mean anyone old enough to really remember him, back in the day, back in the '70's? This is a guy who was a guest on Sesame Street. The corporate operations classic "Up The Organization" advised its readers to conduct board meetings as if Ralph Nader was in the room. Thousands of safety guidelines and corporate regulations were codified through Nader's efforts. The whole concept of "public interest" is inseparable from the name "Ralph Nader."

Then we suffered through 12 years of Reagan and Bush 1. We all held high hopes that the return of Democrats to power would engender the return of voices of public interest. But suddenly Ralph Nader couldn't even get an appointment with a cabinet level official -- even those who started their careers advocating within Nader-founded organizations. This is the legacy of the DLC that promised to triangulate a path to make the Democratic Party friends of Wall Street -- and they succeeded, resulting in Gore, Kerry, and Obama and people just like them as all we're allowed to choose between as "serious" primary candidates.

And Nader? What will be his place in the history books? The man who near single-handedly saved hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of lives, and brought corporate excess to heel in the public interest and established government's role in so doing on behalf of its citizens, the man before whom corporate giants would quake if they heard his name from their lips, or as some egomaniacal pariah who caused Bush to beat Gore and thereby destroyed America? And was it not overwhelmingly Democrats and their financiers who promoted that revisionist history to advance the corporate agenda? Come on. Looking at Obama, and hearing what Kerry before him was promising, do any of you still feel REALLY certain that life under Gore would have been hunky-dory?

Obama, for all his talk of a "team of rivals," only appointed political rivals, not ideological ones, all to the right of his own party, and even some registered Republicans. Not one bona fide liberal, let alone progressive, made a Secretary, Asst. Secretary, or Under Secretary of or for anything. Jones, officially nothing, was kicked to the curb not because he could be a liability with OBama's base of voters, but because, heaven help us, of Glen Beck.

There is no job title out there in the advocacy world anymore for someone to influence government policy from the outside on the Ralph Nader scale. It was the Democrats, many of them right on these pages, who made sure that would become the new normal, and they'd already had as of 1992 without anyone but Nader himself noticing -- that's why he ran for President in 1996 and 2000, as a last ditch effort to revive public attention towards public interest advocacy. You all know he went down in flames -- many of you helped. Van Jones is not going to become the vanguard of an empowered environmental movement that will bring Wall Street to heel in the public interest. He's going to be Cindy Sheehan for the next week or so, and then become to environmentalism what Cindy Sheehan became to peace activism. but much quicker. If you think I'm wrong, and that Amy Goodman is right, please point out to me precisely what Jones will land at the helm of that will make this happen. There has to be a ship for someone to take the helm.

This is a loss, plain and simple, with The False Messiah bowing to Satan Beck instead of firing up what was previously thought of as his own enlightened base to take on the forces of darkness. Jones and most of what he represented at his former post are toast. The noose is around us, and we'll see it serious yanked tight as 2012 comes upon us. Obama will not prepare. You should. Form organizations in your community now, and prepare yourselves to fight.

www.commonplans.blogspot.com
www.eisenhowerproject.org