Thanks to Newsbusters, we now know that NBC has finally mentioned safe schools czar Kevin Jennings. The progressive news network ignored him when it surfaced that he advised a young student who had a sexual encounter with an older man in a bus station to use a condom. And when it was revealed that his group GLSEN was teaching young students sexual acts during special seminars. And when GLSEN posted a reading list that included gay pornographic material. But with the recent spate of bullying at a Massachusetts school that led to a student's suicide, NBC Nightly News finally found face time for Jennings.
ROSSEN: In Springfield, Massachusetts, a young boy hanged himself last year after being teased about his size. In Ohio, Jessie Logan hanged herself after a nude photo was spread around her school. Experts say warning signs are often there.
BARBARA COLOROSO: They hang up from their phone and they're sad or sullen, they get off the Internet and they look a little frightened, these are all clues that you and I as parents need to be clued in to.
ROSSEN: And education officials are worried, too, worried bullying is causing a drop in the graduation rate. Now the federal government is pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into a new anti-bullying campaign.
KEVIN JENNINGS (United States Department of Education): What keeps me up at night, and everyone in the US Department of Education, is the idea that out there there are children who'd rather die than go to school.
No comment was afforded to parents kept up at night from having their children taught "fisting" at one of Jennings' seminars. The report also promoted Jennings' $410 million anti-bullying campaigns without mentioning their real intent. The initiative is aimed at grading schools based on "climate" -- specifically how gay-friendly the schools are. Schools that fully incorporate LGBT themes into the curriculum would be rated as "inclusive" while schools that didn't would fail. All this is at the exclusion of Catholic schools, which are expressly forbidden from promoting gay lifestyles.
NBC is owned by General Electric. GE's CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, is an ardent Obama backer and sits on the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve. His closeness to the administration has helped GE win lucrative health care and green energy contracts with the government. NBC's sister station, MSNBC, is a bastion of Obama adoration and regularly attacks the administration's critics.
One of the downsides about appointing unelected and unaccountable officials is there's usually no one to reign them in. As Obama's treatment of Israel creates tremors throughout his administration, Central Region Czar Dennis Ross and Mideast Peace Czar George Mitchell are having at it.
Sources say within the inter-agency process, White House Middle East strategist Dennis Ross is staking out a position that Washington needs to be sensitive to Netanyahu’s domestic political constraints including over the issue of building in East Jerusalem in order to not raise new Arab demands, while other officials including some aligned with Middle East peace envoy George Mitchell are arguing Washington needs to hold firm in pressing Netanyahu for written commitments to avoid provocations that imperil Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and to preserve the Obama administration's credibility.
Ross is perhaps Obama's sanest czar. A product of the president's "team of rivals" thinking at the beginning of his term, Ross fervently supported the Iraq War and worked as a Fox News contributor. Mitchell is a former Democratic Senate Majority Leader and is widely respected throughout the Middle East. Nevertheless, his comment about staying tough on Israel so Obama doesn't lose "credibility" is very telling. In other words, the president has hurt feelings because Netanyahu announced the apartments' construction in East Jerusalem while Biden was in the country. But it's difficult to see how snubbing the leader of one of America's strongest allies in the White House boosts their credibility.
Either way, Ross will now have to be destroyed by the more radical elements of the Obama Administration. An unnamed official is leading the charge.
“He [Ross] seems to be far more sensitive to Netanyahu's coalition politics than to U.S. interests,” one U.S. official told POLITICO Saturday. “And he doesn't seem to understand that this has become bigger than Jerusalem but is rather about the credibility of this Administration."
So American-Israeli relations are in shambles, the president doesn't care, and the one czar who expresses concern is practically accused of treason.
One of the most controversial appointees in the Obama Administration is Kevin Jennings, the so-called safe schools czar. He gained notoriety after it surfaced that he had brushed off a 16-year-old boy, seeking advice after having a sexual encounter with an older man in a Boston bus station, by saying he hoped they'd used a condom. His group, GLSEN, has been criticized for sponsoring seminars that teach perverse sex techniques to students and for recommending pornography on their reading list.
Just how did such an extremist end up in a presidential administration? In a recent (and rare) speech at the National Press Club, Jennings revealed that Obama specifically sought him out for the czar job. Video courtesy of CNS News:
“President Obama got elected and they were looking for someone to run the safe schools program, and since I worked to make schools safe, they asked me if I would take the job,” Jennings said in a speech last week at the National Press Club.
...
“Honestly, I never, ever saw myself in public office – it wasn’t an aspiration I’ve ever had,” Jennings said. “If I was given the chance to be part of the administration to take what I’ve learned from 25 years in education and apply it to making schools safer, (and) if I said no, that would be hypocritical.”
It is curious that Obama aggressively recruited Jennings for a "safe schools" position. Jennings' only experience in education involves promoting gay tolerance (and occasionally gay pornography). There are countless other educational groups that deal with more relevant issues to young students. The D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) Program, for example, does an excellent job educating children about drugs, a more pressing concern for parents than gay tolerance.
Jennings' new career in public service means he gets to enforce his views on the rest of the nation. As we reported previously, Jennings' office is looking into judging schools based on "climate" -- meaning how gay-friendly a school is. A positively-rated "inclusive" school is one where gay themes are fully integrated throughout the entire curriculum, as far down as kindergarten. Schools with poor climates, such as Catholic schools, would presumably face some sort of retribution. Obama awarded Jennings' office $410 million in his budget.
Cass Sunstein, the president's regulatory czar, gave a speech at the Brookings Institution yesterday. Focusing on the Obama Administration's alleged "accountability" and "transparency", Sunstein grossly exaggerated his boss' commitment to open government.
One of the White House's top regulators on Wednesday stressed the Obama administration takes public comments submitted on its transparency websites "extremely seriously."
...
"We've started to democratize data, we've used openness to promote accountability," Sunstein said, adding disclosure is a "low-cost, high-impact, regulatory tool."
"What transparency does is allow the public to see and to comment on what are the easy cases, what are the hard cases, and how to think about the latter," he added.
The government doesn't take these websites seriously and never has. Their most celebrated attempt at transparency, Recovery.gov, was supposed to track stimulus money. Instead it wildly overestimated the number of jobs that had been created and claimed new jobs in imaginary zip codes. The White House website is used more as a bulletin board to make the case for health care reform than a transparency tool. Obama has also made a practice of holding closed door meetings with everyone from union bosses to drug lobbyists to Bill Ayers, according to the White House visitor logs.
Sunstein himself isn't transparent at all. He's an unaccountable czar of the president's and almost never makes public statements. The website for his department, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, has scant information on it. In the speech, Sunstein gave no indication as to what he does. In fact, he barely mentioned regulatory reform at all, even though that's his job.
Sunstein has previously written that the First Amendment is outdated and needs to be rewritten to serve the public interest. He has suggested that animals should have legal rights and said we should celebrate Tax Day. He didn't address any of these controversies in his Brookings speech.
Ron Bloom, Obama's car czar, has surfaced, buried at the end of a U.S. News and World Report blog entry. Columnist Peter Roff reports that Bloom may have been the catalyzing force behind the Toyota recall.
Whatever the reality concerning the performance of the Toyota vehicles, the investigations are themselves riddled with conflicts of interest. Thanks to President Barack Obama's multibillion-dollar bailout of General Motors and Chrysler, the agencies looking into the safety of the Toyota fleet are part of the same U.S. government that owns large chucks of the same GM and Chrysler that have been losing market share to Toyota and the other Japanese automakers for decades.
Sources who follow the issue suggest that Ron Bloom, the former White House car czar who is now a senior counselor on manufacturing issues, is at least partly to blame for keeping the spotlight focused on Toyota's troubles.
Bloom is an unelected czar charged with overseeing the reconstruction of America's domestic auto industry. The government initially put pressure on Toyota to recall their cars after it was revealed many Toyota models were suddenly accelerating, injuring and killing drivers. Toyota had the highest rate of sudden acceleration problems, although GM and Chrysler had plenty of incidents as well.
Bloom previously worked for the SEIU. Toyota, meanwhile, has refused to unionize its workers. Bloom is also charged with remaking the American auto industry, while Toyota is based in Japan. Bloom has previously said he agrees with mass murderer Mao Tse-tung that "Political power largely comes from the end of a gun." He has also said, "In today’s world the blather about free trade, free markets and the joys of competition is nothing but pablum for the suckers."
However bad the economy gets, we can all rest assured that safe schools czar Kevin Jennings will always have plenty of money. Jennings is the radical gay activist whose group GLSEN sponsored an event that taught young students the art of "fisting", a sex act that can't be explained on our family-safe blog. The invaluable Citizen Link Blog has the latest on Obama's alliance with Jennings.
"President Obama’s proposed 2011 budget would allocate $410 million for programs overseen by Jennings. That’s an increase of $45 million.
So want does Jennings intend to do with this money?
For starters, he says he’s going to make 'school climate' measurement a top priority—and, in fact, he’d love for 'school climate' to eventually be made part of the 'Common Core' national standards movement! He plans to begin with 'a new grant program coming out of this department where we’ll be providing possibly as much as $70 million for investments in school climate projects.'"
So what does "school climate" mean exactly?
"Under Jennings’ leadership, GLSEN has provided students with a “school climate” continuum measurement tool. This tool reveals a lot about Jennings’ true goals: A positively rated 'inclusive school,' for instance, is defined as one where 'LGBT themes are fully integrated into curricula across a variety of subject areas and grade levels.'
I.e., Jennings and GLSEN want homosexual, bisexual and transgender themes taught in every subject at every grade, all the way down to the kindergarten level, maybe even preschool."
So what would happen to a school that wasn't "inclusive"? Catholic schools, for example, don't always teach directly that homosexuality is sinful, but they must at least present the idea. Would Catholic schools, which regularly outperform public schools in every way, be denied funding? Or sued? And how far would a school have to go to be called inclusive? The great indoctrinator Jennings hasn't made any of this clear yet.
Van Jones is on a roll. He's already started a group hell-bent on overthrowing the United States government, declared himself to be a communist, befriended a former Weatherman terrorist, called Republicans ass****s, and accused the Bush administration of perpetrating 9/11. Now we've learned he cast his lot in with traitors during the Iraq war.
In 2003, a band of left-wing nuts headed to Iraq to be "human shields" -- place themselves in front of Iraqi schools and hospitals so the United States would think twice about bombing. They introduced themselves to Saddam Hussein's government which took them in. Van Jones went on MSNBC (where else?) to discuss the problem with Dan Abrams.
DAN ABRAMS: If Saddam Hussein uses human shields and he’s captured alive, he’s going to be tried as a war criminal, as will anyone who works with him in that effort. The question we’re asking here is, what about these Americans, these Europeans who are sending over these American and European human shields?
VAN JONES: They’re heroes.
DAN ABRAMS: Could that — well, all right.
VAN JONES: They’re not criminals, they’re heroes.
DAN ABRAMS: All right, Van, before I even get to the intro, Van Jones is jumping in, describing them as heroes.
VAN JONES: They’re not criminals, they’re heroes.
DAN ABRAMS: All right, Van, before I even get to the intro, Van Jones is jumping in, describing them as heroes.
No they were traitors, quite literally giving "aid and comfort to the enemy." This is the man Barack Obama hired as his green jobs czar, the Center for American Progress hired after that didn't work out, and the NAACP called "an American treasure."
In the end, even the human shield losers were smarter than Van Jones. After meeting with the Iraqi government, the group bolted for the border, complaining that Iraqi officials wanted to post them at strategic targets, such as power plans and oil refineries, instead of more humanitarian locations. What a surprise. These are Obama's and Jones' true heroes: those who talk big about humanitarianism and then cut and run.
Health czar Nancy-Ann DeParle just finished a video question-and-answer session on the White House website. It was mostly the usual chatter about ObamaCare, but one thing really jumped out. When discussing the proposed excise tax on Cadillac health plans, DeParle said, "Do we really want to be spending that kind of money on our health care plans? ... Wouldn't you rather have that in your wages?"
DeParle sounds like a nanny scolding children. Her comment perfectly crystallizes Obama's attitude on pretty much everything. You don't really want to do that. We know that isn't good for you. People who buy expensive health care plans do so because the coverage is excellent, and they have plenty of other options. Obama is supposedly worried about the quality of care, yet he's slapping a huge tax on anyone who buys the best coverage in America.
DeParle also claimed that 47 million Americans don't have health care not because they opt out, but because they "can't afford it." As we have wearily explained over and over again, the Census Bureau says that isn't true. Of that 47 million, about 10 million are illegal immigrants. A further 17 million make more than $50,000 per year, but choose willingly not to carry health insurance. And an unknown third number qualify for Medicaid or some other government-funded health plan.
So the health czar is an Orwellian liar. Who would have guessed?
To be fair, Nicole Yvette Lamb-Hale was confirmed by the Senate and has an official position (Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Manufacturing), unlike so many of Barack Obama's other czars. But the president doesn't need another adviser on manufacturing. He already has Manufacturing Czar Ed Montgomery and crazed anti-capitalist Car Czar Ron Bloom.
Lamb-Hale previously worked at the business consulting firm Foley and Lardner LLP, one of the largest in the country. There, she specialized in the restructuring of companies in the manufacturing sector...especially automobile companies. Obama's government currently has huge ownership stakes in two of America's largest car companies. His administration has been persecuting the biggest competition, Toyota, by demanding massive recalls. Now he brings in a woman renowned for her ability to tinker with the car industry. It smells like socialism and central planning.
Most of the companies that owed TARP money have repaid it. Now it's time for the reverse to happen. Obama needs to get the government the hell out of GM and Chrysler...and fire Montgomery, Bloom, and Lamb-Hale.
John Holdren, Barack Obama's science czar, has more power than most people realize. Right now he's sending envoys to the Middle East.
The Office of Science and Technology Policy, headed up by Holdren, has been sending scientists to the Muslim world since Obama's suck-up speech in Cairo. Envoys so far have included a biochemistry professor and the head of the National Institutes of Health. There's nothing necessarily wrong with this. A global exchange of scientific ideas is always a good thing. But according to the press release, "[The envoys] will investigate opportunities in all areas of science and technology, including math, engineering, health, energy, climate change research, and green technologies."
We know Holdren is a crazed climate alarmist who predicted that the east coast might be flooded by 2020. We also know that Obama failed to work his magic and get a climate agreement in Copenhagen. What sort of back-door environmentalism is going on here?
No seriously, he actually said that. Here's Barack Obama's counterterrorism czar John Brennan writing in USA Today:
"Politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda. Terrorists are not 100-feet tall. Nor do they deserve the abject fear they seek to instill. They will, however, be dismantled and destroyed, by our military, our intelligence services and our law enforcement community. And the notion that America’s counterterrorism professionals and America’s system of justice are unable to handle these murderous miscreants is absurd."
This administration sure is tough and thick-skinned. Imagine people offering up criticism of Obama after a Nigerian with a smoking bomb in his underoos sneaked past our entire national security apparatus even after his father had warned the embassy of his radicalism. Liberals scream pretty loudly whenever anyone questions their patriotism. This is the exact same thing.
"To stem the criticism [of Obama from minority groups], NBA legend Magic Johnson plans to meet with Obama in Washington, D.C., this week to suggest the president appoint a high-profile liaison between the White House and the black and Latino communities — a minority czar, of sorts. "The next 12 months will really be the test for him," Johnson tells NEWSWEEK. "I think we in the community will really have to begin to see the changes needed to get us back on track in 2010." Among the issues Johnson wants Obama to address: the growing number of unemployed black men; the continued practice of big banks refusing to lend money to minority businesses; and the rise in HIV and AIDS in the black and Latino communities. [But he won't address the black abortion rate, which is three times higher than the white abortion rate.] Johnson plans to nominate himself for the job: "And if he wants someone else, that's fine, too. But the sooner the better."
Obama already has a diversity czar at the FCC, but that just isn't enough. Barack Obama, America's first black president who worked on the streets of Chicago, apparently needs a czar to tell him what's going on in black and Latino communities. This will be his 35th czar.
Barack Obama has appointed an ambassador-at-large for women's issues, Melanne Verveer. He has appointed a special representative to Muslim communities, Farah Pandith. But he hasn't found time to pick an ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom.
The State Department has confirmed that the ambassadorship still remains open. The international religious freedom office was established at State back in 1998 and consistently filled by presidents until now. It's not an option either. The International Religious Freedom Act that created the office requires by law that the position be filled and that a report on religious liberty be submitted every year.
With countless czars clogging up his administration, Obama apparently can't be bothered to fill one post he desperately needs to.
It’s fun to laugh at Barack Obama’s blunders on his one-year anniversary, but remember that the president is a radical Chicago pol. He’s inexperienced of course, but he’s also gotten away with some pretty egregious things during his first year. Here are 25 of the worst, in no particular order.
1)Obama’s communications director, Anita Dunn, says that Fox News isn’t a real news network. Days later, Fox is denied an interview with Pay Czar Kenneth Feinberg, even though Feinberg is made available to the other networks. The White House ultimately retreats from this sinister and anti-American activity.
2)Obama appoints John Holdren to be his Science Czar. Holdren is a eugenicist who believes overpopulation will destroy the planet and who has written that forced abortions or sterilizations could be justified under the Constitution.
3)Obama appoints Kevin Jennings to be his Safe Schools Czar. Jennings once headed up GLSEN, a radical gay group that promoted pornographic sex books for children. When asked by a young student what to do about a sexual encounter with an older man in a bus station, Jennings dismissively said, “I hope you used a condom.”
4)Under the influence of Obama’s Diversity Czar Mark Lloyd, and following widespread attacks on the "The Fairness Doctrine", the FCC embraces “localism” and starts thinking of ways to take down large radio companies (most of which employ conservative personalities) and redistribute their money to smaller, minority-owned stations.
5)Obama appoints Ron Bloom to be his Car Czar, a union hack who once called the free market “nonsense.”
6)Obama tries to jam the Employee Free Choice Act through Congress, a union grab bag that would shift power to Big Labor and eliminate the secret ballot for workers voting on whether or not to unionize.
7)Obama gives the United Auto Workers labor union massive ownership stakes in General Motors and Chrysler after both businesses accepted government bailouts. Using the government to hand companies over to their workers? Classic Obama Marxism.
8)Obama’s Office of Management and Budget and the Congressional Budget Office use Enron-style accounting tricks to disguise the negative consequences of their radical policies. Most recently, the OMB announced it would be counting jobs “funded” rather than actually “created” by its stimulus bill.
9)Obama’s Pay Czar, Kenneth Feinberg, is given truly tyrannical power. He can determine the salaries of corporate CEOs and mid-level employees, and “claw back” money already paid.
10)Obama nominates Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Sotomayor has previously stated that empathy is a crucial factor in judging, and that her Hispanic upbringing somehow made her more qualified to sit on the highest court in the land.
11)Obama’s Justice Department sues the state of New Jersey because they administer an exam to aspiring police sergeants which more whites pass than minorities. The lawsuit is purely racial and resembles the Ricci case in Connecticut that got Sotomayor in so much trouble.
12)Hillary Clinton gives a speech celebrating the creation of the UN Population Fund, a group dedicated to providing women with “reproductive services” and that has been convincingly accused of working with China to enforce its one-child policy.
13)After Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona criticized Obama’s stimulus, the White House phones up Arizona’s governor and threatened to withhold stimulus funds to that state if Kyl kept up his criticisms.
14)Obama makes another sick deal with Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska. In exchange for Nelson abandoning his concerns about abortion in the health care bill, Obama offers to have the federal government pay all of Nebraska’s Medicare costs…at the expense of taxpayer money from the other 49 states.
15)Obama is caught at the center of a scheme to sell his former Senate seat in Illinois. Most of the blame appropriately falls on Governor Rod Blagojevich, but some of the president’s chief advisers are implicated on tape as well, including Rahm Emanuel and Valerie Jarrett. Neither is fired nor disciplined in any way.
16)Obama pays off the AARP. With A. Barry Rand, a longtime Obama crony, helming the AARP, Obama bought off the organization by giving them an astonishing $18 million in stimulus money. In return, the AARP strongly supported the health care bill, even though it included massive Medicare cuts, which the group had criticized in the past.
17)Obama brings in Van Jones as his Green Jobs Czar. Jones was entrusted to coordinate the president’s strategy on so-called green jobs, despite his former membership in a group called STORM that advocated the overthrow of the government, and despite a long history of radical and inappropriate comments. Jones later resigns after it’s revealed he signed a petition questioning whether the government destroyed the World Trade Center on 9/11.
18)Obama brings in Jeff Jones. This Jones is a former Weather Underground terrorist (along with Bill Ayers) who later established a group called the Apollo Alliance. The Apollo Alliance wrote the cap and trade bill that Obama later tried to ram through Congress.
19)Obama appoints Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, (Rahm’s brother), to be one of his budget advisors. Emanuel has previously written at length about the need to ration health care.
20)Obama appoints Patrick Gaspard to be his political director. Gaspard is all tied up in the network of corrupt community organizations that produced Obama himself, including the SEIU, ACORN, and the Working Families Party. He has observed that his greatest achievement is "raising two children of color in the U.S." Instead of, say, the Democratic Republic of Congo, where he was born?
21)Obama’s National Endowment of the Arts, under the leadership of Rocco Landesman, tries to coax artists into creating pieces that lionize Obama. In other words, taxpayer money is used to fund artistic propaganda.
22)Obama appoints Robert Bauer to be his White House counsel. Bauer is an ardent ACORN defender and wrote a memo to the Justice Department during the 2008 election asking them to investigate whether the McCain campaign broke the law by criticizing ACORN.
23)Obama gives a speech at the University of Cairo in which he constantly praises the Muslim world and attempts to whitewash its problems with terrorism. The speech is appeasing and useless, since a Muslim bomber would attempt to blow up a Detroit flight less than a year later.
24)Obama attempts to pass a health care bill that, among other egregious provisions, requires every American citizen to purchase health insurance. This tyranny is unprecedented in America’s history, as a requirement for citizenship has never before been in place.
25)Obama joins Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez in failing to accept the election results in Honduras, where a peaceful coup overthrew brutal Marxist Manuel Zelaya, who had refused to leave after being voted out of office. Zelaya is now hiding out in the Brazilian Embassy.
Todd Stern is the climate czar. John Holdren is the science czar. Ron Bloom and Ed Montgomery are both car czars. The term "czar" is familiar to almost everyone thanks to Barack Obama. Most of these people have actual titles, and yet they're called czars.
Czars are Obama appointees, most of whom have not faced Senate confirmation. It is the Senate's constitutional responsibility to advise and consent on the president's nominees. But as has been previously reported on Obama Watch News, these nominees have often faced stiff resistance in the Senate because of their radicalism. For example, Obama's nominee to head up the TSA, Errol Southers, is stuck in limbo because he has previously said that climate change is a greater threat to the United States than terrorism, among other radical statements. Obama's nominee for the OLC, Dawn Johnsen, still faces resistance because she has equated pregnancy to bondage.
The solution? Give policymaking power to staff who haven't been confirmed by the Senate. Like the czars of old, these bureaucrats wield great power. Barack Obama's pay czar Kenneth Feinberg has the authority to determine the salaries of American executives -- and even "claw back" money that's already been paid. And like the czars of old, these bureaucrats are completely unaccountable.
A new study by the Partnership for Public Service is out which analyzes why Obama still has a large number of vacancies in his government. Of course the real reason for the empty slots are that many of his nominees are left-wing radicals and have been stalled by the Senate. Buried deep in the New York Timesarticle on the PPS study is this alarming solution:
"The report recommends major fixes before the next election, such as reducing the number of political appointees that need Senate confirmation."
Obama is reportedly frustrated about his nominees being held up, so he's likely to take this advice. The Senate has the constitutional responsibility to "advise and consent" on a president's nominees. It's a check on the executive branch in case the president tries to, say, fill his offices with radicals. Given how many unconfirmed czars are already infesting the executive branch, how long will it be until Obama just dispenses with advise and consent completely?
While most of America was preparing for the New Year's celebrations, Barack Obama was unveiling a new executive order that retooled how the government classifies information. Thanks to Obama, the "Director [of the] Office of Science and Technology Policy" will now have the power to classify documents. That's John Holdren, the science czar, climate change alarmist (he is the president's senior advisor on climate change), and eugenics fan.
Not only can Holdren issue classification orders, he can assign them the status of "Top Secret". This is usually reserved for information which, if published, could do grave harm to America's national security. "Top Secret" is the highest level of classification in the United States government. It's a power usually reserved for the president, his chief of staff, and high-level cabinet secretaries. But in an unprecedented move, Obama handed this potent authority to his science czar.
Other czars, including Homeland Security Czar John Brennan and Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske, also have classification powers. But this makes sense, seeing as both regularly deal with security and crime policy. In contrast, Vice President Joe Biden doesn't have the ability to classify information. The Secretaries of Commerce, Agriculture, and Transportation can only classify at the "Secret" level, one step below the "Top Secret" category. Now Holdren is more powerful than all of them.
So what exactly is the Obama Administration preparing to hide? Could it be more sketchy data on the climate? Is this a cover-up to protect the draconian, business-killing aims of the Green religion's zealots?
Only in Barack Obama's world does a science czar deserve the unfettered ability to hide information from the public. We need to know why.
Little fleas have smaller fleas upon their backs to bite them, The smaller fleas have lesser fleas, and so, ad infinitum...
Barack Obama's dizzying list of czars now has a lower order.
At the UN Climate talks in Copenhagen today, the U.S. keynote speaker was Jonathan Pershing, deputy to Todd Stern, the Climate Czar. The Deputy Czar portentously delivered the news that the U.S. will reduce "emissions" by 17% by 2020, and 83% (!) by 2050. He also promised that America will "pay its fair share" of $10 billion to the impoverished economies that would be "destabilized" by climate change.
Pershing has a personal stake at Copenhagen. He was a lead negotiator on the failed Kyoto Accords and the treaty it spawned which would have required draconian emissions cuts had it not been rejected unanimously by the Senate. He also served as review editor for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which -- guess what -- produced a report calling for draconian emissions cuts. Pershing was also lead author on the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report which called for.... you get the picture.
Given all the fuss over the dubious data used by the IPCC in its "the sky is falling" prognostications, putting the man who should have checked the facts up there on the worldstage must be seen as yet another pratfall by the banana skin prone Obama White House.
Notes:
Pershing previously worked at the World Resources Initiative, a think tank that promoted his alarmist opinions. He has also advocated for either a carbon tax or a cap and trade scheme, both of which would wreak havoc on the American economy.
Pershing's boss Todd Stern headed up the United States' efforts on the Kyoto Treaty. He has advocated for an international collaboration between the world's biggest polluters called the E8, which could impose tariffs on nations who refused to limit their pollution. He was an early proponent of cap and trade, and wrote in 2007, "The next president should approach this issue the way President Franklin Roosevelt approached the Great Depression: in a spirit of restless determination." Upon his appointment to climate czar, Stern imperiously declared, "The time for denial, delay, and dispute is over".
