Monday, September 7, 2009

How did Van Jones get past the White House vetting process?

It was easy. According to the White House, there wasn't one.
Van Jones, the Obama green jobs czar who resigned shortly after midnight Sunday, did not fill out the exhaustive questionnaire White House officials required of every Cabinet-level secretary and deputy-secretary position.

An administration official said special advisers to the president, or czars, are not required to fill out the questionnaire that runs 7 pages and contains 63 questions.

The entire questionnaire, the official said, is reserved for appointees who must win Senate confirmation.

Let's put this in perspective. President Obama put Anthony Van Jones in charge of overseeing the spending of $30 billion in stimulus money and didn't even have him fill out a simple questionnaire? Many McDonald's do a background check on managers.

4 comments:

JoeBama "Truth 101" Kelly said...

Same thing I've been saying but your picture of Jones is better BP. Well done sir.

Diogenes said...

What a blatant crock of crap you're spreading.

Nobody said there wasn't a vetting process, except you.

Nobody said that there wasn't a questionnaire to be completed, or questions to be answered, except you.

You're so stupid you can't understand what's been said. Either that, or you DO understand, and you're intentionally lying.

What the Faux News report said was that Jones did not have to fill out the SAME questionnaire that Cabinet level officers completed.

That's a far cry from not being vetted at all.

And, if you remember (which you probably won't, conveniently) the Obama administration was initially criticized for having too comprehensive a questionnaire for possible appointees.

So, in other words, it's completely untrue to say that Jones "didn't even fill out a simple questionnaire" or that he didn't do a McDonald's-style background check. The FBI DID do a background check, as a matter of fact.

But, heck, why let a little thing like "facts" get in the way of a good bashing of thr President, right? That's the rightwingnut motto, right? "We don't need no stinkin' facts!"

Bluegrass Pundit said...

According to the Washington post: "He was not as thoroughly vetted as other administration officials," the official said. "It's fair to say there were unknowns." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/06/AR2009090601054.html

Now that statement might imply some form of vetting was done, but I doubt any was. The WH to my knowledge has not described any process. Most of the dirt on Van Jones was available via a Google search. I can't see how he would survive any serious vetting. I can not find any proof of your statement a background check was done. You made the statement. You should prove it.

Anonymous said...

The Washington Post article stated:

"While some conservatives tried to portray Jones as one of Obama's many issue czars, he was not. Nancy Sutley, head of the White House environmental council, hired him as her "special adviser for green jobs, enterprise and innovation" in mid-March, and he reported to her rather than to Obama. Because Jones's position did not require Senate confirmation, he avoided the kind of vetting that Cabinet officials were subjected to. "He was not as thoroughly vetted as other administration officials," the official said."

So, first, he was a second level appointee, and second, the article clearly says he was vetted but "not as thoroughly" as those with higher rank.

To conclude from this that he was not vetted is to admit to lack of reading comprehension.

Van Jones is one of the most brilliant people whose services we are not able to use due to the red-baiting of fascist Beck and other rightwingers.