I'm still working on the bridge to current events. I separated out the links to anthropology from the main history page, the links to institutions from the 20th century page, and sociology from the late 20th century. I also separated out the use of institutions by sociology and the 20th century history of peoples of the world.

Since misinformation about why Van Jones  resigned is still floating around.  I thought I'd do a bit of a resume, largely taken from Wikipedia.

1968 Born

1986 Graduated High School

c 1990 BA,  University of Tennessee at Martin.

        I don't know what his undergraduate degree was in, but he interned with about three companies involved in Journalism, and helped launch or spearhead three companies.

   c. 1992 became a Communist.

1993 JD, Yale University Law School

1993 moved to San Francisco

1994 One of 8 founding members of

Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), a group explicitly committed to revolutionary Marxist politics whose points of unity were revolutionary democracy, revolutionary feminism, revolutionary internationalism, the central role of the working class, urban Marxism, and Third World Communism.

1995  Started Bay Area Police Watch, to track and protest police brutality.

1996  Founded Ella Baker Center for Human Rights

1997-1999 Led a campaign to get Mark Andaya fired from San Francisco PD.

1999-2000  Unsuccessfully led campaign to defeat Proposition 21 (which proposed treating some juveniles accused of serious felonies as adults)

2001-2003 Launched "Books not Bars" campaign.

2002  Member of organizing committee leading a march to put "truther" questions to Sen. Diane Feinstein

2003  Grassroots director for Arriana Huffington's gubernatorial recall campaign

2005  Founded "Colors of Change", "to strengthen Black America's political voice."

2005   Began promoting eco-capitalism. 

Produced "Social Equity Track" for the United Nations' World Environment Day celebration, held that year in San Francisco. Began promoting Oakland Green Jobs Corps

2007  Began creating "Green for All", a new NGO.

2008  published "The Green Collar Economy"

2009  Named Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality.^[7] Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality

The Communist history alone would be sufficient to disqualify him from a government position which would have required Senate confirmation, which his did not.

His experience seems to be principally that of an anti-establishment activist.  Missing from his resume are some of the more radical causes he espoused during his activist career, and any expertise in business administration, economics, engineering, or biology.

The Green for All website is vague on exactly what green or green-collar jobs actually are. "We need [ to ] identify the specific skills the green economy demands." This implies  that they have not already actually done so, and that their feel-good-about-the-environment talk is long on rhetoric and short on specifics.

I made a little progress on the bridge to current events.  I separated the application of institutions to moderm history as a separate page, the application of institutions to the 20th century as a separte page,  and created a page for events of August 2009. I also separated the application of 20th century history to sociology as a separete page. Most of these new pages will be visible the next time I uplod the Knowledge Base to the web site.

So I was up too late, and ran across the story that Van Jones has resigned as White House "green jobs czar', over allegations that he had been a communist, had signed a petition calling for investigation of the Bush Administration for knowingly permitting the terrorist attacks of Sept 11, 2001, and had descriped the Republican Party using a vulgar term (Admittedly, he also applied the term to thimself, but not to Obama... obviously, his usage is a trifle inconsistent)

Wkipedia says more:

In 2004, Jones was one of "100 notable Americans" who signed a "911 Truth Statement" from 911Truth.org. The statement called "for immediate public attention to unanswered questions that suggest that people within the current administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war."

On September 3, 2009, Jones issued a statement regarding the "incendiary" petition stating, "I do not agree with this statement and it certainly does not reflect my views now or ever." A White House official said that Jones did not review the document carefully before signing it.

A commenter on Jay Bookman's blog came up with this gem, however.  Two years before this petition, in 2002,  Van Jones had been helping organizing a march to bring these same allegations  to California Senator Diane Feinstein's attention.

Really, Mr. Jones? Not Ever?

"On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me," Jones said in his resignation statement. "They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide."

 

 

Sure. And Obama is bringing about a new era of peace and healing and end to racial division and political strife, too.

I'm willing to agree with those who think that the opposition to Obama's proposed speech on education has been much overplayed.  On the other hand,  it's a sign that a large and increasingly vocal segment of the American public no longer trusts him in any way.

He has developed something of a  reputation for saying whatever is politically expedient, even if it contradicts what he said last year, last month, or five minutes ago. He often does not say what he means, and often does not mean what he says.  If he can be trusted for anything, it is to be a large-government redistributionist of the Robbin' Hood variety.   He campaigned on "Hope and Change", but what he has delivered is too much same-old, same-old: either the worst of the Bush administration, (however you define that "worst")
 or the kind of socialism that  went out of fashion in the 1980s.

I wouldn't attempt to keep students from hearing  the speech. However, I would want to read it first, and a bit more carefully than Congress manages to read multi-billion dollar appropriations legislation.