We really need more of this: people on the right calling b.s. against the people on the left. This tussle is between People for the American Socialist Way and Americans for Limited Government and the subject is President Obama’s close aide Valerie Jarrett. Here’s ALG’s side:
Americans for Limited Government (ALG) President Bill Wilson today directly challenged People for the American Way Chair Lara Bergthold to substantiate her organization’s claims that ALG had engaged in a “McCarthy-era” attack against top advisor to Barack Obama, Valerie Jarrett, on the ALG website, StopJarrett.com.
“We ask you to find one factual error on StopJarrett.com,” Wilson wrote in a letter to Bergthold. “Unlike the People for the American Way, whose website is riddled with inaccuracies, StopJarrett.com is meticulously researched. Perhaps the reason you don’t like it is because Ms. Jarrett is a radical who should have never achieved her position of power.”
People for the American Way’s charges against Americans for Limited Government and other outlets were published in its document dated December 2009, “Rise of the New McCarthyism: How Right Wing Extremists Try to Paralyze Government Through Ideological Smears and Baseless Attacks”.
Wilson wrote to Bergthold that the accusations were “pathetic,” stating that concerned citizens had every right to object to the policies of Barack Obama’s nominees, and to question the vetting process for choosing what Wilson termed were “radicals.”
“Valerie Jarrett, in her role as Barack Obama’s trusted advisor, has advocated for these appointments, and thus is responsible for the agenda that is taken into the office by these officials, just as Barack Obama is for making the appointments,” Wilson wrote. “The fact is, as we have carefully documented, these appointments represent a highly objectionable, radical agenda totally at odds with the ways and wishes of the vast majority of the American people.”
Wilson said that he objected to Obama’s nominees’ plans to “create a ‘green’ economy based on faulty, manipulated science, as Mr. Jones was tasked to do; extend legal rights to animals and to create constitutional mandates on education, health care, and other entitlements, as Sunstein has advocated; and utilize the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as a means of enforcing ‘diversity’ in media ownership and on the airwaves through the creation of a Chief Diversity Officer … now filled by Mark Lloyd.”
Citing the American Spectator as a source, Wilson wrote, “Jarrett interviewed Jones for his position as the ‘green’ jobs czar in a position Jarrett’s Office for Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Engagement (OIAPE) helped to create. Her office also helped to create Lloyd’s current position at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), ‘Chief Diversity Officer.’ And she also had a direct hand in hiring Sunstein.”
The letter concluded, “Barack Obama, with the explicit collusion of Valerie Jarrett, nominated a line-up of radicals to be in pivotal government positions. Their policy positions are a matter of record.”
Considering how little vetting was done on many of President Obama’s picks for high government positions, I’m glad someone is complaining about these selections. The nice thing about the internet is that we can find out more about the policies and decisions these nominees have made – after all, the left had a field day coming up with allegations about nominees like Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court and Sarah Palin’s vice-presidential bid.
Now I don’t care about who Valerie Jarrett sleeps with or if she picks her nose. I don’t even care if she’s the kind of woman I’d have a beer with or would want on my bowling team. (President Obama, on the other hand, is definitely a leadoff bowler – he’d really give us a high handicap!) But possible criminal activity and mismanagement, that’s another thing and it’s important to know. If the liberals want to champion someone whose qualifications and track record are questionable, I suppose those are the fleas you get when your dog lies down with them.
I think in half a century when honest historians look back at the Obama Administration, they’ll find corruption on the scale of other Presidents famous for scandal-ridden terms of office like Nixon, Harding, and Grant. In particular, Harding is most famous for noting, “I have no trouble with my enemies, but my damn friends, they’re the ones that keep me walking the floor nights!”
What scares me is that I’m not sure President Obama is similarly troubled at all about his friends.
