Obama Keeps Tapping

President Obama is doing too much! He's working too hard! He's employing too many people! He's solving unemployment by hiring everyone himself!

Anyway, President Obama has tapped Van Jones. (Heh, heh.) Sorry... President Obama has appointed Van Jones a special adviser for green jobs.

Van Jones has been making some national noise over the past year or so as an activist and environmentalist. He writes from time to time in The Nation magazine and has been a guest multiple times on Democracy Now!. He wrote a book called The Green Collar Economy, and his nonprofit Green For All helps lift people out of poverty through environmental jobs.

I like this fella a lot. I'm a fan of that place where environmentalism intersects with social justice, and Van Jones is pretty much the man taking up the space there.

These quiet appointments can be very powerful in an Obama administration, and assuming that Van gets his voice heard in the White House, this tapping (heh, heh) demonstrates some terrific progressive thinking. Well done, President Obama. Well done, Van Jones.