Self Appointed Experts.

To misquote Tom Wolfe, we are always being told that the dark night of extremism is descending on the American right yet it always seems to land on the left.

The departure of Obama's truthy former "Green Jobs" advisor Van Jones was inevitable and right. As I've said before I believe that the science supports the proposition that global warming is to a large extent man made which probably puts me in a minority in my part of the political spectrum. A lot of the public is scpetical of AGW so it doesn't help that environmentalists are perfectly happy to have gibbering lunatics as their spokesmen (I call this "Michael Meacher Syndrome").

Anyway how did Van Jones come to be appointed as Obama's expert on creating "Green Jobs"? He didn't spend years familiarising himself with economic theory, he didn't run a business, he didn't study to make himself an expert on energy policy and he didn't learn engineering so that he could create energy solutions. In fact as far as I can tell he is a dilettante who bounced around as an activist for whatever far left cause was flavour of the month, before he designated himself as an expert on the environment and job creation, he was a "Civil rights activist" (race hustler), "human rights activist" (anti-police demagogue) and an advocate of "social justice" (not to be confused with normal justice).

In other words there was nothing in his background to support his claim to expertise in the Green economy, in fact in so far as he insisted that there wouldn't be any trade offs to shifting the economy in such a different direction he is almost the exact opposite of a economic expert. Yet on the basis of these non existent credentials he was recruited by the President of the USA. It is like appointing Gillian McKeith as Surgeon General. That is the scandal.