(Analyst's note:  Extremely troubling.  Here we go again with yet another Marxist activist in another top administration position.)

 

 

Does Environmental Protection Agency Chief Lisa Jackson view her post as an activist position that can be used to spread America's wealth?

Jackson has given scores of speeches touting "environmental justice" and recently launched an initiative aimed at achieving "environmental

justice," a policy critics warn could be a ruse to spread the country's wealth.

WND reported another top administration official, Obama's regulatory czar Cass Sunstein, wrote it is "desirable" to redistribute America's wealth using "environmental justice."

Meanwhile, Jackson, the first African American to head the EPA, routinely mixes environmental activism with racial politics.

Jackson has made remarks on race that seem to echo controversial statements by Obama's former "green jobs" czar, Van Jones, who resigned in September after it was exposed he founded a communist organization. Jones previously stated his advocacy for green jobs was part of a broader movement to destroy the U.S. capitalist system.

In an EPA video announcing a new "environmental justice" initiative, Jackson opens with, "There are too many places in this country where pollution and environmental degradation fall disproportionately in low-income and minority communities. ... We can't stand by and accept those disparities. As a start we are building our environmental team."

Similarly, Jones drew fire for remarks he made in 2008 when he claimed, "The white polluters and the white environmentalists are essentially steering poison into the people-of-color communities because they don’t have a racial justice framework."

The concept of "environmental justice" permeates Jackson's work.

For her first public appearance after being confirmed by the Senate in January, Jackson chose a national conference of "environmental justice" groups meeting in New York.

Just after she was confirmed, Jackson gave a press conference touting her decision to "expand the conversation on environmentalism and working for environmental justice."

In , Jackson declared, "We, as a nation, must address this environmental justice issue."

"New Jersey's ports are located in Newark and Camden – two environmental justice communities. The residents of these cities, along with many other urban residents throughout the state, are disproportionately impacted by diesel exhaust."

After Obama tapped Jackson to head the EPA, Monique Harden, co-director of the far-left Advocates for Environmental Human Rights, a nonprofit legal advocacy group in New Orleans, stated, "This is certainly a person who understands environmental justice and who has launched and initiated efforts to reduce pollution and therefore the cancer and health impacts in communities of color."

Last August, Jackson was a speaker at the annual conference of the National Association of Black Journalists, discussing the theme, "This Land Is Our Land Too: Justice, Jobs and Environmental Protection." At the conference, she stated it is necessary to make clear to people suffering immediate economic distress the relationship between "traditional civil rights and social justice issues" and environmental justice.

'Leftist scheme' to redistribute wealth?

What does "environmental justice" mean?

Wikipedia defines the concept as "an equitable spatial distribution of burdens and benefits to groups such as racial minorities, residents of economically disadvantaged areas, or residents of developing nations."

Ross Kaminsky, writing at Human Events yesterday calls Jackson's concept of "environmental justice" a "leftist scheme to justify redistribution of wealth and the resulting regulations are not based on scientific evidence or cost/benefit analysis."

If so, Jackson would not be the only administration official to think that way.

WND reported Obama's regulatory czar Sunstein, wrote it is "desirable" to redistribute America's wealth to poorer nations using "environmental justice."

According to Sunstein, global climate change is primarily the fault of U.S. environmental behavior and can, therefore, be used as a mechanism to redistribute the country's wealth.

The Obama czar penned a 2007 University of Chicago Law School paper – obtained and reviewed by WND – in which he debated whether America should pay "justice" to the world by entering into a compensation agreement that would be a net financial loss for the U.S.

Sunstein heavily leans on the side of such an agreement, particularly a worldwide carbon tax that would heavily tariff the U.S.

A prominent theme throughout Sunstein's 39-page paper, entitled "Climate Change Justice," maintains U.S. wealth should be redistributed to poorer nations. He uses terms such as "distributive justice" several times. The paper was written with fellow attorney Eric A. Posner

"It is even possible that desirable redistribution is more likely to occur through climate change policy than otherwise, or to be accomplished more effectively through climate policy than through direct foreign aid," wrote Sunstein.

He posited: "We agree that if the United States does spend a great deal on emissions reductions as part of an international agreement, and if the agreement does give particular help to disadvantaged people, considerations of distributive justice support its action, even if better redistributive mechanisms are imaginable.

"If the United States agrees to participate in a climate change agreement on terms that are not in the nation's interest, but that help the world as a whole, there would be no reason for complaint, certainly if such participation is more helpful to poor nations than conventional foreign-aid alternatives," he wrote.

Sunstein maintains: "If we care about social welfare, we should approve of a situation in which a wealthy nation is willing to engage in a degree of self-sacrifice when the world benefits more than that nation loses."

Sunstein is not the only Obama czar to make such an argument. Van Jones made similar remarks before he resigned his position.

Two weeks before Jones started his White House job in March, he delivered the keynote address at Power Shift '09, billed as the largest youth summit on climate change in history. A reported 12,000 young people were at the D.C. Convention Center for the event.

During his speech, available on YouTube, Jones used terms such as "eco-apartheid" and "green for some," and preached about spreading the wealth while positing a call to "change the whole system."

In one section of his 29-minute speech, Jones referenced "our Native American brothers and sisters" who, he claimed, were "pushed," "bullied," "mistreated" and "shoved into all the land that we didn't want."

"Guess what?" Jones continued. "Give them the wealth! Give them then wealth! No justice on stolen land ... we owe them a debt."

"We have to create a green economy, that's true, that's true. But we have to create a green economy that Dr. King would be proud of," Jones exclaimed.

With additional research by Brenda J. Elliott

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