Apollo Alliance co-founder Jeff Jones |
The Apollo Alliance, whose board members include a slew of radicals, was instrumental in helping draft a "clean technology" bill being pushed by U.S. senators, WND has learned.
The Investments for Manufacturing Progress and Clean Technology Act of 2009, or IMPACT, was sponsored by Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and is also being promoted by Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich. The act seeks to establish a $30 billion revolving loan fund to help small and mid-sized manufacturers retool their factories to produce "clean technologies" and become more energy efficient.
The Apollo Alliance has boasted in promotional material the act was based on the group's recently published "GreenMAP" or Green Manufacturing Action Plan, which laid out aggressive steps to scale up production of American-made clean energy systems and components while making U.S. factories more energy efficient.
When Brown formally introduced the act in June, he was reportedly joined by Apollo Alliance Chairman Phil Angelides and other notable business, labor and "clean energy" leaders.
"Without a program to support our own domestic manufacturers, policies that create new demand for clean energy will just lead to more imports," Angelides told reporters alongside Brown.
"It is critical that Congress enact legislation that provides direct and substantial investment in clean energy component manufacturing to ensure that jobs are created in the U.S.," Angelides said.
Brown commented, "We can revive American manufacturing through investment in clean energy. This bill will help our manufacturers retool, put our auto suppliers back to work and produce clean energy technologies."
The Green Collar Association, a clearinghouse that supports green collar job growth through education and training, reported that shortly after Apollo's GreenMAP report was released in April 2009, Brown and Stabenow asked the Apollo Alliance to help them draft model clean energy manufacturing policies based on the report's recommendations.
The Apollo Alliance has been instrumental in helping draft key policies of the Obama administration. It was previously reported Apollo helped craft portions of the $787 billion "stimulus" bill signed into law by Obama.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said in mid-2009: "The Apollo Alliance has been an important factor in helping us [the U.S. Senate] develop and execute a strategy that makes great progress on these goals and in motivating the public to support them."
Discover the Networks notes that in July, Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appointed Apollo Alliance Chairman Angelides to serve as chairman of the newly created Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.
The Apollo Alliance claims it was founded in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks "to catalyze a clean energy revolution in America."
Among its board members are a grouping of radicals, including:
- Van Jones, President Obama's controversial former "green jobs czar" who resigned in September after it was exposed he founded a communist revolutionary organization and signed a statement that accused the Bush administration of possible involvement in the 9/11 attacks. Jones also called for "resistance" against the U.S.
Green For All, a group co-founded by Jones, is a formal backer of Brown's IMPACT Act.
Jones himself decried the Apollo Alliance mission as "sort of a grand unified field theory for progressive left causes."
- Joel Rogers, a founder of the socialist New Party. WND reported evidence indicating Obama was a New Party member. In an interview with WND, New Party co-founder and Marxist activist Carl Davidson previously recounted Obama's participation with the New Party.
- Jeff Jones, a founder of the Weather Underground domestic terrorist group who spent time on the run from law enforcement agencies while his group carried out a series of bombings of U.S. government buildings.
Jones joined the Students for a Democratic Society, or SDS, from which the Weathermen splintered in the fall of 1965. Two years later, he became the SDS' New York City regional director, a position in which he participated in nearly all of the group's major protests until 1969, including the 1968 Columbia University protests and the violent riots that same year at the Democratic National Convention.
In 1969, Jones founded the Weathermen with terrorists William Ayers and Mark Rudd when the three signed an infamous statement calling for a revolution against the American government inside and outside the country to fight and defeat what the group called U.S. imperialism. President Obama came under fire for his longtime, extensive association with Ayers.
Jones was a main leader and orchestrator of what became known as the Days of Rage, a series of violent riots in Chicago organized by the Weathermen. The culmination of the riots came when he gave a signal for rowdy protesters to target a hotel that was the home of a local judge presiding over a trial of anti-war activists.
Jones went underground after he failed to appear for a March 1970 court date to face charges of "crossing state lines to foment a riot and conspiring to do so." He moved to San Francisco with Ayers' wife, Bernardine Dohrn. That year, at least one bombing claimed by the Weathermen went off in Jones' locale at the Presidio Army base.
Jones' Weathermen took credit for multiple bombings of U.S. government buildings, including attacks against the U.S. Capitol March 1, 1971; the Pentagon May 19, 1972, and a 1975 bombing of the State Department building.
With research by Brenda J. Elliott