This week, a global warming climate change alarmist group decided it would be great fun to petition the World Meteorological Organization to start naming violent storms after prominent deniers of their theory, despite a complete lack of evidence that violent storms are any more numerous today than in other years: "[W]e propose a new naming system, one that names extreme storms caused by climate change, after the political makers who deny climate change and obstruct climate policy.” Well, since the foolhardy pursuit of solutions to this myth, among many others, has caused countless economic and environmental catastrophes, let's turn the tables and name Leftist catastrophes, both economic and environmental, after the prominent progressives who have caused such widespread destruction and suffering.

1. The Chris Dodd Housing Bubble.

The former Senator from Connecticut received so much favoritism from Countrywide Home Loans that it boggles the mind and begs the question why is he not in jail after the financial collapse that was caused by the subprime lending industry?  In return for all those sweetheart loans, Dodd helped pass legislation that made the American taxpayer back up virtually the entire mortgage industry, including the toxic loans that were fully guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

2. The Tre Arrow Yosemite National Park Fire.

Tre Arrow, a green anarchist with many arsons under his belt, gained international fame for protesting logging by climbing a federal building in downtown Portland, Oregon in 2000 and staying perched on a narrow ledge for eleven days. An elaborate pully system with buckets was rigged for his food intake and waste expulsion, in a precursor to the Occupy movement. Because residents aren't allowed to harvest surplus timber, western forests are choked with excess fuel that burns quite well on hot summer days.

3. The Barney Frank Fannie/Freddie Implosion

4. The Great Michael Mann Hockey Labor Dispute of 2012
Michael Mann's infamous Hockey Stick Graph is so full of holes, it's a wonder that anyone takes him seriously anymore. We should continue to remind the world of his ham-handed association with the entire sport of hockey.

5. The Al Gore Migratory Bird Kill

6. The John Kitzhaber / Jay Inslee Regional Recession
The governors of Oregon and Washington are doing everything they can to block expansion of coal exports in the Pacific Northwest. These exports would create thousands of jobs in a region where joblessness routinely exceeds the national unemployment rate.

7. The Bill Clinton Spotted Owl Extinction And Rural Oregon Counties Depression

President Clinton's forest action plan, designed to save the threatened (NOT ENDANGERED) Northern Spotted Owl, focused on habitat management and effectively killed the logging industry in Oregon. Turns out, of course, that all those jobs were lost for no reason, as the Spotted Owl is still declining - due to competition from an invasive species, not loss of old growth forests. Sorry loggers!

And finally,

8. The Barack Obama Depression Of 2009 - ?

Last week, Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX) introduced a bipartisan bill that would end the federal online gambling ban.  The Internet Gambling Prohibition, Poker Consumer Protection, and Strengthening UIGEA Act of 2011 has nine original cosponsors from both sides of the aisle, including Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) and Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA), who have advocated for similar legislation in the past. Congressman Barton is Chairman Emeritus of the powerful U.S. House Committee on Energy & Commerce and has significant influence on the legislative process; which gives the bill an increased likelihood of passage.

Currently, online gambling is prohibited at the federal level, thanks to stringent regulations that affect financial transactions of Internet gambling operators. The regulation has caused the online gambling sector to move overseas, to avoid the new regulations. Nonetheless, in April this year the F.B.I. seized three poker websites, effectively shutting down access to them, charging them with bank fraud, money laundering, and illegal gambling.

Congressman Barton’s bill would repeal the ban and instead allow states to decide whether to allow residents to participate in Internet gambling. One of the bill’s only requirements would be that online gambling operators must be licensed in at least one state. The bill would bring back the Internet gambling business to U.S. borders, paving the way for thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in new revenue. Giving power back to the states and the people is what Congressman Barton’s bill does, and that is the essence and foundation of the Constitution.

Check out this letter in which members of Congress threaten Glenworth Financial's president William Frey likely over his opposition to the strangely named "Helping Families Save Their Homes Act of 2009."  An article by Frey in the Washington Times on the act can be found here.  

In Atlas Shrugged, one of the main villains is Wesley Mouch, who is described in the Wikipedia entry on the book’s characters as “Initially Wesley Mouch is the least powerful and least significant of the Looters - the other members of this group feel they can look down upon him with impunity. Eventually he becomes the most powerful Looter, and the country’s economic dictator, thereby illustrating Rand’s belief that a government-run economy places too much power in the hands of incompetent bureaucrats who would never have positions of similar influence in a private sector business.”

And now we have our very own Wesley Mouch:

Barney Frank is a petty bureaucrat-cum-dictator of the worst sort, whose Congressional snivelings simply reinforce the view of all sane Americans that no politician from Boston is to be trusted (whether they’re drunk or not.) Doesn’t he even look like he could/should be named “Wesley Mouch"?

In another pathetic performance on Wednesday, Barney Frank was grilling AIG CEO Edward Liddy, demanding the names of employees who received retention bonuses which the company agreed to before Mr. Liddy became CEO. Liddy said he would provide the names if Mr. Frank would agree to keep them confidential because AIG employees have been receiving death threats. Mr. Frank said he was not persuaded that the threats were significant, that he would not guarantee confidentiality (meaning he wants to use a current or former AIG employee to score political points), and that he would subpoena the names if he has to.

If there is anyone whom this country should be repudiating, it is Barney “Mouch” Frank.

In another fine moment, Mr. Frank demanded to know the names of people who received their bonuses after they no longer worked at AIG. This happened after Mr. Liddy repeatedly explained that the retention bonuses were given to people who were assigned to close down certain parts of AIG’s business. Mr. Frank demanded to be provided with a list of former employees who received such bonuses and how long they stayed at AIG before leaving and then getting the bonus. The implication of course is that Mr. Frank thinks someone who wasn’t at AIG for long shouldn’t be getting a bonus. But of course if the goal of the employee is to wind down an area of business quickly, one could just as easily argue that the people who left the fastest might have the best argument for a bonus. Now, I’m not exactly arguing that, but just making the point that Frank is a perfect example of a man who knows enough to be dangerous but not enough to be useful – and that suits his political ambitions just fine.

While Mr. Frank continues his anti-capitalist ranting on the House side, soon to be ex-Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) was crying crocodile tears about the AIG bonuses, seemingly forgetting that it was his amendment to Obama’s “stimulus” bill which explicitly protected bonuses such as AIG’s, specifically that there would be an “exception [from the stimulus’ bill’s executive compensation restrictions] for contractually obligated bonuses agreed on before Feb. 11, 2009″. Mr. Dodd says the language of his amendment was changed in conference or elsewhere and that he didn’t actually propose that, yet somehow it became law as part of his amendment. On Thursday morning, Dodd was pointing the finger at the Obama Administration for the language change.

It should come as no surprise, that just as Chris Dodd and Barack Obama were the biggest Senate recipients of “bonuses” (aka campaign contributions) from Fannie Mae, they were also the two biggest recipients from AIG, who gave more than three times as much to Democrats as to Republicans in 2008.

And then, there’s the Democrats’ version of “The Architect” (the nickname for Karl Rove), Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, the man by most accounts primarily responsible for the bailout of AIG and largely responsible, along with Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke for the entire bailout craze. Earlier this week, Geither offered feigned outrage at the AIG bonuses, sending a letter to Congressional leaders saying that the government will get the money back from the company. While it’s possible that Geither wasn’t made aware of the bonus payments, the fact that the Treasury Department was told by the New York Federal Reserve about the bonuses more than two weeks before the money was paid means one of two things: Either Geither knew about them and let Congress believe he didn’t, or his Department is so disfunctional under his “leadership” that they left him swinging in the wind. In either case, adding in Geithner’s central role in bailing out AIG, in crafting the “stimulus", and in his utter failure to competently run the financial and economic arm of the executive department during the most critical time for our economy since before my parents were born, it is a travesty that he still has his job.

I guarantee we’ll start hearing more and louder calls for Geithner’s resignation, not least from Democrats in Congress who would like to find a Democrat in another building to deflect blame on to. (Chris Dodd will probably lead the charge, as he’s already started the blame game.) My prediction: Barack Obama will offer his “full confidence” in Geithner, and then “reluctantly” accept his resignation. It would be particularly ironic if Geithner’s last day was April 15th, tax day, so that he could go off and file another false tax return…apparently a prerequisite toward getting an Obama cabinet position but hopefully not a strong enough qualification to keep him there.

The media and political furor of the week is the employee bonuses paid by AIG under contracts that existed prior to the government’s effective takeover of the company. And while the President as well as politicians of both parties are fulminating about the payouts, voter anger should be directed more at those very politicians than at AIG.

In a truly remarkable statement yesterday, GOP Senator Charles Grassley (R-Farm Subsidies, or R-Iowa) said this of AIG executives: “The first thing that would make me feel a little bit better towards them if they’d follow the Japanese model and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say I’m sorry, and then either do one of two things – resign, or go commit suicide.”

And NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo demanded (and presumably received) a list of everyone who received a “bonus” check. Think about that for a minute…

And then Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said of the people who received the bonuses, “If you don’t return it on your own we will do it for you.” Think about that for two minutes…

I’m not saying that these bonus contracts were wise or even that they weren’t a minor level of corruption in their own way. But they shouldn’t distract us from the fact that it was politicians and bureaucrats who gave AIG your money and mine.

By now we all know (and by “we”, I’m including idiots like Grassley) that the bonuses were due to current and former employees based on pre-existing contracts…and that the top management of the company is not receiving them.

But even after that was clear, politicians from the President on down are trying to figure out how to block or recover those payments, including some Democrats suggesting a special surcharge tax on bonuses from firms which are receiving TARP money with the effect of creating a 100% tax rate on those payments.

Of course, just two years ago, the President’s Press Secretary said the administration was “confident” they knew where AIG was spending taxpayer money.

The upcoming government program called the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (“TALF”), which was already delayed once, is now getting the cold shoulder from many would-be participants over the level of government interference in their business which they may be subject to if they participate. Not just the risk that government may retroactively try to change employment or other contracts, which would make it more difficult to attract quality employees who would prefer to go to a non-participating firm without that risk. But also other know-nothing protectionist measures such as the provision in the stimulus bill that restricts the ability of recipients of government “rescue” money to hire foreign workers on H-1B visas. These are not tomato pickers we’re talking about here. They are educated, important members of the American economy who will simply leave the US and go to compete against us because of Congress’ boneheaded “America First” nonsense.

There’s another very important point about the money that went to AIG. It seems that AIG tried to keep secret (probably for both legitimate and illegitimate reasons) just where it sent the tens of billions of taxpayer dollars it received. The majority of payments to AIG were distributed to other banks and investment banks, each of which was made whole on contracts at taxpayer expense even though almost all of those banks could have withstood losing much or all of the amount paid. In other words, American taxpayers just covered nearly $100 billion in potential losses, including at least $58 billion which went to foreign banks, especially in France and Germany!

Goldman Sachs, which has had tremendous impact on and some might say control of the US Treasury for much of the time since Robert Rubin was Bill Clinton’s second Secretary of the Treasury, received about $13 billion! No wonder Hank Paulson wanted AIG bailed out. And no wonder he appointed as the new CEO of AIG Edward Liddy…who serves on the Board of Directors of Goldman Sachs. Anyone smell a rat?

While nobody likes to lose money, these giant American and foreign institutions could have withstood losing a few billion dollars each. Instead, the government simply paid out $100 billion of our money to cover their potential loses.

While part of me thinks government should demand a return of part of that money from all the AIG counterparties so that they’re at least sharing in the loss, another part of me says that would just be further government meddling in existing contracts. Hindsight is 20/20, but clearly the government should have let AIG go into bankruptcy protection and then work out an orderly closing-down of the company, including letting its counter-parties take all, or at least much, of their losses.

And now the politicians want to scream about $165 million actually paid to employees?

To put it another way, dividing the $165 million in bonuses over the roughly 6,400 people who will receive them, we’re talking about an average of just under $26,000 per person. But these are the same politicians who passed an economic stimulus plan that Democrats claim will cost around $100,000 per job created and stimulus opponents claim will cost over $200,000 per job created.

It’s truly amazing for a President who is proposing a budget with a $1.75 trillion deficit (and it will be higher than that) and a Congress that passed a “stimulus” bill that will likely end up costing over $3 trillion in the next decade (not the $800 billion nominal price tag on the disastrous piece of legislation) is complaining about $165 million going to Americans who are due it under contracts.

They’re simply tried to cover their asses for being responsible for the single biggest waste of taxpayer money in American history. We must not let them get away with it.

The Treasury Department and the Fed, either knowingly or unknowingly (my guess is the former) simply redistributed your money and mine to Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Societe Generale, and Deutsche Bank, just to name a few. They made the argument (which I believed, to a degree) that the counter-party risk could take down the entire financial system. But it turns out that the counter-party risk was so widely distributed that it would have been just a small bruise on an industry which was being so severely beaten for other reasons that the additional losses from AIG would have been little more than a minor additional nuisance.

Barney Frank is one of the key villains in the whole financial meltdown, but he got one thing right this week, speaking of how the government threw more than $100 billion of taxpayer money at AIG with no strings and no oversight: “Clearly there was a mistake at the beginning.”

And today, if I understood him right, Barack Obama is saying that he will be proposing legislation to allow government to regulate executive compensation. It is an all-out war on capitalism, but unfortunately for those of us who prefer capitalism to the current trend toward economic fascism, the left is using AIG as the poster boy for free-markets when any true capitalist would have said “let them fail.”

It’s far past time to insist on an end to government bailouts, to stop accepting “too big to fail” and instead to consider some thing “too big to save.” And it’s time to hold our elected officials accountable for wasting our money on a nearly unimaginable scale.