Much has been said and written in recent days about how “The liberal uses crises, real or manufactured, to expand the power of government at the expense of the individual and private property.” The current financial situation is surely no different. What is striking is how brazen are the attempts we are seeing to attach pet schemes to the bailout’s coattails.

For example, Legal Newsline notes that California attorney general Jerry Brown and Al Gore told a group of investors waiting for the government to make them rich in the name of global warming — that, in the words of Legal Newsline’s headline “green opportunity could help financial crisis.” (I would add that the photo adorning the piece is, I am sure, from Gore’s days as a congressman. Apparently Gore hasn’t been photographed much in the past two decades.)

It seems that we could get out of this huge economic pickle if only we damned the torpedoes and charged headlong into the green agenda. Employing that knack for understatement for which he is so well known, Gore says “I actually do think that the green revolution is the solution to the financial crisis . . . the national security crisis, the debt crisis and the climate crisis. They are all connected.” (Admit it, I’m not the only one who immediately thought: Bacon . . . ham . . . pork chops. Heh heh heh. Ooh, yeah, right, Lisa — a wonderful, magical animal.)

Oddly, when bills promoting such schemes are discussed, it is in the context of how much they would cost the economy; when scored by CBO, the discussion of how much they would cost the state (either we are on the cusp of recruiting a prominent crowd to the cause of dynamic scoring, or this is snake oil of the least humorous sort, given the moment in which we find ourselves). When countries who claimed to have taken the first step in this revolution are faced with the second step, they cry instead in pain at how it’s bleeding them.

Recall that the entire green enterprise is premised upon shifting massive taxpayer funds into preferred ideas (I don’t want to issue a blanket description of all of the moonbattery and failed programs as “technologies”), sort of like we are being urged to do with banks, cities and others who made bad investment decisions.

On second thought, maybe Gore/Brown have gotten it half right: what if we were to funnel $700 billion to these programs that exist solely because of governmental policies instead of bailing out lenders collapsing in large part because of governmental policies?

Adding to the similarity is the ritual call that, unless we do what they want, we face Armageddon. I have noted various other signs that should strike us as familiar, warning us from rushing to ask our governors to add more inventions of government particularly in the name of global warming.

When the biggest cheerleaders for such schemes are those who have sunk millions (or more) in the projects and are simply waiting for the government to step in and add value to those apparently nearly valueless investments — like Gore is – that should be the final warning sign anyone needs. Stay Out.