From his palatial mansion in Tennessee, which burns twice the energy in a month that most American homes use in an entire year, Al Gore calls on America to learn lessons from the Maya Civilization, the downfall of which he claims could have been caused by climate change they ignored. 

Archaeologists speculate The Maya civilization collapsed sometime before 900AD.  Al Gore once compared those who doubt man-made climate change to those in the Middle Ages who thought the earth was flat.  I guess if the Mayan Congress had passed cap and trade legislation and stricter CAFE standards, they’d be wowing us with their pottery and clay figurines to this very day.

A new study suggests the Mayan civilization might have collapsed due to environmental disasters:

“‘These models suggest that as ecosystems were destroyed by mismanagement or were transformed by global climatic shifts, the depletion of agricultural and wild foods eventually contributed to the failure of the Maya sociopolitical system,’ writes environmental archaeologist Kitty Emery of the Florida Museum of Natural History in the current Human Ecology journal.”As we move towards solving the climate crisis, we need to remember the consequences to civilizations that refused to take environmental concerns seriously. — Al Gore Blog

Most of the talk about the Republican Party these days focuses on who we are and what we should represent.  Many of those debating the future direction of the party are looking to Governor Mitch Daniels for guidance.  Mitch has made it clear that he has little interest in being a voice at the national level, through elected office or otherwise, but that doesn’t mean the lessons of his leadership will go unnoticed.  Mitch sat down with Matt Tully to chat about this and other issues.

Gov. Mitch Daniels won’t be spending a lot of time advising the flailing national Republican Party, but what he is saying is worth heeding.

Many in the GOP, and in the national media, are looking to Indiana’s top boss for clues on how Republicans can emerge from a nasty political slump. On Nov. 4, as Democrats increased their congressional majorities, and as Barack Obama claimed traditionally red states such as Indiana, Daniels not only won re-election but far outpaced his showing four years ago.

In fact, he won more votes — roughly 1.56 million — than any other candidate for any office in Indiana history.

“I’m not really here to advise people in Washington,” Daniels said earlier this week while sitting in his Statehouse office.

“But be positive,” he urged his fellow Republicans. “There will be very large flaws in what is proposed by this Congress and pushed through this Congress. It’s fine to note them. But on each occasion, you ought to have a better idea to propose.”

As others debate the direction of the party, Daniels is singing the praises of limited government and free markets and says Republicans must do a better job of proving such policies “lift the downtrodden and the average person far better than bigger government.” — Indianapolis Star

Indiana’s famously cautious junior Senator is weighing in on the proposed bailout of the auto industry, leading us to believe that a deal must be imminent.  That, or Bayh saw a poll that said it was popular, or at least not unpopular.

U.S. Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN) is urging his colleagues to support action that he says will help the struggling American auto industry. The $25 billion bailout plan appears stalled in the Senate. Bayh says tens of thousands of jobs hang in the balance and believes if the federal government does not act “it will have unintended consequences, none of them positive.” — Inside Indiana Business

On his Washington Post Political Blog, Chris Cillizza suggests that Bayh might be vulnerable if the right candidate comes along:

Anita Dunn, one of Barack Obama’s closest political advisers, is returning to her media consulting practice — bypassing the chance to serve in the first Democratic White House in nearly a decade.

She will return to her firm — Squier Knapp Dunn — and begin the process of readjusting to the soap-operatic world of political consulting. Dunn’s biggest client heading in the 2010 election is Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh who some Republicans believe can be beaten — we’re skeptical — with the right candidate. (Gov. Mitch Daniels, anyone?) — The Fix

Mitch Daniels leads Indiana at the speed of business, and the US Senate moves at a speed near death.  We can’t for a moment imagine a scenario in which Mitch Daniels would run in 2010.  After all, if he wanted to be a Senator, he would have been one in 1989 and Evan Bayh would be the best looking political science professor at Georgetown University. 

Isn’t the bigger news here that Evan Bayh, who normally runs as if he has no opponent, is now hiring one of the top political strategists in America to work on his reelection campaign?  Forget what Republicans think, clearly Bayh thinks he’s vulnerable.

The House GOP selected their leadership team yesterday and elected Rep. Mike Pence to the number three spot as House Republican Conference Chairman.  The national GOP has no shortage of challenges ahead but having a leader like Mike Pence who is right on the issues and guided by a conservative compass will help us restore our credibility with the American people and get the party back to the conservative principles that made the party what it was a few short years ago. 

Rep. Mike Pence, new chairman of the House Republican Conference, said his party has to return to conservative principles to retake Congress.

“This is a time of renewal and regrounding for Republicans on Capitol Hill,” Pence told reporters shortly after he was unanimously elected to the No. 3 House GOP leadership post Wednesday. “We know the way back to a Republican majority is to return our party to those traditional conservative principles that minted our majority to begin with.”

“Mike Pence always says, ‘I’m a conservative, but I’m not angry about it,’ ” Boehner said, according to excerpts from his speech released to the media. “This is the tone we want. Respect our opponents; fight for our principles. Relish the battle of ideas.”

Pence said Republicans would work vigorously with President-elect Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress when they agree.

“But when we disagree,” he said, “we will provide substantive and positive alternatives on behalf of the American people in this debate.” — Indianapolis Star

A constitutional crisis over what can appear on personalized license plates appears to have been averted for now.  The BMV policy that doesn’t allow references to religion on new personalized plates took effect on November 6 of this year.  That means Liz Ferris, the woman who filed a lawsuit against the BMV to protect her “Be Gods” PLP, can get her plate and sleep soundly, confident that tailgaters will know she wants them to be God, or that they belong to God, or that God belongs to them, or whatever the hell it means.

The Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles commissioner today backed off its denial of a woman’s request for a personalized license plate reading “BE GODS.”

The decision resulted from a lawsuit filed this week by Liz Ferris, who had that same plate on her car for eight or nine years but forgot to renew it on time for 2008. When she submitted a new personalized plate application, the BMV denied her request because of a recent policy change banning any references to religion or a deity on new personalized plates.

But while it was proposed last year, that policy didn’t take legal effect until this month. Commissioner Ron Stiver said in a statement released today that the BMV would give Ferris a new plate bearing her old message — which she intended to mean “Be God’s” or “belong to God.”

“After reviewing Ms. Ferris’ request,” Stiver said, “it is clear that she attempted to reserve her PLP prior to November 6. As such, I have over-ruled the existing determination and directed that Ms. Ferris receive her initially requested PLP.” — Indianapolis Star

We still say do away with all of it: personalized plates, political low digit plates, special interest plates, and the like.  It’s time to let the BMV just get back to basics so we avoid these ridiculous constitutional issues over something that is intended to identify a vehicle for law enforcement.

We at Frugal Hoosiers have been fairly critical of the proposed bailout of the American auto industry.  But, as Rex Early would say, it’s a mighty thin pancake that doesn’t have two sides.  So here’s another take on the bailout from regular commenter and sometime contributor Danny Ernstes. 

I am writing this post to the Frugal Hoosiers blog to address some misconceptions and maybe win over a few of our friends who are skeptical about this bailout package. I know my audience here is attuned to free market principles and is very quick pull the trigger on such items as a bailout for these companies especially when they involve labor unions.

Let me say first and foremost that the UAW understands that our companies have to be profitable and must have flexibility to adjust to the market. Over the years the UAW has adapted and bargained contracts that both give the company the flexibility it needs while working to meet the needs of our members.

Nevertheless, here are some thoughts about the auto-bailout and some perspectives that you may not have thought of.

In the face of a global credit crisis and a worldwide economic downturn, U.S. auto sales have slowed to a crawl. As insecurity spreads throughout the economy, consumers are delaying major purchases — and those who do visit auto showrooms are not finding credit available on reasonable terms.

The domestic auto industry simply cannot succeed in today’s unstable economic environment without immediate help from the federal government. And the costs of failure are unacceptable.
This isn’t just about three large Michigan-based companies and the 240,000 people who work for them, including 150,000 of our members. It’s also about thousands of car dealerships that are anchor businesses in cities and towns across America. It’s about thousands of small and medium-size businesses — employing millions of workers — that provide parts, logistics, research, engineering and other goods and services to Chrysler, Ford and General Motors. If a major domestic auto company were to fail, a significant number of supplier companies would also be in jeopardy. This would quickly affect all the companies that produce autos in the United States — including Toyota, Honda and Nissan — because many of them buy parts and services from the same group of suppliers.

A major disruption in the auto supply chain would quickly curtail production at auto plants, whether domestic or foreign-owned, throughout the United States. The cost of failure at even a single U.S. automaker would be millions of lost jobs and hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of lost sales and revenue spread across all 50 states.

In a recent article in Bloomberg News Toyota executives spoke of what impact failure would have on their company. “We’re worried. We’re concerned about it,” said Mike Goss, a spokesman for Toyota’s North American manufacturing unit in Erlanger, Ky. “The vehicles we build in North America use about 75 percent local content, and much of that is coming from the same companies that supply the Detroit Three.” Mike Michels, Toyota’s U.S. vice president of media relations, said the failure of one or more of the U.S. automakers would be ‘devastating” for the entire industry.

Focusing back on the UAW I want to point out that, it is not the actions of our members that have caused the crisis in today’s auto industry; the crisis is being driven by economic factors that have nothing to do with labor costs or factory performance. To the contrary, our contracts have put our employers in a position to compete.

The reality of today’s auto industry is that union-made vehicles are winning quality awards and that union-represented factory workers are winning productivity awards. A Nov. 8 Post editorial claimed that unionized auto manufacturers pay “wages and benefits that far exceed those of non-union competitors,” but recent labor negotiations with Chrysler, Ford and GM addressed this alleged wage and benefit gap.

The 2007 labor negotiations with the companies transformed the domestic auto industry; when the agreements we reached have been fully implemented, they will largely or even completely eliminate the labor-cost gap between unionized auto plants and our nonunion competitors. One analyst has estimated that as a result of our contracts, GM will soon enjoy a labor-cost advantage over Toyota.

The various demands for cuts in the wages and benefits of active and retired autoworkers as a condition of federal assistance are curious — and extremely unbalanced. To our knowledge, no one has proposed cutting the compensation of everyday active or retired bankers, bond traders, and office or building personnel who work at AIG, Bear Stearns or the numerous banks that have received billions in federal aid. Why is it only autoworkers who are singled out for this dubious honor?

Besides being unfair, government-mandated wage and benefit cuts make no economic sense. In the midst of the most severe recession in decades, the last thing we should do is take money out of the pockets of working families, since it is consumer spending that drives two-thirds of all U.S. economic activity.

I hope that this helps clear up some misconceptions about the bailout program and we can begin an honest discussion about the bailout. I look forward to your posts.

DannyE