Paul Krugman had a column in the New York Times entitled Gore Derangement Syndrome speculating on the reasons that Al Gore drives so many on the right to the brink of insanity:

Partly it’s a reaction to what happened in 2000, when the American people chose Mr. Gore but his opponent somehow ended up in the White House. Both the personality cult the right tried to build around President Bush and the often hysterical denigration of Mr. Gore were, I believe, largely motivated by the desire to expunge the stain of illegitimacy from the Bush administration.

And now that Mr. Bush has proved himself utterly the wrong man for the job — to be, in fact, the best president Al Qaeda’s recruiters could have hoped for — the symptoms of Gore derangement syndrome have grown even more extreme.

The worst thing about Mr. Gore, from the conservative point of view, is that he keeps being right. In 1992, George H. W. Bush mocked him as the “ozone man,” but three years later the scientists who discovered the threat to the ozone layer won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In 2002 he warned that if we invaded Iraq, “the resulting chaos could easily pose a far greater danger to the United States than we presently face from Saddam.” And so it has proved.

Krugman goes on to explain the detrimental effect that accepting certain basic facts about climate change would have on GOP dogma. It seems odd to me that, more and more over the past 10 or 15 years, on the national level, the choice between R & D is becoming basically a choice between faith-based policies and fact-based policies.

Niki Kelly, writing for the Fort Wayne Journal Courier, is reporting that the Senate Commission on State Tax and Financing Policy will not issue a final recommendation. The panel has been studying the property tax issue all summer. It is not unusual for summer study committees to not issue final recommendations, though perhaps in this case – given the high level of interest – one would be expected. The panel is formally made up of 3 Republicans and 2 Democrats. Even without a formal recommendation, the study still probably had value. A lot of good information came out over the course of the study and that will be useful in analyzing any plans that are proposed this coming session. I wonder if the Republicans may have been afraid of stepping on the toes of Governor Daniels by approving and publicizing their plan before he announced his own or afraid of providing an excuse for Eric Miller to get mad again when the legislators act responsibly and propose a tax plan that might actually work.

Via a lot of places, but I’ll just pick Taking Down Words, the Times of Northwest Indiana tells the tale of Christina Pearson, age 20, who was made to undertake “four trips to two branches and calls to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles’ Indianapolis headquarters in two days before Christina was able to get her ID card.”

The problem was that Christina has Down Syndrome and, consequently, does not happen to have the items on the list of approved documents the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles requires for a citizen to get a State ID. The communication for the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles, Dennis Rosenbrough explained that BMV staff is under very strict orders to accept only the approved laundry list of documents before issuing a State ID. Says Rosenbrough, “It’s very important for all states to issue the IDs in a very careful way. This is not unusual to Indiana in any stretch of the imagination.” It is my understanding that the federal government has become involved in issuance of State identification, ostensibly for national security reasons; so, he’s probably right that strict control over issuance of identification is not unique to Indiana. What is unique to Indiana, however, is the requirement that a citizen have one of these strictly controlled pieces of identification as a prerequisite to exercising that citizen’s constitutional right to vote.

Steve Bonney has been awarded the Environmentalist of the Year Award by the Hoosier Environmental Council. Bonney was the lead plaintiff in the law suit opposing the sale of the Toll Road. Obviously the suit was not successful, but I sure appreciate his efforts.

One of the Lafayette area’s biggest festivals is going on this weekend: The Feast of the Hunter’s Moon. It is a celebration of the annual gathering that used to take place between the French and Native Americans at Fort Ouiatenon, about 4 miles southwest of West Lafayette on the Wabash River. The festival began in the late 60s as a class project of a high school history teacher. Since then, it’s grown to an event so big that it has to be scheduled around Purdue’s home football games — the local roads and hotels can’t accommodate both. Today is day two of the the event’s 40th annual occurrence.

The Lafayette Journal and Courier has some coverage and pictures from yesterday. The feast features period re-enactors and food and the like in an effort to take you back to the 18th century and give you an idea of the history of the place.

This poster showing how your federal tax dollars get spent put government spending in perspective.

And, no, I’m not talking about the practice of passing bad legislation and hurrying out of town. In this case, it looks like Rep. Mike Murphy — or someone driving his car with legislator’s plates — struck a parked car outside of Ike & Joney’s in downtown Indianapolis before taking off without reporting the collision or leaving insurance information. I’m not a criminal lawyer (and we probably can’t prove Murphy was the driver beyond a reasonable doubt, let alone intoxicated, in any case), but which has the harsher penalties? Knowingly and intentionally leaving the scene of the accident after he was aware of hitting another vehicle; or being intoxicated enough so as to be oblivious to the fact of a collision?

Kagro X over at Daily Kos paints a chilling picture. He suggests (with links and evidence and stuff) that Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio refused to play ball with the NSA when it wanted to snoop on Americans without warrants and tap into the telecommunications systems to do so. Consequently, the government denies Qwest government contracts and at the same time sics the SEC on Nacchio related to the company’s bad luck (related to the failure to obtain the government contracts.)

Al Gore along with the UN climate change panelwon the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Certainly the country would have been better with Gore in the White House following the 2000 election, but I think that for him personally, he did a lot better for himself as a private citizen. I have similar thoughts with the flurry of “Will he run for President, now???” articles. Sure, I think he’d do a good job as President, but why would he want to? He’s wealthy, well-liked, and respected now. Even more, he seems to be enjoying what he does.

(H/t to Paul O’Malley for flagging this one). The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article about the Greensburg Honda plant entitled Honda and UAW Clash Over New Factory Jobs. The article discusses the Honda plant’s restriction of applicants to those who live within the 20 counties near Greensburg. The UAW says that the restriction is designed to exclude most of the state’s thousands of laid-off unionized workers. Honda says it’s merely designed to make sure workers live close to the plant and can get to work on time.

According to the WSJ article:

Of the 33 auto, engine and transmission plants in the U.S. that are wholly owned by foreign companies, none have been organized by the UAW, despite repeated attempts. Mainly, foreign auto makers have located plants in Southern states where the UAW has little presence and where right-to-work laws limit union power. When they have ventured into Northern states such as Indiana and Ohio, they have mostly chosen rural locations far from any unionized plants and UAW halls. The moves now are helping the foreign-owned plants begin to lower wage scales.

It used to be that the presence of UAW jobs kept the foreign automakers’ salaries and benefits up, even if the foreign shops weren’t unionized. But now, apparently, with the UAW in decline, foreign manufacturers are decreasing what they offer to workers.

Again, I go to a more generalized question — productivity is way up over the past 30 years. Wages are stagnant. Where is the money going?