Check out Kevin Brinegar’s latest appearance on "Inside the Statehouse" with Gerry Dick. Kevin remarks on budget issues, intensity at the Statehouse, and House leadership’s snub of an Indiana Congressman last week.

View the 3.5-minute video here.

PaidContent.org recently featured Ford’s plan to let its customers do its advertising for them via social media. The column analyzes the risks and potential rewards. Perhaps it’s something innovative to keep in mind for your company — if you’re feeling brave:

With its back against the wall financially, auto maker Ford is taking a radical and risky approach to the marketing of its new Fiesta: Later this month, it will hand over the branding and promotion duties for the car to 100 twenty-somethings who have no advertising experience.

Ford is giving each of them a Fiesta to drive around; recipients range from award-winning indie filmmakers, to single moms, to aspiring dancers, and even avid gamers, and they’ll document their experiences with the car through YouTube vignettes, blog posts and other social media updates for six months. The kicker is that Ford will have no control over what they post, meaning the effort could ultimately end up tarnishing the brand almost a year before it hits U.S. dealerships.

But it’s a risk Ford has to take—since it’s in a fight (to the death?) to attract young, tech-savvy consumers that may have never thought about buying a domestic car before. The company believes that traditional marketing won’t sway this demographic.

Dubbed the “Fiesta Movement,” Ford worked with New York-based social media consulting firm Undercurrent to help flesh out the concept; more than 4,000 people submitted video auditions, and the WSJ reports that Ford chose the recipients based on a “social vibrancy” rating—a measure of how much they were followed online and across how many platforms—as well as other factors like overall creativity, video-making skills and of course, their driving histories.

Ford isn’t the first car company to try to reach younger consumers through social media: Toyota’s Scion brand has launched initiatives in virtual worlds like Second Life and There.com, Honda partnered with Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim for a user-generated t-shirt campaign, and Chevy’s most recent effort gave away free Aveo5 hatchbacks to winners of an online video competition.

But giving consumers control over a brand can backfire: in 2006, Chevy let YouTubers make commercials for the 2007 Tahoe, and instead of getting clips that showed off the SUV’s features, most of the entries focused on how bad the truck was for the environment. Still, Ford acknowledged that the stakes were too high to not engage its target demo in the most edgy way possible: “In terms of awareness, we have to go from zero,” Chantel Lenard, Ford’s global car marketing manager, told the WSJ.

Juan Williams – one of the most accomplished and respected journalists in America – will share his powerful insights with the Economic Club on May 1 (at noon in the Indiana Convention Center’s Sagamore Ballroom).

Williams’ storied journalism career includes 23 years with the Washington Post, a bestselling book on the Civil Rights movement and an Emmy. He currently works as a senior national correspondent for NPR and analyst for Fox News – where his professionalism and candor through spirited debate has become well-known.

Join us on May 1 as Williams presents an insider’s view of politics, the economy and other current affairs. Get your tickets now.

Vince Griffin, Chamber vice president of energy and environmental policy, will receive the 2009 Natural Resources and Environmental Management Alumni Society Award of Distinction from Ball State University at its April 17 awards dinner.

Griffin, who earned his master’s degree from Ball State in 1975, has been the Chamber’s environmental and energy issue expert since 1997. A registered environmental health specialist, he has held numerous positions in the private and public sectors, coming to the Chamber after a lengthy career at PSI (now Duke Energy).

A Ball State release notes the award is presented to "one who is in a position of distinction, and who has demonstrated outstanding successes in his field, related to natural resources. Recipients are those who have also demonstrated loyalty to or support of the Ball State University Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management."

A former president of the Indiana Environmental Health Association, Griffin currently serves on the board of the Center for Coal Technology and Research at Purdue and the Center for Earth and Environmental Sciences at Indiana University.

For those politically inclined, the work on the next election often begins before the current one takes place. In other words, while November 2008 was drawing plenty of attention at this time last year, there were at least some looking ahead to 2010. That is especially true when the "next" period ends with the number zero.

The every-10-year-period means a new census, a reapportionment of House seats in Congress and new maps for both legislative and congressional districts. There will be a great deal of time to discuss the politics of drawing the lines. For now, the early projections are in place on which states will be winners and losers in the amount of representation they have in Washington.

The National Conference of State Legislatures has its reapportionment outlook. Remember, they are only estimates at this point, but Indiana’s nine seats appear safe. The state, of course, came up short after the 2000 and 1980 population counts — losing a spot in the House each time. (Indiana once had 13 districts before dropping one each after the 1940 and 1930 censuses).

So who wins and who loses in 2011? The big, big winner, according to NCSL, is Texas with the potential of gaining three seats. The South and West also look to benefit from one additional seat for Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada and Utah.

On the other side, eight states stand to lose one seat each. They are Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Side notes: If the estimate holds, California would not increase its congressional power for the first time since becoming a state in 1850. Also, pending legislation would increase the size of the House from 435 to 437 — giving the District of Columbia its first vote and allowing one more state to add a seat. (Utah would gain the additional representative, for now, if the legislation passes this year.)

Interested in raising over a million dollars this election cycle for one of the most sophisticated and active Chamber or business PACs in the country? Do you want to be part of a top bi-partisan political team that has a strong record of success? One more item to consider — not only do we deeply believe in what we are doing in electing pro-business candidates, but we also have a lot of fun while winning a lot of campaigns! 

Indiana Business for Responsive Government (IBRG) is hiring a Manager of Political Fundraising. This person would provide fundraising expertise to IBRG and endorsed candidates, as well as assist the President, Vice President of Political Affairs and IBRG Board members in meeting the fundraising objectives for IBRG. The Manager of Political Fundraising is the person with primary responsibility for executing the IBRG fundraising plan. IBRG’s political fundraising includes in-state PAC, federal PAC and “soft-dollar” fundraising efforts.

Still interested? Read the brief description and then view the full job description and apply.

"As we go forward, we should embrace a collective commitment to encourage open trade and investment, while resisting the protectionism that would deepen this crisis." — President Barack Obama

Elaine Chao, former U.S. Secretary of Labor, outlines her hope that the president’s actions live up to his words when it comes to free trade (the above quote is taken from an open letter he wrote for publishing just before the recent G-20 Summit). In a column penned for the Heritage Foundation, she contends that history has proven the inherent flaws in protectionism :

We have been down this road before. The Tariff Act of 1930, sponsored by Sens. Reed Smoot and Willis C. Hawley, is infamous for deepening and prolonging the Great Depression. When the Smoot-Hawley bill landed on President Herbert Hoover’s desk, more than 1,000 economists urged him to veto it. Tragically, the president ignored their pleas. Other nations retaliated, and America learned a painful lesson.

By 1932, U.S. exports to Europe were just one-third of what they had been in 1929. The precipitous drop claimed many jobs, contributing to the economic misery that saw the U.S. unemployment rate soar to 25.1 percent in 1933 from 7.8 percent in 1930. Americans did not suffer alone. World trade overall fell two-thirds in the first few years of the Depression.

Today it is apparent that some in Washington have forgotten that history or never bothered to learn it. Lawmakers at home, as well as abroad, are embracing protectionism for the 21st Century that threatens to make an already severe economic crisis even worse.

The World Bank recently reported that, since the beginning of the current economic crisis, countries around the world have enacted 47 measures that restrict trade at the expense of other nations. These instigators include the United States and 16 fellow members of the G-20 whosigned a pledge just four months ago to eschew protectionist measures.

She also claims Obama is off to a rough start, as he signed off on some protectionist measures included in the recent stimulus bill. Read the entire column and let us know what you think.