For there to be a real change in the legislative landscape in 2011, Republicans elected to represent congressional districts or states in Washington must remember that they serve the people in those various jurisdictions and not the permanent denizens of the nation’s capital, a notion which many elected Republicans neglected in the past.

In her post on Republican investigations into Administration misconduct, Michelle Malkin reminds those Republicans of their duties:

Just a humble reminder: [Incoming House House Oversight Committee chairman Darrell] Issa’s job — and this goes for every GOP House leader — is not to mollify Beltway pundits.

Their job is not to manage White House p.r. and “reach across the aisle” and “get things done” for the sake of bipartisanship.

Their job is to protect taxpayers’ best interests, rein in a bloated, out-of-control federal government, and abide by their oaths of office.

Republicans need remember that Americans did not embrace the GOP this fall so much as they rejected the Democrats.  They gave us back our House majority on a kind of “trial basis.”  Should Republicans stand up to the Beltway establishment and for over-regulated individual and entrepreneur, they may well lose favor with the in-crowd in Washington, but retain the good will of the taxpaying folk beyond the Beltway for years to come.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo may well be one of the luckiest men in politics.   The son of a politician well loved in Democratic circles, he was tapped as Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development with little experience to qualify him for the job.

Just as he waltzed into that job, he practically walked into his current job.  When the then-scandal plagued incumbent bowed out of the race, Cuomo’s path to the Democratic nomination was unobstructed.  The Republican nominee imploded almost from the moment he first opened his mouth after he won his party’s contest for the Empire State’s top job.  Not just that, the GOP is all but dead in New York State.

To win, he just needed to keep his name on the ballot.  Now in office, he seems to be as politically skillful as he was lucky.  Although his party is beholden to the public employee unions, he knows he needs to stand up to them if he’s to solve the state’s fiscal problems.  And  with word that he’s seeking “a one-year salary freeze for state workers as part of an emergency financial plan he will lay out in his State of the State address on Wednesday”, it’s look like he’s prepared to do just that:

“The governor said during his campaign that the difficult financial times call for shared sacrifice,” said a senior administration official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the governor’s address. “A salary freeze is obviously a difficult thing for many government workers, but it’s necessary if the state is going to live within its means.”

While the immediate budget savings from the freeze would be relatively modest — between $200 million and $400 million against a projected deficit in excess of $9 billion — achieving it would be politically meaningful.

And because such a step would not require legislative approval, Mr. Cuomo could achieve it while bypassing the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, and the Democratic-controlled State Assembly, labor’s most powerful allies in Albany. (more…)

Incoming House Majority Leader Eric Cantor will be introducing a bill to repeal Obamacare.

He’s doing this exactly as it should be done, using simple language (well, as simple as legislative language gets) for total repeal.  The bill is short enough that the average Congressman could in the time it takes to make a latte.

Indeed, I’ve already read the whole thing — which is something that most Congressmen who voted for the original bill probably can’t say.

When global warmists tell me about their climate ideology that governments must take action immediately to reduce the amount of greenhouse gasses pumped into the atmosphere (lest catastrophe ensue), I ask them to predict for me the annual increase in temperature over the next few years.

Should the temperatures increase as they predict (based on the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere), then I will join their crusade them in calling for government action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  Unfortunately, they don’t dare to offer such predictions, saying that if we wait too long, it will be too late.

Well, as I learned last month, there are,  some “climate ‘scientists’ ” who have made predictions about global warming have have seen those predictions proven wrong (via Patterico).

Maybe their problem was that they were looking at the wrong data.  Instead of looking at the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, they may have better served themselves by looking at other factors, including solar radiation.  A new paper finds no correlation temperature change and CO2:

The absence of correlation between temperature changes and the immense and variable volume of CO2 waste by fuel burning is explained by the weak power of additional carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to reduce the outcoming window of long wave radiation.

Via Pirate’s Cove.

With science increasing our skepticism, don’t you think it’s time to start rescinding some of the environmental laws designed to avert a crisis now apparently non-existent.  Repealing the most draconian of those laws in the (once)-Golden State may help the state regain its luster.

FROM THE COMMENTS: Sonicfrog reminds us that

2010 will not be the hottest year on record. As expected, due to the mid year fade of the El Nino and the establishment of La Nina conditions, temps took a late year nose dive and 2010 failed to beat the 1998 mark. As of this moment, average world temp is back to the decade average, meaning there is still no temp rise evident for at least a decade. As was 1998, 2010 temp was abnormal due to a strong El Nino. It wasn’t as strong as 98, but it was strong enough. I expect, if the ENSO / temp correlations hold to the usual pattern, the first few months of 2011 will be below average temp wise.

When, right after college, I lived in Europe, I noted was that the continentals were far more class conscious than their American peers. Unlike most of us New World natives, they pretty much saw the social structure as set in stone.  Perhaps, it is this lack of fluidity that caused so much resentment among the lower classes for their wealthier fellow citizens.  

Here, in America, many in the MSM seem to make much of income inequality, trumpeting statistics which show a rising gap between the rich and the poor.  Yet, most Americans just don’t get upset about that gap.  In his latest column, Michael Barone asks us to consider this “conundrum in American politics“:

Income inequality has been increasing, according to standard statistics. Yet most Americans do not seem very perturbed by it. . . .

It’s a widespread assumption in some affluent circles that ordinary Americans are seething with envy because they can’t afford to shop regularly at Neiman Marcus or Saks Fifth Avenue. My sense is that most Americans just don’t care. They’re reasonably happy with what they’ve got, and would like a little more.

It’s Barone, read the whole thing.  He make an important observation about American culture.  The best efforts of many liberals notwithstanding, most Americans don’t seethe with resentment for those more financially well-off than they.

Perhaps, it’s that we know, most of us at least, that greater financial success doesn’t necessarily mean greater personal fulfillment.  We believe those things can be found in our families, our communities and our passions.

Up until the George W. Bush era, if you were looking for a sensible left-of-center opinion, you went to the New Republic.  But, somehow the election of 2000 seems to have pushed their editors — and many of their leading writers — over the edge.

Jonathan Chait joined the angry left in proclaiming his hatred for George W. Bush.  And now another Jonathan who has, for some time, been showing similar signs of an affinity with the doctrinaire critics of anything conservative posts a piece titled in his magazine’s e-mail (and on the web-site, but not the article itself), Are There Any Grown-Ups in the GOP Who Can Talk Sense About the Debt? Any At All?

Now, maybe he didn’t give the article this title and the editors in promoting it did.  I mean, you click on that title on their web-page (or in the e-mail) and you get a piece with this title, “Lindsey Graham Joins the Loonies.”

And usually with Cohn, buried underneath his animus for small-government Republicans, are a few nuggets of wisdom.  But, it used to be that when the editors of the magazine did a better job in cleaning up their pieces in order to craft more civil critiques of conservatism.

Perhaps, it’s just the standards of the new media 0r the ethos of the left which has lead to the decline of this once great bastion of liberal thought.