Conservative values in Action: New Jersey!

New Jersey would close its centralized car inspection lanes and motorists would pay for their own emissions tests under a sweeping set of recommendations set to be released by the Christie administration today.

State parks, psychiatric hospitals and even turnpike toll booths could also be run by private operators, according to the 57-page report on privatization obtained by The Star-Ledger. Preschool classrooms would no longer be built at public expense, state employees would pay for parking and private vendors would dish out food, deliver health care and run education programs behind prison walls.

The state conducts more than 1.94 million initial inspections a year and pays for all of them. Drivers pay only if they fail the inspections and have to make repairs.

Privatization is a good thing: it injects competition into feather-bedded state jobs.

But let's take it one step further: a risk/benefit analysis on car inspections. Does the cost of car inspections lead to a benefit which is worth the cost? If the answer is no, then drop the whole darn thing and work on something that does have a tangible benefit.

Progressives and the growing dependency agenda

Sometimes George Will drives me nuts, but he has nailed the disease the Democrats suffer from in spades here.

Democrats are fighting to the death for a public option in healthcare but fight just as strong to block public options in education where 89% of children are locked into government run schools, many failing to provide any kind of decent education.

He also adds, "For congressional Democrats, however, expanding dependency on government is an end in itself. They began the Obama administration by expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program. It was created for children of the working poor, but the expansion made millions of middle-class children eligible -- some in households earning $125,000. The aim was to swell the number of people who grow up assuming that dependency on government health care is normal.

The Progressive agenda is killing America. Will we fight back?

Jobs, Freedom, Wealth Creation

Nowhere are the battle lines between Progressivism and Conservatism more boldly drawn than in the area of Jobs creation for Americans. As Fox News reports, the continued loss of jobs in the current recession is bring the jobs issue front and center despite the Obama Administration's best efforts to keep it low key in 2009. What are the key differences between the two philosophies?

Progressives:
-believe Government can stimulate job creation by massive Federal spending
-believe that target economic stimulus is better than the seemingly helter-skelter approach of letting the market make spending decisions
-deficits don't matter if you are investing in infrastructure
-the economy can't do its best without some one looking over it
-Free markets are unfair, some people do better than others
-Government has an obligation to level the playing field

Conservatives:
-believe in limited central government per the Constitution
-people decide best how to spend their money
-private sector is the engine of economic growth and wealth creation
-deficit spending long term is bad monetary policy
-a rising tide of economic growth lifts all ships, everyone prospers
-individual opportunity and responsibility

Obviously the dynamics of each philosophy are far more complicated than this, but these basic principals shape the agendas of each movement. And, will shape the battle of the elections in 2010. Clearly, since the age of Reagen in the 1980's, the size of the Federal Government has grown to massive proportions. And yet the problems that big government is supposed to solve; economic inequality and poverty are by many measures just as bad or worse than they were back in the 1950's when the size of the Federal Government and its impact on the everyday lives of Americans was far less.