PUBLIC MARKS with tags government & new

The disaster in New Orleans was caused, not by too little welfare spending, but by too much. Four decades of dependence on government left people without the resources -- economic, intellectual, or moral -- to plan ahead and provide for themselves in an emergency

A new study shows a direct relationship between mercury in children's vaccines and autism, contradicting government claims there is no proven relationship between the two. Published in the March 10 issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, the data show since mercury was removed from childhood vaccines, the increase in reported rates of autism and other neurological disorders in children not only stopped, but actually dropped sharply – by as much as 35 percent.

Federal, state and local officials all failed to anticipate the devastation threatened by Hurricane Katrina and then were slow to react when the storm overwhelmed New Orleans levees, said a draft report by a special House committee investigating Katrina.

Last week Ron Paul mailed each of his congressional colleagues a copy of a speech outlining his views on the lobbying and ethics scandals engulfing Washington. "I'm afraid many of them won’t like my conclusion: to reduce corruption in government, we must make government less powerful-- and hence less interesting to lobbyists."

But reporters still ignore free market advocates who predicted it. Media coverage of problems facing the new Medicare prescription drug plan focused on elderly patients left in the lurch by bureaucracy, producing what CBS’s Bill Plante called a “political headache” for the Bush administration. But in the Jan. 16 reports on the “Evening News” and “World News Tonight,” both networks ignored conservative critics who had argued the plan was doomed to fail because it was a typical big government solution that ignored the free market.

A recent government order mandating that voice over internet protocol services must include the same government-approved wiretapping capabilities as traditional phone companies threatens to cripple peer-to-peer telephone innovation, according to new warnings from civil liberties groups and an internet telephony pioneer.

Perhaps you've heard the one about the 700 firefighters from a variety of states who volunteered to do rescue work following Hurricane Katrina? They sat in a hotel room in Atlanta for days getting sexual harassment training from FEMA officials. No joke. Note to Republicans eager to shovel new money at federal agencies: This is the way government works.