PUBLIC MARKS from jasontromm with tags government & bush

The White House has been dropping hints that the president will make health-care reform the centerpiece of his State of the Union address. The Bush administration's health care record is, to put it delicately, inconsistent. It has supported efforts to remove government influence over the health care sector, such as health savings accounts (HSAs). On the other hand, the president signed into law the largest expansion of federal power over health care in generations the ill-fated Medicare drug program.

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 black conservative leader says don't blame racism or President Bush for what happened to thousands of black people during and after Hurricane Katrina. "The truth is black people died, not because of President Bush or racism, they died because of their unhealthy dependence on the government and the incompetence of Mayor Ray Nagin and Governor Kathleen Blanco."