NANCY LESSIN, CHARLIE RICHARDSON Co-founders of Military Families Speak Out, Lessin and Richardson have a son, Joe, who just returned from Iraq. They said today: “Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson and others are arguing that attacks in Iraq mean we have to send more troops. We have 58,000 names on a wall — and millions of…

GREG PALAST Palast is coauthor of Regulation and Democracy (a book that includes analysis of power markets) and author of the best-selling The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. He said today: “Like some sort of mediaeval doctors bleeding their patient, the Bush administration keeps pushing for more deregulation when it’s been the problem — not…

LLOYD J. DUMAS Dumas is the author of Lethal Arrogance: Human Fallibility and Dangerous Technologies and is a professor of political economy at the University of Texas at Dallas. He said today: “The massive failure that knocked out power to the Northeast and Midwest U.S. and Canada looks like the disastrous blackouts of 1965 and…

DOUG HELLER CARMEN BALBER Consumer advocates with the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, Heller and Balber said today: “The California energy crisis was the culmination of a decade-long push to remove consumer protections and regulatory oversight of California’s electric power system… Leading the charge was Ken Lay, the former CEO and Chairman of Enron,…

Today an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (embargoed for 3 p.m. ET), backed by more than 7,000 physicians, proposes national health insurance. A news conference on the proposal, including two former Surgeon Generals, was set to take place today at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., at 10 a.m. Dr.…

ROBERT POLLIN Professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and author of the forthcoming book Contours of Descent: U.S. Economic Fractures and the Landscape of Global Austerity, Pollin said today: “Recently there has been much talk, and some signs, of a recovery out of the long stagnation that has gripped the U.S.…

BILL MESLER A former editor of the Seoul-based Korea Economic Journal, Mesler said today: “The upcoming talks in Beijing are a positive sign. Unfortunately the Bush administration has continued to make unacceptable demands without offering any concrete concessions, which continues to hamper the possibility of reaching a fruitful accord. The Bush administration says it wants…

SHELDON RAMPTON, JOHN STAUBER Rampton and Stauber are the authors of the just-released Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush’s War on Iraq. They said today: “In our book we report that the Bush administration’s phony claims about Iraq go well beyond those mere 16 words in the State of the Union…

MARK LANCE Lance, a professor at Georgetown University, was in the West Bank in June and July with a delegation of university faculty and has written about the wall that Israel is constructing in the West Bank. He said today: “Sharon claims that Israel is building a ‘security fence’ so that it can protect itself.…

ANAS SHALLAL The Pentagon has just released pictures of dead Uday and Qusay Hussein. Shallal is founder of Iraqi-Americans for Peaceful Alternatives. He said today: “This is reminiscent to me of previous coups in Iraq. As a child, I remember seeing the killing of Abdul Karim Kassem on TV in 1963. Now, we have the…