RAED JARRAR Jarrar is an Iraqi-born political analyst who just came back from a visit to Iraq. A senior fellow with Peace Action, Jarrar has written several articles since his return to the U.S.: “The Iraq Withdrawal: Obama vs. the Pentagon,” “Sliding Backwards on Iraq?” and “A Military Coup in Iraq?” available at his web…

DIANA M. PEARCE Pearce is the director of the Center for Women’s Welfare and is currently on the faculty of the School of Social Work at the University of Washington. She said today regarding reports of changes in how poverty is measured: “While change in the outdated federal poverty measure is long overdue, caution is…

ROBERT WEISSMAN, via Dorry Samuels Weissman is president of Public Citizen, which just released a statement: “Americans Need an Independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency.” ROB JOHNSON ABC News reports today: “Even as many Americans still struggle to recover from the country’s worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, another crisis — one that will be…

MarketWatch reports today: “Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., has dropped plans for a separate, stand-alone agency to protect consumers against credit-card and mortgage fraud in a bid to restart stalled financial reform legislation.” WILLIAM K. BLACK Black is associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. He was…

KIM IVES Ives, a journalist with Haiti Liberte newspaper, just returned from Haiti on Thursday. He reports that with the rainy season coming, tens of thousands of Haitians remain homeless, living in giant camps of sheets, tarps and tents. Many complain that they still do not receive food aid, charging that the coupon system devised…

STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER, M.D., M.P.H. MARGARET FLOWERS, M.D. QUENTIN YOUNG, M.D. MARK ALMBERG Young, national coordinator of Physicians for a National Health Program, an organization of 17,000 doctors who support a single-payer, Medicare-for-All approach to reform, said today: “Regrettably, the president’s proposal is built on some of the worst aspects of the Senate bill. For example,…

CHARLES HALLMAN Hallman is a staff reporter with the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder. The pieces he has written recently include “Minnesota Stimulus Dollars Bypass Black Businesses: Transportation millions flow to the white ‘status quo.’” EVA SANCHIS Metro editor for El Diario/La Prensa, Sanchis’ articles include “Bushwick Is Dying: The mortgage crisis is eating away the wealth of…

BEAU GROSSCUP AP reports today: “A NATO airstrike killed at least 27 Afghan civilians, officials said Monday, in the third coalition strike this month to kill noncombatants and draw a sharp rebuke from Afghanistan’s government about endangering civilians.” Author of the book Strategic Terror: The Politics and Ethics of Aerial Bombardment, Grosscup is professor of…

TRUDY LIEBERMAN Today, the White House released its new plan on healthcare. Lieberman is a contributing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review. A complete archive of her Campaign Desk articles can be found at CJR.org. Lieberman stresses the need for media outlets and others to examine the contents of the proposal rather than focusing on…

ANAND GOPAL Available for a limited number of interviews, Gopal has reported for the Wall Street Journal and the Christian Science Monitor; he is currently working on a book and doing independent reporting from Afghanistan. In a recent interview, he said: “Almost all the reporters who are there are the embedded reporters, so they’re only…