The Coca-Cola company announced on Wednesday that it intends to change the way it does business with school districts. The list of changes includes encouraging local representatives to negotiate non-exclusive contracts, supplying of vending machines that have school messages on the outside rather than Coke ads, and offering a wider variety of “nutritious” beverages. The following critics of commercializing schools are available for interviews: GARY RUSKIN Director of Commercial Alert, Ruskin said: “Coke is on the run. Their announcement today is a desperate PR effort to keep angry parents from kicking Coke, Pepsi, Channel One and other junk food marketers…

An economist who predicted a collapse of stock prices a year ago, when the Nasdaq composite index was near its peak, said today that “the nation’s political leaders chose to ignore the stock market bubble” — and “as a result, millions of families have seen their dreams of a secure retirement or their children’s college education vanish.” In a news release issued by the Institute for Public Accuracy on the afternoon of March 16, 2000 (a day when the Nasdaq closed at 4,717.39), Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research said: “The main feature of the ‘new…

MAX SAWICKY Senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, Sawicky said today: “Because some members of Congress view President Bush’s proposed tax cut as a budget buster, they would like to make these large tax cuts subject to cancellation or postponement if economic and budget prospects begin to dim. The buzz word for such devices is a ‘trigger.’ There are problems if this scheme works, as well as if it doesn’t. Typically a trigger would aim to enforce arbitrarily tight and unnecessary fiscal criteria such as a surplus target or a debt limitation. If it works it’s bad, since when…

Last night, the Senate voted to roll back a new federal rule protecting workers from repetitive stress injuries. House action is expected later this week. The following analysts are available for interviews: PAMELA VOSSENAS Vossenas is co-chair of the health and safety committee of the National Writers Union, which is affiliated with the United Auto Workers. She said today: “The Senate’s action, under the Congressional Review Act, is a draconian measure by the Bush administration with a clear intention to kill the ergonomics standard forever. It’s an extremist action that will not only maim over a half-million workers each year,…

With a historic trial underway in South Africa, as 39 pharmaceutical companies try to stop the South African government from importing cheaper versions of AIDS drugs, the following analysts in the United States and South Africa are available for interviews: ROBERT WEISSMAN Co-director of Essential Action and author of the recent paper “AIDS and Developing Countries: Facilitating Access to Essential Medicines,” Weissman said today: “With an appalling human tragedy unfolding in Africa, the multinational pharmaceutical industry has in its South African lawsuit decided to place its narrow proprietary interests over the life-and-death concerns of people with HIV/AIDS. Win or lose,…

WILLIAM SPRIGGS Director of the National Urban League Institute for Opportunity and Equality, Spriggs said today: “President Bush misspoke when he said that he was offering tax relief to the $25,000 a year waitress-mom who faced a 50 percent marginal tax rate for working overtime. Her high tax rate comes from being close to the phase-out level of the Earned Income Tax Credit. Because she is getting the Earned Income Tax Credit, she owes no positive income tax, and therefore receives no benefit from the Bush tax cut. She and her children will not benefit from the president’s proposed doubling…

In the aftermath of Secretary of State Colin Powell’s trip to the Mideast, the following analysts are available for interviews on the direction of U.S. policy in that region: PHYLLIS BENNIS Author of Calling the Shots: How Washington Dominates Today’s UN and co-editor of Beyond the Storm: A Gulf Crisis Reader, Bennis said today: “The administration wants to shift the focus away from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict towards Iraq, oil and the Gulf states. There is enormous international pressure on the U.S. to change its Iraq policy of bombing and sanctions. The talk about changing the nature of the sanctions is…

At his news conference Thursday afternoon, President Bush expressed a desire to gain approval from Congress for presidential fast-track negotiating authority. “I’d love to have fast-track approval,” he said. “I think it’s going to be important to work with our neighbors to the south and Canada to the north to promote free trade throughout the hemisphere.” But opponents responded by denouncing scenarios for fast-track authority. The following policy analysts are available for interviews: SARAH ANDERSON Anderson, director of the Global Economy Project of the Institute for Policy Studies, said today: “Before granting Bush fast-track authority, members of Congress should take…

With public debate intensifying over tax-cut proposals, the following policy analysts are available for interviews: JAMES K. GALBRAITH The author of Created Unequal: The Crisis in American Pay, Galbraith teaches economics at the University of Texas at Austin. He contends: “Bush and Cheney have rightly called for tax action to save our slumping economy. Congress should respond with the right actions: measures that help working American families this year, that provide relief to state and local taxpayers, that encourage business investment, that are large enough to have an immediate effect — and that are phased down to protect our economy…

MARY SCHWEITZER An associate professor of economic history at Villanova University, Schweitzer said today: “From the standpoint of historical statistics, the most obvious abnormality is the ever-widening gap in the distribution of income and wealth in this country, made all the more alarming by the nature of the discrepancy. Since 1980, taxes on the labor in this country have risen substantially in the form of the FICA tax charged both workers and their employers. Fifteen percent of all labor costs go directly to the federal government today, harming both workers and small businesses… When all taxes are factored in, a…