The Commission on Presidential Debates has formally announced that it intends to exclude all third party candidates from the presidential debates. Phil Donahue (who is a member of the Committee to Elect Ralph Nader President) wrote in the Sunday Los Angeles Times: “If Ralph Nader is excluded from the presidential debates, many issues important to millions of Americans will get little or no attention during the corporate sponsored face-offs between the two major party candidates” — e.g. drug war, death penalty, trade, national health insurance. The following are among those available for interviews: JAMIN RASKIN Law professor at American University,…

WENONAH HAUTER Director of Public Citizen’s Critical Mass Energy Project, Hauter said today: “Oil interests have used their enormous political power — which has increased with Exxon-Mobil and other mergers — to stop public policies that advance energy efficiency and conservation. Lehman Brothers reported recently that profits from the four largest oil companies are expected to more than double to a combined $50 billion this year alone. Texaco increased its net income by an astounding 473 percent in the first quarter of 2000.” More Information NJOKI NJOROGE NJEHU Director of the 50 Years Is Enough Network, Njehu said today: “The…

The National Association of Broadcasters, which lobbies for the commercial broadcast industry, is holding its annual radio convention in San Francisco through September 23. Nonviolent protests are planned. These analysts are available for interviews: ROBERT McCHESNEY Professor at the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois and author of Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times, McChesney said today: “The NAB is arguably the single most anti-democratic force in the U.S. today. It opposes campaign finance reform — broadcasters have little incentive to cover candidates because it is in their interest to force them to buy…

LIZ ACCLES Accles is national coordinator for the Welfare Made A Difference National Campaign, which today launched a public education drive. Accles can arrange interviews with current and former welfare recipients; some of their stories are available on the web page. More Information FRANCES FOX PIVEN Piven is Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York. Her books include The Breaking of the American Social Compact. Piven said today: “The welfare rolls are down and politicians, the media, everyone touts the success of welfare reform. But it…

NOAM CHOMSKY Author of a number of books on international relations, most recently Rogue States: The Rule of Force in World Affairs, and Institute professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Chomsky said today: “The UN Millennium Summit has a nice wish list — it calls on governments to do lots of good things like devote resources to eliminating poverty and protect the environment. But the issues that matter can’t simply be solved by most of the countries of the world, they need to be addressed by the richest countries, the U.S. primarily. Its dominance in the world and its…

JAMIN RASKIN Law professor at American University, Raskin represented Ross Perot in 1996, chairs the Appleseed Citizens’ Task Force on Fair Debates and has also advised the Nader campaign on the debate issue. Raskin said today: “While the two major parties are squabbling over details of what kind of debates they want, the full breadth of America is not being represented. The Commission on Presidential Debates has arbitrarily set 15 percent in several national polls as the threshold for appearing in the debates, thus effectively excluding third-party candidates. It’s critical that there be lawful, democratic standards for debate participation, whether…

LARRY BIRNS Director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Birns said today: “President Clinton’s waiving of human rights constraints on the Colombian military to enable it to receive over $1 billion in U.S. military assistance is a dangerously provocative step.” Birns, who has spoken with the Colombian president and recently returned from a trip to Bogotá (where he met with several senior national security officials), observed: “While the right-wing military and its associated death squads are responsible for 80 percent of all human rights violations in Colombia, the White House drug czar is increasing the militarization of the anti-drug war…

CHAD HANSON Executive director of the John Muir Project and author of Big Timber’s Big Lie in the current issue of Sierra magazine, Hanson said today: “The fire risk is coming from twigs, shrubs and saplings, material less than four inches in diameter. It’s not a problem that the timber industry in any way can solve. While the anti-environmental Republicans want to use fires as a pretext to continue logging mature forests on public lands to please the timber industry campaign contributors, the administration is proposing an equally destructive and baseless proposal: to cut down all the small and medium…

DEBORAH TOLER Policy analyst with the Institute for Public Accuracy, Toler said today: “While this latest trip to Africa by Clinton is supposedly about stability and democracy, the corporate agenda also needs to be scrutinized. In exchange for paltry trade benefits, the ‘NAFTA for Africa’ African Growth and Opportunity Act made sub-Saharan Africa the only region in the world now subject to MAI [Multilateral Agreement on Investment] conditions. The recently announced loans from the Export-Import Bank are intended to undermine Brazilian and Indian sales of less expensive generic AIDS drugs and encourage African countries to go even further into debt…

HARVEY WASSERMAN Author of the just-released book The Last Energy War: The Battle Over Utility Deregulation and senior advisor to the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, Wasserman said today: “Utility deregulation is a $200 billion scam that will gouge both the ratepayer and the environment for decades to come.” CHARLIE HIGLEY Energy research director for Public Citizen and author of the report “Money Harvest: Utility Holding Companies Are Threshing Ratepayers,” Higley said today: “The public has the right to control the electric power industry — reliable and affordable electricity is an absolute necessity in our modern society. Electricity deregulation, which…