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…

ROBERT NAIMAN A senior policy analyst at the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research, Naiman said today: “The U.S. government decision to challenge efforts to make AIDS drugs affordable in Brazil at the World Trade Organization is disturbing for several reasons. It indicates that despite lofty rhetoric in Washington about the importance of fighting the scourge of AIDS in poor countries, the priorities of the pharmaceutical lobby still take precedence in U.S. policy over the lives of millions. It also illustrates the danger of lodging dispute resolution and enforcement powers in institutions like the WTO; the clear intent of…

JOEL BLAU Blau, a professor of social policy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, said today: “Bush is marketing a tax policy that redistributes money upward. Earn money as a worker, and you are taxed; make money in the stock market, and you will be taxed less; accumulate enough money, and when you die, your estate will not be taxed at all. The Bush proposal to cut the capital gains and estate taxes thereby illuminates the essential policy bias of the new administration. Instead of ‘compassionate conservatism’ and calls to leave no American behind, we are…

RABBI ARTHUR WASKOW Waskow, director of The Shalom Center, is on the steering committee of Break the Silence, an ad hoc group of American Jews who “support Israel and a Palestinian state living at peace alongside Israel.” He is among the signers of a statement being released today on behalf of the Olive Trees For Peace project, which says in part: “We dare not leave peacemaking to the interaction between Prime Minister Sharon and Chairman Arafat. Both peoples must now act at the grass roots. We must take small steps to renew trust between our communities, while keeping fresh before…

While governors from 10 western states met with federal officials in Portland, Ore., today to discuss the regional energy crisis, critics in California and the Pacific Northwest were calling for fundamental changes in government policies on electric power generation. The following policy analysts are available for interviews: EUGENE ROSOLIE The director of the Green Power Project at the Portland-based organization Northwest Environmental Advocates, Rosolie said this afternoon: “It’s unfortunate that elected officials failed to see the warning signs of this energy crisis months ago. Friday’s conference will amount to nothing more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The…