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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

In recent years, the U.S. Justice Department and its Task Force on Violence Against Reproductive Health Care Providers have been credited with preventing violence. Although John Ashcroft testified he would protect abortion providers, many doubters, citing his record, are speaking out. “I have rarely spoken to the media in the two years since my husband’s…