HOLLY SKLAR Co-author of the just-released book Raise The Floor: Wages and Policies That Work For All Of Us, Sklar said today: “A job should keep you out of poverty, not keep you in it. Most Americans believe that. But as we celebrate Labor Day, hardworking Americans [who are] paid minimum wage have to choose between eating or heating, health care or child care. At $5.15 an hour, they earn just $10,712 a year. That’s a third less than in 1968, when the minimum wage was about $8, adjusting for inflation. A couple with two kids would have to work…

LORETTA ROSS Founder and executive director of the National Center for Human Rights Education, Ross is at the UN conference on racism, which begins on Friday in South Africa. She said today: “The Bush administration should not come to the conference. It would likely play an obstructionist role, refusing to acknowledge that the enslavement of Africans in the Americas and the theft of Native-American lands were crimes against humanity. Instead, members of the Congressional Black Caucus should attend. This would be in the tradition of civil-rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer and her colleagues from Mississippi, who sent an alternate delegation…

As the IMF and Argentina’s government agree to another loan package of $8 billion and further austerity programs, the following analysts are available for interviews: BEVERLY KEENE Coordinator of Dialogue 2000, a coalition representing human-rights and other groups in Argentina, Keene said today: “This new agreement with the IMF brings no resolution to growing unemployment and poverty. In fact, it will only make things worse since these loans are conditional on implementing more of the policies that have impaired the economy and taken an enormous human toll due to the cuts in health and social services…. Argentina will pay some…

With the White House reporting today that the current-year surplus has plummeted to $158 billion from the $281 billion projected in April, the following policy analysts are available for interviews: STEVEN KULL Author of the report “Americans on Federal Budget Priorities,” Kull is director of the Center on Policy Attitudes, which conducted a scientific online survey to determine how Americans thought the budget should be divided. He said today: “Based on what we’ve seen, in terms of how people prioritize the surplus, there may be significant public discomfort with the next round of tax cuts. The public has put a…

Wednesday (Aug. 22) marks the fifth anniversary of President Clinton’s signing of the “welfare reform” law. Re-authorization for Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, the program that came out of the 1996 legislation, will be a subject of controversy during the next year. The following policy analysts are available for comment: NOEL A. CAZENAVE Co-author of the just-released book Welfare Racism: Playing the Race Card Against America’s Poor and associate professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut, Cazenave said today: “The deployment by politicians and the media of racist images of lazy and sexually promiscuous black ‘welfare mothers’ facilitates the…

As the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives releases a report this afternoon at the Brookings Institution, the following individuals are available for interviews: REV. JAMES LAWSON Pastor emeritus of the Holman United Methodist Church in Los Angeles and one of the architects of the civil rights movement, Lawson said today about the White House plan: “This is another attempt to undermine the notion that government should be responsible for justice and equality in the emancipation of its vulnerable. The religious and political right so limit the options that they become one-dimensional — and serious religious, academic and…

THOMAS POWER Chair of the economics department at the University of Montana and author of the paper “Destroying Forests to Save Them: Rational Responses to the Summer of 2000 Wildfires,” Power said today: “The argument of many of the Western governors is that significant expansion of Western logging will reduce fires. But from an economic point of view, to reduce the threat of fire, you have to remove the most flammable material, but that has no commercial value. If you log an area, you remove the material that is least flammable — commercial logs — and leave the material that’s…

Anticipating major protests, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank announced late Friday that they will be scaling back their fall meetings in Washington to only two days, Sept. 29 and 30. The following policy critics are available for interviews: NJOKI NJOROGE NJEHU Director of the 50 Years Is Enough Network, a coalition of over 200 U.S. grassroots groups dedicated to transforming the World Bank and the IMF, Njehu said today: “The duration of the IMF/World Bank meetings does not matter to the hundreds of millions of people impoverished by the institutions’ austerity policies, like user fees for primary…

RUTH HUBBARD Professor emerita of biology at Harvard University and author of Exploding the Gene Myth, Hubbard is on the board of the Council for Responsible Genetics. She said today: “The most immediate problem with Bush’s stance is that by saying there will be no federal funding for initial stem cell research, that means there will be no federal regulation. Germany, Britain and other countries have laws that regulate this kind of research. The existence of excess embryos for research is a result of the lack of regulation of the U.S. fertility industry. As a result, we have already seen…

President Bush is on a month-long vacation, but many people in this country get scant time off. The following analysts are available for interviews about how Americans would benefit from more vacation time: DEBORAH FIGART Co-editor of the recent book Working Time, Figart is professor of economics at Richard Stockton College in New Jersey. She said today: “It’s great that the president of the United States can recoup his energy with long vacations. Now he should encourage policies so that other hard-working Americans can also have time for rest, family and other activities. An International Labor Organization study earlier this…