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News Releases

  • Interviews Available on Corporate Wrongdoing

    CHARLIE CRAY Cray is director of the Campaign for Corporate Reform for the group Citizen Works. More Information VIRGINIA RASMUSSEN Rasmussen, who works with the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy, wrote the article “Rethinking the Corporation.” She said today: “The legislation signed by Mr. Bush today is a quickly-devised effort to send a message that the people are ‘winning,’ when, in fact, nothing of the sort has happened…. A law establishing oversight and imposing a few penalties we are told will set things right and get corporations in line, but will in fact leave the giant corporations and their…

  • Ritter and Von Sponeck on Iraq: Interviews Available

    The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is scheduled to hold hearings on U.S. policy toward Iraq beginning Wednesday. Scott Ritter and Hans von Sponeck are available for interviews: SCOTT RITTER Ritter, who was a chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq, is the author of Endgame: Solving the Iraqi Problem Once and For All. He said this afternoon: “Sen. Joe Biden is running a sham hearing. It is clear that Biden and most of the Congressional leadership have pre-ordained a conclusion that seeks to remove Saddam Hussein from power regardless of the facts, and are using these hearings to provide political cover…

  • Interviews Available on Economic Crisis

    TOM SCHLESINGER Executive director of the Financial Markets Center, Schlesinger said today: “New information about the role of large financial holding companies in the Enron debacle raises questions about the effects of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), a 1999 law that completed the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act and permitted firms like Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase to combine banking, securities and insurance operations under one roof. The dealings between Enron and its banks also highlight another key question: Where were the regulators? This question applies most directly to the Federal Reserve, which received umbrella supervision authority over all financial holding…

  • Stock Market Slide: What Does It Mean?

    ELLEN FRANK Professor of economics at Emmanuel College in Boston and author of the forthcoming book Money Illusions, Frank said today: “For the last 10 years or so, the broad public has been encouraged, mostly because of 401(k) plans, to regard the stock market as a safe place to invest retirement funds and obtain consistently high, if occasionally volatile, returns. Small investors have been led to believe that a buy-and-hold strategy will yield a certain 7 percent return, when it almost certainly will not. Stock prices have risen faster than the economy, than sales, than corporate profits. This simply can’t…

  • Interviews Available: * Halliburton * The Fed

    JIM VALLETTE Coauthor of the report “Halliburton’s Destructive Engagement” and consultant to EarthRights International, Vallette said today: “Newsweek reported yesterday that the current CEO of Halliburton asserts that Cheney knew of the accounting practices of the company employed during Cheney’s tenure as CEO — the practices that are now under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Halliburton is also a corporate welfare king, a major beneficiary of government aid toward fossil fuel industry projects in developing countries — to the tune of at least $6 billion in government aid packages since 1992. Newsweek reports that Halliburton fell from $54.02…

  • Interviews Available on Corporate Accountability

    * Pfizer merger DAVID HIMMELSTEIN, M.D. Associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program, Himmelstein said today: “The Pfizer buyout of Pharmacia announced today is the industry’s response to the reality that they have very little in the pipeline in terms of new products. Drug firms still have the highest profit margins of any industry, but that is beginning to wane. The industry has spent the last decade basically buying innovation from academia. Research has focused on what’s profitable in the short run and less and less on the necessary science…

  • Universal Healthcare, Police Brutality, Marijuana Policy

    STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER, M.D. Associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program, Woolhandler is co-author of a just-released study, “Paying for National Health Insurance — And Not Getting It.” She said today: “We pay the world’s highest health-care taxes. But much of the money is squandered. The wealthy get tax breaks. And HMOs and drug companies pocket billions in profits at the taxpayers’ expense. But politicians claim we can’t afford universal coverage. Every other developed nation has national health insurance. We already pay for it, but we don’t get it…. Government expenditures…

  • U.S. Policies on AIDS: Interviews Available

    Earlier this week, protesters at the 14th International Conference on AIDS in Barcelona [see: www.aids2002.com/IE_Home.asp ] shouted “Shame! Shame! Shame!” as U.S. health secretary Tommy Thompson delivered a speech about U.S. policies regarding the global HIV/AIDS crisis. The conference continues through Friday. Available for interviews: ZACKIE ACHMAT Achmat, an anti-apartheid leader in South Africa since the 1976 Soweto uprising, is HIV-positive. He has refused to take anti-retroviral medicines until they are available to all South African HIV/AIDS patients through the public health system. In 1998, he founded the Treatment Action Campaign but was unable to travel to the Barcelona conference…

  • Bush’s Version of “Corporate Responsibility”

    CHARLIE CRAY Director of the Campaign for Corporate Reform for the group Citizen Works, Cray said today: “Although it appears there are good things in Bush’s speech, a lot of what he is ‘proposing’ is apparently inevitable considering the momentum in Congress for the Sarbanes bill. Bush could have closed the offshore tax haven loophole which allows CEOs to claim that they are not covered by the new proposals by locating overseas. He could have strengthened whistle-blower protections, he could have barred corporate criminals from getting government contracts. Bush’s SEC budget increase is much less than what is being proposed…

  • Some Major Civil Liberties Issues

    BARBARA OLSHANSKY Author of the recent book Secret Trials and Executions: Military Tribunals and the Threat to Democracy, Olshansky said today: “Since the attacks of September 11, the United States has witnessed a sweeping revision of its immigration laws, foreign intelligence gathering operations, and domestic law enforcement procedures. These changes, like those adopted during some of the most notorious episodes in our nation’s history, involve a profound curtailment of our civil liberties. In the not-too-distant past, the U.S. government reacted to national security threats with policies that we now remember with horror. The Red Scare and the Palmer raids after…

  • While Senate Holds DOE Hearing Today, Nuclear Victims Blast Narrow Scope

    WASHINGTON — While the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee holds a hearing today to focus on health and safety issues at two Department of Energy atomic plants, representatives of workers and others subjected to radiation exposure say that the Senate panel is dodging a wide array of serious problems at DOE nuclear facilities across the country.…

  • Foreign Policy Issues: India, Taiwan and Russia

    NEIL TANGRI Field director for the Multinationals Resource Center, Tangri has worked in India on development issues. He said today: “The past 10 years have seen dramatic changes in the Indian economy. Frustrated by corruption and a sense of losing the economic race to China and the ‘tiger’ economies, Indian politicians on both the right…

  • “New Economy” or Stock Bubble?

    As the stock market continues to rise, many analysts are proclaiming a “New Economy.” They argue that computer technologies have created a market not bound by the physical constraints of the old industrial economy. But are we becoming increasingly unprepared for a downturn? Among the critics of the New Economy available for interviews are: ELLEN…

  • Congressional Commission Slams IMF; Analysts Available for Interviews

    The new report from the International Financial Institutions Advisory Commission, created by Congress in 1998, is adding to calls for drastic reform of the International Monetary Fund. The “Meltzer Commission” report urges full cancellation of the debts owed by poor countries to the IMF and the World Bank as well as significant reduction of the…

  • Beyond “Super Tuesday”

    LEONARD WILLIAMS Professor of political science at Manchester College and co-author of the recent Campaigns and Elections article “‘Moderates Win’ and Other Political Myths,” Williams said today: “In part the election fits the standard scenario of the more established candidates winning after a bit of trouble. But up to this point in the campaign there’s…

  • Pinochet’s Release

    JOYCE HORMAN Joyce Horman is the widow of Charles Horman. Along with another U.S. citizen, Frank Teruggi, he was detained and murdered in September 1973 in the days following Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s bloody military coup backed by the U.S. government. She has worked to uncover the facts about his murder for more than 26 years.…

  • Religion and Politics

    REV. JIM WALLIS Editor-in-chief of Sojourners magazine, Rev. Wallis said: “Al Gore and George W. Bush have talked about how much Jesus influenced them. The question has been whether that’s an appropriate thing for a candidate to talk about. It is very appropriate for a candidate to speak of their personal faith — if they…

  • Bradley and McCain: Insurgents?

    MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD Editor of The Progressive, Rothschild said: “Bradley doesn’t represent a real alternative to Gore or McCain or Bush. He supports the death penalty. He favors tougher sanctions on Iraq. Along with Gore, he has been a leading proponent of NAFTA and the World Trade Organization; and he, like Gore, has carried water for…

  • Scientist’s Resignation Raises Questions About Nuclear Policy

    A month ago, Andreas Toupadakis held a classified position at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. But he resigned his post, voicing criticisms of U.S. nuclear policy. Interviews are available with Dr. Toupadakis and other nuclear policy analysts: ANDREAS TOUPADAKIS Prior to joining the staff at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s “Stockpile Stewardship” program on nuclear weapons,…

  • Rising Cost of Oil… And Embargo

    WENONAH HAUTER During the last year, gasoline prices have gone up from about 90 cents a gallon to $1.36, while crude oil has gone from $12 to $30 a barrel. Hauter, director of Public Citizen’s Critical Mass Energy Project, said today: “Throughout the history of the oil industry, it has been plagued with sharp peaks…

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