GAIL SHEARER Shearer is senior health policy analyst for Consumers Union and author of the just-released report “Medicare Prescription Drugs: Conference Committee Agreement Asks Beneficiaries to Pay Too High a Price for Modest Benefit.” Among the report’s findings: * “The funds set aside for this ‘benefit’ — $400 billion over 10 years — cover just 22 percent of the anticipated drug costs, leaving consumers to foot the rest of the bill.” * “Medicare is being moved down the road to privatization by requiring competition between private health plans and Medicare….” * “Private Pharmacy Benefit Managers get to pick what drugs…

JOSEFINA HERNANDEZ PONCE and PEDRO EUSSE and SEVERINA RIVERA, Hernandez Ponce is a sewing machine operator and president of SITEMEX, the only union in the sweatshop garment industry in Mexico. The union was founded last year after two years of efforts which began when Hernandez Ponce and four other workers refused to eat the factory food to protest substandard conditions, widespread sexual harassment and a weekly wage of $30. Students in more than 20 U.S. universities helped by pressuring their schools’ administrations to raise the issue with Hernandez Ponce’s employers. She said today: “NAFTA has created a sweatshop economy for…

GREG PALAST Palast is author of the New York Times bestseller The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. His investigative reports appear on BBC Television and in the Guardian Newspapers of Britain. He said today: “Blair, like Margaret Thatcher before him, faces revolt within his own party. They believe he lied to get Britain into Bush’s war in Iraq. And just as bad, Bush is seen as taking Blair for granted; ‘Dubya’s poodle’ is the common phrase. Worse, Britons are seething over what they see as raw treatment on other issues. For example, Bush’s steel tariffs and legal attack on the…

MILAN RAI The British author of Regime Unchanged, a just-released book on the invasion of Iraq, Rai is in the U.S. until November 25. He said today: “President Bush recently said in an interview with the BBC of the war on Iraq: ‘War is my last choice, not my first choice.’ In March 2002, a year before the war on Iraq, President Bush told three senators meeting National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, ‘[Expletive deleted] Saddam. We’re taking him out.’ The President was determined to avoid a peaceful resolution of the Iraq crisis. On March 17, 2003, UN weapons inspectors presented…

MEDEA BENJAMIN Benjamin, the founding director of the international human rights group Global Exchange, is also co-founder of the Occupation Watch Center in Iraq. Paul Bremer, in Washington mid-week, repeatedly cited the Iraqi Governing Council in his remarks. Benjamin said today: “The Bush administration wants the Iraqi Governing Council to rubber-stamp policies coming from Washington and to take the blame when things go wrong. The problem for the administration is that some members of the Council have begun to question U.S. policies, such as opening Iraq to foreign investment or the U.S. plan for writing and approving the constitution. So…

ALAN SAGER DEBORAH SOCOLAR Sager and Socolar are co-directors of the Health Reform Program at Boston University’s School of Public Health. They have recently released a report entitled “New Medicare Rx Benefit Means Big Profits for Drug Makers.” The report finds that “an estimated 61.1 percent of the Medicare dollars that will be spent to buy more prescriptions will remain in the hands of drug makers as added profits. This windfall means an estimated $139 billion in increased profits over eight years.” More Information DOUG HENWOOD Productivity numbers are scheduled to come out Thursday, job growth and unemployment on Friday.…

JARI SHEESE Sheese owns a small business in Indianapolis, Indiana. Her husband is stationed in Iraq. She said this afternoon: “He had just dropped me a line telling me that he’d be getting around by helicopter and that made me feel better — then a helicopter gets downed killing 16. We find some way to communicate almost daily, either email, instant messaging, whatever we can do. He doesn’t want to be there any more. There was a time he felt they were doing some good, but that has gone. He helped set up the Iraqi Media Network. He enjoyed working…

CARL CONETTA Co-director of the Project on Defense Alternatives, Conetta wrote the just-released report “The Wages of War: Iraqi Combatant and Noncombatant Fatalities in the 2003 Conflict.” Conetta said today”Reviewing U.S. combat data, battlefield press reports, and Iraqi hospital surveys, we have found that approximately 13,000 Iraqis (plus or minus 16.5 percent or 2,150) were killed during the major combat phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The report covers the period from March 19 to the end of April. Among the Iraqi dead were between 3,200 and 4,300 noncombatants.” More Information DAVID ENDERS Enders is editor of Baghdad Bulletin and has…

Analysts are available to scrutinize some of President Bush’s claims, including those from Tuesday’s news conference, focusing on Iraq and the recent attacks there: BUSH: “I would assume that they’re [the suicide bombers] either, or, and probably both Ba’athists and foreign terrorists.” FACT: “There are a growing number of interviews with Iraqi resistance fighters that establish that many, perhaps most, of them are not Ba’athists and not foreigners. One interviewed in the San Francisco Chronicle said that he took up arms after the Fallujah massacre, in which U.S. troops fired into a crowd of peaceful demonstrators, killing 15,” said Rahul…

With welfare legislation for Temporary Assistance to Needy Families reauthorization making its way through the House and Senate, interviews with the following are available: LIZ ACCLES Accles is with the Welfare Made a Difference National Campaign, which is organizing with a host of other groups the “Shirts Off Our Backs Day” in Washington, D.C. — a series of events and actions on Monday, October 27. The group documents the stories of people who have received welfare and struggled out of poverty. More Information HEATHER BOUSHEY An economist with the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Boushey coauthored the recent paper…