News Release Archive - 1999

WASHINGTON — While a congressional hearing today focuses on Nigeria, advocates for human rights and environmental protection are available for interviews on the role of oil companies in backing repressive actions by the Nigerian government.

Among those available for interviews are:

BRONWEN MANBY
A researcher for Human Rights Watch, Manby is one of three witnesses to be testifying before the House subcommittee on Africa about the human rights status of the Niger Delta. She is author of The Price of Oil: Corporate Responsibility and Human Rights Violations in Nigeria’s Oil Producing Communities (1999). Manby said: “The oil companies operating in Nigeria share a responsibility to ensure that oil production does not continue at the cost of violations of the rights of those who live in the areas where oil is produced. Given the deteriorating security situation in the Delta, it is all the more urgent for the companies to adopt systematic steps to ensure that the legitimate protection of company staff and property does not result in summary executions, arbitrary detentions, and other violations.”
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STEVE KRETZMANN
Director of the oil program at Project Underground, an environmental and human rights organization, Kretzmann has gone on two fact-finding missions to the Niger Delta. He said: “By continuing to pump oil out of the Delta without regard for the area’s pollution, desperate poverty and the killing of peaceful protestors, the multinational oil companies are throwing fuel on an incendiary situation which they have largely caused. The U.S. public and Congress should renew pressure on Chevron and the other oil companies to comply with U.S. environmental and human rights standards now.”
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PAUL EKADI
President of the Ijaw National Congress USA, representing the largest ethnic group in the oil-producing region of the Niger Delta, Ekadi said: “There have been many incidents of violence against environmental protestors this year, several of them involving the complicity or even the participation of Chevron equipment and personnel. This continues today. The most recent was a full-scale battle in the streets of the main oil-producing city, Warri, in July, where the Nigerian news media reported that Chevron helicopters were used to supply and transport Itsekiri militants into the war zone… Such conditions are more typical of Rwanda than a stable democracy. Despite the recent presidential elections, unless multinational oil corporations end their systematic human rights and environmental abuses in the Niger Delta, democracy will not be achieved in Nigeria.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

LINDA GORDON
Professor of history at the University of Wisconsin/Madison, Gordon said: “The budget surplus provides Americans with an opportunity for a conversation about our priorities. Most Americans want better schools, better policing, cleaner air and water, an end to global warming, and above all, medical insurance for everyone. Taxes offer a fair and efficient way of providing these and many other services to the public. Buying these things privately is either impossible or more expensive for everyone. The proposed tax cuts, which benefit mainly those who live on investments and inflated CEO-type salaries, will further the deepening inequality which in turn further degrades everyone’s standard of living.”

JANE MIDGLEY
Coordinator of the Women’s Budget Project, Midgley said: “Any federal budget surplus should be invested in the social infrastructure of the country and not thrown into tax breaks for the rich. Over 50 percent of discretionary spending goes to the military while programs like housing, welfare, and community development are shrinking as a percentage of the budget. This has a large impact on the increasing numbers of women who are single heads of households and who rely on government assistance to provide a decent standard of living for their families.”
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DERRICK LEON DAVIS
Outreach director for the Prince George’s County public schools Head Start program, Davis said: “If the proposed tax cuts are passed in Congress, approximately 290 of our children will lose their services in FY 2000… At this time of billion-dollar budget surpluses, we have a great opportunity to bring Head Start’s Comprehensive Early Childhood and Family Development Services to more children and families, in Maryland and across the country.”
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PATRICK LESTER
Senior program associate with the Coalition on Human Needs, Lester said: “The tax cuts assume continued budget surpluses which are themselves based on drastic cuts in domestic programs. For example: Veterans Administration medical care cuts would result in nearly one out of two veterans losing care; federal spending for education in discretionary programs would be cut almost $30 billion in real terms in the next 10 years… Average Americans want the government to invest intelligently to meet the needs of families, neighborhoods, the environment and communities rather than give the middle-class a tiny cut in taxes while handing over hundreds of billions of dollars to the wealthy.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

In a major development this morning in the uproar over the censorship and lockout of the staff at KPFA Radio, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that “a proposal to sell Berkeley radio station KPFA is expected to come today before the policy-making body of KPFA’s governing Pacifica Foundation.”

Denials of plans to sell the station — which is broadcast throughout much of northern California — have come from Mary Frances Berry, who chairs the Pacifica Foundation board of directors and also chairs the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.

But the San Francisco Chronicle reports today: “Speaking on condition of anonymity, sources close to the crisis told the Chronicle that Pacifica’s seven-member executive committee will meet by phone today and is expected to vote on the sale. The executive committee is drawn from members of Pacifica’s 14-person board of directors.”

The newspaper added: “Three sources said a majority of the committee appear inclined to support a sale.”

A wide array of KPFA supporters are denouncing these developments as a betrayal of the 50-year-old listener-supported station and evidence of deception on the part of Berry and the rest of Pacifica’s executive committee. Among those available for interviews are:

VAN JONES
Jones is executive director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights based in San Francisco.

DENNIS BERNSTEIN
Bernstein, a journalist at KPFA Radio, was fired — and then was ordered arrested — by Pacifica management on July 13 when he broke the story of prospective sale of KPFA Radio on the air.
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BARBARA LUBIN
Lubin is on the KPFA Steering Committee.
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KAHLIL JACOBS-FANTAUZZI
Jacobs-Fantauzzi is on the KPFA Local Advisory Board and on the KPFA Steering Committee.

NICK ALEXANDER
Alexander has been a KPFA news department volunteer for 15 years and is a member of Blacks for Justice in Radio.

ANDREA BUFFA
Buffa is executive director of the Media Alliance based in San Francisco.
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

These analysts are available for interviews about the tax bill just passed by the House of Representatives and the implications of such legislation:

MICHELE McGEOY
Michele McGeoy is the CEO of RH Solutions and a member of Responsible Wealth, a national network of affluent Americans working for fairer and more effective economic policies. She said: “Wealthy people like me, I’ve discovered over the years, tend to find we have ‘friends’ we never knew existed. My newest friends sit in Congress. They must really like me. With all the problems in the world today, they’re worried that I’m not rich enough… The so-called budget surplus that congressional leaders want to spend on tax breaks is largely the product of past and future cutbacks on everything from Medicare to bridge repair.”

MATT GARDNER
A policy analyst with Citizens for Tax Justice, Gardner, said: “The House has decided to gut the estate tax, which is only levied on 1.6 percent of the highest-valued estates. And the House made it a priority to substantially reduce tax rates on capital gains; more than 90 percent of the benefit will be enjoyed by the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans. (Capital gains is income from the sale of stock and other property.) And the bill still includes billions in ‘corporate welfare’ for multinational corporations.”
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DEAN BAKER
An economist with the Preamble Center, Baker said: “The Republicans want to cut capital gains taxes at a time when almost every serious economist in the country thinks the stock market is already hugely overvalued. What is the point of making the bubble even larger? Many of the other tax cuts make about as much economic sense. By eliminating the inheritance tax, are we trying to give people an incentive to die? The claim that these tax cuts will help the economy is ridiculous on its face. The cuts are simply a way to give more money to the wealthy, which is not at the top of most people’s priorities just now.”
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CHUCK COLLINS
Chuck Collins is the co-director of United for a Fair Economy and co-author of Shifting Fortunes: The Perils of the Growing American Wealth Gap. He said: “This is Robin Hood in reverse. Low- and middle-income Americans will lose more than they gain — through the health, education, and other budget cuts required to pay for these tax windfalls for the already rich… This legislation would only exacerbate income and wealth inequality in the U.S., presently at its greatest point since the 1920s.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020 or (202) 332-5055; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

A nationwide outcry is growing as the Pacifica Foundation continues its lockout of staff and volunteers at radio station KPFA in the San Francisco area. A week ago, the foundation’s management halted the station’s evening newscast in mid-sentence while the news anchor was reporting on the latest developments in the KPFA-Pacifica conflict. Since then, archival tapes have been airing. Among those who can be called for interviews are:

MATTHEW LASAR
Author of Pacifica Radio: The Rise of an Alternative Network (Temple University Press, 1999), Lasar said: “The Pacifica Foundation is clearly abandoning the most basic precept of community broadcasting — that those who work at and support a station have something to do with its policies. Pacifica’s actions here are unprecedented in the organization’s history.”
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AILEEN ALFANDARY
News co-director at KPFA, Alfandary said: “There are disturbing indications that Pacifica is considering the sale of KPFA’s or [New York City station] WBAI’s lucrative frequencies. Equally troubling is that Mary Frances Berry, the chair of Pacifica’s board and of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, would use her Justice Department connections in an apparent attempt to get the Berkeley police to crack down on nonviolent protesters.”

ANDREA BUFFA
Executive director of Media Alliance, a 22-year-old media accountability organization based in San Francisco, Buffa said: “The Pacifica Foundation really underestimated the breadth and depth of support for KPFA.”
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J. IMANI
A member of KPFA local advisory board, Imani said: “Berry wants to diversify Pacifica from the top down; we’ve been working to diversify it from the bottom up.”

BEN H. BAGDIKIAN
Author of The Media Monopoly, a former top editor at the Washington Post and former dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley, Bagdikian said: “The national board has only limited time to reverse the present course of events if they wish to preserve Pacifica and what it stands for.”

MARY FRANCES BERRY
The chair of the Pacifica Foundation, Berry did not respond to IPA’s request for comment.

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

There have been a number of developments on trade issues this week: The World Trade Organization ruled on the European Union’s ban on U.S. hormone-injected beef, the Secretary of Agriculture made a speech on genetically modified foods and the House is set to vote on major Africa trade legislation. Among the analysts available to discuss these issues are:

LORI WALLACH
Director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, Wallach said: “The House is about to vote on legislation that a coalition of oil companies dubbed the ‘African Growth and Opportunity Act.’ It certainly does nothing to help Africa grow or expand its opportunities, although it is full of special perks for foreign corporations. In exchange for modest new rights to import textiles and apparel, the bill requires African nations to mortgage their future by slashing public investment in health and education, cutting corporate taxes, removing hunger-fighting price supports, and opening Africa’s natural resources to foreign exploitation. Our other trade agreements don’t impose harsh conditions on trading partners; neither should agreements with Africa.”
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NJOKINJOROGE NJEHÛ
Director of the 50 Years Is Enough Network, Njehû said: “If the African Growth and Opportunity Act becomes law it will take away sub-Saharan Africa’s right to determine her own destiny. The bill mandates that countries adhere to more of the same flawed IMF austerity programs in order to qualify for trade benefits with the United States. The benefits would flow to a few U.S. corporations, while the vast majority of African people would be disempowered and hindered from developing or benefitting from Africa’s great potential and resources. This is outrageous and unacceptable. Continuing to bleed Africa of her financial resources when the health, social development, and future of her people are at great risk is not only hopelessly immoral — it is also a grievously short-sighted way to treat a trading partner.”
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KRISTIN DAWKINS
A program director at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, Dawkins said: “The U.S. is demanding that the Europeans buy beef with artificial growth hormones and the Europeans are adamantly opposed to that. A virtually identical stand-off is shaping up around the issue of genetically engineered foods. If a small number of countries succeed in pushing deregulatory policy through the WTO, it will show the undemocratic nature of the WTO and fly in the face of overwhelming popular demand for healthy foods on both sides of the Atlantic.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

LOUIS DUBOSE
Editor of the Texas Observer, Dubose said: “‘Compassionate conservatism’ is in fact the same old wine, badly soured, in a shiny New Texas bottle. We are dead last in per capita government spending, 49th in spending on the environment — while first in pollution.”
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EVA DeLUNA
Budget and policy analyst at the Center for Public Policy Priorities, DeLuna said: “Texas has the fifth highest poverty rate — 3.3 million people, 1.4 million are children. On a per capita basis, Texas spends a negligible amount on natural resources, welfare, libraries, the arts or adult education. Things have changed recently, however — spending on prisons has increased dramatically in the last decade.”
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ROBERT BRYCE
In today’s Austin Chronicle, reporter Bryce breaks new ground about Gov. George W. Bush’s involvement in an influence-buying scandal regarding the world’s largest funeral company. Bryce said today: “Bush got $35,000 in contributions from Service Corporation International. It appears Bush then helped them thwart an investigation by the Texas Funeral Service Commission. The former director of the commission, Eliza May, was pressured by Bush’s chief of staff and campaign manager Joe Allbaugh. She has filed a whistle-blower lawsuit.”
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BARBARA RENAUD GONZALEZ
A columnist for the San Antonio Express-News and author of the forthcoming Mestiza, a personal and political look at the future of Latinos, Gonzalez said: “Bush has used the magic of Spanish to seduce Latinos, but his policies have hurt us. Bush has attended the most exclusive schools in the country, but he doesn’t want to pay for ours. Instead, he signed a $2 billion tax cut on property taxes. He betrays democracy by supporting school vouchers which erode diversity and skim the best students. Bush is an avid supporter of the death penalty but he has opposed the right of indigent defendants to adequate legal counsel.”

CRAIG McDONALD
Director of the campaign finance reform group Texans for Public Justice, McDonald said: “Bush is clearly the all-time champion of raising money in Texas politics: $16 million in the ’94 race, $25 million in the ’98 campaign. Much of his money has come from a handful of corporations that have controlled Texas politics for many years: oil and gas, utilities, corporate law firms, the petrochemical industry. Almost half of Bush’s ’98 war chest came from donations of $10,000 and up. Bush has been responsive to his campaign backers. He got lots of money from the tort ‘reform’ groups during his first race. As soon as he got into office, he declared tort reform an emergency — which greased the legislative process, allowing the enactment of a draconian slate of laws that make it difficult for consumers to hold corporations accountable.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

As President Clinton tours poor areas of the United States, analysts are available to comment on past and future policy choices:

MIMI ABRAMOVITZ
Professor at the School of Social Work at Hunter College and author of Regulating the Lives of Women, Abramovitz said: “It’s positive, and long overdue, that Clinton is addressing these issues, but to be saying that you want to deal with poverty while you’re calling welfare ‘reform’ a success is rather disingenuous. While the welfare rolls have dropped sharply, studies indicate that many have simply joined the ranks of the working poor. They now have jobs that are paying below poverty wages, without benefits or affordable child care; moreover, states have been ‘forgetting’ to tell them that they are still eligible for Medicaid and food stamps.”

JAMES K. GALBRAITH
Author of Created Unequal: The Crisis in American Pay and professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, Galbraith said: “It is good that Clinton is going out and calling attention to these issues, but some of the suggestions are flawed. If you build a base of incomes and social and physical infrastructure, then business activity develops, but if you throw business activity in a region where that does not exist, then you have a sweatshop phenomenon. What is needed is housing assistance, public services, money to improve schools and the environment, and income support such as through the earned income tax credit and a higher minimum wage.”
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GEORGE FRIDAY
Friday is a member of the Grassroots Policy Project and a low-income activist. She said: “If it wasn’t for NAFTA, hundreds of thousands of jobs would not have left the U.S., creating more poverty. If there were minimal protections for migrant workers, then we wouldn’t have the depth of poverty that we have. If North Carolina, where I live, wasn’t a ‘right to work’ state, people could do collective bargaining and have the guarantee of organized workplaces. As it is, they can be fired at will. What you have now are people who are afraid of losing jobs, so they don’t push for better conditions and safety at their workplaces.”

ROBERT J. S. ROSS
Professor of Sociology at Clark University and author of the forthcoming Hearts Starve: The New Sweatshops in Global Context, Ross said: “What the president’s tour highlights is that there are really important pockets of poverty in the country. Full employment is the single most important thing in lifting people out of poverty, and the president seems to understand that. But a rising tide lifts boats unequally. While poverty is falling, income inequality remains at post-war highs… Using tax incentives just moves investment around. Spot subsidies have not proved to be terribly efficient inside of nations.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

The following health-care policy specialists are available for interviews on the new Clinton plan for Medicare:

DON McCANNE, M.D.
A member of the National Coalition to Protect, Improve and Expand Medicare, Dr. McCanne said today: “Including prescription coverage in Medicare is definitely a step in the right direction, but it is still inadequate because it leaves too much of the cost as out-of-pocket expenses which will remain unaffordable even for moderate income Medicare recipients. The direction we should be moving towards is fixing Medicare and expanding it to cover all of us. The American health-care system is a disaster now, between the 43 million uninsured people and the damage wrought by the market approach to health care. We need comprehensive reform and a change to methods of cost containment that are patient-oriented.”
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GAIL SHEARER
Director of Health Policy Analysis for Consumers Union, Shearer said today: “The president’s proposal is a much better value than the current Medigap policies many Medicare recipients have. Under Medigap, a typical 75-year-old pays $1,800 for prescription coverage and gets at most $1,250 of benefits per year. However, we are concerned about the voluntary nature of the president’s proposal. Ideally, prescription drugs would be covered for all, just like doctor and hospital bills. If only those in need elect coverage, premiums collected will not cover as large a portion of costs as anticipated, thus spiraling premiums.”
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JOHN HESS
A retired New York Times reporter, currently a radio commentator and an analyst on the economics of aging, Hess said: “The Clinton administration’s proposals for Medicare are pure election-year posturing. There is no talk of Medicare reform even reaching Congress this year. Moreover, the proposals fail to address the central problem — the nonstop rise in the price of prescription medicines. Someone has to have the courage to lower the boom on the pharmaceutical industry and start controlling the price of these medications. The first thing that will happen if the government pays for prescriptions is that employers who now cover all or most of the cost of brand-name drugs — which are in many instances much better than generic counterparts — will drop that coverage. The government in the meantime would have a limit on how much per year they will cover and the premium would come out of our Social Security checks on top of the increased premium that will be charged for Medicare. Employers will be better off, the drug companies will be better off, but people who now have better coverage from their employers and Medigap coverage — and those with drug bills that exceed the proposed limits on government coverage — would be worse off.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Vice President Gore’s role in setting policies for AIDS drugs in countries such as South Africa has become a simmering issue. These analysts are available to explain why:

ROBERT WEISSMAN
Co-director of the Essential Action organization founded by Ralph Nader and co-author of Corporate Predators, Weissman said: “Africa is suffering from an AIDS epidemic that U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher equates with the plague that decimated Europe in the 14th century. But while treatments are available to enable many people with HIV/AIDS to live relatively normal lives, the pharmaceutical industry has priced them out of reach. When countries like South Africa seek to undertake to lower the cost of essential medicines for HIV/AIDS, the U.S. government shamefully bullies them, threatening them with trade and other sanctions. Gore has played a leading role in carrying out this unconscionable policy. It is time he reversed himself and U.S. government policy, so that people’s health needs triumph over industry greed.”
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JULIE DAVIDS
A member of ACT UP Philadelphia, where Gore will be fundraising today, Davids said: “Al Gore has played a pivotal role in threatening trade sanctions against South Africa for their 1997 law which permits the generic manufacture of AIDS drugs, even though such a law is allowed by trade agreements that the U.S. has signed. The pharmaceutical companies oppose this law not because they would lose any money directly — they can’t sell significant amounts of AIDS drugs in South Africa at the prices they are charging — but because they don’t want people in the U.S. and other wealthy nations to realize that these drugs cost pennies to make.”

PETER LURIE, M.D.
A medical researcher with Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, Dr. Lurie (who has conducted research on AIDS in South Africa, where he is from) said: “Right now, HIV is spreading in South Africa at a rate about as high as anywhere in the world. For the U.S. government to prevent the South Africans from using a perfectly legal mechanism for addressing this terrible epidemic is unconscionable.”
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ELLEN MILLER
Executive director of Public Campaign, Miller said: “Why is Al Gore leading the Clinton administration’s efforts to prevent Third World countries like South Africa from producing or buying affordable generic versions of critically needed AIDS drugs? The answer: there’s literally millions of dollars in hard and soft money contributions to be had by serving the interests of the pharmaceutical industry. The Gore campaign is well-positioned to reap a bumper crop of pharmaceutical cash.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167