mbs multinational biz services

Jim Tozzi and his partner (ex Republican politician/bureaucrat), Thorne G Auchter, ran one of the more successful lobbying operations in Washington. They functioned behind a pair of companies, known as Federal Focus and Multinational Business Services, together with two so-called think-tanks, the Institute for Regulatory Policy and the Center for Regulatory Effectiveness. The main client of these partners was the tobacco industry, in particular Philip Morris.

One of the more successful of their ploys, was to use the non-profit Federal Focus as a service company to support other lobbyists and public relations operations in exchange for access to their favourite politicians. If the lobbyist was mounting a major social function with inviting Congressmen, Senators, or political party leaders or influence peddlers, Federal Focus would provide free entertainment (inevitably a trad. jazz band). Federal Focus made a tax-loss, while the quid pro quo was that Tozzi and Auchter were able to use these function to lobby on behalf of their own clients.

Biography

James J. Tozzi was born in ±1938 and earned a PhD in Economics and Business Administration from the University of Florida. After spending some time in New Orleans he realized he would never make his fortune playing jazz (trumpet) and moved to Washington DC. In 1964 he joined the Office of the Secretary of the Army, Department of Defense, working on budget and strategic response issues.

In 1972 he transfered to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and quickly rose to the position of Deputy Administrator during the administration of President Ronald Reagan. After the restructuring of the OMB, Tozzi came to direct the OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs where he became the gatekeeper for virtually all proposed regulations dealing with public health and safety. He was still Deputy Administrator of OMB when he resigned in 1983 at age 45 to begin working as a lobbyist.

According to the Washington Post, Tozzi was effectively in charge of OMB in the 1980s when evidence emerged that giving aspirin to children with flu symptoms increased the risk of Reye's syndrome, a potentially fatal complication. A federal health agency recommended legislation to enforce warnings on aspirin containers, but Tozzi took the position that the evidence was not adequate. Almost 200 children died of Reye's disease in the following years before activists could persuade Congress to enforce labelling. {Note: the syndrome is now extremely rare.] [1](See Tozzi response below)

In these early years of the 1980s (1981-85), his future partner, Thorne G Auchter, was the Assistant Secretary for Labor at the Occupational Safety & Health Administration. The OSHA also regulated smoking in workplaces, along with threats arising from other workplace pollutants. After leaving the OSHA he and Auchter established Federal Focus in 1986, which received funding from Philip Morris.[1]

Auchter and Tozzi's Federal Focus, was a 501(c)(3)}non-profit organization. They also began to work closely with George L. Carlo who ran similar operations for the tobacco industry and for Dow Chemicals and other industry sectors with health problems. Auchter was also a partner in Carlo's Health and Environmental Sciences.[2]

At the end of 1991 Auchter also created the Institute for Regulatory Policy (IRP) as a subsidiary of Federal Focus, and James Tozzi changed his own focus to another subsidiary, Multinational Business Services (MBS) which they founded around 1992. [3] The tobacco industry's "EPA Watch" newsletter of May 15, 1992 mentioned Jim Tozzi as the "director of the Washington-based Multinational Business Services Inc. (MBS)". [4] By then, Tozzi and Auchter were fully involved in tobacco-support activities for Philip Morris.

Where are they now

1992 Tozzi has been a member of the Environmental Financial Advisory Board (EFAB) since 1992 and currently serves as chairman of the International/Energy Workgroup. The EFAB provides advice to the Administrator and Program Offices of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on "how to pay" questions for environmental protection.

1996 In 1996 Jim Tozzi, James MacRea and possibly also Thorne Auchter founded the Center for Regulatory Effectiveness (CRE) [5] [6] of which Tozzi and MacRea are still a "Member of the Advisory Board". [7]

2001 Tozzi was a major behind-the-scenes architect of the Data Quality Act (DQA) which he helped to become law in 2001.

2002 The 990 tax form this year for the non-profit Federal Focus (the last available on GuideStar) has four people listed as managers: Jim J. Tozzi (director), Barbara Tozzi (treasurer), William Kelly (secretary), and James Tang (vice president). [8] Federal Focus still uses the same address in Washington that was also used for MBS.[9] Tozzi, who played the cornet since age 7, still seems to use the Federal Focus Jazz Band as the distinguishing feature of his lobby operations. He plays for disadvantage children.

Tozzi Responds to Reye charge

Tozzi disputes the Post Article on Reye's Syndrome (Source pgs. 305 & 309, Courting Change, a book published by the Public Citizen Litigation Group) He maintains:

The Reyes Syndrome Rule (on labelling) was withdrawn from the OMB's review by the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), so the assertion that Jim Tozzi rejected the proposed Reyes Syndrome labeling is completely inaccurate. The facts are, as demonstrated in the record, as follows:

Sept 20 1982 The Secretary of HHS sent a proposed labeling regulation to OMB.

Nov 8 1982 The American Academy of Pediatrics announces "Labeling aspirin-containing preparations as contraindicted in the treatment of influenza or chicken pox should be delayed until more conclusive evidence of the association of aspirin administration and Reye's Syndrome is shown by further investigation."

Nov 18 1982 The Secretary of HHS withdrew the rule from OMB review.

The record clearly demonstrates that Tozzi did not delay the implementation of the review for years.

Documents and Timeline

A search of the tobacco archives reveals 1013 documents which have both of the terms "Multinational Business Services" and "Tozzi" [10] search for terms.

1992 Oct 27 Tozzi is trying to influence the EPA's Risk Assessment of Second-hand smoke, by attacking the standards and techniques being used by the scientist. He especially attacks the use of meta-analysis (a way of combining numerous similar studies) [11]

1992 Dec 17 FDA response to a letter from Jim Tozzi of Multinational Business Services on behalf of the tobacco industry. He has cited two lung cancer studies (Stockwell and Soronson) which he maintains don't support the dangers of passive smoking.[12]

1995 Mar 31 Auchter contract with Philip Morris. [13]

Related SourceWatch Resources

The Junkman and the Web of Deceit;

How the Spin-Doctors Cross-Fertilise

If you want to see how carefully crafted such a web of deceit can be, check out JunkScience.com, run by a pseudo-science debunker with the name of Steven Milloy. He promotes this site as having "All the Junk that's fit to Debunk", and a lot of the material in these pages are just what it purports to be -- a good, and sometimes humourous attack on bad science and activist crap.

Milloy promotes himself as a private crusader. He regularly leads the attack on activist groups involved in questions of public health, environmental destruction and pollution, and he proudly calls himself "The Junkman".

He loaths the EPA, the FDA and the Democrats; in particular Al Gore.

Milloy gives you some personal details at the site. Here's what he says:

Steven J. Milloy is the publisher of the Junk Science Home Page and an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute.

Milloy's work on the Junk Science Home Page has garnered numerous awards, including: being named "One of the 50 Best Web Sites of 1998" by Popular Science; and designation as a "Hot Pick" by Science. The site has also been recommended by the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, Financial Times, Forbes and MSNBC.

Milloy holds a B.A. in Natural Sciences from the Johns Hopkins University, a Master of Health Sciences in Biostatistics from the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, a Juris Doctorate from the University of Baltimore, and a Master of Laws from the Georgetown University Law Center.

In addition to the Junk Science Home Page, Milloy: appears frequently on radio and television; has testified on risk assessment and Superfund before the U.S. Congress; and has lectured before numerous organizations.

Milloy's publications include:

- Silencing Science, with co-author Michael Gough (Cato Institute, 1998)
- Science Without Sense: The Risky Business of Public Health Research (Cato Institute, 1995)
- Science-BasedRisk Assessment:A Piece of the Superfund Puzzle (National Environmental Policy Institute, 1995)

A lobbyist with a law degree is a valuable commodity in corporate America because it invokes lawyer/client-privilege if dubious deals ever get into the courts. The Biostatistics tag just tells you that he can do maths.

Before Milloy moved into his present role as "JunkMan", he was employed by a number of professional PR and lobbying companies, including Multinational Business Services which was Phillip Morris's main lobbyist on the environmental tobacco issue in late 1992 (when Milloy worked there). This organisation was run by a Reagan Republican appointee who ran the OSHA for a while, Thorne Auchter. Like many top people from the Reagan administration, Auchter became a major lobbyist in Washington in the 1980s, and went into business on behalf of the tobacco industry, along with his partners Jim Tozzi (in MBS and Federal Focus) and (in HES) Dr George Carlo.

Phillip Morris later funded the organisation known as TASSC (The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition) through the public-relations/lobby organisation, APCO Associates, and Milloy took over as its director. [See below]. This organisation was funding by tobacco, chemical, energy and other polluting industries in the USA as a way to attack epidemiologists, toxicologists and environmentalists who claimed to have evidential science showing these companies were doing harm. In Milloy's terms, these claims are all junk-science, and he is the arbiter of such labels.

Milloy is currently listed as an "adjunct fellow" at the Cato Institute, which leaves the impression that he is an independent, highly educated, science commentator funded by an independent foundation. This boost's his impied claim to be carrying on a personal crusade to clean up the science shonks -- while, in fact, he is a lacky who specialises in a subtle form of lobbying, and runs misinformation campaigns for business.

He writes books for the Cato Institute sarcastically attacking the scientific expertise and ethics of any scientist who's results threaten American corporate business interests -- provided they fund him.

The Cato Institute is a well-known independent "free-enterprise" think-tank run by members of the Republican Right in Washington DC. [" ....22 years of promoting public policy based on individualliberty, limited government, free markets, and peace."]

It also runs what it calls the "Cato University", which offers expensive summer courses to those with a "commitment to liberty and an interest in the world of ideas".

The Cato Institute also employs the writer-humourist PJ. O'Rourke, and funds him to travel, speak, and to write his very humourous books attacking anything remotely resembling concern for the environment, consumerism, or political liberalism. That's fair enough, I guess; most humourists take a leftish line and their attack on the Republican Right are far more vicious.

Behind the scenes the Cato Institute is, itself, funded by many major corporations and industry associations with vested interests, including the American Farm Bureau Federation, Amoco, ARCO, Chase Manhattan Bank, Coca-Cola, CSX Corp., Exxon, Ford Motor Co., Koch Industries, Monsanto Co., National Ammonia Co., Philip Morris, Proctor and Gamble, and Toyota Motor Sales USA.