ctr for Study of Public Choice

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bogus sepp conf sci integrity

NO MERRI

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see cash for economists

very long

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Cash_for_Comments_Economists_Network

The Cash for Comments network of 127 (in total over ten years) American Professors of Economics (with a few law and business professors), was one of the most successful, and long-lasting of all the scams run by the tobacco industry. It was the brain-child of Professor Robert D. Tollison at George Mason University's libertarian think-tank, the Center for the Study of Public Choice (CSPC), and James M Savarese of Ogilvy & Mather Public Relations.

Savarese later took the lobbying operation out of O&M and ran it through his own private lobbying company James Savarese & Associates with a skeleton staff -- and in partnership with Tollison and his wife Anna Tollison. Later Savarese turned up, once again, as a key lobbyist with Ogilvy Adams & Rinehart, so clearly this had always been a surreptitious O&M operation - kept at arms length and legally separated from that large company - probably for legal reasons.

Essentially, Savarese and Tollison recruited as network members at least one Professor of Economics in each State University (they were poorly paid and welcomed the chance to make money on the side). He used his list of members and associates within the Center for Study of Public Choice and the Public Choice Society which he jointly controlled with Gordon Tullock and James Buchanan at George Mason University.

The foundation document of this network was a memo "Excise Tax Speaking Forums" sent by Ogilvy & Mather to FredPanzer at the Tobacco Instituteon the 20th November 1984 [2]. It refers to a forum sponsored by the Public Choice Society to be held in New Orleans (Feb 21-23 1985) which had four core-group network speakers on a major panel, which was being organised for the tobacco industry by Tollison and Savarese. This early manifestation came to be called the Committee on Taxation & Economic Growth.

• Public Choice Libertarian ideology
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Public Choice Libertarian ideology

'Public Choice Economics' in the context of the day, was a catch-phrase meaning "free-markets, less government, reduced regulation" of goods and services. It was the ultra-libertarian economic ideology of UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher which was followed (as much as he was capable of understanding it) by President Ronald Reagan in the USA. It's main emphasis was on deregulation of industries -- even those with poisoning and polluting proplems - and in Reagan's case it led to major scandals with the forced retirement of over 20 top staff from the EPA, and the hurried exit ofThorne Auchter as head of the Occupational Safety & Health Administration and his (later) lobbying partner J:{ames J Tozzias the administration's "Deregulation Czar" (Office of Information & Regulatory Affairs - OIRA/OMB).}:

Payment system

The tobacco industry paid no retainer fees to the general Cash-for-Comment network members. However they did retain some of the core network and paid higher fees to a half-dozen of the Society economist recruited as part of the Committee on Taxation & Economic Growth. Network members were employed purely on pay-for-service transactions, and expected to also make some extra cash from the newspapers which accepted their op-eds.

Savarese and Tollison would put out a request to each network member, specifying the subject to be covered and including a few of the key themes to be promoted, together with any essential statistics. The professor-member was then expected to:

1. write an op-ed piece following the theme and guidelines provided (usually 1000-1500 words), but in layman's language.
2. send the article to the editor of a local city newspaper (specified by the minders). It was probably assumed that some would be paid a token freelance writer's fee by the newspaper. ($100-$250 at this time)
3. if the article was published (and many were since they were essentially free) then photocopies of the article were to be sent to two local Representatives or Congressmen (specified by the tobacco staff)
4. copies of the published piece would then be returned to Savarese for payment.

The professors would then be paid between$600 and $3000 for their efforts by way of the Center for the Study of Public Choice at George Mason University; the amount varied over time.

The articles were commissioned via Savarese's staff, and the draft article was expected to be returned to the Institute for checking. They would make any necessary changes, and pass it through one or more of their major outside law firms for vetting. Sometimes Savarese or his staff might make changes also. Newspapers were designated in each region, so two or more articles didn't conflict.If the article was published (and sometimes even if they weren't) copies were to a designated Representative or Senator, with a note bringing the economist's 'independent opinion' to the Congressman's notice.

They were also paid to write letters-to-the-editor whenever the opportunity arose to promote the cigarette industry's line. For a period in 1987-88 the network was extended to also include Professors of Law and Business.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Ogilvy

SW

Thomas J. DiLorenzo was a Professor of Economics at Loyola College in Maryland and George Mason University who attacked tobacco control researchers in the press. He then moved on to a position as Senior Fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. [1]

DiLorenzo was a minor figure in the Cash for Comments Economists Network run by Robert Tollison out of the libertarian think-tank, the Center for Study of Public Choice at George Mason University. The tobacco industry paid James Savarese and his staff (at James Savarese & Associates) to organise and oversee the operations and keep it at arm's length. This was a Tobacco Institute operation which went on for many years.

Its aim was to keep pressure on Congress and State Assemblies not to increase excise taxes on cigarettes - or to pass legislation that would ban cigarette advertising - and to stop them blocking sales via vending machines (mainly to minors). Because of the ad-ban threat, they had the tacit support of many media outlets in promoting this message. Their input was generally in the form of 1000-1200 word op-eds for a designated newspaper, or a letter to the editor on a subject the Tobacco Institute wanted promoted. They would be paid $700 to $1500 for each piece published, with a bonus if personal letters were sent to two local Congressmen.

In the mid 1990s there appears to have been a break up of the larger network with most of the non-core members joining William Shughart in working through the Independent Institute. Savarese and Tollision, however, continued to work through George Mason University. DiLorenzo served as a research fellow at the Independent Institute and the Capital Research Center, two public policy think tanks that have accepted tobacco industryfunding.[3]

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  • 4.3External Sources...

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http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Center_for_Study_of_Public_Choice

The Center for Study of Public Choice is a libertarian think-tank which was founded by Professor James Buchanan (the guru of the 'Public Choice' ideology) and run by Economics Professor Robert D. Tollison (with some help from Richard E Wagner) It was originally housed at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, but then transferred, along with Tollison, Buchanan and a number of 'Public Choice' academic enthusiasts, to the corporate-funded George Mason University.

It was used at GMU by Tollison to run his Cash for Comments Economists Network along with James Savarese. He paid Carol M Robert and Elizabeth Masaitis from the Center to provide editorial and organisational work for his Tobacco Institute-funded network of economists. Anne Tollison was also employed by the Center for a while to supervise this operation.

Don't confuse it with the Center for the Study of Popular Choice -- or with the North Dakota Center for Study of Public Choice and Private Enterprise (Director Jeremy Jackson in 2016)

Public Choice is not so much an economic theory as it is a an extreme form of libertarian small-government, low-or-no-regulation ideology. The practitioners therefore had no ethical or moral qualms about taking tobacco industry money to help promote a "legal product". So Tollison's think-tank acted both as an academic association and as a vehicle for lobbying on behalf of the tobacco industry.

Those attracted to this free-market, low regulation, form of economics are -- by definition -- academics who have no problem with usurping the reputation of a university and converting it to a propaganda vehicle for the preservation of the right to smoke ... provided they got paid hansomely for their efforts. See this explanation of 'Public Choice' economics from an encyclopedia of economic theory:

Public choice takes the same principles that economists use to analyze people's actions in the marketplace and applies them to people's actions in collective decision making. Economists who study behavior in the private marketplace assume that people are motivated mainly by self-interest. Although most people base some of their actions on their concern for others, the dominant motive in people's actions in the marketplace—whether they are employers, employees, or consumers—is a concern for themselves.

• See this fairly clear and rational explanation [2] and the more esoteric theoretical explanation: [3]

Professor James Buchanan was the founding guru of the Center for Study of Public Choice when it was at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute. It later moved to George Mason University when Buchanan led the Polytechnic's Economics Department in a walk-out. They transferred as a group to the new corporate-funded George Mason University which not only tolerated personal greed, but made this the university motto. At that time Buchanan, Tollison and Richard E Wagner were disciple of Friedrich Hayek and the all had links to the American Enterprise Institute - controlled at that time by William Baroody and Irving Kristol, and funded (as was GMU) by the larger manufacturer of consumer products. Later they developed even stronger links to the Independent Institute.

• 1 Sportometrics - the height of absurdity
• 2 Recent Transitions
• 3 George Mason University
• 4 References

Sportometrics - the height of absurdity

In 1985 Robert Tollison, Richard Higgins of the FTC, and Brian Goff completed a paper on "economic research into the play and institutions of sports" at the CSPC. They used Public Choice theory to...:

• explained the process by which runners decide to supply effort during a race ...
• demonstrated empirically that professional basketball players who competed in states with open high school basketball competitions survive longer in the National Basketball Association.

[They explained that] "Sportometrics," or the use of sports and sports data to test economic hypotheses, will continue to be of interest to some Center Scholars over the next several years.

Recent Transitions

There are conflicting data about the recent changes to the Center. The Mercatus Center (Who's site is also at GMU) says:

The Center moved to George Mason University in 1980, where it merged with the Center for the Study of Public Choice during 1998 to become the James M. Buchanan Center for Political Economy.^[1] The Mercatus Center writes of the move that "Once again, support from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation provided the critical funding for this formative move." The Mercatus Center brand was developed in 1999 from the James Buchanan Center.^[1]

However the tobacco archives (recording documents in 2001) don't register the Buchanan Center, but continue to show funding of Mercatus and CSPC.

In 2016 the CSPC was being run at George Mason University by Dr Alex Tabarrok. [4] who doesn't figure in a significant way in any of the tobacco archive documents -- except, as an index entry for "The Perils of Setting a Constitutional Order", Foreword to Penelope Brook Cowen, Tyler Cowen & Alexander Tabarrok, "An Analysis of Proposals for Constitutional Change in New Zealand (1992).

Robert Tollison died in October 2016. His obit by Peter Boettke, reveals links to the think-tank Citizens for a Sound Economy. [5]

George Mason University

The 1985 Annual Report of the CSPC says about its relationship with GMU:

The Center for Study of Public Choice is an integral part of George Mason University. While maintaining its separate identity, the Center staff is part of the George Mason Economics Department. As such, the university budget covers the salaries of the permanent Center staff and minimal operating expenditures. Excluding the physical facility which houses the Center, St. George's Hall, general university support in 1984 additionally amounted to some $500,000 on an annual basis.

Center activities extend beyond those supported by the university. Funds for summer and release-time research, guest lecturers, visiting scholars, graduate students, and for supplemental travel and operating expenses have been provided by external supporters. External support in 1985 summed to approximately $300,000. These funds were provided by numerous external supporters, to whom we are very grateful for their sustained support over the years

[6]

George Mason Uni was founded in 1972 on a campus just outside Washington DC. It is now Virginia's largest public research university with 34,000 students on campus, ten schools and colleges, It no longer advertises it CSPU, however it does still have a Mercatus Center which was a research-based center used by the tobacco industry [7]

All Google entries which are indexes under the terms "Tollison" AND "Mercatus" seem to be expunged.

In April 2016, GMU renamed its law school the Antonin Scalia School of Law after receiving a $10 million gift from the Charles Koch Foundation and another $20 million from an anonymous donor which was funnelled through Leonard Leo, the executive VP of the Federalist Society. Between 2011 and 2014 the Koch's gave $48 million in donations to the GMU according to the Associated Press - and it is this money which supports the free-market Mercatus Center. The Mercatus board includes Richard Fink (Exec VP of Koch Industries, and Charles Koch himself.

Charles Koch also chairs the board of the Institute for Humane Studies at GMU.

The Mercatus Center is also linked to the National Federation of Independent Business and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)

References

See the Cash for Comments Economists Network and the Document Index

1985 See the Center for Study of Public Choice Annual Report. [8]

1989 See the Center for Study of Public Choice Annual Report. [9]

1. ↑ ^Jump ^up ^to:1.0 1.1 Jane Mayer Covert Operations: The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama The New Yorker, August 30, 2010

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[### Public choice theory is crucial to understanding the ...

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Jul 21, 2017 — To borrow from the great writer and civil liberties advocate James Bovard, democracy might be helpful if a group of five can't decide what to ...Read more

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