The corrupted 120+ member tobacco economists network - part 28. Writing "independent" letters to senators.

Overview of previous posts here

Letters to Senators 

The economists were paid if they sent their op-eds to their local congressmen and Senators.

In 1989, these faculty contacted their local politicians, sending them their op-ed

Several of these are not economists, but professors of law. As we will see in another blogpost, the industry also tried setting up a lawyers network. 

The economists and lawyers did not exactly say they were paid by the Tobacco Institute, As an example, Ronald X. Groeber wrote

As another example, the letter written by Gary M. Anderson (he sent a copy to the Tobacco Institute and on top wrote sorry for the delay, so the Tobacco Institute probably had asked him to forward it)

The full list of letters discovered can be found in the appendix which will be published with the last blogpost in the series

The tobacco economists network - or how the Tobacco Institute recruited over 100 American economics professors. Part 17 of many

Overview of previous posts here

The industry keeps evaluating

The industry kept evaluating for effectiveness

Full list of remarks:

• Prof Dominick Armentano — "Yes: Contacted, make good witness"
• Prof Summer LaCroix — "Yes: if needed in Hawaii"
• Prof Allan Dalton — "Yes: Good Witness"
• Prof Fred McChesney — "No Contact. Reported to be OK and could be used in future.
• Prof Cecil Bohanon — "Should be replaced by listed Indiana Economist, Prof. James A Papke"
• Prof Thomas Pogue — "Yes, Could be outstanding."
• Prof Robert McMahon — "Yes: Creditable witness and one-on-one contact."
• Pro Greg Neihaus — "Yes, outstanding witness"
• Prof Raymond Raab — "Yes: Outstanding"
• Prof Terry Anderson — "Yes, Good Witness"
• Prof Terry Logue — "Yes: Outstanding witness"
• Prof Kenneth Greene — "Yes: Only in particular situations with controlled information."
• Prof Cliff Dobitz — "No contact: State not lend itself to Economic witness use."
• Prof Richard Vedder — "No - Conflict minimizes effectiveness"
• Prof William Mitchell — "Yes, Good witness"
• Prof Ann Harper-Fender — "No contact - out of country, will contact in June.
• Prof Arthur Mead— "Yes: Good witness"
• Prof Dennis Hein — "Contact sometimes back; will probably be good witness and usable in 1988.
• Dr Mark Schmitz — "Washington — No"
• Dr Dennis Chinn — "Washington —Yes, Excellent"

PR-firm Ogilvy and Mather and James M. Savarese  explain

In order to make the most of the new opportunities for the economist network, several factors had to be taken into consideration

(...)

As effectiveness was everything, the industry even asked Savarese to replacesome economists because they. . . lived in the wrong city.