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'''D. Allen Dalton''' was an  Assistant Professor of Economics at Boise State University, Idaho. He  was also a member of the [[Cash for Comments Economists Network]] which was run for the Tobacco Institute by Professor [[Robert D. Tollison]] and lobbyist [[James Savarese]] with the help of Tollison's wife [[Anna Tollison|Anna]] and the staff from the [[Center for Study of Public Choice]] (located on the grounds of George Mason University).   

Overall, this pair recruited (in total) between 120 and 130 professors of economics (usually Libertarian - Public Choice zealots at State Universities). Some stayed for the duration while others washing temporarily through this lobbying scam.  Most of the recruits were members of Tollison's [[Public Choice Society]] which had the public-choice libertarian economics guru [[James Buchanan]] at its head. [[Anna Tollison]] (wife) also appears to have handled the Society and some network administation, while Savarese had [[Leslie Dawson]] (wife of Sam Dawson from United Steel Worker's Assoc/union) and [[Kelleigh Varnum]] (aka Kelleigh Varnum-Roffman) as his key assistants.

Dalton himself realised the career benefits of think-tanks andlater took over one in Boise called the "[[Center for the Study of Market Alternatives]].  This was linked through the libertarian lobby, the Atlas Research Group with the [[Atlas Group]] network.[http://opencorporates.com/companies/us_id/C53319] [http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/vch38b00/pdf    See his C/V]

The recruited professors would be instructed on occasions to write a 1200-1400 word opinion article (known as 'op-eds') for their local newspaper. The subject to be discussed or the claim to be challenged, and any important statistical information and possibly a broad outline, would be sent to them along with the names of (usually two) selected newspapers.  They would also be given the name of two local Federal or State politicians to lobby by sending a copy of their article, along with a personal note.  

They were paid on the basis of work performed -- at rates which varied between $600 and $3,000 for each article. This was good money for a second-rate State university professor of economics at the time.  See longer explanations: [[Economists' network]] and the full-blown [[Cash for Comments Economists Network]].

The [[Cash for Comments Economists Network]] later split up and most of the members transferred over to work for the tobacco industry under the cover of the [[Independent Institute]] with [[William F Shughart]] taking a leading role.  Savarese and Tollison then appeared to have formalised their partnership, with Tollison and his wife becoming part of James Savarese & Associates.

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==Documents & Timeline==
<b>1954 Jan 11</b> Born     
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<b>1976 April 23</b> The [[Center for the Study of Market Alternatives]] Inc, gives either 1976 or 1977 as the year that it was founded by [[Ralph Smeed]].  Dalton became the Director much later. [http://opencorporates.com/companies/us_id/C53319]
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<b>1979 MA</b> Economics, Virginia Polytechnic Inst. & State Uni     
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<b>1980 Aug</b>  Assistant Professor  of Economics, Arizona State Uni     
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<b>1982 Aug</b>  Assistant Professor of Economics, Boise State University.     
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<b>1984 Jul</b>  The Tobacco Institute's <B> Cigarette Excise Tax Plan</B>.  <BLOCKQUOTE><i> The plan augments our basic lobbying efforts by relying on groups outside the industry -- some not regularly associated with the industry -- to argue against excise taxes for us.  
 
It is an ambitious program, based on the notion that many of the most effective protests against tobacco taxes will come from groups philosophically distant from The Institute. Many such groups agree with us on the excise issue, even though they disagree with us on other matters.   At the federal level, supporting Congressional members from the tobacco states is essential to our lobbyists. The tobacco members consistently vote as a unified group -- something that is rarely seen in Congress today. They are our lobbyists' most important resource.   

The program recommends that economic and other consultants assist us in developing, "packaging," and presenting our anti-excise arguments in legislative testimony or meetings with coalition members.   

<B> Resources:</B> <BR> Economic consultants with different areas of expertise will conduct research and act as spokespersons for The Institute and organizations supported by The Institute. Specific activities with economists are discussed throughout the tactics.   

<B> Tactics:</B>  <UL><li>  Stimulate reputable public finance economists at key state universities to determine the validity of state revenue forecasts, perhaps on behalf of state business organizations and present arguments against excise taxes in various forums; e.g., meetings with potential coalition members or budget officials.  
<li>  Encourage economists to make the case against regressive taxation in meetings with potential coalition members and legislators.   
<li>  Retain public finance economists affiliated with non-profit organizations to research the subject and use their findings in forums such as:   
<UL> <li>  Private meetings with state legislators or staff ;  
<li>  formal testimony before government bodies ;  
<li>  targeted media appearances;  
<li>  speeches before business, civic, labor, and other groups ;  
<li>  tax symposia in key states where the proceedings could be published for use in other states ; and  
<li>  articles which raise the visibility of key arguments in the business, academic, and popular press. </UL> </UL>  <B> Strategies:</B>  <UL> <li>  Presenting specific members of the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance Committees with arguments prepared by economists with whom they share some common interest; e.g college affiliation, service on the same commission.   
<li>  Gaining the support of Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ), the most influential labor/liberal tax reform group in the country, in opposition to excise taxes.   
<li>  Relying on the AFL-CIO -- via The Bakery, Confectionery, and Tobacco Workers Union -- to ensure that the labor/liberal tax package that emerges in the next session of Congress does not include tobacco. </UL>
    
<B> Appendix:</B> A list of economists in key states who may be willing to act as industry and third-party spokespersons on the tax issue.  
<u>Following is a list of economists in key states who might assist us as experts receiving honoraria. We have begun contacting them to ensure their willingness and expertise. We are asking each about past experience; work with similar issues; previous work with the industry; published articles or research; and availability. </u>  
   
Our intent is to have a group of individuals whom we can call upon as needed to testify, conduct special research and discuss their research projects and/or views on excise taxes with budget officials, potential coalition members, legislators and the media. </i></BLOCKQUOTE>  <B> Professor Allen Dalton</B> joined this scheme a year or so later.  [http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/mnx23f00/pdf]

<hr color=red><center><b>Dalton must have been recruited towards the end of 1984.</b></center><hr color=red> 
 
<B>1985 Jan 1</b> A draft of his article <I><b>"Tax Revision: Reform of Fraud?"</b></I> has been sent to the Tobacco Institute along with a number of  articles written for the TI by other academic economists.  President Reagan, at the beginning of his second term, had asked Senator Robert Packwood (R-OR) to devise a plan to increase taxes without changing the income tax laws.  This essentially meant an increase in excises on such products as cigarettes -- and so the tobacco industry mounted a full-scale attack on the 'Packwood Plan'.   
  
They enlisted a new set of  op-ed economist authors: <ul> <li> [[Allen Dalton]] (Boise State Uni); <li> [[Thomas Pogue]]  (Uni of Iowa); <li> [[Richard McKenzie]]  (Washington Uni, St Louis);<li>   [[Terry Anderson]]  (Montana State Uni); <li>  [[Michael Crew]]  (Rutgers Uni); <li>  [[Jean J Boddewyn]]  (CUNY); <li>  [[Ann Harper-Fender]]  (Gettysburg College); <li>   [[Scot Atkinson]]  (Uni of Wyoming)</ul><font color=green>
: [All of the articles written by this new batch of economists attack the Packwood Tax Plan, and all have been carefully retyped by Tobacco Institute secretaries ready for distribution to appropriate local newspapers.  This is the first indication in the archives that Allen Dalton is working on commission for the tobacco industry.] </font>  

Allen Dalton writes: <BLOCKQUOTE><I> What began as a noble attempt by the Reagan Administration to affect fundamental tax reform in the United States appears about to become a massive exercise in politics as usual.     
 
In January, 1985  President Reagan called for tax reform that would reduce rates, close special-interest loopholes, increase fairness, expand economic growth and increase American international competitiveness. Reagan's proposals, in the words of Treasury Secretary Baker, were based on the simple premise that "the tax system must not be used to favor one taxpayer over another, to favor one industry over another, to favor one form of consumption over another, or to favor one investment over another." </i></BLOCKQUOTE> This was an attack on the Packwood Proposal because it involves the removal of deductability of advertising costs, and use of excise taxes to discourage unhealthy products like cigarettes. <BLOCKQUOTE><I> In order to finance this multi-billion dollar giveaway and remain faithful to the President's call for revenue-neutral tax reform, the Packwood plan seeks to increase the most regressive, most inefficient, most anti-production, most anti-competitive, most anti-democratic tax in the tax code: federal excise taxes.</I> [http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/pdp38b00/pdf]</BLOCKQUOTE> <font color=green> 
: [He manages to write the article without mentioning cigarettes -- or that he was paid by the tobacco industry. This is one of eight draft articles from network economists here].   </font>

{{1985-96PackwoodC4C}}

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{{1986AprResearch}}
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<B>1986 May /E </b>A Tobacco Institute list of <B> "Schedule of Payments - Excise Tax Op-Ed project."</B> (April-May 1986) This lists those academic economists who have already planted their article on a local newspaper, and the amount they are to be paid.  They appear to have been paid $900 for each article, and $1025 if they had also made contact with their local Congressman.  However a number of the cash-for-comments network members still have not completed their commission.   
  
The <B> George Mason (Uni)</B> production staff of <B> Bob Tollison, Bill Shughart</B>, and <B> Gary Anderson</B> were paid for <B> "rewrites, editing and research, 18 articles"</B>, and <B> Carol Robert</B> for the "production of final product. " A total of $18,000 + $1067 expenses <font color=green>[or $1000 per article to make them into saleable propaganda for their local newspapers]</font>    
 
The individual payments to network participants are listed here [http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/jhe19b00/pdf] and later supplementary payments here [http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/anf38b00/pdf].    
The GMU production staff were also being paid another $9,500 for rewrites, editing and research on 9 additional articles, while Savarese seems to have been charging $5,800 + $235 in expenses for recruiting replacement economists in California, Montana, New York, Ohio and Tennessee. 
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<b>1986 Jul 21 </B>[[Sam Chilcote]] the CEO of the Tobacco Institute writes to the members of his Executive Committee detailing the TI's successes in generating objections to the proposed <u>GSA {Government Services Administration] anti-smoking bans.</u>    

They have persuaded the <u>American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE)</u> to help having the rules amended, and have turned out their friends and associated companies to generate letters of objection.   <BLOCKQUOTE> Included among the comments received by GSA thus far are thousands generated as a result of contact with TAN [Tobacco Action Network] activists, other tobacco family organizations, key coalitions, organized labor and <B>economists.</B>   

The State Activities Division's alert of key contacts in the field, as well as TAN activists, has generated at least 3,100 letters of opposition. These are letters for which copies have been sent to division headquarters; there are no doubt many others.     
   
Among member companies, all have asked their employees to write letters of opposition. In addition, RJ Reynolds reports its phone bank efforts to reach Washington, DC residents, may have resulted in up to 3,700 opposition letters. Reynolds also sought letters from respondents to an earlier mailing on the federal excise tax issue. Philip Morris initiated a program designed to generate up to 10,000 mailgrams to GSA by the comment deadline. </BLOCKQUOTE>  Letters of objection (all  remarkably similar in content) from numerous academic economists were also attached.  They all seemed to focus on one extraordinary aspect: <u>the  cost of implementating the ban</u> -- rather than the rights of non-smokers to breathe clean air.   

The economist's letters all attacked the GSA's calculation ... "that the costs of NO-SMOKING signs in government buildings would cost less than $100 million annually."  Apparently  [[Robert Tollison]] had circulated a much higher estimate of costs (which some of the letter-writers mentioned) ... and all of the economists' letters completely ignored any cost savings, such as lower cleaning and painting costs in government buildings; reduced sick days; higher productivity, etc. which you would normally figure to be of significance to an economist.  

These letters, were all written within a few days of each other by university professors (sometimes with multiple signatures) spread across the country, and they came from:   <UL> <li>  8th July -- [[Arthur T Denzau]], Washington University, St Louis, Mo   
 <li>  3rd July -- [[Barry W Poulson]], University of Colorado, Boulder   
 <li>  10th July -- [[Thomas E Borcherding]], Claremont College/Graduate School, California   
 <li>  7th July -- [[William F Shughart]] II, [[Center for the Study of Popular Choice]], George Mason University, Washington DC   
 <li>  Undated -- (joint) [[Cecil E Bohanon]],[[ James E McClure]], [[Stephan F Gohmann]], [[Clarence R Deitsch]], [[Lee C Spector]] -- all PhDs in economics at Ball State University, Muscie, Ind.   
 <li>  7th July -- [[John F Militello]], Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania,   
 <li>  7th July -- [[Jean J Boddewyn]], Baruch College, The City University of New York [Advertising lecturer]  
 <li>  5th July -- [[Morgan Reynolds]], Texas A&M University   
 <li>  8th July -- [[Cliff P Dobitz]], North Dakota State University   
 <li>  8th July -- [[William C Mitchell]], University of Oregon   
 <li>  11th July -- [[Arthur C Mead]], Economist, Newport RI   
 <li>  10th July -- [[D Allen Dalton]], Boise State University, Idaho   
 <li>  10th July -- [[Henry N Butler]], George Mason Univeristy   
 <li>  10th July -- (joint) [[S Charles Maurice]], [[Leonardo Auernheimer]], [[Niccie L McKay]], [[John R Hanson]] II, [[Lynn Gillette]], [[Gregory Delemeester]] at Texas A&M University   
 <li>  9th July -- (joint) [[Robert B Ekelund]], [[Richard Ault]], [[David Saurman]], [[John Jackson]], [[Robert F Hebert]], [[J. Keith Watson]], [[Mark Thonton]], at Auburn University, Alabama   
 <li>  9th July -- (joint) [[Richard K Vedder]], [[Lowell E Gallaway]], [[Jan Palmer]], [[David Klingaman]]</B> at Ohio University [http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/xpg25b00/pdf]   </UL>
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<b>1987 May 28</b> [[Paul A Jacobson]], the Tobacco Institute's Region V Supervisor, has been evaluating the value of the economists that Savarese and Tollison had recruited to cover his area of the country. He had interviewed the TI's State lobbyists to see what their impressions were as to the value of various economists.  He says about this economist: <blockquote><I> Professor Allan Dalton<br>Economics Department, Boise State University

Counsel Bill Roden has met and talked with Professor Dalton on several occasions, however they have never discussed excise taxes. 

Professor Dalton's professional reputation is excellent and Bill feels that he would be an articulate witness for a legislative hearing. Counsel Roden has not asked Professor Dalton to testify in the past, but will discuss possible future testimony with the Professor before the start of the next legislative session . </i> [http://industrydocuments.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/qgwn0138] </blockquote>

{{1987C4Cretainer}}
==References==