ICJL touts new study by Big Tobacco, Oil and Drug Companies
Earlier this week on Illinoize, the Illinois Civil Justice League's Ed Murnane was touting a new study by the Pacific Research Institute, which he says backs up his claim that we need to restrict citizen access to the courts.
Not surprisingly, the Pacific Research Institute's work is funded by Big Tobacco, Big Oil, and Big Drug Companies.
According to SourceWatch, the Pacific Research Institute's major financiers include:
Altria (Parent company of Phillip Morris)
Chevron Texaco
ExxonMobile Corporation
Pfizer
PhRMA (umbrella group for the pharmaceutical industry)
The PRI's donors includes another group that I'd never heard of until now: White House Writer's Group.
Again, from SourceWatch:
Gee, anyone wanna bet that the WHWG's client list includes Big Tobacco, Big Oil, Big Drug Companies, or all three?The White House Writers Group (WHWG) was founded in 1993 by "five former White House speechwriters", many colleagues from the George H.W. Bush Administration. [1][2]
Media Transparency calls WHWG "an umbrella firm of former ghostwriters for Republican presidents and bureaucrats now at the service of anyone willing to pay." [3]
As for the study itself
You've got to give style points, but no credibility points, to a study that includes a foreword from Haley Barbour. For those of you who've forgotten the pre-Katrina past of Mississippi's current GOP Governor, he's grateful. You see, Haley Barbour isn't just the former chair of the RNC and a defender of the old ways of the South, he also posed for a widely disseminated photo with modern era segregationists. That lapse in political judgment (and Barbour's subsequent defense of it) left such a stain on Barbour's political career, most folks plum forgot that before he became RNC chair, Barbour was a DC lobbyist who's firm made millions lobbying for big tobacco.
Barbour is so deep in the pocket of the tobacco industry that he vetoed a bill as governor that would have lowered grocery taxes by raising the tax on cigarettes (Mississippi has one of the highest grocery sales tax rates in the country).
To paraphrase the Chicago Tribune, Barbour is so deep in the pockets of the Tobacco Industry, he's lint.
But, God Bless Katrina, Barbour is now quietly campaigning for the VP slot on the Republican ticket in '08.
The moral of the story is this: If you want to pass off your tobacco industry propaganda as "a thorough and comprehensive study by economists," don't include a foreword by the segregation-loving, tobacco lobbying, ultra-conservative governor of Mississippi. Read more...
