Carol M Robert

This article is part of the Tobacco portal on Sourcewatch funded from 2006 - 2009 by the American Legacy Foundation.

Mrs. Carol M Robert of the Cash for Comments Economists Network made a lot of money providing the production services for the many op-ed articles that the various professors of journalism generated in working as a propaganda mill for the tobacco industry. She made about $750 a time, while the professor only received payment of about $1000 for having written the piece.

She worked as a secretary for the Center for Study of Public Choice which Robert Tollison ran at George Mason University. Her co-worked Elizabet A Masaitis, was also involved, at a lesser degree.

DISAMBIGUATION: Mrs. Carol M Robert worked on a regular basis for the Center for Study of Public Choice which was located on the campus of George Mason University. The Director, Professor Robert Tollison used her as the production coordinator on the Cash for Comments Economists Network that he ran with James Savarese for the Tobacco Institute. Her surname Robert didn't have a terminating 'S' but this was often mistakingly applied. RJ Reynolds also had a Carol Roberts who was involved in their Purchasing department, which means the archives have many documents generated by her. There was a Carol Roberts, a chain-smoking County Commissioner who like to defy the Florida Clean Indoor-Air Act. Another Carol Roberts complained to the Newark Star-Ledger that the Hackensack Medical Center was still choking its workers with smoke, despite the smoke-free ordinance. She was given a smoke-free job in the pharmacy.

Documents & Timeline

See the Cash for Comments Economists Network and the Document Index

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1985 See the Center for Study of Public Choice Annual Report. [1]

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1989 See the Center for Study of Public Choice Annual Report. [2]

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1992 Robert Tollison and Richard Wagner have published their "The Economics of Smoking". Now that the Master Settlement Agreement has released millions of tobacco industry document, there's little point on concealing the relationship. So, unlike their previous publishings, this tome gives credit to both the Tobacco Institute and Carol Roberts.

This manuscript was produced under a grant from The Tobacco Institute. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Institute or its member companies. We are grateful to Mrs. Carol Robert for her unfailing and unflappable assistance in the preparation and typesetting of the manuscript.[3]

At least they are half-honest.

There are some great quotes in this book if you bother to read it. However there's no admission that the authors every got it wrong, or that she and they surreptitiously worked most of their lives for the tobacco industry, and reaped a modest fortune from the pockets of those addicted to nicotine. Quote:

• More than 90 percent of Medicare beneficiaries are over age 65--an age group in which only 16 percent are smokers. Even if it is assumed that smoking harms health, there is no valid basis for claiming that smokers place an above-average demand on Medicare.

Cowell and Hirst (1980) estimate that smokers have a life expectancy that is 7.3 years less than that of nonsmokers. If one assumes such figures are accurate, they suggest that smokers should be taxed less for lifetime health insurance--and Medicare is a form of open-ended, lifetime health insurance.

It would be a reasonable assumption that the reasons only 16% of the aged are smokers, is a) many smokers have died prematurely. b) lung cancer and coronary bypass operations don't come cheap. c) those who have survived their cancer of the lung operations and coronary by-passes have now given up under medical advice. d) passive smoking will have also killed a large number of non-smokers. e) the cost burden on survivors may now fall on their spouses, and others in the family f) what about house fires, bush fires, etc... etc.

The ideology behind this Public Choice libertarian accounting mentality is that society is about money, not that it is about living a comfortable and productive life, and helping others do the same.

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1994 The CSPC now drops the tobacco research and propaganda. But a Carol M Roberts turns up working for RJ Reynolds in its Packaging logistics section. There is no evidence that this is the same person, but the timing is intriguing.

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Curiousity/Coincidence: We make no comment about this 2016 entry.

Carol M. Roberts is Professor in the University of La Verne’s Doctoral Program in Organizational Leadership where she advises doctoral students, chairs dissertations, and teaches research plus a variety of courses focused on leading organizations. Carol is a speaker, consultant, and seminar leader specializing in organizational and team development, strategic planning, conflict resolution, coaching, and personal mastery. She has been a trainer for the California School Leadership Academy and the California School Boards Association. She received her doctoral degree in planning, policy, and administration from the University of Southern California. Carol served on the Executive Board for the Southern Counties Women in Educational Management and was awarded its Woman of the Year award.