Our analysts participating in the Healthcare Lobbyist Challenge have been hard at work. Thanks to them, our list now features 175 staffers-turned-lobbyists. Our lead analyst, @ddwriter has earned more than 1,000 points while our runners up @Reed.Young and @Priscilla have made some valuable contributions. If they stay in the lead, they’re going to win some …
C Douglas
Posts by C Douglas
Following PhRMA
Over the weekend, the Associated Press broke the news that the drug industry plans to support Obama’s health care proposal. Despite the nasty adjectives the White House has used to describe them in recent months, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) will run TV ads in favor of “Obamacare” that will cost at least …
LittleSis gets local
In order to identify 500 congressional-staffers turned health care lobbyists, we’re adding a new twist to our Lobbyist Editing Challenge. We’re encouraging you, our analysts to host LittleSis house parties. Grab a few friends, get them signed up as analysts and spend a few hours listening to some good tunes while tracking down health care …
Supplementing the News
Recently, I’ve been exploring various ways LittleSis can be used as a vessel for supplementing and improving upon information disseminated by major news sources. Here’s just a few quick examples of news-worthy profiles I’ve been working on: Joe Cassano, an AIG officer cited by Time Magazine as one of the 25 people to be blamed …
Easy ways to get ahead in our contest
Our list of congressional-staffers-turned-healthcare-lobbyists has grown. We’ve already identified 140 lobbyists from the offices of people like Baucus, Grassley and Emanuel. Big props to our leading analyst @ddwriter who is leading the Lobbyist Editing Challenge with a whopping 462 points! To keep up this momentum, we need you to participate in our contest. Here are …
Lobbyists Editing Challenge launched!
Today marks the official launch of the Lobbyists Editing Challenge, LittleSis’ first analyst contest! Our citizen journalists are going head to head as they track down former congressional staffers who now work for the health care industry. Each time a member of the health care research group adds a staffer to our master list or …
Who is framing the “Cadillac-plan” debate?
If you’ve turned on the TV this morning you know the networks can’t stop talking about “gold-plated Cadillac plans,” insurance coverage that costs upwards of $10,000 more than the national average. Senator Kerry has proposed taxing the insurance companies that offer them in order to raise money for universal health coverage. The New York Times …
Sen. Carl Levin Issues Subpoena to Goldman Sachs
After an extended period of blog lethargy, I’m making my debut on Eyes on the Ties today in order to announce a LittleSis research project: we’re working to develop a comprehensive list of all the connections between Goldman Sachs executives and influential government officials and lobbyists. Serendipitously (or perhaps not), Senator Carl Levin has also …
More health care lobbyists with congressional ties unearthed, search now expanded
A few weeks ago, we set out to build a list of congressional-staffers-turned-health care lobbyists. With the help of some incredible citizen journalists at the Huffington Post Investigative Unit, our list of lobbyists has grown exponentially this week. Here are a few trends we’ve found thus far. Where they work Three lobbying firms have acquired …
Shoutout to OpenSecrets
As we announced earlier this week, LittleSis and the Huffington Post Investigative Fund are teaming up to track down former congressional staffers who are now lobbyists for the health care industry. Slowly but surely we’re making progress – in a short period of time we’ve found lobbyists coming out of the offices of McCain, Baucus …
Grassley’s “health care plan”
At a recent town hall meeting, a constituent asked Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley about health care, “How come I can’t have the same thing you have?” His response? “You can! Go work for the federal government!” You can check out the entire exchange here. While getting a job with the federal government won’t solve health …
The path of least resistance…for the health care industry
In a healthcare interview last week Rahm Emanuel told the Wall Street Journal that: “The goal is to have a means and a mechanism to keep the private insurers honest…The goal is non-negotiable; the path is.” Emanuel’s comments have sparked a firestorm of debate about the “trigger option”, a health care reform proposal that would …