Last Friday, LittleSis got a fantastic mention from veteran reporters Bill Moyers and Michael Winship on Salon.com. You know Bill Moyers from his excellent Sunday interview show, Bill Moyers Journal.

The Senate Finance Committee will be voting on Sen. Max Baucus‘ health reform bill tomorrow and the healthcare lobby has been doing its job overtime the past few weeks. This makes the healthcare research we’ve done all the more pertinent, which Moyers and Winship recognized.

Here’s an excerpt:

You can’t tell the players without a scorecard in the old Washington shell game. Lobbyist out, lobbyist in. It’s why they always win. They’ve been plowing this ground for years, but with the broad legislative agenda of the Obama White House — healthcare, energy, financial reform, the Employee Free Choice Act and more — the soil has never been so fertile.

The healthcare industry alone has six lobbyists for every member of Congress and more than 500 of them are former congressional staff members, according to the Public Accountability Initiative’s LittleSis database.

Just to be certain Congress sticks with the program, the industry has been showering megabucks all over Capitol Hill. From the beginning, they wanted to make sure that whatever bill comes out of the Finance Committee puts for-profit insurance companies first — by forcing the uninsured to buy medical policies from them. Money not only talks, it writes the prescriptions.

Moyers and Winship label the crossover of these former Hill employees a “friendly takeover of government, a leveraged buyout of democracy.” In light of the healthcare debate, we thank the authors for highlighting this standard Washington practice that shouldn’t be so standard.

We’ve gotten two great mentions of our health care research this week in Politico and The Huffington Post.

Politico congressional reporter Manu Raju names Liz Fowler, Sen. Baucus’ current health adviser and former WellPoint lobbyist; Mark Hayes, Sen. Grassley’s health counsel who is married to a health care lobbyist; Frederick Isasi, Sen. Bingaman’s health policy adviser and former lobbyist at Powell Goldstein; and Kate Spaziani, senior health policy aide to Sen. Conrad, also a registered lobbyist at Powell Goldstein.

Raju writes:

And according to the group Public Accountability Initiative, which tracks politicians’ ties to various interests, more than 500 former congressional aides have gone on to become health care lobbyists.

Both lobbyists-turned-aides and aides-turned-lobbyists say they offer unique expertise and experience as lawmakers try to rewrite the nation’s health care laws.

“It gave me a very different perspective, leaving the Hill,” said Debbie Curtis, who spent two years as a lobbyist for the consumer advocacy group Consumer Action during the Clinton-era health care debate. Curtis is currently the chief of staff for Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.), the chairman of the powerful health subcommittee on the House Ways and Means Committee.

Read more…

LittleSis got a great piece of press today in The Buffalo News. Business reporter Stephen Watson really “got” our site and explained it in a clear way to readers, too. The story references our Robert Hormats report and our health care project with the Huffington Post Investigative Fund, but also recognizes the larger context of the role of watchdog sites.

Here’s an excerpt:

By bringing these relationships to the public’s attention, LittleSis and other citizen-watchdog Web sites are filling a need, proponents said.

“The fact of the matter is many people in Congress have strong ties to, and relationships with, powerful corporations, lobbyists and special interests. And the public should know about them by whatever means possible,” said Dave Levinthal, a Buffalo native and spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics, which operates Open- Secrets.org.

If there are any Buffalonians reading this, sign up to become a LittleSis analyst!

LittleSis has gotten two mentions in the UK press recently. First, a BBC News article mentions the possibility that a LittleSis for the UK might get funded by mySociety, a nonprofit that promotes civic tools. They’ve put out a call for proposals about sites to develop in the UK and LittleSis is in the running. The idea for a UK LittleSis will be pitted against other sites and users will vote to see which they think should be developed.

mySociety founder Tom Steinberg says:

“The next step will be on a different scale from what we have built before,” said Mr Steinberg, “something that might have an order of magnitude more impact or more users.”

There is currently no site like LittleSis in the UK. There are certainly plenty of powerful people to connect, so we’re excited about this possible partnership. More to come on how you can help us by voting.

Read more…

LittleSis for Washington insiders, in this week’s National Journal:

The biggest value LittleSis offers is not so much the details it provides but the ties it highlights. “In a city like Washington that functions off of connections … having an online Rolodexing system to figure out these connections is a valuable tool,” said Scott Goodstein, who served as the external online director for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

It’s interesting to see the site presented to an inside-the-beltway audience. I’m glad the article informed them that:

1. LittleSis is watching.
2. This will prove useful to insiders-looking-in.

The magazine is subscription-only, but the article is available here from Sunlight Foundation.