“Those in power must spend a lot of their time laughing at us”*…
LittleSis— the opposite of Big Brother–is a free database of who-knows-who at the heights of business and government.
It’s a kind of “involuntary Facebook of the 1%”…
We’re a grassroots watchdog network connecting the dots between the world’s most powerful people and organizations… We bring transparency to influential social networks by tracking the key relationships of politicians, business leaders, lobbyists, financiers, and their affiliated institutions. We help answer questions such as:
- Who do the wealthiest Americans donate their money to?
- Where did White House officials work before they were appointed?
- Which lobbyists are married to politicians? Who do they lobby for?
All of this information is public, but scattered. We bring it together in one place. Our data derives from government filings, news articles, and other reputable sources. Some data sets are updated automatically; the rest is filled in by our user community.
The database is large; at this writing:
And as the explanation above suggests, it’s growing.
Readers might do well to browse. If, as a recent Princeton study suggests, the U.S. is no longer a democracy, but an oligarchy, it’d be wise to meet the new bosses.
* Alice Walker
###
As we contemplate cronyism, we might recall that it was on this date in 1884 that the brokerage firm of Grant & Ward, in which former President Ulysses S. Grant was a partner, failed under the weight of $16,725,466 worth of debts. The firm, founded in 1881, had done well at first, bolstered by the salesmanship of Ferdinand Ward– “The Young Napoleon of Finance”– and by Grant’s name. The former president bragged to friends that he was worth two and a half million dollars, and family members and friends poured money into the firm. But Grant was largely disengaged from the company’s business (he later argued in his autobiography), often signing papers without reading them. In the event, it turned out that Ward was running a Ponzi scheme (before Ponzi had given the technique its name). Ward was eventually convicted of fraud and served six years at Sing Sing. Grant was financially ruined, but was bailed out by William Henry Vanderbilt, who paid off Grant’s debts, and by Mark Twain, whose generous offer for Grant’s autobiography financed the ex-President’s final years.
Frederick Opper’s treatment of “Young Napoleon” Ward, published during Ward’s trial