White House Releases 75,000 New Visitor Records

By GottaLaff

As Seinfeld never said, "Who are these people?"

Most of the roughly 75,000 records released Friday cover October. Most visitors were there for White House tours.

Bond. James Bond:

(click on image to enlarge)

Health care watch: White House visitor logs

By GottaLaff

The White House had visitors, as the logs reveal, and they were talking health care reform:

Top aides to President Barack Obama met early and often with lobbyists, Democratic political strategists and other interests with a stake in the administration's national health care overhaul, White House visitor records obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press show. [...]

The records show a broad cross-section of the people most heavily involved in the health care debate, weighted heavily with those who want to overhaul the system.

Here are a few on the list:

• Dr. David Himmelstein of Harvard Medical School, single payer advocate
• George Halvorson, chairman and CEO of Kaiser Health Plans
• Scott Serota, president and CEO of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Assoc.
• Kenneth Kies, a Washington lobbyist who represents Blue Cross/Blue Shield, among others
• Billy Tauzin, head of PhRMA
• Richard Umbdenstock, chief of the American Hospital Assoc.
• Laird Burnett, a top lobbyist for insurer Kaiser Foundation Health Plan
• Joshua Ackil, a lobbyist whose clients include Intel, U.S. Oncology Inc., and Knoa Software Inc.
• Alissa Fox, a lobbyist with the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, met March 31 with Peter Orszag
• Mark Agrast, a lobbyist for the Center for American Progress Action Fund
• Amador "Dean" Aguillen, a former aide to Nancy Pelosi who is now with Ogilvy Government Relations, where he lobbies for clients including pharmaceutical companies
• Merribel Ayres, a lobbyist who appears to focus on environmental issues such as energy and climate change

There is much more information on these visitors and others here.

Transparency Watch: Here they are, the White House visitor records

By GottaLaff

BushCo wouldn't know the first thing about this. The word "transparency" was not in their DickTionary:

This unprecedented level of transparency can sometimes be confusing rather than providing clear information.

A lot of people visit the White House, up to 100,000 each month, with many of those folks coming to tour the buildings. Given this large amount of data, the records we are publishing today include a few “false positives” – names that make you think of a well-known person, but are actually someone else. In September, requests were submitted for the names of some famous or controversial figures (for example Michael Jordan, William Ayers, Michael Moore, Jeremiah Wright, Robert Kelly ("R. Kelly"), and Malik Shabazz). The well-known individuals with those names never actually came to the White House. Nevertheless, we were asked for those names and so we have included records for those individuals who were here and share the same names.

Here is the list.

White House Will Reveal Visitor Names

Strike one up for transparency!

The Obama administration "plans to change White House policy by releasing the names of thousands of visitors whose comings and goings traditionally are kept secret by presidents," USA Today reports.

"Until now, Obama had followed the Bush policy of keeping visitor logs secret. News organizations and watchdog groups had sought to make the records public to show who was influencing administration policy on health care, financial rules and other issues."