LightSquared: Another Solyndra?
There’s a White House scandal involving favoritism towards a specific company high on President Obama’s political agenda — and it’s not Solyndra.
In this case, the company owner happens to be a big Democratic Party donor. And in the pursuit of giving preference to a specific company, the White House undercut a legendary four-star general and potentially undermined U.S. national security. Adding fuel to the explosive story: at one time President Obama was a personal investor, with $50,000 of his own money.
The company? It’s called LightSquared. And you’re likely to hear more about it in the future. The scandal involves the White House overruling the Pentagon, endangering the American GPS commercial marketplace, and playing favorites to a single company — all to please a well-positioned Democratic donor and advance an Obama pet project.
A disturbing report yesterday by Eli Lake at the Daily Beast charges that the White House pressured U.S. Air Force General William Shelton, commander of the U.S. Space Command, to change his testimony about his opposition to a $14 billion LightSquared wireless internet project. The Space Command and Gen. Shelton warned that LightSquared could cripple the Pentagon’s Global Positioning System (GPS). Lake writes that the White House took sides in favor of LightSquared and against the Pentagon:
Shelton’s prepared testimony was leaked in advance to the company. And the White House asked the general to alter the testimony.
Other commercial industry figures agreed that the new wireless system could interfere with aviation safety, disrupt military and rescue operations, and interfere with high-tech farming equipment and consumer navigation devices.
For years within the telecom industry there have been persistent complaints that LightSquared majority owner Philip Falcone’s political connections with the White House and the Federal Communications Commission have led to political and regulatory favoritism for his company. Falcone is a hedge fund investor who made a fortune shorting subprime debt. He is worth $2.2 billion and has been close to the administration and to Democratic Party officials.
On Thursday, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski was slated to testify before the House Armed Services Committee about the political patronage in the granting of fast-track waivers for the company. But Genachowski stood up the committee — he refused to appear. Said Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH):
I consider the chairman’s failure to show up today to be an affront to the House Armed Services Committee.
Turner added he wanted to hear personally why the FCC agreed to a conditional waiver for LightSquared.
Both the Solyndra and LightSquared scandals are part of a larger, emerging narrative about the Obama administration’s decision to pick business winners and losers. Like the solar scandal, LightSquared is part of an Obama industrial policy to reshape America’s business landscape in the Democrats’ own political image. In this case, Obama’s dream was universal wireless broadband for all Americans.
In the Solyndra scandal, the White House pressured the U.S. Department of Energy to provide a half-billion dollar grant to a financially questionable solar energy company in pursuit of the president’s agenda for “green” technology.
In this LightSquared scandal, General William Shelton was asked by the Office of Management and Budget — an arm of the White House — to change his testimony. Even more damaging, OMB shared the general’s testimony with LightSquared.
LightSquared employs an army of eight high-powered lobbying firms, including one headed by former Democratic House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt. In 2011 alone, LightSquared spent $720,000 on lobbyists.
Quoting Rep. Turner, Lake reported:
“There was an attempt to influence the text of the testimony and to engage LightSquared in the process in order to bias his testimony,” Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) said in an interview. “The only people who were involved in the process in preparation for the hearing included the Department of Defense, the White House, and the Office Management and Budget.”
iWatch, a project of the Center for Public Integrity, has conducted an exhaustive investigation of LightSquared and its high-level Obama connections. They found that in addition to the president, Donald Gips — Obama’s former personnel chief — had $500,000 invested in LightSquared. Gips raised half a million dollars as a “bundler” for the president’s 2008 campaign, and now has the politically coveted position of U.S. ambassador to South Africa.
iWatch also had harsh words for Obama’s head of the Federal Communications Commission, Julius Genachowski. Genachowski also was one of Obama’s biggest fundraisers, bundling $500,000 for Obama’s presidential run. Under his chairmanship, the FCC granted special rulings and waivers to allow LightSquared to operate.
Falcone and his company also made major contributions to the FCC while his case was pending before the commission. In September 2010, LightSquared CEO Sanjiv Ahuja made a $30,400 contribution to the Democratic Party, the maximum donation allowable by law. Falcone twice gave the maximum allowable.
iWatch traced LightSquared payments to contacts within the administration. On September 22 Ahuja met with James Kohlenberger, Obama’s chief of staff for the White House Office of Science and Technology. A day later Ahuja gave $30,400 to the Democratic National Committee. A week later, on September 30, Falcone and his wife reportedly each gave $30,400 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
“Hi Aneesh!” LightSquared representative Dave Kumar wrote to Aneesh Chopra, the president’s chief technology adviser on Sept. 23, 2010. “I touched base with my client Sanjiv Ahuja and he expressed an interest in meeting with you. … He is going to be in D.C. next week for a fundraising dinner with the president.” The email was one of 300 emails obtained by iWatch.
In two separate rulings, the FCC favorably approved LightSquared requests: on March 26, 2010, and on January 26, 2011. The rulings allowed the company to switch from a satellite company to a wireless system based on 400,000 towers. The tower system could interfere with many GPS signals.
GPS proponents have been dismayed by the quick FCC rulings. “The whole process has been highly unusual,” said Dale Leibach, a spokesman for the industry group Coalition to Save Our GPS . “The FCC typically doesn’t act quickly on matters before them, and they acted with great haste and lightning speed” on LightSquared.
Like solar energy, Obama has pressed for a bold agenda for universal broadband availability. In his 2010 State of the Union address, the president became a big cheerleader for the idea. The president demanded that broadband be given to 98% of the American people. In February 2010, Obama released a bill called the American Jobs Act which called for universal coverage. He told a group of college students: “This isn’t just about faster Internet or being able to find a friend on Facebook. It’s about connecting every corner of America to the digital age.”
The president wasn’t only intellectually involved. Investment manager George W. Haywood steered Obama toward putting some of his personal money into the wireless company. Obama bought into it with a $50,000 investment, according to his 2005 Senate financial disclosure form.
Haywood has remained close personal friends with the president. Haywood and his wife attended the first White House state diner and a Super Bowl party at the White House in 2009.
In February 20, 2010, Haywood and Genachowski together met at the White House. A White House spokesman said the two men watched the NBA All-Star Game with Obama in the White House residence quarters. “That was a poker game,” said Haywood. “It was poker, pizza, beer and the … game.”
Obama explained during the 2007 campaign how he invested in the wireless company. “After I got my ($1.9 million) book contract, I had money to invest,” he said, referring to his second book, The Audacity of Hope. He said he wanted “a more aggressive strategy than the normal mutual funds.”
“I thought about going to Warren Buffett and I decided it would be embarrassing with only $100,000 to invest to ask his advice,” Obama told reporters. Instead, Haywood recommended a UBS stockbroker, who bought more than $50,000 in stock in SkyTerra Communications, which would become LightSquared.
For quite some time Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) has been trying to get the FCC to disclose information about LightSquared’s investors and their relationship to the White House. His office says they have had no success. Grassley asked:
Are there ties between the investors and the administration that might lead to the perception that the administration is biased toward approval? … In the absence of transparency, the perception might be that the FCC is rushing the public’s business to help a friend in need, regardless of the consequences for the public and the economy.
Thirty-four senators, including eight Democrats, wrote Genachowski in May of this year asking the commission to rescind LightSquared’s waiver. “GPS is integral to the functioning of our economy, and is essential for public safety.” Until the company can prove that its wireless system does not affect GPS use, “we request the Commission rescind LightSquared’s waiver.”
On May 31, Genachowski said he would not permit LightSquared to go into commercial service, but he did not rescind the waiver.
On June 23, the House Appropriations Committee passed a resolution to halt FCC expenditures on the LightSquared project until there are assurances it won’t disrupt GPS signals.
The LightSquared case has been quietly simmering in the background for years within the telecom community. But now with possible tampering of a four-star general’s testimony, the episode should get a greater public airing.
If so, in addition to a sinking economy the other narrative that might emerge is that the Obama administration — which promised openness and integrity in governance — is an administration full of insider dealings, political favors, and deceit.
Let’s see, we have a situation in which a new “system”;
1. Seems tailor-made to cripple our military’s C3I (The One strongly disapproves of our military, which he sees as standing in the way of his Utopia);
2. Also could cripple any sort of “non-organic” farming (ditto);
3. Is being pushed by big contributors to the Democrats in general, and The One in particular;
4. And oh yes, The One has skin in the game himself.
Check, check, check, and check.
I’m not surprised that General Shelton was “pressured” to change his testimony (i.e., lie under oath and commit perjury). Nor am I surprised that Mr. Genachowski feels that he is not required to explain himself to Congress; this administration is full of apparatchiks, ward-heelers, and other political animals who believe they need answer to no one but The One.
In fact, the only thing which surprises me is that like Solyndra, the MSM is actually starting to notice that, as Shakespeare said, “there is something rotten in the state of Denmark”.
General Shelton should be commended for standing his ground as a leader should. As for Mr. Genachowski, he should be subpoenaed, now.
If he ignores that, send the U.S. Marshals to collect him.
clear ether
eon
That pretty much sums it up, eon. But expect to see more of this as people are having their feet held to the fire while the O-bey-me administration panics. I especially take pleasure in the fact that it was a military officer, and a high-ranking one at that, who blew the whistle here thus restoring some of my faith in the officer’s oath to the Constitution. “That I will uphold the Constitution of the United States; That I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same”.
I had hoped, perhaps against all hope at times, that there were still honorable persons in power left.
This does not just cripple the military, it causes problems to all airborne gps users….read that nearly all general aviation aircraft and nearly all commercial aircraft. Let me be clear. The airliner that you ride on next WILL have navagation troubles because of Lightsquared’s transmissons. They even admit that to the AOPA (Aircraft Owner’s and Pilot’s Association). Lightsquared even tries to make it the problem of the gps manufacturers by saying that they make an inferior product. Be that as it may, the danger still exists.
It’s even bigger than you state (and I’m also an AOPA member).
GPS supplemented with Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) allows properly equipped planes to make precision instrument approaches to hundreds of airports without requiring millions of dollars of expensive hardware at each of those airports. Precision instrument approaches are safer than non-precision approaches. LightSquared’s technology interfers with aircraft GPS receivers. That reduces safety.
The FAA is spending billions of dollars on the Next Generation (NextGen) air traffic system. That system will be much more accurate and capable than the existing ATC system. Instead of using expensive and limited ATC radars to track aircraft (leaving many gaps in coverage), NextGen will involve properly equipped planes reporting their positions to simple ground receivers and to each other. GPS positions are far more accurate than radar derived positions. All of NextGen depends on GPS.
Ground emergency services use GPS to help them get more quickly to people in need. LightSquared will interfere with that and more people will die.
GPS timing signals are used for a variety of things including cellular communications. LightSquared will hinder that. It will also interfere with the millions of GPS receivers built into cell phones, cars and computers.
Why should we allow this just for one company’s benefit?
Modern precise surveying applications depend on the GPS signals, which will be shouted down by LightSquared’s megaphones.
It is unconscionable that the Obama admin should grant such preference to their acolytes, at the expense of the entire positioning technology industries which depend on GPS. Navigation, aerial, marine and land-based; precise guidance for agricultural and construction equipment (yes, it’s successful to within an inch or two for those uses) – precise scientific studies – property line locations (within 1/8 inch in expensive urban locations). On and on.
The FCC has ALREADY last February issued a permit to LightSquared for use of their requested frequency, which seriously interferes with the far fainter signals from the GPS constellation. This is gross ignorance, or gross arrogance, to simply throw away the 30-year development of positioning technology to favor donors to the Obama administration so that they may get rich.
Julius Genachowski must face, by subpoena if necessary, some serious questions from Congress for presiding over this malfeasance by the FCC. The last word has not been heard, though the Obama admin seems to believe that it has.
And mind you, my feeble rant doesn’t even touch the damage done to the Defense Department by this bought-in-Chicago travesty of corruption.
“Why should we allow this just for one company’s benefit?”
Because the owner of that company is a big obama campaign donor. That’s really all that matters.
You’ve nailed it John!
When Rumsfeld invested in the emerging market of artificial sweeteners, stevia (a no calorie natural plant leaf sweetener), was conveniently legislatively prohibited from being used in all prepared food. Legislated monopolies are far more secure than insider trading information with a new patent guaranteeing 40% of a market for seven years.
This administration is up to its ear lobes in scandal. This time it involves telling a General Officer what to say to a Congressional hearing. November 2012 can’t get here soon enough.
apparatchik
“Communist agent or spy,” 1941, originally in writings of Arthur Koestler, from Rus., from apparat “political organization” (see apparat). Rus. pl. is apparatchiki.
It’s not the apparatchiks (functionaries) who are the main problem but the crony capitalists or as I prefer to call them the publicly funded pseudo-capitalists. They use taxpayers’ funds to amass fortunes. It’s unethical and ought to be illegal. At a minimum it’s cause for expulsion from public office – appointed or elected.
“In February 20, 2001 Haywood and Genachowski together met at the White House.”
You mean 2010, right?
Yup, thank you for catching this. It was 2010.
Crony capitalism at its worst, although the Solyndra scandal is coming in a close second. Sarah Palin was way, way, ahead of the curve on this one by calling out all of the crony capitalism that’s going on in Washington, and it’s going on with YOUR money. Good for her. But, still, I think operation “Fast and Furious” is much worse than this. At least in these solar scandals, nobody got killed. In Fast and Furious, one American border guard was killed as well as a number of innocent Mexicans. To me, that makes it a lot worse than a simply form of larceny. But it just shows you how dirty this administration is. You can take the boy and his friends out of Chicago, but you can’t take Chicago out of the boy. Just another reason to get rid of him and his buddies in 2012.
Fast and Furious fits the crony capitalist mold rather neatly if the drug cartel leaders are cronies of Obama…something that’s within the realm of possibility.
Well said, Ship. These unpublished deals have brought about the continuous decline of the US economy for over a hundred years with the Kissinger-Arabia oil / bonds deal accelerating its demise with more external dependence and a propped up dollar.
The whole charade has become a house of interest bearing cards built on the sands of time from a deck of international jokers with only greedy good ole boy exceptions.. The trend should have been noticed at Yalta when FDR relinquished all the European spoils of war to Stalin in spite of Churchill’s objection. After all with the dollar already inflated to 45% buying power by 1945, any significant debt could be paid off with the shrinking chit except to bankers that demanded gold.
So goes the quality of decision making in the hands of idiots of both the drugged out and the narcissistic politically inflated whether in war or peace.
Urgency demands immediate investigation of all that can prevent the guaranteed lame duck damage expected in 2012. But with the FBI infiltrated by yet to be indicted conspirators from Hamas, can the job be left to the DOJ? You can bet that their game will continue long after any fire is lighted due to cour delay defense.
The good news is that all goods and services hawked by TV ads are subject to immediate boycott.
LightSquared at least attracted substantial private investment, demonstrating some merit in its product: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/falcones-lightsquared-raises-265-million/
Unfortunately, that proves little except that they made a good sales pitch to investors looking for the next big thing. Such investors are often wrong, as they were in the dot-com bubble and other bubbles.
When word gets out that a government contract will be issued based on politics, any investor worth his salt will want to get on board, regardless of merit. Politics always trumps merit.
No, NCW, there’s no merit in the project.
I am an engineer in the telecom space, and I was peripherally involved in this project back when it was still Skyterra. (IIRC that was about 4-5 years ago, but I’m really bad at dates.)
Skyterra hired my (then) employer (an engineering consulting firm) to do a “Proof of Concept” paper for them. We had a team of eggheads who did that kind of work.
My only involvement was administrative, but I was privy to the technical details of the project. I thought it rubbish at the time (though I didn’t realize the implications for GPS), and believed there was no way the FCC would approve of it absent some serious back-room dealing. I didn’t know who the players were or their connections, and I didn’t think any more about it at the time.
Mind you, I wasn’t certain that the FCC would NOT approve it, because I know dirty back room deals happen. That’s how Nextel got started. That was another venture that never should have been allowed to happen from a technical standpoint, but DID happen because of inside connections.
BUT NCW, investors plug serious money into all kinds of nonsense projects, projects that CANNOT work due to basic laws of physics or engineering. For example, I am aware of about a half-dozen different proposals to build cellular phone networks on high altitude platforms of various kinds. Each has attracted some serious investment money, and sometime, some big names (like Alexander Haig), and each has flamed out for good solid technical reasons. They could NOT work.
There have been several companies that have gotten investment money to build a solar electric generator in space, and beam the energy down to earth. Never mind that the inverse square law makes this idea laughable! (For each kilowatt beamed down, you get MICROwatts on earth, at best.) Investors, ignorant of high school level science, still plunk down money because they believe sales pitches.
In contrast, Lightsquared’s only problem is the GPS interference, which is fatal. Other than that, it’s basically sound.
LightSquared follows in the footsteps of Nextel. In both cases people with the right connections got the rules changed to increase the value of radio licenses to make them useful for a cellular type wireless network. Sort of like getting a friend on the city council to rezone property from residential to commercial. In all cases this sort of action should be done slowly with full public disclosure. Compensate the parties that lose in the rule change and make the changes slowly and it can work. Wireless became dramatically less expensive after the 1.9GHz PCS auction where companies got licenses by competitive bidding and prior users of the spectrum got paid to move. LightSquared bypasses both the competitive bidding and the compensation in what appears to be a get rich quick scheme.
Bingo. That was a dirty back room deal if ever there was one, and the public safety world paid dearly, and is still paying, in the form of interference from a service that never should have been allowed.
Of course, the resolution to all this has been to give Nextel (now Sprint) a couple of VERY attractive chunks of spectrum to compensate them for the cost of cleaning up the mess THEY created!
As a former Nextel and Skyterra employee, I have to correct your assertion: unlike the the Lightsquared waiver, which was granted at “light” speed and without the traditional commentary period, but if you are referring to the Nextel rebanding order and the public and contentious debate about how to resolve 800MHz interference, there was no “back room deal”. Yes, Nextel (now Sprint) does get a a 10MHz chunk of 1.9G spectrum when rebanding is completed, but have they currently spent billions more than expected to resolve the issue, and it’s still not completed.
The simple fact is when ESMR was first deployed, no one anticipated the demand for future wireless services, and the potential for interference from unfiltered LMR systems in adjacent frequency bands. To pretend that the whole thing was some kind of scam is ridiculous. (Ironically – some of the biggest users of Nextel’s iDEN service were public safety agencies, because it allowed them to interoperate in a way their proprietary radio systems did not)
The issues with potential GPS interference were known at Skyterra years before Falcone and company bought the company. Whether or not they were fully disclosed, ignored, or just not addressed is fair game for speculation. Personally, I would vote for “not disclosed” and look farther back into the history to find the truth. Falcone looks to have bought a turkey.
While this round of corruption is noteworthy, to the best of my knowledge, there is still no accounting for 100′s of billions of dollars of various stimulus funds. Obama may well be the first president to serve time post office for acts in office. I don’t think a pardon is in order here.
Also of note: Has everyone forgotten about the GM dealership closing list generated in the WH? Of the over 600 targeted all but 2 were owned by Republican donors. These people in this administration are punks.
Account for the stimulus money by walking down any city street and counting the storefront offices the Dem ward heelers have freshly opened and staffed with LittleAcornIncs to work for the 2nd coronation.
They proliferate like “job training” offices in Puerto Rico where each town has several, acquired in the elections every 4 years. They never close. They have no training. Only a worn out 40-ish Party envelope stuffer (a what?) who clacks around in her wedgies and corsage and gets favors done for the welfare continuances she signs due to no funds left over for job training after her office renovation project. The favors may include a lively “delivery service” using the kids of her supplicants. Never support a “job training” bill. It’s ward heeler money for both parties and leads to incredible corruption and abuses at the street level.
For further information:
http://www.gpsworld.com/wireless/news/fcc-calls-more-testing-potential-lightsquared-interference-12078
http://www.gpsworld.com/gnss-system/news/rally-organized-protest-potential-gps-band-interference-lightsquared-12073
http://www.gpsworld.com/defense/news/white-house-may-have-pressured-general-change-lightsquared-testimony-reports-daily-beas
LightSquared apparently stomps all over the GPS frequencies and would have an enormous effect on not only the military but all of the cell-phone apps and navigation devices that rely on GPS.
This morning Fox News went to some length about how much Stimulus money the Obama administration squandered trying to create green jobs. The sheer, blind ideological stupidity of the attempt is stunning. What with the all the other allegations of scandal—not to mention its boneheaded missteps on the economy—coming down on this administration it could come apart at the seams long before Election Day.
How many scandals will it take to bring down the Obama regime?
Just askin’.
Whose side will the military be on? Just askin’.
Obama’s still got some cards to replay. A GREAT many people are still cowering in fear over the possiblity they may be called a racist for criticizing Obama. This is such a powerful force, it may even get him re-elected. Unless people get themselves unattached to the liberal, television culture, we are doomed.
Yep.
Obama impeached and convicted = massive race riots.
It’s not the number of scandals, it’s the willingness of the regime’s opponent to make it a political issue, to the extent that the media *has* to start asking questions.
Is the quality of the loaded questions like those puked out in all recent candidate exposure what you have in mind? That’s all you can expect from sold out corrupt agenda pushing TV. Just follow the money trail. No source of pertinent questions can exist in even the least corrupt of the entire TV sewer field with the one exception of GBTV starting out with more subscribers than OWN.
Pay for play. So, from the Admin’s point of view, what was so wrong with Blago? OIC, getting caught.
Both scandals have been mislabled as crony capitalism. This is Chicago style corruption where polititions raid the taxpayers and give money to party loyalists. Crony capitalism is something else. Neither Solyandra or Lightsquared are legitimate businesses. is a system where the government sends legitimate busness to its friends. Obama is giving crony capitlism a bad name.
You’re exactly right. Obama’s not interested in “winners” or “losers”, certainly not in the same way that we would normally measure business success.
“Crony capitalism”, aka “corporatism”, is when private industry controls the government, which makes laws, establishes tariffs, etc., to benefit the corporations. Japan from the 1960s to the collapse of its “bubble economy” in the 1990s was a textbook example of this (MITI, etc.).
When the government essentially seizes control of industries, makes decisions for those industries in pursuit of a sociopolitical dogma (disregarding profit and loss, i.e., actual results), and expects and receives tribute from those industries in return for “favors”, the correct term is “syndicalist socialism”. Two sure signs of this are (1) corporations being “turned over” to unions (“the workers”) to manage, and (2) favored corporate heads and/or groups becoming shills for the political leadership’s dogmas- and getting the equivalent of a pat on the head and a “Good doggy- here’s a biscuit” in return. (Can you say “Jeffrey Immelt”?)
Prior to Obama, the three previous attempts at this in the last century were Mussolini in Italy, Hitler in Germany*, and FDR in the U.S. (the National Recovery Act). FDR was brought up short by the U.S. Supreme Court. We all know what it took to deal with the other two. And please note, exactly none of the three was an economic success.
(*Godwin be d***ed. We’re talking about what the Red Army Staff used to call “objective conditions” here.)
Syndicalist theory, descended from John Maynard Keynes, Dewey, the Fabians, and others, was very popular with political theorists a century ago. They believed it was a system in which all the decisions would be made by the “right people”, i.e. the “enlightened elite’”, like themselves. The only problem is, it never works in the real world, because the “enlightened ones” tend to cling to their dogmas (from which their power derives) in spite of all evidence from the real world that their dogmas simply are not consistent with reality.
Calling this “crony capitalism” allows those truly responsible- the political leaders- to divert responsibility for their mistakes onto their corporate “partners”.
“Syndicalist socialism” is the correct definition. It puts the blame where it belongs- on the political leadership, and their enablers.
clear ether
eon
I’m tempted to refer to the president as Don Corleone Obama.
Buncha big questions. I would like to look at it this way.
I like tomatoes. There are hundreds of varieties but only a few reach the market. In the garden we can get a superior product. The same goes for business.
Where does our government get all its financing? It comes from a finite pot so the more government financing we have the less private financing will be available.
Whether I raise my tomatoes or whether I buy my tomatoes we need a plant to produce the tomato. The government is not that plant. It must gather the tomatoes from the grower but it does not pay for the product as you would at the supermarket. Therefore the grower has less income to live on.
This column is dealing with fruit and not the plant that produces the fruit. Constitutionally, the government has no right to the money it is investing in these scandals and corruption. It is not even crony capitalism.
There are natural laws that govern capitalism but those laws, in order to work at the most efficient,require personal discipline. The undisciplined liberal assumes that capitalism is not under discipline and must be under tight liberal control. That never works.
For examples take a look at the REA,rural electrification,USDA farm programs with their agenda 21 mind set,Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. These are the programs that set the current scandals in motion. They are the plants that are bearing the current crop of bad fruit. It is the system as a whole and not just the bad apple here and there.
So where is the NY Times? And how about the Washington Post, TIME, NEWSWEEK and other worthy (/s) media?
If these guys are Pultizer hunting, the field harvest is out there for the picking.
I believe last month Vanity Fair ran a puff piece about the guy pushing through the Light Squared deal – pictures of him and his wife – and discussed how they didn’t fit in well with NYC old money.
Shortly after that I noticed that Light Squared had paid a lot of money to have their name plastered all over the Farragut North station on the DC metro. That station, by the way, comes out at the intersection of Connecticut Avenue and K Street – the middle of the K Street corridor – home of the nation’s lobbyists. The only problem with that ad campaign is that the people they would want to reach never would even consider riding the subway.
Well, sort of seems like our guy Obama never really left Chicago, doesn’t it? Just hope the American public realizes what is going on. If this is allowed four more years we will be well and truly sunk!
Clearly the government is here to help – they had to cronyize capitalism in order to save it.
Thank goodness we are surrounded by so many fine politicians and business people willing to do this hard work on our behalf. Their ill-gotten gains are simply inadequate compensation. They should all be made guests of large federal institutions for long taxpayer funded vacations, for say 10 to 20 years. It is the least we can do.
…political and regulatory favoritism
Attempting to get an Air Force general to change his testimony to cater to a large democrat donor is par for the course for this crowd.
Genachowski at the FCC does what Obama wants just as Lisa Jackson at the EPA bows to the boss’ every whim.
Formulating US policy as a function of political favoritism.
Chicago on the Potomac.
And don’t forget UNIONS as key players in this travesty:
Jimmy Hoffa Jr., introducing Obama on Labor Day…”Obama Says He’s “Proud” of Hoffa After Teamsters Chief Declares “War” on Republicans And Threatens To “Take These Sons of Bitches Out”.”
NLRB obstructionism as Boeing tries to set up in a right to work state, South Carolina.
Watch this video if you’d care to see one of Barack’s favorite groups in action
It is unacceptable that Americans have become so de-sensitized to real scandals. The purposeful feeding of cultural decline has caused average americans to lack pride and barely flinch or even recognize corruption when it’s in front of their faces. I’m sorry people, “Fast and Furious”, “Solyndra” and “Lightsquared”, much less others that have yet to surface are a BIG DEAL!
When leadership is larcenous the country suffers. When this larceny is combined with ignorance we have a disaster. When this larceny and ignorance is combined with devotion to Islam we have, well, we have contemporary America.
The biggest theft of all was done right before our eyes, GM/Chrysler. Does not this need a thorough investigation.
Eric Holder will. Uh, probably not. There aren’t enough “investigators” willing to be destroyed by the demoncratic machine for daring to dig into their affairs. Remember Ken Starr?
Ken Starr? The guy who was appointed by Clinton’s own AG, and has a long history with the Clintons, including financial connections to the Lippo Group?
Ken Starr? The guy who buried evidence of criminal actions by the President, so much so that two DEMOCRAT investigators on his staff resigned in disgust?
Ken Starr? The guy who turned an investigation into corruption into a circus about a stained dress, and brilliantly succeeded in ensuring that there would never be a serious investigation into serious wrong-doing by the President?
Do you mean, THAT Ken Starr?
NO! Not that Ken Starr. The Ken Starr who tried to investigate the most immoral man to ever hold office of President but, in typical fashion, was stonewalled by the Demoncrat Party of NO-SHAME. That Ken Starr!
The FCC Chairman needs to explain why he ignored the FAA and the DOD when handing out frequency allocations.
This story stinks to high heaven and as a result Gen Sheltons’ career is over, no matter the outcome he is toast. He kept the faith because he has not commented publicly but make no mistake the secret testimony earlier was about the outside pressure he recieved from this administration.
In the Military Civilian Control is how they keep faith with the constitution and it is against regulations to do anything that might undermine the civilian governemnt. That is the reason for no public comment or confirmation but the Gen testified and had to tell the truth, honor code and all that. Gen Shelton has willingly scarificed his career to protect all of us.
One of my biggest frustrations in judging this Administration, is that they have been so grossly incompetent in every capacity, that we never have time to comprehend how criminal they are too.
It will be an interesting election next year. We will finally answer the question has “progressive” politic become so efficient at buying and pandering for a vote, is it enough to overcome such obvious & abject failure in my estimation of the worst administration in U.S. history?
We need to move from “pay to play” to “pay for your crimes”. Until these guys and the politicos that support them are perp-walked hiding their faces, they’ll keep playing this sordid game.
You are mistaken, Tex.
They are not incompetent. They are evil.
Take the ten most integrity-challenged democrat members of Congress, e.g., Pelosi, Biden, DiFi, Maxine Waters, Hastings, etc., and see if their names are tied into any of these expensive failures. More likely, it would be a member of their families who would be the direct contact.
FAA not to happy either, just Google or Bing “FAA + Lightsquared”
Yawn! Another Obama scandal! What else is new? Par for the course!
Putting a favored company’s interests ahead of national security is about the ultimate in crony capitalism, but when you really think about it, that is what that kind of activity is in the business of, either directly or indirectly, whenever it is engaged in.
It is unbelievable the amount of actual criminal activity there is in this Obama Regime, he takes the money and gives the country the finger every day.
Greetings:
Having spent most of my work-life in the printing industry including the “dot.com bubble”, I think a company named “LightSquared” with a cube(d?) in its logotype would have been sufficient warning to let this opportunity just pass me on by.
great, yes, the ‘hip graphic designer / we’re cool new economy type’. bet you saw lots of those cool logos eh? what’s the book name, “All Marketers are Liars”?
Pattern? Give me a break. Solyndra was clearly a mistake, and there might be some nefariousness there that should be investigated thoroughly, but the vast majority of the companies loaned money through this program are still in operation. The pattern is successful, if anything, although I’d say its far too early to judge it either way really.
It isn’t just the Defense Department that LightSquared is blasting away with its monster signals. Some folk over the last 20 years have developed thousands of applications, all based on very precise positions and elevations that are derived from the GPS constellation to far greater than military accuracy. This has revolutionized the industry, which is so committed to it that to regress to pre-GPS techniques would be a disaster.
Currently the fix is in on behalf of LightSquared, via Genachowski’s FCC. He refuses to appear before Congress to defend said fix, or to recognize the catastrophic damage to engineering/surveying that LightSquared will cause. Professional societies such as ACSM and ASCE are taking to the streets – unheard-of tactics for these professionals – on September 22 to take the case to the public.
Chicago politics and its associated bribery has no business usurping the civil public works field. There will be consequences.
Forget the bribery, forget the theft, let us think of the implications of Lightsquared providing an internet project making the internet available to “everyone”.
With Obama wanting to have the power to shut down the internet grid at his whim, it is quite convenient to fund Lightsquared to build the infrastructure that would make Obama’s desire a reality.
Am I crazy?
No, not crazy, you’ve just misunderstood the situation.
This isn’t about Internet access. By no stretch of the imagination can LS take over ALL Internet access. Even under the best of circumstances, they don’t have the bandwidth to replace all of the other carriers that exist.
This one is about money – campaign contributions from wealthy investors.
Here are two other stories that do a good job of connecting the dots:
http://www.ainonline.com/news/single-news-page/article/lightsquared-squabble-raises-questions-about-political-games-30697/?no_cache=1
http://nlpc.org/stories/2011/03/01/will-fccs-political-favor-harbinger-hedge-fund-result-gps-interference
One ‘benefit’ for Obama would be to have full-time access to a system that could blast messages to 98% of all Americans. If you think command-and-control messages to the peons from the head Commissar wouldn’t be valuable to this Chicago President, think again.
And lets not forget the DOJ shutting down the ATT/T-Mobile Merger as that would have been in direct competition with Lightsquared’s LTE/4G plans…
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that if LightSquared wanted to use the same frequencies at the GPS system then there would be a jamming problem that would be illegal under FCC regulations.
Are people in the FCC being investigated?
When agencies previously operating under constitutional oath become subject to presidential edict over ride, it becomes necessary to diminish any trust to the level of said source of over ride. Then consider other alternatives quid pro quo without rules of escalation when point of no return becomes more evident than degree of diminishing returns.
Read carefully. They don’t want to use the same bands, they want to use immediately adjacent bands. Theoretically, this isn’t a problem. In reality, when you have an existing base of millions of GPS receivers out there that weren’t designed to have adjacent-band signals at millions of times the power level of the satellite signal, , including weapons, the expected outcome is that in the areas around the transmitters, signals will be degraded, and in some cases outright jammed.
That’s bad enough, but then to make things worse, they hand this allocation out to one favored company, and not on a fair and open basis. And these geniuses didn’t expect a pushback?
I have been following the LightSquared application process since January 26, 2011 when the FCC granted a conditional waiver to LightSquared allowing the dramatic expansion of terrestrial use of the mobile satellite spectrum (MSS) immediately adjacent that of the Global Positioning System (GPS) utilizing extremely high-powered ground-based transmissions that could potentially cause severe interference to hundreds of millions of GPS receivers.
At that time is was my suspicion that there may have been something about LightSquared and its dealings with the FCC that are not in the best interests of the GPS user community.
It has historically been FCC policy to not allow any interference by new bandwidth users with pre-existing users. Why is the LightSquared case different? Why hasn’t LightSquared been forced to use a bandwidth further away from GPS frequencies, or modify their proposed system to eliminate, without question, all interference with existing GPS systems? Instead, LightSquared has suggested that GPS manufacturers are producing inferior equipment and that filters be used with that equipment at the expense of the GPS user community.
I submit that the burden of interference mitigation is solely the responsibility LightSquared and that no costs should be incurred by the GPS community to accommodate their existence.
Silly man. That only applies to ham radio operators, not politically connected megacorporations.
Does anyone have the means/resources to prepare a list of likely crooks and run it against the names of those actually involved with one of these companies? Solyndra is near San Francisco. I can’t believe that Pelosi’s son-in-law or DiFi’s husband’s life-long golfing buddy didn’t get an award of company stock in anticipation of the company going public. It didn’t, of course, but an award, at the front end, wouldn’t have cost Solyndra anything but after an IPO would have been worth a significant amount.
We can’t rely on Holder or the media examining these issues. Whose else has the capability?
Rather than bash Obama let’s place the blame where it really belongs: A constant stream of political corruption and lobbying which has brought our country to it knees. Its true that Falcone and associates donated to the Dems in 2010, but they also contributed to the GOP in 2008.
2008 contributions:
http://www.campaignmoney.com/political/contributions/philip-falcone.asp?cycle=08
2010 contributions:
http://www.campaignmoney.com/political/contributions/philip-falcone.asp?cycle=10
The Joy of Creeping Corruption
When the late economist-philosopher Friedrich Hayek coined the term “creeping socialism” in The Road to Serfdom, he couldn’t have envisioned the great socialist leap forward this America has witnessed under President Barack Hussein Obama. To complement the soaring socialism, Obama and his administration are now proving they are as guilty of creeping corruption as they are of perpetrating socialistic schemes.
It may all be a good thing.
In 2008, Obama was painted by his mainstream media as Mr. Clean, free of political contamination perhaps in part because he was so inexperienced in politics, and in everything else except community organizing. Perhaps, too, that cleanliness feature was on the mind of then-Senator Joe Biden when he described his future boss as “bright and clean.”
For the most part, the president somehow eluded significant scandal for two years but in the third year of his reign the dirt has hit the executive fan big time.
To be sure, there were relatively minor dings in Obama’s armor during his first two years. However, the out-of-control EPA and TSA, the WikiLeaks leaks, the black racism demonstrated at Eric Holder’s Justice Department, etc. and Obama’s scandalous mishandling of the economy weren’t comparable in gravity to the overt instances of corruption playing out now in both the White House and DoJ.
First came the “Fast and Furious” fiasco, the botched gun-running sting which resulted in the ATF furnishing some 1500 weapons to Mexican cartels which were then used to kill a U.S. border patrol agent and in countless crimes south of the border rather than achieving the planned aim of arresting Mexican criminals.
Close on the heels of Operation Fast and Furious came the Solyndra and LightSquared messes, the administration’s favoritism toward so-called “green” companies. Playing favorites is a time-honored if sleazy feature of politics but when the administration wasted hundreds of millions of dollars of scarce taxpayer money and the good buddies repaid that largesse by generously funneling millions back to Obama’s campaign war chest, favoritism entered the realm of impeachable corruption.
If anything, the corruptive nature of the LightSquared seamy involvement with the presidency actually eclipsed the Solyndra boondoggle.
What may turn out to be the ultimate irony in the deceit, misrepresentations, and outright lies of Eric Holder and Barack Obama relating to the administration’s growing record of corruption is the fact that most of it was avoidable had the president not adopted the Nixonian approach to being caught: deny, deny, and deny again. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=5724.)
Jonathan Alter and the Scandal-Free Obama Administration
Bloomberg.com recently published an article by Jonathan Alter titled, “Obama Miracle Is White House Free of Scandal.” There are very few better examples of liberal obtuseness and evidence they suffer from acute political astigmatism.
Alter, liberal author, liberal columnist, senior editor of Newsweek for 28 years who helped drive that liberal magazine into virtual bankruptcy and its sale for the tidy sum of one dollar, frequent contributor to Al Franken’s liberal Air America which filed for chapter 7 bankruptcy, still appears as a commentator on liberal MSNBC among other liberal MSM and still totally idolizes liberal president Barack Hussein Obama.
Did I mention Jonathan Alter is liberal?
Evidently flummoxed by fellow leftists’ waning support for our failing, flailing chief executive, Alter successfully attempts in his piece on Obama’s miraculous avoidance of scandal, its “scandal-less state,” to be as honest and transparent as the hero he so deeply admires.
“Obama Miracle” would be comical if not for the Halloween-y scariness of its author’s knowing commission of deceptions.
Alter skirts the dirt and completely avoids reference to what is rapidly developing into the most contemptible presidential scandal since Republican president Richard Nixon lied about Watergate and Democrat president Bill Clinton lied under sworn oath.
In fact, Obama’s scandals are far worse than Nixon’s and Clinton’s. They merely lied to protect their sorry arses and to deceive the American people but Nixon was just stupid and Clinton just a congenital liar. Obama, and his henchmen, have not only lied but have cost the country hundreds of millions of dollars and, more reprehensibly, have cost the life of a border patrol agent.
That last, deadly fiasco, the grossly-botched Department of Justice/ATF Fast and Furious gun-running operation, effectively gave some 1500 weapons to Mexican drug cartels to wreak havoc south of our border and to murder agent Brian Terry.
Government and law enforcement agencies often foul up stings like Fast and Furious. What they are not expected to do is what Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder has done, lie and obstruct congressional inquiries into what went wrong.
Jonathan Alter’s reaction to Fast and Furious and its relevance to administration scandals? Fast and Furious? What Fast and Furious? Alter would sooner air Holder’s filthy New Black Panther Party linen!
Either Alter is ignorant, obtuse, Obama’s cover-up point man, or all three.
While praising the president’s honesty, character, and integrity without sourcing any of those debatable attributes, Alter lambastes Republicans for allegedly tarnishing Obama’s reputation and attacks the Obamian favorite whipping network, Fox News, for “manufactured controversies,” also without providing any substantiation.
He criticizes GOP Rep. Darrell Issa’s contentions that Obama’s is “one of the most corrupt administrations” in history, a view predicated mainly on the White House and Justice Department consistently stonewalling on every issue Issa is trying to investigate.
He accuses Fox of manufacturing stories concerning the multitude of Obama’s extremist “policy czars,” those secretive heads of agencies recruited from the leftist fringes and put in place without congressional scrutiny.
Alter knows full well that stonewalling, refusals to cooperate with legally-constituted authorities, is invariably indicative of illegalities and unethical conduct. At the very least, they put the lie to this president’s vaunted, unfulfilled, transparency.
As for Fox, he knows that the only conservative alternative to the liberal mainstream media has exposed far more than just the czar scandals . . . (Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=5842
I’ve thought for a long time that this is team Obama’s retirement plan. I honestly think this scheme was cooked up while Obama was on the campaign trail and it all about providing a retirement package for Obama, Genachowski, and others. It’s not politics it all about money.
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