do I really have to say it???
Posted on 05/30/2008 6:53:41 PM PDT by weef
do I really have to say it???
Any Illinois pol, rat or pubbie, has a high likelihood of being corrupt. I found it interesting that the 'rats in congress excepted Hastert's leadership role (when the pubbies ruled) without much protest. Newt Gingrich, on the other hand, was totally unacceptable. I attributed it to the fact Hastert was non confrontational and sort of an old shoe type of guy. Now I know the real reason, he was as corrupt as any of them, and they knew they could reveal him to be the low life pol he really is ... at a moments notice. In effect controlling Hastert.
LINE ITEM VETO HERE! LINE ITEM VETO NOW! AND SAVE THE TAX PAYERS BILLIONS!
When incumbents lose, we win.
When incumbents lose, we win.
It was worth saying twice (didn’t mean to, though).
What Mark Twain said......
I second that. How do we get er done?
What a great bumper sticker!
Another Freeper came to his defense with "he's not been convicted, nor even charged, of anything."
When one must be convicted to even be labeled, nothing will ever come of exposes such as Fox's.
If public damnation is fruitless, at what point must we resort to pitchforks?
Everything in West Virginia is named after Sheets. I’m sure that he would be in the top two.
Hey Martial! Every shmear has it’s two sided sleaze.
You know they are crooks all, but most of the sheeple are gonna walk away thinking they are all PUBBIES.
I agree wit the the principle..
THROW THE BUMS OUT.
The French example sounds appropriate here.
U.S. Rep. Paul E. Kanjorski touted Cornerstone Technologies LLC as a way to spin anthracite into lightweight carbon fibers, building a high-tech future from Northeastern Pennsylvania’s coal-mining past.
But eight years after it was launched by the Nanticoke Democrat’s relatives, the firm has collapsed into bankruptcy, leaving behind bad debt, embittered former employees and lingering ethics questions about $10 million in federal contracts Mr. Kanjorski helped secure for Cornerstone. The company’s vision of producing advanced materials for the Navy never left the drawing board.
At least two Kanjorski nephews were on the Cornerstone payroll, according to the congressman and a former company official. Their total compensation has never been made public.
Bruce Conrad, a Cornerstone founder embroiled in a legal dispute since he was ousted as company president in 2001, said nephew and co-founder Peter A. Kanjorski was paid $95,000 in 2001. In the same year, a vice president who was ousted along with Mr. Conrad was paid $80,000, according to documents filed in his lawsuit against the company.
Mr. Kanjorski’s daughter, Nancy, and his four nephews were owners and/or board members at Cornerstone, which rented space in a Wilkes-Barre building co-owned by the congressman before moving to larger quarters in Plains Township.
Cornerstone had an $850,000 Department of Energy contract to conduct research on producing minute particles of anthracite for use in carbon fibers for lightweight vehicle parts. Mr. Warren said the department terminated the contract when it became clear that the company’s approach could not adequately reduce the particles without submitting them to an expensive secondary milling process using existing technology.
When the contract was terminated in 2001, Cornerstone billed UT-Battelle, which manages Oak Ridge for the federal government, $241,629 for what it claimed were unreimbursed costs. Those costs included a portion of a $366,204 bill from Pennsylvania Micronics, a Cornerstone affiliate also owned by Mr. Kanjorski’s relatives, according to Oak Ridge documents obtained through a U.S. Freedom of Information Act request.
Cornerstone’s origins lie in Mr. Kanjorski’s 1987 visit to the University of Missouri-Rolla, where Dr. Mazurkiewicz and other scientists were researching the use of water jets for underwater mining. Hoping to harness that technology to find new uses for the region’s anthracite coal, Mr. Kanjorski secured a $2.1 million Defense Department grant to research the use of water jets to clean large-caliber artillery shells. The money was funneled through Earth Conservancy, a nonprofit land-reclamation project Mr. Kanjorski formed to acquire 16,000 acres of former mine land in Luzerne County. Research funds went to Missouri-Rolla and King’s College and Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre.
The King’s and Wilkes involvements and how much they were paid were not clear in documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
When water jets proved unsuitable for mining or shell-cleaning, Mr. Kanjorski turned to the U.S. Economic Development Administration for a $1.1 million grant to research using water jets to pulverize old tires. The recipient of that grant was the 11th Congressional District Regional Equipment Center, another nonprofit formed by Mr. Kanjorski to lease surplus federal heavy equipment to local municipalities.
But in 1997 the center forfeited the grant because officials objected to hiring a firm co-owned by Mr. Kanjorski’s relatives, Impact Technologies, to conduct the research.
About a year later, in September 1998, Mr. Kanjorski managed to get $4 million in federal funding for “materials micronization technology” research included in the defense appropriations bill for fiscal year 1999. A footnote in the bill restricted that research to work on the “micronization” of coal and other particles for use in “composite materials, fuel cell membranes, filtration technology, diesel fuel and other materials and processes important to national defense.”
While any company could have submitted a proposal to perform that research, apparently only one did, according to Luis Leme, an attorney for the U.S. Office of Naval Research — Cornerstone Technologies LLC. The company was established by Peter A. Kanjorski and Bruce Conrad, a former Carbon County planning director, in December 1998.
According to Mr. Conrad, Peter Kanjorski, who was CEO of the firm, made no decision without consulting his uncle. In August 2000, the congressman personally presided over a meeting between Peter Kanjorski, two other Kanjorski nephews and Mr. Conrad to resolve a dispute over offering shares in Cornerstone to several key employees, Mr. Conrad maintains.
Thomas Unger, a former senior vice president at Cornerstone, said in published interviews in 2002 that Mr. Kanjorski took an active role at Cornerstone and acted “like a CEO.”
The majority of Cornerstone’s federal research was funded by the Office of Naval Research through earmarks Mr. Kanjorski had inserted in the agency’s budget for 1999, 2001 and 2002.
Cornerstone Technologies key players
- Paul E. Kanjorski: Twelve-term congressman who used his influence to earmark $10 million in federal contracts that were awarded to companies controlled by his relatives, including Cornerstone Technologies LLC, which recently filed for bankruptcy.
- Peter A. Kanjorski: The congressman’s nephew owns 20 percent of Cornerstone and is part-owner of KOR Holdings, which owns another 60 percent of Cornerstone. He is Cornerstone’s president and CEO.
- Marian Mazurkiewicz: Cornerstone’s former chief scientist and a leading researcher in water-jet technology. He is owed $600,000 in unpaid salary, according to Cornerstone’s bankruptcy filing.
- Bruce Conrad: Former president of Cornerstone and owner of 20 percent of the company. Conrad was fired and removed from Cornerstone’s board in May 2001, leaving Peter A. Kanjorski and his three brothers in control of the company’s operations. Mr. Conrad claims he was ousted at the instigation of the congressman because he supported a move to share company stock with key employees. In a lawsuit against Mr. Conrad, Cornerstone alleged he tried to leak company secrets to another firm.
- Paul Eric Kanjorski: Congressman’s nephew; Cornerstone employee and board member; part-owner of KOR Holdings.
- Russell Kanjorski: Congressman’s nephew; Cornerstone board member; part-owner of KOR Holdings.
- Mark Kanjorski: Congressman’s nephew; Cornerstone board member; part-owner of KOR Holdings.
- Nancy Kanjorski: Congressman’s daughter; part-owner of KOR Holdings.
Cornerstone Technologies LLC, a research company owned by relatives of U.S. Rep. Paul E. Kanjorski and funded with $9.2 million in federal defense earmarks secured by the congressman, won’t pay a penny of the $1.34 million it owes to its creditors, a bankruptcy trustee said Thursday.
Cornerstone declared $14,100 in assets when it filed for bankruptcy in September 2006. A recent inventory of Cornerstone’s holdings by an appraiser working for the U.S. Bankruptcy Court showed “there’s no real assets to liquidate,” Trustee Robert P. Sheils Jr. said.
In its bankruptcy filing, Cornerstone listed the machines as having an unknown value, but noted they cost $100,000 to build. They were also listed as part of the collateral securing a $142,000 debt to another Kanjorski-family company, KOR Holdings. KOR Holdings, owned by Kanjorski’s daughter and four of his nephews, owned 60 percent of Cornerstone. One of the nephews, Cornerstone CEO Peter A. Kanjorski, personally owned another 20 percent of Cornerstone. The remaining 20 percent was owned by a former Cornerstone employee.
Cornerstone Technologies, a research company that received more than $9 million in federal grants and contracts, halted operations in 2003. The company, which was operated by U.S. Rep. Paul Kanjorski’s daughter and four of his nephews, promised to create hundreds of jobs and to turn the Wyoming Valley into a technology hotspot. Kanjorski, D-Nanticoke, earmarked several million dollars in federal spending toward the company and is the reason, according to one of the company’s former employees and a listed creditor, the company failed.
“The moment we had a greedy congressman trying to stuff his pockets with money, we were through,” said Bruce Conrad, of Weatherly, in March. Conrad owned 20 percent of the company. An additional 20 percent was owned by Peter Kanjorski, a Nanticoke attorney and a nephew of the congressman. The remaining 60 percent was owned by KOR Holdings, a partnership owned by the congressman’s daughter Nancy and nephews Peter, Paul Eric, Mark and Russell.
In an assessment of how the Kanjorski family handled the day-to-day operations, a former head of Penn State University’s Energy Institute was quoted as saying “It was like the Three Stooges meet anthracite”.
So it should come as no surprise that the Kanjorski clan squandered 9.2 million dollars of taxpayer money and after filing for bankruptcy is leaving creditors with no hope of regaining even a portion of the 1.34 million dollars in debt that this bunch left behind.
10.5 MILLION dollars and Cornerstone Technologies produced nothing of any practical value.
******
AVA Solar, a Fort Collins, Colorado based company has just been given a 3 million dollar federal grant.
The company promises to employ up to 500 people by next year.
I would advise anyone living in the Fort Collins area not to quit the job they have in the hopes of working at AVA.
I say that because the Director for Strategic Planning for the company is none other than Russell Kanjorski.
Yes, he is one of the Cornerstone Kanjorski’s that blew through the 9.2 million dollars that Uncle Paul got for them, produced nothing, and then left creditors on the hook for another 1.3 million.
If I were the suspicious type, I would be wondering if Congressman Kanjorski was involved with AVA Solar getting a 3 million dollar government grant.
And if it was conditional on his nephew Russell getting hired.
But the real irony of this saga is shown in a story about AVA Solar that appears in the Northern Colorado Business Report.
In the final line of the article, Russell Kanjorski is quoted as saying:
“It’s really time for us to stop talking and start doing”.
It’s just a shame that Russell and the rest of the Kanjorski clan feeding at the public trough couldn’t have figured that out 10 and a half million dollars ago.
When will this be on or did I miss it?
The Federal Elections Commission recently fined Citizens for Action, a political action committee associated with Congressman Kanjorski.
Two of Mr. Kanjorski’s nephews who are,(surprise surprise) on the Cittizens for Action payroll have received over $75,000 in “consulting” fees and “expense” reimbursements.
Another Kanjorski affiliate, Pennsylvanian’s for Kanjorski, paid K&K Real Estate $36,000 to rent a campaign office.
It appears that K&K made out like bandits, 36k for a campaign office is a tad steep.
Unless you consider the fact that Mr. Kanjorski and his brother Peter own K&K Real Estate.
Sept. 2007
The U.S. Navy wants a business owned by the family of Rep. Paul E. Kanjorski to hand over a piece of high-tech equipment bought with some of the $9.25 million in taxpayer funds Kanjorski steered to the company.
Except no one seems to know where to find the equipment — a high-pressure pump.
The mystery of the missing pump, combined with newly unearthed evidence that federal investigators probed Kanjorski’s connections to the company, Cornerstone Technologies, has given new life to a story that seems unlikely to go away.
Kanjorski, who along with his chief of staff was subpoenaed in one of the cases but never testified, said he’s storing some of Cornerstone’s property but can’t speak for the company.
“I have no relationship to the Cornerstone company and have had no involvement in the company’s legal proceedings, except I indicated my willingness to give a deposition,” he said in a statement to Politico. If Cornerstone owes the Navy something, he said, “that is a matter between the contracting parties.”
Cornerstone’s lawyer was unaware of the pump and said the Navy never mentioned it.
The company reported in its bankruptcy filing that it owed a debt of unknown value to the Navy for an “incomplete contract,” but the U.S. government has not filed a claim against Cornerstone.
Claim or not, the Navy wants the pump, which was part of a prototype water-jet mill taxpayers paid Cornerstone to develop, according to Ignacio Perez, the Navy program officer who oversaw Cornerstone’s work. “The Navy will collect only the pump when it finds it,” he said, but “it has not been located at this point.”
Kanjorski encouraged the creation of Cornerstone in the late 1990s to develop — and one day commercialize — the technology. It was formed by his nephew, Peter Kanjorski, and a scientist, Bruce Conrad, who were joined in the company by four of the congressman’s other nephews and his daughter.
In 1998, with the help of Rep. John P. Murtha, a fellow Pennsylvanian and the top Democrat on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, Rep. Kanjorski earmarked $3.5 million for the research through the Navy.
Though Kanjorski has denied he actively steered taxpayer cash to Cornerstone, the Navy’s Perez said the company was the only applicant for the research contract. And a 1999 e-mail exchange suggests Kanjorski and Murtha pressured the Defense Department to release funds to Cornerstone.
The department was withholding at least part of the funds, a Navy official wrote to Conrad, “and the only way it will be … released [is] if Congress gets on their back.”
Conrad forwarded the message to Kanjorski’s chief of staff, Karen Feather. She responded that Kanjorski talked to Murtha’s appropriations staffer who “said this is an annual dance and ‘guaranteed’ us that our project would not be rescinded. But he promised to call over to make sure they knew the appropriators were watching over this project carefully.”
Cornerstone reportedly has $14,000 in assets and a lot of creditors. According to The Voice, the Kanjorski nephews didn’t really understand much about the business and talked some poor scientist away from his heavenly farm in Missouri to Northeastern Pennsylvania, where he worked and was shorted on his paycheck to the tune of $600,000.
The Voice story references a New York Times article that gives Murtha a hand in eight of 10 pet projects for Congressman Kanjorski.
******
After leaving Cornerstone, Peter Kanjorski went to work for his uncle’s political action committee.
Kanjorski has given varying accounts about his role with Cornerstone. In October, 2002, the Allentown Morning Call reported that “Kanjorski freely admits he arranged federal funding for water jet research but insists it was not for Cornerstone or any other specific company.” Four years later, in October, 2006, he called it a “pet project,” and told the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader that family members “did me a favor in devoting their time” to Cornerstone.
One industry expert described the company’s activities as “the Three Stooges meet anthracite.”
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