Of course they all, “fauxnews” is biased right? Ooops.
2 GOP, 1 Dem, “The FOX News documentary team also investigated the case of Pennsylvania Democratic congressman Paul Kanjorski, who earmarked millions of taxpayer dollars for a company run by his family.”
I’m sure CNN will have a special report on Murtha’s corruption coming up next.
WHAT ABOUT Harry Reid, his 4 sons and Real Estate Deals?
What about Allan Mollahan? What about William Jefferson D. Louisiana and the National Guard helicopter with 90K in his freezer?
You wanna talk pending investigations?
Maxine Waters hubby..
Come on!
Maybe they skipped Murtha and his good buddy Mollohan (D - WV) because both of them have been at it for so long and for such BIG BUCKS, nobody could consider it news anymore. (30+ yrs. through Republican and Democrat administrations, and still going strong...)
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.