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LightSquared: Obama's Dangerous Broadband Boondoggle
Townhall ^ | September 21, 2011 | Michelle Malkin

Posted on 09/20/2011 11:09:58 PM PDT by opentalk

If you thought the half-billion-dollar, stimulus-funded Solyndra solar company bust was a taxpayer nightmare, just wait. If you thought the botched Fast and Furious border gun-smuggling surveillance operation was a national security nightmare, hold on. Right on the heels of those two blood-boilers comes yet another alleged pay-for-play racket from the most ethical administration ever.

Welcome to LightSquared. It's a toxic mix of venture socialism (to borrow GOP Sen. Jim DeMint's apt phrase), campaign finance influence-peddling and perilous corner-cutting all rolled into one.

The company is building "a state-of-the-art open wireless broadband network." Competition in the industry is a good thing, of course. But military, government and civilian aviation experts have long objected to LightSquared's potential to interfere with the Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite network. As the government's own Positioning, Navigation and Timing agency explained:

"The GPS community is concerned because testing has shown that LightSquared's ground-based transmissions overpower the relatively weak GPS signal from space.

Although LightSquared will operate in its own radio band, that band is so close to the GPS signals that most GPS devices pick up the stronger LightSquared signal and become overloaded or jammed."

(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Crime/Corruption; Government
KEYWORDS: corrpution; falcone; fcc; lightsquared; obama

1 posted on 09/20/2011 11:10:01 PM PDT by opentalk
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To: opentalk

Boondoggle....????...or discovered just in time


2 posted on 09/20/2011 11:19:22 PM PDT by Doogle ((USAF.68-73..8th TFW Ubon Thailand..never store a threat you should have eliminated))
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To: opentalk
From related link
Politically-connected LightSquared Pushes Wireless Internet Plan despite GPS Interference Concern

...LightSquared’s current majority owner, hedge fund manager Philip Falcone, made large donations to the Democratic Party while his broadband request was pending before the FCC. He and LightSquared executives met with White House officials.

.... Falcone is facing an ongoing investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over some of his hedge fund dealings. Falcone has has publicly denied any wrongdoing.

Grassley asked Genachowski in an April 27 letter why the FCC did not “proceed with caution rather than step on the gas.”

“Should the government cede a valuable public resource to a hedge fund that’s subject to multiple SEC investigations?” Grassley said.

3 posted on 09/20/2011 11:21:59 PM PDT by opentalk
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To: opentalk
More from Michelle Malkin

Oh, and coincidentally, there's $6 billion earmarked for a "public safety broadband corporation" buried in the Obama jobs proposal just as LightSquared pushes into that market, too.

It's all just one strange quirk of timing, Team Obama shrugs....

4 posted on 09/20/2011 11:30:24 PM PDT by opentalk
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To: opentalk

Obama is setting up a 24K golden parachute for himself.


5 posted on 09/20/2011 11:34:13 PM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (There's gonna be a Redneck Revolution! (See my freep page) [rednecks come in many colors])
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To: opentalk
And as it becomes more and more apparent that Bambi will receive about a 48-state ass stomping in Nov. '12, he will lose all restraint and try his best to live up to his promise to "be a really 'GOOD' one-term POTUS".

(Well, I suppose 9 out of 57 states isn't that bad.)

6 posted on 09/20/2011 11:37:05 PM PDT by ARepublicanForAllReasons (The world will be a better place when humanity learns not to try to make it a perfect place)
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To: HiTech RedNeck
Obama is setting up a 24K golden parachute for himself.

The One is setting himself up to run for higher office -- Mayor of Chicago.

7 posted on 09/20/2011 11:40:39 PM PDT by ARepublicanForAllReasons (The world will be a better place when humanity learns not to try to make it a perfect place)
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To: opentalk
Our tax money is being laundered by these criminal enterprises and returned to the Obama Regime as campaign contributions. That is the obvious activity going on in the fascist Obama Regime.

Notice that the Solyndra execs are planing to plead the 5th when they testify before the House Energy and Commerce committee next week. They are trying to buy time so the Obama Regime can plan a strategy to cover their rears. “Who exactly are Solyndra’s executive trying to protect and what are they trying to hide?” said Reps. Fred Upton, chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and Cliff Stearns, chairman of the Investigations Subcommittee.

8 posted on 09/20/2011 11:43:40 PM PDT by jonrick46 (2012 can't come soon enough.)
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To: opentalk
I predict that a lot of people will be going to jail sometime around 2014. The Obama administration is the Chicago Machine on steroids. They will have to coin a new word for this unprecedented level of theft and government corruption. I suggest ‘Obamugging’.
9 posted on 09/21/2011 12:57:25 AM PDT by WMarshal (Where is the next Sam Adams?)
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To: jonrick46
Obamas poker game at the White House, when
Michelle was gone skiing in Colorado, was with an early investor of the company and also head of the FCC.
10 posted on 09/21/2011 1:32:47 AM PDT by opentalk
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To: All
With all the scandals of late, one that seemed to go away that I think should be dusted off...Shorebank.

WSJ video “This is crony capitalism at its worst”

I wonder if ShoreBank Pacific, now called One PacificCoast Bank, invested in or was connected at all to Solyndra. They did like to invest in solar. pfft I'm getting out there, seeing a boogeyman around every corner. :P

ShoreBank acquisition closed by OneCalifornia http://www.sustainablebusinessoregon.com/articles/2011/01/shorebank-acquisition-closed-by.html

11 posted on 09/21/2011 1:56:07 AM PDT by Irenic
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To: opentalk

Obama -— Launderer in Chief


12 posted on 09/21/2011 3:39:29 AM PDT by Erik Latranyi
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To: Irenic
There is a pattern of chronic corruption all the way back to Rezko. After the November elections Issa told Obama to he would need accountants not lawyers for his investigations.

There still is no accountability.

13 posted on 09/21/2011 3:42:39 AM PDT by opentalk
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To: opentalk

Their never was any accountability with Clinton’s “most ethical” administration, so why would anyone be stupid enough to believe that Obama’s “most transparent” administration will be held accountable for it’s crimes?


14 posted on 09/21/2011 3:56:11 AM PDT by MikeSteelBe (Austrian Hitler was as the Halfrican Hitler does.)
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To: MikeSteelBe
Zer0 transparency.
Zer0 responsibility.
Zer0 accountability.

L1a

15 posted on 09/21/2011 4:16:57 AM PDT by BobP (The piss-stream media - Never to be watched again in my house)
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To: opentalk
Related article link

..Billionaire hedge fund manager Philip Falcone recently gave investors more information about three U.S. government investigations into his Harbinger Capital Partners fund firm.

In a year-end financial statement, Falcone also disclosed for the first time that his $6 billion firm paid $60 million to settle a lawsuit with NACCO Industries. Falcone said the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether his firm violated a short-selling rule involving three stocks and whether it engaged in market manipulation in unnamed debt securities.

...In the same document, Falcone also said that regulators are still reviewing facts surrounding a $113 million personal loan that he took from the hedge fund in 2009 and repaid in full late last year.

... About half of the fund's assets are now committed to LightSquared, and Harbinger controls roughly 80 percent of the wireless telecom company's shares.

16 posted on 09/21/2011 4:48:06 AM PDT by opentalk
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To: opentalk
As bad as Lightsquared and Solyndra are, nobody was murdered as a result.


17 posted on 09/21/2011 4:48:42 AM PDT by Travis McGee (www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com)
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To: opentalk
...venture socialism (to borrow GOP Sen. Jim DeMint's apt phrase)...

HOORAY Jim DeMint! DEFUND socialist collectives, foreign and domestic.

18 posted on 09/21/2011 6:45:13 AM PDT by PGalt
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