Zer0 responsibility.
Zer0 accountability.
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 ...
Boondoggle....????...or discovered just in time
...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.
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....
Obama is setting up a 24K golden parachute for himself.
(Well, I suppose 9 out of 57 states isn't that bad.)
The One is setting himself up to run for higher office -- Mayor of Chicago.
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.
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
Obama -— Launderer in Chief
There still is no accountability.
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?
..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.
HOORAY Jim DeMint! DEFUND socialist collectives, foreign and domestic.
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