LightSquared: Obama’s Dangerous Broadband Boondoggle
Let the sun shine in…
After I blogged last week about Barack Obama’s burgeoning LightSquared scandal, I received a miffed e-mail from billionaire hedge fund manager/Obama donor/LightSquared principal backer Philip Falcone under the subject line “Tip.” Falcone defended the Obama administration and noted that the predecessor to LightSquared, called Skyterra, had benefited from some previous regulatory approvals under the Bush administration. (Sound familiar? It’s the same “Blame Bush” defense the White House and its allies are using to try and deflect the Solyndra debacle.)
Falcone then fumed at me: “I really wish someone would take 5 freaking minutes to do some diligence and get the chronology straight! I’d be glad to point you in the right direction if you so choose. You may even find some dirt on AT&T, the GPS guys and they (sic) money they are spending on this campaign. Do you know that your tax dollar goes to build satellites that the GPS manufacturers use, for free?? Billions….Billions…..Billions…And a few of these companies are foreign companies….that do not pay taxes. I really truly wish someone would spend some time to get the facts straight.”
While Falcone and his P.R. team take to the airwaves, I took more than “5 freaking minutes to do some diligence” and did a little more digging. My syndicated column below goes over the latest developments and basic facts since The Daily Beat’s Eli Lake first reported Gen. Shelton’s bombshell disclosures about the White House’s testimony-meddling.
But there’s much more.
As the House prepares to launch official investigations of both Solyndra and LightSquared, investigators need to look closely at exactly how the Obama FCC’s unusual January 2011 waiver for LightSquared promised the politically-connected company a stunning corporate windfall. The waiver gave the company a green light to use its initial satellite bandwidth license for “exclusive terrestrial purposes.” As the Telecom, Media and Finance Associates, Inc. blog explains, this meant that “the spectrum rights would be considered (and valued) as equivalent to terrestrial spectrum, allowing LightSquared to raise additional funds to build out its network. In fact that is exactly what LightSquared then proceeded to do, by raising $586M, secured against its spectrum assets, in February 2011.”
By the company’s own internal estimates and comparisons with other satellite spectrum transactions, the January 2011 waiver boosted the value of LightSquared’s spectrum assets by $10 billion more than two similarly situated mobile satellite service providers that had gone bankrupt. TMF Associates notes:
Once this $10B windfall is more widely recognized, I think it is going to represent an enormous political problem for both LightSquared and the FCC Chairman during the upcoming Congressional hearings, making Solyndra’s $535M loan look like small beer [emphasis added]. After all in July 2010 current FCC Commissioner Copps noted in conjunction with the MSS NPRM/NOI that he “appreciate[d] the willingness of my colleagues to raise questions regarding the need for any mechanisms—such as spectrum fees—to compensate the American people for the terrestrial use of the public spectrum resource”, which is exactly why January’s action (which was not even brought before the full Commission) was such “an unprecedented and surprising development”.
A few more tidbits:
*Soros Fund Management — surprise, surprise — is a “signficant investor” in Falcone’s enterprise.
*Debunking of LightSquared’s spin that it “has never taken one dollar in taxpayer money:”
…[A]pparently forgetting Mr Carlisle’s testimony to Congress that LightSquared has received over $2M from the FBI for providing satellite services and equipment in the current fiscal year, not to mention its own estimate that the January 2011 FCC waiver was worth over $10 billion in incremental spectrum value to the company. And did he really just say that they will only be investing $8B rather than the $14B number they have used previously?
The FCC Chairman’s refusal to attend the hearing comes in the wake of allegations that the White House pressured Gen. Shelton to change his testimony to the Committee, and while Sen. Grassley is still pursuing the FCC Chairman for details of FCC communications with and about LightSquared in the run up to approval of the January 2011 waiver. My guess is that there must have been some reason for LightSquared to submit its waiver request on the Thursday before Thanksgiving and it would be reasonable to assume that they must therefore have been told by the FCC that the application would be placed immediately on public notice with an accelerated (10 day) comment period over the holiday, in the hope that no-one would notice. If that was the case then it would be quite surprising if there was no email evidence of such communications.
Unfortunately for the White House, the over-worn “Blame Bush” card does not explain the Obama FCC’s actions, the Obama FCC’s refusal to attend the hearing, or President Obama’s own eyebrow-raising financial entanglements (more on that below) with LightSquared’s predecessor and his ties to several of the shady investors and promoters of the racket.
***
LightSquared: Obama’s Dangerous Broadband Boondoggle
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2011
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.”
Two high-ranking witnesses — Air Force Space Command four-star Gen. William Shelton and National Coordination Office for Space-Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing Director Anthony Russo — have now blown the whistle on how the White House pressured them to alter their congressional testimony and play down concerns about LightSquared’s threat to military communications. According to Eli Lake of The Daily Beast, both officials were urged to express confidence in the company and endorse its promise to address any technical concerns “within 90 days.”
Gen. Shelton had noted earlier this year: “Within three to five miles on the ground and within 12 miles in the air, GPS is jammed by (LightSquared’s) towers. … If we allow that system to be fielded and it does indeed jam GPS, think about the impact. We’re hopeful we can find a solution, but physics being physics, we don’t see a solution right now.”
Despite industry-wide protests, the firm somehow received fast-track approval for a special FCC waiver that grants LightSquared the right to use wireless spectrum to build out a national 4G wireless network on the cheap. Ken Boehm, of the conservative watchdog National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) in Washington, D.C., summed up the deal earlier this year: “LightSquared will get the spectrum for a song, while its competitors (e.g., AT&T and Verizon) have to spend billions.”
The current “fix” LightSquared proposes to address the interference problems is a costly, conceptual pipe dream that could require massive retrofitting of millions of handheld GPS devices. GPS expert Eric Gakstatter scoffs: “I’ve been pretty open-minded about LightSquared proposing a solution, but this really insults our intelligence. (A)s we’ve seen previously with LightSquared, it’s not about finding a practical solution for the GPS user community; it’s all about selling an idea to the FCC. The problem is that the FCC doesn’t have to live with LightSquared’s half-baked ‘solution’; we do.”
So, what’s greasing LightSquared’s skids? Hint: It used to be known as “Skyterra.” In 2005, Obama put $50,000 into the speculative firm — raising eyebrows even among his water-carriers at The New York Times. The paper noted that Skyterra’s principal backers at the time of the investment included four Obama “friends and donors who had raised more than $150,000 for his political committees.”
One of those pals who urged him to buy stock in Skyterra was George Haywood, a major Skyterra investor and campaign donor who chipped in nearly $50,000 to Obama’s campaigns and to his political action committee along with his wife.
Coincidentally, Obama bought his Skyterra stock the very same day the FCC “ruled in favor of the company’s effort to create a nationwide wireless network by combining satellites and land-based communications systems.” One industry expert tells me it strains credulity to believe the timing wasn’t dictated by inside information. Indeed, the Times reported that immediately after that morning ruling, “Tejas Securities, a regional brokerage in Texas that handled investment banking for Skyterra, issued a research report speculating that Skyterra stock could triple in value.”
Coincidentally, Tejas and its chairman, John J. Gorman, were also major backers of Obama — flying him in a private plane for political rallies and pitching in more than $150,000 for his campaign coffers since 2004. Obama sold his stock at a loss in November 2005 — just as Skyterra was locked in a messy proxy fight over a failed roll-up — but his political relationship with the company was cemented.
In 2009, shady billionaire hedge-fund manager Philip Falcone — whose firm Harbinger Capital Partners is reportedly under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for market manipulation abuses — acquired Skyterra.
Coincidentally, Falcone, his wife and LightSquared CEO Sanjiv Ahuja have contributed nearly $100,000 between them to the Democratic Party during critical White House meeting periods and negotiations over LightSquared’s regulatory fate.
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. Except, as we all should know by now: There are no coincidences in Chicago on the Potomac. Just an endless avalanche of quids, quos and taxpayer woes.
***
Shady birds of a feather flock together. Here’s more background on Obama’s broadband boondoggle pals.
Via Business Week 2005, here’s what was going down with key Skyterra/LightSquared investors after Obama sold his stock. According to public SEC filings, Motient Corporation in September 2005 “entered into a non-binding letter of intent with Skyterra Communications Inc. and TMI Communications and Company (and others) to consolidate ownership” of two mobile satellite service providers — MSV and TerreStar — within Motient. Motient’s largest shareholder at the time was Dallas-based hedge fund Highland Capital Management. Shady pandemonium ensued:
In August, Highland sued Motient’s officers and directors in Chancery Court of Delaware, claiming the defendants tried to line their pockets with Motient’s cash by paying exorbitant fees to firms in which they held interests. The suit focuses especially on Motient chairman Steven G. Singer, his brother and convicted felon Gary A. Singer, and former Motient director Jared E. Abbruzzese.
According to the complaint, Motient hired Abbruzzese’s Albany (NY)-based consultancy Communication Technology Advisors (CTA) in May 2002 to provide financial advice while Abbruzzese was still a director at Motient. At the time, two other CTA employees, Peter D. Aquino and Gerald S. Kittner, were also Motient directors. Since then, CTA has functioned as Motient’s de facto executive management and has received over $3 million in fees and tens of millions of dollars worth of warrants to buy Motient stock, Highland’s complaint says.
The complaint further claims that Abbruzzese and CTA in 2004 pressured Motient’s board to hire a small Austin (Tex.)-based investment bank, Tejas Inc., to raise money for Motient. However, Abbruzzese allegedly failed to disclose that he owned options to buy 100,000 shares of Tejas. As a result of fees and warrants paid by Motient, Tejas’ annual profit increased over 2,600%, and the Tejas shares underlying Abbruzzese’s options appreciated 900% in one year. In March 2005, Motient appointed Barry A. Williamson to its board, a Tejas director who owns over 51,000 Tejas shares. In May 2005, Tejas announced it would acquire CTA for $65 million. Abbruzzese was appointed vice chairman of Tejas and granted a generous employment agreement and stock-option package.
Abbruzzese’s alleged conflicts run deeper. In fiscal year 2004, Motient lost $72 million on revenues of $36.9 million. What, then, accounts for its $1.3 billion market cap? The company has a 40% stake in Mobile Satellite Ventures (MSV), a Reston (Va.)-based provider of mobile satellite communications that owns valuable spectrum licenses. MSV is a limited partnership, and its general partner is Motient Satellite Ventures GP, Inc., whose managers are Abbruzzese and Kittner of CTA. “Motient’s purchases of MSV units in 2004 at prices that reflected ever increasing valuations of MSV enriched Kittner, Abbruzzese and CTA through their ownership of MSV units,” Highland’s complaint says.
…Hovering in the background of this power struggle is Steven Singer’s brother, Gary Singer, who in the mid-1990s spent nearly two years in federal prison for fraud, money laundering, and racketeering as part of a junk-bond insider trading scheme while he was co-chairman and CEO at Cooper Companies, Inc., a healthcare products maker in Pleasanton (Calif.). At the time of the crime, Steven Singer and a third brother, Brad Singer, were also executives at Cooper and were later sued on civil charges related to the trading scheme.
The SEC has permanently barred Gary Singer from acting as an officer or director of any public company. Nevertheless, Highland’s complaint says that he “shares an office with Steven Singer, has participated in many Motient board meetings and conference calls, and even acted in a managerial role on behalf of the company.” Gary Singer has allegedly pressured Motient’s board for compensation and owns warrants to acquire Motient shares.
Here’s a summary of the “conflicts of interests and board self-dealings” related to Terrestar.
Note also from the SEC documents that the interference issues that are at the heart of the regulatory battle now were raised at least six years ago. LightSquared continues to downplay those problems with pie-in-the-sky fixes.
House GOP investigators have their work cut out for them.
The latest on their quest for documents:
House Republicans asked for records of contacts between the White House and Philip Falcone, citing concerns about possible political pressure on U.S. agencies over the billionaire’s proposed LightSquared wireless venture.
LightSquared is seeking to allay fears its planned $14 billion network may disrupt military and civilian uses of the global-positioning system. The company needs clearance from the Federal Communications Commission to proceed. The request yesterday from House Republicans adds political static to a debate that has centered on radio interference.
Some U.S. officials have been reluctant to testify on GPS interference and agencies haven’t provided information, Representative Ralph Hall, of Texas, chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, wrote in a letter yesterday. That “does nothing to promote the case for LightSquared, nor does it put our minds at ease about the possibility that this administration may be providing special favors to high-level financial donors,” Hall wrote.
The Obama administration should turn over “all records” of contacts by Falcone, LightSquared and his Harbinger Capital Partners hedge fund, according to the letter. Six other Republicans on the panel signed the letter, which was distributed by e-mail.
Events surrounding solar-panel maker Solyndra LLC, which failed after receiving U.S. loan guarantees, “further emphasize our concern about a pattern by this administration to grant preferential treatment toward donors,” Hall and his colleagues wrote. “As with Solyndra, the lack of scrutiny of the LightSquared project is disturbing.”
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HalliTeleburton!I understand that King Putt himself has or had $50,000 invested in Light Squared just before it got the government funding.
There are several impeachable-level scandals that go right to head of the stinking fish of this regime – and the so-called “journalists” are deaf, dumb and blind.
G-d, do I need a friggin’ drink!
From the Obamas’ 2005 U.S. Form 1040, some details on that purchase and sale of Sky Terra shares.
On 11/01/05, Obama and MO sold 2,500 shares of SkyTerra Communications for $75,922. They bought the shares earlier that year on 2/10/05 for $91,130. The sale netted them a short-term capital loss of $15,208.
One other thing. One of MM’s links mentions that the Obamas purchased the shares through a UBS broker. That’s interesting because at that time it appeared that they were have their investments handled by Northern Trust.
And on top of all this, just look how cozy Obama is with all those millionaires, billionaires, and hedge-fund managers he pretends to hate!
Sharp point!
James Greenidge
Queens NY
J.J. Sefton – READ my post, please.
There seems to be no limits to the greed and desire to distrupt on the part of this regime and their fellow travelers.
If I were to put a face on Pure Evil, I would select the face of George Soros.
Since age 14 this piece of human debris has done nothing but spread havoc and misery. The world will be so much better off when he meets his Maker.
Excellent scoop, Michelle. You do more work than all the msm lamestream o boot lickers combined!
It figures soros would have his dirty, commie tentacles in all this. I hope all the relevant documents are delivered for the investigations, without being altered, hidden or shredded.
The public hatred is purely demagoguery directed at the envious masses. In private, Barky assures his billionaire cronies what he says publically doesn’t include them because they are on board with his agenda, so, “just ignore what I say.” wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
Culture. Of. Corruption.
On practically a daily basis, Michelle Malkin publishes posts like this that are essentially addenda to her excellent book.
My name Peggy. You have reward points?
RedDog Industries provides premium composted dog poo for the biomass energy market. The fact that we gave a million dollars plus stock options to Mr. Obama and his campaign had no bearing whatsoever on the 500 million dollar loan we received from the US government. In any event, RedDog was able to use that money to make 30,000 metric tons of sweet poo that in turn created 250,000 kilowatts of energy, enough to power 12 Priuses for 4 months. Go Green!
Teh Won is at this moment planting statements in his UN speech for future citation when he finally addresses his corruption scandals, He is making sweeping statements vowing to his commitment to attacking corruption by promoting accountability around the world. That video clip will come in handy later for us too.
Umm, that might actually be viable.
AKA “Lippy”. badda bing badda boom… fugettaboutit.
Nothing to see here. Just normal Chicago politics.
Great job MM, keep it up. P.S. Get a “food taster”.
Al Gore, George Kaiser, Philip Falcone… How long is this list going to get? All of these billionaires and aspiring billionaires watching their carefully laid plans based on government favoritism and graft blowing up before their eyes.
Implicit in that statement is the “everyone is doing it so why are you picking on ME!” defense.
It would seem to me that this case would be by far much stronger than the case they presented against Martha Stewart.
As usual, Michelle hits it out of the ball park. Great journalism, lots of sources and the idiots still want to argue. Amazing.
Excellent research Michelle! I am impressed.
At school we were taught how to research the number of toilets in Hong Kong and Camels in Bahrain but nothing like this. How about a class so we can all help you?
It’s Chicago Meets Caracas On The Potomac.
Heh, be careful for what you wish for, you poinyoin! MM’s posts are like sparklers on the Fourth Of July!
I saw Falcone’s interview on FNC and I was surprised that Martha McCallum didn’t take a more adversarial approach to it. Instead, she lobbed softballs.
However, I’d pay to see our Michelle take on Falcone on a point-by-point basis. Heck, we should make it pay-per-view!
Go get ‘em, girl!
Regards,
Peter H.
Thank you Michelle for your due dilligence and excellent reporting. If only the LSM would do their jobs!!! Just think where we might be????
My response, then hand over all yours and the WH emails regarding the situation so that the “due diligence” can be done.
In any argument, they say that there are 3 sides: your side, my side, and the truth.
MM has laid out a fair amount of research on her side, and Falcone has sputtered around trying to defend his own, but I expect to hear a lot more sputtering in the days and weeks to come from Falcone and many others.
While MM’s research looks pretty damning, and Falcone’s defense looks pretty feeble, it will be interesting to watch and see where the truth ends up lying when the dust settles. Right now, I’m thinking it’s going to be a lot closer to MM than Falcone/Soros/Obama.
Awesome job Michelle!! Although, I think we’ll see the same stalling as we are used to with respect to turning over documents. Nonetheless, the dirt is out there for all to see.
Kinda makes you wonder how long til Falcone’s attorney tells him to plead the 5th.
If you have any friends in the surveying and engineering fields be sure to email this post to them. GPS is big in the surveying area and will affect many of their jobs and projects – all over the world! It is the talk of the town if you own GPS instruments for your work. Of course the first concern is our military and our safety but if this LightSquared does not get shut down a lot more people could be out of work!
Ya think?
Martha got jail time and Obama just gets richer and more powerful.
These slime-ball tactics, the bottom-of-the-swamp corruption…WILL END. Thanks to people like MM, it is all coming down like a house of cards.
I LOVE it when the fit hits the shan and I am stocking up on popcorn and other selected snacks and beverages. It is going to be a very interesting Winter.
THANKS, MICHELLE! I PRAY FOR YOU AND YOUR FAMILY EVERY DAY!
And yet more possible ties to scandals have come out:
Martha just didn’t have the right kind of powerful political and financial connections to avoid conviction, sentencing and serving.
Obama has…..for the moment, anyway.
Blame Bush – check.
Don’t forget the obligatory straw man:
For one, the GPS satellites are primarily for military use and would cost the same whether the public could use them or not. For another, the GPS manufacturers don’t “use” them per se, they provide products that enable people, largely the taxpayers paying for the satellites in the first place, to use them. That would include anyone with car navigation, handheld navigation, and most anyone with a cell phone. They’re also handy for emergency services.
I guess in a perfect socialist world the government would build the devices and decide who needs them.
I am shocked to the extreme to learn that the most ethical administration could “alledgedly” be involved in these dealings. Perhaps it would save our lovely and talented hostess a lot of time and effort if she would just write about all the dealings of the pRez and his administration that don’t involve a high level of corruption. I can then invision her doing a lot of sitting and thumb twiddling, waiting for something to write about. Thanks for all the work you do MM. Keep shining the light and watch the bugs scatter!
If only Martha knew George Soros
Anyone see the post over at Newsbusters? They pulled up Light Squared over at the AP News link and not one article showed up. It is more important than ever to get this post emailed to as many as possible. LSM is not going to report it. Perhaps we should all email it to AP and see if they get a hint that we are on to their “protect Zero at all costs” scam.
Wow Michelle, what an awesome piece of investigative journalism! You truly bring back professionalism and respect to the field. Amazing that the LSM has not mentioned a single word on the subject, not! They’re too busy spreading their socialist/communist propaganda and feeding opium to the masses. You really put the final nail in the coffin of the LSM!
Aside from the plethora of corruption you have exposed at the highest level of government here, the fact that our military GPS systems may be severely impaired by “Light Squared”, leaving our country very vulnerable and possibly defenseless, is very concerning indeed and begs this question among so many others: What is our Military and Congress doing to stop this? This issue should be given the highest priority by both of them and must be resolved immediately!
Does he know how many other technologies were developed with taxpayer $’s that the public benefits from through products created once the technology was “declassified”?
Here is a list of just some of them:
The difference from what Falcone is that these devices were spinoffs from technology original meant for government use. In Falcone’s case, he wants to use current technology at a lower cost than the competition.
If a scandal occurs in Chicago or has a link to Chicago, you can pretty much be sure Obama is involved in some way. He is dirty down to his toes.
Do you know that your tax dollar goes to build satellites that the GPS manufacturers use, for free?
No, GPS Manufacturers make a product that when sold to a consumer allows said consumer to access GPS signals for free -
O/T…Ron Paul considers Dennis Kucinich for a Cabinet position if elected.
When I read that, the first thought that came to mind was, “Oh, boy, here it comes: clearly, this guy isn’t familiar with the Pictographic Dictionary, becuase if he was he’d have known that under ‘Tenacity’ there’s a wonderful image of Michelle’s face.”
But I’ll bet he’s learning fast that saying, in effect, “C’mon, I double-dog dare ya to find anything shady here!” to the Queen Bee is an invitation to be stung, repeatedly.
This isn’t a bug – it’s a boon to the Marxist and muslim governments out there who hate us, and who must be thrilled that Obama wants to wreck our military’s GPS system. Luckily that whole native-born thing is so esoteric.
Or ….
Coincidentally,
ObamaPerry bought hisSkyterraGardasil stock the very same day the…[investors in California started a takeover...]Can we stop asking how “public servants” get rich?
Haha – expect more emails Michelle!
Obama can have Martha Stewart’s old bunk on the honor farm. I’m going by the mom jeans – he would go to a woman’s prison, right?
Trading on inside info – the exact thing she was convicted of doing.
Why aren’t the GOP candidates all over this?
Sorry for so many comments but I truly believe Obama should be in jail.
On September 21st, 2011 at 11:25 am, Truesoldier said:
If there were any truth to the following claim, the WH would have already made public all of the emails and financial transaction records…
Barry,
Oops – #45 I included way too much – apologies…
And yes – I’m slamming Perry for the very same “coincidence” – making a financial investment the same day he met with a company principal, and coincidentally some other investors start a takeover.
Ron Paul jumped the shark a long time ago. Stick a fork in him. He is nuts.
Totally agree, just thought I would point this out to those who still believe he would make a great President.
Ron Paul has been getting on my nerves for a long time. This just succeeded in getting on my last one. I just don’t get it…what is the appeal of this moron? He has some good ideas, but MORE bad ones! He makes Libertarians look stupid.
I’m guessing more than 5 freaking minutes went into researching that debacle. A LOT more. Bet he’s sorry he threw down the gauntlet?
Some of us tend to think in whiteboard and in order to track all the dirty dealings mine went out the door down the hall and out in the front yard. Imagine Michelle’s did too. Great work as always!
Hey is it just me but where’s all the trolls defending _____ ?
Ron Paul is the novelty act of the primary season, adding some interesting points to debate, but little else. The reality of his being elected president is somewhere between little and no chance.
Yup. They have so much material to work with it boggles the mind.
All great posts here, especially Alohaguy and Hawkeye. There is enough evidence to move these investigations along and my two main points; the Republican candidates should be ALL over this and secondly congress should be holding hearings NOW.
Until I see someone in handcuffs being led into a federal penitentiary this ain’t going nowhere.
William Holden’s character in “Stalag 17″… I like it
Andrew McCarthy has a great post at NRO regarding why the investigations have not moved forward.
Corruption taken to a fine science!
Great Job Michelle. The connections between all the players keeps getting better. I hope there’s enough space in the prisons for all the guilty.
Im glad to see that the House GOP members are trying to spotlight the remaining DOE loans pending and the Stimulous deadline looming:
It may not stop the DOE, but it at least will put a spotlight on them.
***
Good job, Michelle! Well documented. And I would like to see–and test–the “10 cent” microwave filter that can be installed (hah!) in all cell phones, GPS receivers, bomb and aircraft guidance systems, etc.
***
Not to mention how cheap and easy it will be to install high power filters in the 30 or more satellites in the GPS constellation that provides this critical service to the military, surveying, and bomb / missile guidance systems. Maybe we can pay the Russki astronauts to use their Soyuz Spacecraft to mod the satellites! No security problems here! We don’t have any Space Shuttles to do this job anymore!
***
The cheapest microwave filters I saw were hundreds of dollars each–and were the size of a AAA battery. The much better high “Q” units were microwave cavity systems that cost $5000 or more–and were the size of your fist. Pretty costly and bulky to add to your cell phone and Garmin or TomTom car GPS guidance unit!
***
And once again we see what an inept “businessman” Comrade Obama really is. Hillary Clinton made hundreds of thousand dollar profits in her insider information cattle future deals. The Messiah lost His A** in His deal. Like our economy is “benefitting” from His economic “skills” now.
***
John Bibb
***
O/T – I can’t even trust Senator Inhofe.
Inhofe introduces Storm Shelter Act
Yet more nanny-state manipulation of the citizens!
To show you how smart Hillary is – at the time of her cattle futures trading, it wasn’t illegal to trade on insider information in commodities. (At least cattle.) Her broker may have broken the law by “assigning” trades – meaning picking the winners to assign to her, but she made out.
Hi Michelle Malkin,
The “Soros Fund Management” link is a paid link and it shows nothing to ordinary people who are not subscribers.
Can you update the link with a free link? news.google.com is very useful to find these free links.
Gawdalmighty, a flow diagram showing the spiderweb inter-connectivity of all these organizations would give M.C. Escher a migraine!
Best coverage of this story by far.
Getting approval to use that spectrum at terrestrial tower sites while the competition is paying tens of billions at auctions for their spectrum is a really big deal.
And the CEO saying the company would be “a disruptive force” and would “democratize” wireless communications is more than a little disconcerting.
The whole thing reeks of fascist style command economy.
So what’s your response to this MM Trolls? How do you defend the most ethical and transparent administration in history?! Buehler, Buehler, Anyone? Can you imagine if Bush had invested in and gave preferential gov’t loans to say Enron? It would’ve been armageddon in the MSM.
I don’t know if it means anything or not, but Obama’s buses are backed up to the rear loading docks of Fort Knox as we speak.
Ahhhh… this is NO coincidence. Does anything think for one second that Tejas didn’t know what was coming down with the FCC and that they didn’t share that with their favorite clients? –>> Obama.
The SEC should be be confiscating all records at Tejas to determine what communication took place between their personnel, advisers and management prior to these stock purchases, the FCC announcement and their clients. A well as between Tejas and anyone with information about the FCC ruling.
Someone there knew in advance and got their faves in the stock.
It matters not that Obama lost money by November. People go to jail for this.
And Perry may have written that SS is a Ponzi scheme, and maybe it is in some respects. But the Obama administration is turning the federal government into a new Scheme that makes Ponzi look like a Three Card Monty Dealer.
And the people involved in Motient and CTA are criminals through and through.
It’s not surprising at all to see the are dots to connect between SkyTerra, Motient, CTA and Tejas. Birds of a feather indeed Michelle.
You can bet that since these schemes are pretty well thought out as far as illicit money making potential goes, they are also well thought out as to how to bury it.
Whomever is digging up the dirt better dig fast.
Look at who you find linked to Obama. Then look at Obama and ask yourself who this guy really is.
GPS is the norm now in general aviation. And these receivers are WAY more expensive than the Garmin’s in people’s cars. Anywhere from a couple thousand to more than $10K.
There won’t be any “simple’” mod to fix these units. There’s nothing simple in aviation certification.
But don’t worry. Some dude in West Virgina will be able to post naked pictures of himself on Facebook.
O/T, but it is being reported that at LAX someone have been marking the belly of Southwest Airlines 737′s with what some have said look like either arabic letters or arabic symbols. It was done with some sort of heat activated chemical that only appears once the APU (Auxilary Power Unit) is hooked up to the plane. It appears that the trend has been increaseing as of late. As of right now there is no other information at all.
5 freaking minutes to follow the money!
Will Falcone respond to this? Booosh!
This scandal is only the tip of the preverbial iceberg. Fast and Furious, Solyndra, Boeing, others yet to come, are all going to keep Holder and Obama dancing around until long after they are gone.
Wait until someone digs up all the new Executive Orders and regulations all his minions have put in place in nearly every segment of our government that favor his people and cost us more one way or another.
Obama will go down in history as the most corrupt American Pesident, bar none, when all the truth comes out. And he will not be tarred alone.
And AlohaGuy mentioned the new broadband cummunications effort. It’s my understand it will replace the current dedicated law enforcement radio bands and all cities, counties and states will have to bid for their share of the band. That means more tax dollars to whomever controls the broadband, if it’s true.
Truesoldier,good post. a little more sofisciated than usual because it is heat activated. Now back to topic. Nice long posts. Why not just arrest and charge these people?
Andrew McCarthy’s post as to why not is really worth the read over at NRO, but long story short is that any criminal investigation (including special prosecuter) still answers to the DOJ (whether directly or indirectly). So it is a conflict of interest n Holdre’s part to see justice done.
Ask Martha Stewart.
Thats not something that I had thought of but with this guy and his shenanigans, I would not doubt it.
He lied about Rev Wright and continues to hide the truth about his beliefs. He is pursuing his ideas by any means possible while pretending to distance himself from any illegal stuff even though he supports it if it furthers his cause.
Standing for your beliefs is one thing. Corruption to further your cause is another. Standing idly by while others do the dirty work without condemnation is a form of corruption. He is not being honest with many people.
Personally, I think that Obama, Holder and all the Obama appointees have been given their marching orders to generally do anything they can to further the Obama/Liberal agenda.
Further, I believe the people at the top, including Obama have also told them that they do not want to know any details, so they can retain “plausible deniablility if anything goes wrong.”
So, T-Bone, in that respect, as well as maintaining their continuing silence to which you alude, they are complicit.
I suspect however, there are enough cutouts below them to save them from direct legal responsibility.On the other hand, if any of them breaks and decides to talk, that will be a horse of a different color (so said Oz The Great acting as a doorman).
Thats the key phrase. They aren’t dumb, just misguided.
Didn’t Martha Stewart do time for something similar to this? Why does the term ‘insider trading’ ring alarm bells in my head?
Will crap EVER stick to Teflon? I know the “oversight” committee has a lot on it’s plate right now (ESPECIALLY with the ethics violations and abject dismissal of legal rulings against the Marxist/Communist regime) but SOMETHING or SOMEONE has to STOP this blatant flouting of the law from these clowns.
The man will never be impeached nor is there the likelihood of an indictment for any of the high crimes and misdemeanors the administration has perpetrated.
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HI NJ-AVIATOR–#75. Good comment. I worked with military missile and radar equipment electronics for 41 years. Testing at -50 Deg. F, +140 Deg. F, rain test, dirt test, solar heat load test, EMP lightning strike with a simultaneous neutron burst from a reactor buried in a well under the test site. Shake and vibration tests.
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Some of my co-workers were ex pilots. One was a WW2 P-51 pilot who got his EE degree and built and flew his own gliders. I helped him out with some of his radio problems.
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There is nothing cheap or easy about aircraft electronics. Lots of redundancy and safety margins in these systems. And when they fail–real bad stuff happens. I don’t think adding that “10 cent filter” will cost less than a complete $20,000 dollar radio replacement. And will include a lot of real testing to make sure that the thousands of modified units are really working properly. Expensive stuff.
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The old Hewlett-Packard management maxim was “Faster–Better–Cheaper”. And the skilled engineers who made it happen said, “Pick any 2 of the 3!” No way you get all 3–regardless of what the management or politicians think. The pilots and hardware engineers know the truth.
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John Bibb
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LightSquared now states that precision GPS can be fitted with filters ranging from $50 to $300. They claim they would be willing to upgrade government equipment but are not obligated to upgrade the other 10′s of millions of GPS devices owned by private entities.
When LightSquared acquired their spectrum, the license was for satellite broadcast only. LS went to the FCC and asked for a waiver to use high power terrestrial transmitters. Their high power signals on a band that was never designated for that type of signal literally drowns out the reception of low power GPS signals. Their response is to blame every GPS manufacturer world wide for not anticipating an event that was never supposed to happen.
O/T – Ms Malkin is getting all kinds of hateful tweets WRT the execution of the cop-killing scumbag Troy Davis. @AlecBaldwin seems to be behind most of it.
What a low-life scumbag coward.
Everything about this administration is disturbing.
Everything!
Lack of scrutiny, and especially by the presstitutes. The blame lies with them, but also with the American people who voted for this crook Obama.
Imagine if, say, George Bush or Dick Cheney was involved in only Obama’s stinky Rezko sweetheart deal for his home – the LSM would have sunk them with incessant calls for their resignation and impeachment. But nary a word, that’s all ‘old news’ and ‘no big deal’.
It’s a double standard – the right is held to strict ones, and the left is held to low or no standards at all. And the taxpayers pay, and the country suffers.
Clinton’s took off with the WH china but Obama is going to take off with the treasury.
Add to that Bill’s little Moon Rock memento worth a few $Mil. Just found it in his papers, imagine that.
Ann Coulter’s column today gives the spin a reality check.
I was hoping she would cover this, and she just nailed it.
The Clinton’s staff took off with a great variety of WH things not permantently attached, as I recall.
Obama has already emptied the treasury. His tour bus is just finishing loading up at Ft. Knox at the moment.
Tghe “lack of scrutiny” on behalf of their Obamessiah was completely wilfull and deliberate on the part of the presstitutes, as they spent all their efforts scrutinizing Palin, as if she were the presidential candidate, in the most minute detail back in ’08. And as they will most certainly do to the GOP canditate come ’12.
Obama’s INSIDER TRADING must be thoroughly investigated…after he is out of office, so that it is done by an impartial group. This isn’t going away and he WILL pay. Just be patient, because this won’t happen on Holder’s watch. Obama is one of “his people”, don’cha know!
I’m hoping our next president names an aggressive Constitutionalist AG and sweeps the DOJ clean of leftist parasites. No “compassionate conservatism” need be applied.
Just read Alec Baldwin’s screed where he mentioned Michelle Malkin
Wow!
Michelle tell the truth, did that bloated bigot ask you out and you laughed at him and he can’t get over it?
Is that what happened?
Whatever you did, please keep it up.