GPS and LightSquared

[_richardMdBorn]

WSJ today contains a full page ad by lightsquared saying that 99.5 % of the interference problems have been resolved and the final .5% are rapidly being resolved.

and by the way light squared in th ead says that it is the gps community's sloppy infringement of lightsquared owned spectrum that was/is causing the problems; and lightsquared has put up its own $$$ like 15 billion over the last decade to revolutionize the wireless business.

let the games continue!!

k

LS has made false claims during the controversy. I'm not excited by another press release from the company but will wait for independent engineers to comment on it.

[_Brackite]

The scandals continue: The ATF and Fast and Furious, Solyndra and LightSquared. As I wrote, the GPS community has been screaming about this since late last year. Now at last the general public is becoming aware that the Obama Administration is putting at risk GPS to line the pockets of a big campaign contributor.

Solyndra is Probably the biggest scandal from the Obama Administration. Solyndra was supposed to create several thousands of ‘Green' Jobs within the State of California. However, After having received over a half-billion dollars in stimulus money, Solyndra shipped Jobs to China, and then Solyndra went bankrupt.
The Following is from Wikipedia:

Solyndra was a manufacturer of cylindrical panels of CIGS thin-film solar cells based in Fremont, California. Once touted for its unusual technology, plummeting silicon prices led to the company being unable to compete with more conventional solar panels.[1] On September 1, 2011, the company ceased all business activity, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and laid off all employees.[2] The company is also being sued by employees who were abruptly laid off.[3]

...

On March 20, 2009, the USDOE, made a "conditional commitment" to a $535 million loan guarantee to support Solyndra's construction of a commercial-scale manufacturing plant for its proprietary solar photovoltaic panels.[10] The White House scheduled a press event for September 4 and federal reviewers gave final approval on September 2.[11] After securing the loan guarantee, the Federal Financing Bank, a part of the Department of the Treasury, loaned Solyndra the money.

...

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solyndra



Obama Administration Offers $535 Million Loan Guarantee to Solyndra, Inc.




The State of California overwhelmingly voted for Barack Obama for President back in November of 2008.
The State of California now has an Unemployment rate as high as 12.1%, which is 3% higher than the National Unemployment rate.



The Following is from the Los Angeles Times:

Obama advisors raised warning flags before Solyndra bankruptcy

Treasury chief Timothy F. Geithner and others were worried that the selection process for federal loan guarantees fell short and raised the risk that funds could be going to the wrong firms.

...

By Tom Hamburger, Kim Geiger and Matea Gold,
Washington Bureau

September 26, 2011, 6:35 p.m.


Reporting from Washington— Long before the politically connected California solar firm Solyndra went bankrupt, President Obama was warned by his top economic advisors about the financial and political risks of the Energy Department loan guarantee program that boosted the company's rapid ascent.

At a White House meeting in late October, Lawrence H. Summers, then director of the National Economic Council, and Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary, expressed concerns that the selection process for federal loan guarantees wasn't rigorous enough and raised the risk that funds could be going to the wrong companies, including ones that didn't need the help.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu, also at the meeting, had a different view. Under pressure from Congress to speed up the loans, he wanted less scrutiny from the Treasury Department and the Office of Management and Budget, or OMB.

The divisions foreshadowed a question that has emerged since Solyndra's bankruptcy: Was the program's vetting process thorough enough? The disagreements also spotlighted an issue that has confronted Obama since he took office: What is the appropriate role of the government in stimulating the private marketplace?

Skeptics, noting that taxpayers could now be on the hook for $527 million the federal government loaned Solyndra, said the administration would have been better off making greater use of market incentives, not individual company loan guarantees.

"It was completely predictable that there would be a colossal failure among the bets," said one person familiar with the internal debate.

Defending the program as an overall success, administration officials say that the $17 billion in loan guarantees now on track to go to 30 companies will help double renewable energy generation in Obama's first term.

The program that funded Solyndra is set to expire at the end of the month, and the White House is pushing to provide more green-energy loan guarantees through other initiatives and keep the U.S. competitive globally. The Chinese government, the Energy Department says, last year committed $30 billion to solar-panel manufacturers.

Almost immediately after the 2008 election, Obama advisors began debating how to create jobs while reducing the nation's reliance on fossil fuels. Some advisors pushed to expand a George W. Bush administration loan-guarantee initiative to help green-energy companies launch commercially. Others were philosophically opposed to providing help to individual companies and warned against betting taxpayer money on inherently risky ventures.

Nevertheless, the administration went forward with the loan guarantee program as part of the 2009 stimulus law. High-level disagreements on the program continued.

In late October 2010, administration officials took their opposing views directly to Obama. In preparation, a memo was drafted by Summers, who remained wary of the program, and two others who were more supportive: then-energy advisor Carol Browner and Ron Klain, then chief of staff to Vice President Joseph Biden. The memo laid out their different concerns and options to fix a "broken process" for getting loans approved.

Warning that the program could "fail to advance your clean-energy agenda" by investing in companies that didn't need help, the memo proposed alternatives, including diverting the funds into grants available to the entire industry. By contrast, Energy Department officials wanted to end the "deal by deal" reviews by the Treasury and OMB, the memo said.

After the meeting, officials worked to streamline the process but didn't make significant changes.

It is unclear whether an overhaul would have helped anticipate the problems at Solyndra. In February, the Energy Department agreed to restructure the company's loan. A little more than six months later, Solyndra declared bankruptcy, laying off 1,100 people and triggering FBI and congressional investigations.

The administration originally touted the green energy program as a tool that would create or save tens of thousands of jobs. So far, 30 projects are on track to create about 16,750 construction jobs and 2,577 permanent jobs. The Energy Department notes that a related loan guarantee program helped save 33,000 jobs at Ford by helping the company modernize its factories.

But some critics argue that other government loan guarantee programs do a better job of protecting taxpayers.

For example, a Transportation Department program to spur infrastructure improvements limits loan guarantees to 33% of the cost of a project, said Autumn Hanna of the nonpartisan Taxpayers for Common Sense. Energy Department guarantees can amount to 80%.

Critics also question whether the Energy Department has the expertise to select which companies to help.

"Questions have to be raised about the quality of their analysis," said analyst Shyam Mehta of GTM Research in Cambridge, Mass.

Jim Nelson, chief executive of Solar 3D, a Santa Barbara company that is developing three-dimensional solar cell technology aimed at making more efficient solar cells, said the government should stay out of the business.

"If private investment cannot find a reason to invest in emerging technology to make it commercial," he said, "what is government doing it for?"

Energy Department officials counter that only projects that have met the test of the marketplace are considered.

"We don't pick winners and losers," spokesman Damien LaVera said. "The private sector does." Companies selected for loan guarantees, he added, have been "deeply, deeply, deeply capitalized by the private capital markets."

Many clean-energy investors say the loan guarantees have been essential to getting capital flowing, particularly during the credit crunch. It's important for the government "to bridge this difficult gap between where venture capital is able to fund these companies and where traditional project finance kicks in," said Sunil Paul, a San Francisco-based clean-energy investor.

Rhone Resch, president and chief executive officer at the Solar Energy Industries Assn., credited the program with creating "more than $40 billion of private investment in both energy generation and manufacturing projects," and said the solar projects selected would not have gone forward without government backing.

But government audits in recent years have found problems in the implementation of the program.

A July 2010 report by the Government Accountability Office found that the department committed to back the loans without completing required studies of market, legal and technical issues.

"Without this information, it is not clear that the program could have fully evaluated the risk of the loans it committed to," said Frank Rusco, an analyst for the GAO.

Link: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... 8311.story

[_Brackite]

Here is the latest information about the Fast and Furious scandal:

Fast and Furious: Holder Caught Lying to Congress:
http://forums.hannity.com/showthread.php?t=2330081

[_moksha]

Private businessmen can be shifty. Let's not trust them with public money.

[_richardMdBorn]

Private businessmen can be shifty. Let's not trust them with public money.

Venture socialism is a bad thing.

[_Nomomo]

Private businessmen can be shifty. Let's not trust them with public money.

Venture socialism is a bad thing.

As is capitalism when practiced by scumbag shameless criminal pricks like the Koch Brothers for instance. Not defending Obama in any way here, but am curious if you would prefer a hand picked and puchased President owned by the criminal scum of the earth Koch Brothers and thier ilk over Obama if those are the choices presented? Fortunately the Koch Brother's latest selection/purchase Christie hasn't a chance. But we can be sure they haven't given up on getting a man of "their's" in the executive position.

[_richardMdBorn]

More details have emerged about the Solyndra scandal.

On Friday, while most of America was preparing for the weekend and not paying attention to the news, the government released a batch of Solyndra emails.

They showed that Treasury Department and Office of Management and Budget officials were concerned about the Energy Department's giving Solyndra more money even after the failed company had defaulted on its $535 million government loan.

Specifically, the officials worried that the plan was putting Solyndra investors before taxpayers, a violation of federal law. So disturbed were Treasury and OMB that they advised the Department of Energy to consult with the Department of Justice. But DOE, eager to pump the chimera of green energy, declined.

It's also possible there was a financial interest for one DOE official that was too important to be derailed by contacting a controlling legal authority, if we might employ a phrase former Vice President Al Gore once used to excuse his questionable behavior.

The Washington Post reports that "records provided (last) Friday by a government source also show that an Energy Department stimulus adviser, Steve Spinner, pushed for Solyndra's loan despite having recused himself because his wife's law firm did work for the company."

Spinner, now at a left-wing think tank, has been described by ABC News as "an elite Obama fundraiser hired to help oversee the administration's energy loan program" who "pushed and prodded career Department of Energy officials to move faster in approving a loan guarantee for Solyndra."

Time refers to Spinner as a "top Obama fundraiser" who was entangled in the Solyndra loan even after "agreeing to avoid any 'active participation' in the company's application" due to his wife's job.

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysi ... -House.htm

Obama, in my opinion, is 2/3 far leftist and 1/3 corrupt Chicago politician. Both sides of him are on display in this scandal.