If you thought the half-billion-dollar, stimulus-funded Solyndra bust was a taxpayer nightmare, just wait. If you thought the botched Fast and Furious 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 senator 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:
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