LightSquared: Putting O’s donors first?
nypost.com
If you thought the half-billion-dollar, stimulus-funded Solyndra solar company bust was a taxpayer nightmare, just wait. On its heels comes yet another alleged pay-for-play racket: LightSquared.
So what’s greasing LightSquared’s skids? Hint: It used to be known as “Skyterra.” In 2005, Barack Obama put $50,000 into the speculative firm. The New York Times noted that Skyterra’s chief backers at the time included four Obama “friends and donors who had raised more than $150,000 for his political committees.”
One pal who urged him to buy stock in Skyterra was George Haywood, a major Skyterra investor, who with his wife chipped in nearly $50,000 to Obama’s campaigns and political action committee.
Coincidentally, Obama bought his Skyterra stock the 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.” The Times reported that, just 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.”
Tejas and its chairman, John J. Gorman, were also major Obama backers -- flying him in a private plane for rallies and pitching in more than $150,000 for his campaign coffers since 2004. |
