Slashdot Mirror
LightSquared CEO Resigns Amid Appearance of Bribery
New submitter msauve writes "LightSquared, the company who's request to use make use of spectrum in a way likely to interfere with GPS was recently denied, has suffered another setback. CEO Sanjiv Ahuja has now resigned, only a week after a report detailing political contributions and the personal financial interests of Obama and officials in his administration in SkyTerra, the precursor company to LightSquared.
Ahuja's one and only contribution to the Democratic Party occurred on the same day he tried to arrange a meeting with Obama administration officials, apparently as part of LightSquared's desire to fast track FCC approval of a change beneficial to the company."
He attempt to do what many /.ers say happen all the time, and got busted.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Well, of course, apart from the fact that it would smashed neighboring frequencies and would probably have never worked properly, of course.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It's an election year so they're probably happy to accept any money they can get, but I wonder if anyone within the administration or the DNC itself is going to get some smackdown for this incident.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Actually... this keeps happening when people try to buy Obama. He got burned by his dealings with Rezzko and has been really strict about reporting and clean hands accounting since.
-GiH
There's absolutely nothing new about this situation. It's a fact of modern political life that if you want face time with a politician you have to donate to their campaign. Planet Money did an interesting podcast about the concept of political fundraisers in Washington that really sheds light on the problem: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/11/01/141913370/the-tuesday-podcast-inside-washingtons-money-machine
Because there isn't anything to prove, it's basic physics. But to appease shills like you, they did do that test.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Seriously? Chris Dodd basically dick-smacked the entire concept of "bribing government is bad" into non-existence, but they force this guy out?
I guess that "contribution" wasn't big enough.
You've obviously not been looking hard enough. The Ars Technica article sums up the science behind it pretty well (basically, they did a test run of the terrestrial base-stations and it interfered with ~75% of GPS devises, after LightSquared reduced the stations power to try to fix the problem). There is a ton of proof that they actually interfere with GPS signals, namely, actual experiments.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
This is enough to get someone to resign on the appearance of Bribery but Chris Dodd's blatant admission of buying representation is not? double standard continues for elected officials.
I swear they give me mod points to shut me up.
I agree this happens in politics all the time. The differences are that the purchase of influence is extraordinarily well documented in these cases, and the people buying influence from Obama don't seem to know how to run a business at a profit.
He didn't get fired for trying to bribe the administration. He got fired for not being successful at it.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
I'm sorry, but this simplistic view is laughable. After nearly 200,000 documents and several investigations, no evidence that any political pressure was applied to approve the loan has been found.
None.
So no, it wasn't "team Obama" -- it was career feds, doing what they're supposed to do: review loan applications and decide whether to approve or deny.
Some loan recipients go bust. That's the way it is -- which you'd likely admit, if an honest appraisal of the situation were your main goal.
Kythe
Rejected? Rejected is a bit of a strong word. Try deferred until they met certain conditions like raising further outside capital.
Which they met.
And no, it was not Bush's fault. Nobody is saying that. They are saying that Bush originated the program, and that Solyndra was a fast-track candidate, but fault is distinct from the clarification. When it comes to fault, It was China's. Because China massively subsidized their own solar industry.
However, Solyndra DID build their factory, they DID follow through on what they claimed to do, so you know what? The people who claim it was a fraud and a scam are wrong.
The way to have less corruption is for government to have less power over people. Why bribe someone who can't help (or hurt) you? Smaller government is the answer.
Let's see, counting Solyndra, you have now come up to 4.
You're still 4 short.
Oh wait, Uni-Solar's PARENT company is the one that filed for bankruptcy, not just the Uni-Solar unit. Maybe the whole company had problems, but the unit itself could have been fine. Evergreen got subsidies from the State of Massachusetts, not the Feds. I'd look up SpectraWatt, but I think two out of three is enough disputation to demand that you share more facts to justify your claims.
Wikipedia talks about it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LightSquared
IT does look like they were working through the issues; which mostly involved GPS.
Now, maybe they couldn't completely do it, so he tried to bribe people.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
you're on slashdot. No evidence IS evidence of wrongdoing.
"If political contributions are not intended to sway the people in charge, or to be in charge, what are they for?"
Are you serious? They're contributions made under the US Campaign Finance laws. The legal intent is that they are to be spent on political campaigns to sway voters to support the candidate/party to whom they're given, not to directly influence policy. The latter is bribery.
If a company has an interest in particular areas of government policy, they should be contributing to candidates who best support their position, not bribing the current officeholder in an attempt to directly influence policy.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
"intermodulation distortion"
GPS receivers are built too cheap
So? GPS receivers were built under the assumption that no terrestrial signals would exist near them (which was a safe assumption given the frequency allocations). If the choice comes down to 1) keep GPS as it is (receivers are relatively cheap, small, and readily available) or 2) have the service LS was developing at that frequency, then I'd say GPS is the clear winner. Why have to dispose of decades worth of GPS receivers just for yet another LTE network? Why doesn't LS just use a different frequency? There's nothing essential about this particular frequency except that it was (supposed to be) cheap. Fuck 'em.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
the businessweek link is indeed dead.
on top of that, if you search for the article, you can find it on the businessweek site, but that link is a 404 too, and most other sites linked to that.
anyhow. http://www.dot.gov/affairs/2011/dot16411.html should suffice.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
From reading /. I learned that only those morally bankrupt evil conniving lowdown scumbag Republicans take bribes.
Democrats take campaign donations.
Hope that clears things up.
No brain, no pain.