Three scandals and more to come. I guess when you use Chicago tacits this is to be expected.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09/16/scandals-undercut-obama-re-election-message/First there was Fast and Furious, then there was Solyndra and now there is LightSquared -- three high-level scandals that involve allegations of cover-ups inside the Obama administration.
The latest one involves confidential testimony from Gen. William Shelton, head of the Air Force’s Space Command, whom congressional sources say told a House Armed Services subcommittee that he was pressured to change his prepared remarks in a way that would benefit a major Democratic donor.
Philip Falcone is one of the big backers of LightSquared, a telecommunications company that wants to develop a nationwide satellite phone network. Falcone is a billionaire hedge-fund manager who is known as “the Midas of misery” for his skills at exploiting economic failure. He is also a big political campaign contributor, usually to Democrats.
His LightSquared venture requires federal authorization because of concerns that it would interfere with the satellite-driven GPS system that guides the U.S. military. Shelton reportedly said he was pressured to change his conclusion that the LightSquared plan was too risky. If the plan is nixed, Falcone and his partners stand to lose big.
A motive for trying to get Shelton to shade his testimony might also be found in the fact that the Obama administration has long been pushing for the idea of a national wireless broadband system, the very thing that Falcone and Co. are selling. If the generals say no to LightSquared it could permanently derail the pet project. But the involvement of a Democratic donor casts the pall of cronyism on the whole mess.
Only three entities review a general’s prepared testimony: Department of Defense, the White House, and the Office Management and Budget, so Shelton’s accusation is potent stuff.
This comes as new emails reveal that White House officials who were supposed to be vetting failed solar panel maker Solyndra, also run by a major Democratic donor, for a half-billion-dollar subsidized loan were very much interested in “optics” and political ramifications of their decisions.
Politics were at play when the White House revived the idea that had been tabled during the Bush administration and at play again as Obama officials fretted over how to manage the firm’s collapse in the least damaging way for the president’s re-election.
As evidence piles up in the Solyndra case, new details continue to emerge on the Fast and Furious probe that show a much larger scale for the Justice Department’s botched gunrunning sting, which encouraged illegal gun trafficking to drug gangs and then lost track of the weapons.
