George Soros was invested in LightSquared

  For those who are unaware of the burgeoning LightSquared scandal, below is a quick background on the story which I wrote about here:

 A company called  LightSquared which is run by a major Democrat donor,  Philip Falcone, was developing a new technology which the Pentagon feared would interfere with the military’s GPS system and the Congress was beginning to hold hearings about the Pentagon’s worries. A four-star Air Force general, William Shelton, was set to testify in front of the Congress but his prepared testimony was leaked to the White House. The White House was unhappy with the testimony because it was unfavorable to a major Democrat campaign donor, so they asked the general to change his testimony when he appeared before the Congress. In addition to General Shelton, a second man has come forward testifying that the White House also pressured him to make his testimony more favorable to LightSquared.

  With that background out of the way, the plot has thickened because it is now being reported that none other than billionaire Democrat contributor and defacto policy maker George Soros just happens to be invested in the company and had a vested interest that testimony be favorable to LightSquared.

 He generously funds a huge swath of the liberal movement, and has aligned his business interests with Obama’s big-government policies. For instance, Obama green-energy official Cathy Zoi left the Energy Department earlier this year to help run a new green-energy (and thus subsidy-dependent) investment fundSoros was starting.

In the LightSquared affair, Soros shows up repeatedly.

First, Soros is reportedly an investor in LightSquared. The Wall Street Journal reported in November 2010: “In 2009, while some investors were asking for withdrawals, others were lining up to put money into Harbinger. They included Soros Fund Management, which during the past year became a significant new investor, say people familiar with the matter.”

Additionally, the telecom- and tech-related liberal nonprofits Soros funds have gone to bat for LightSquared in its various policy fights. In April 2010, the Public Interest Spectrum Coalition filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission backing Harbinger’s business plans and met with an FCC commissioner on the matter. Four groups that belong to that coalition received six-figure gifts from Soros’ Open Society Institute the year before.

Six months later, those four Soros-funded groups — Free Press, Media Access Project, the New America Foundation, and Public Knowledge — filed a joint comment backing LightSquared in a related regulatory matter.

  So because George Soros was an investor in LightSquared he revved up his non-profit liberal propaganda machine to write glowing accounts of the new startup company. We now have three major Democrat contributors who either own, have an interest in, or are invested in Lightsquared and we also know that the White House pressured at least two people to change their testimony to make it more friendly to the company; are we to believe that the White House did not apply this pressure because of the people who stood to gain from the approval of the new LightSquared technology?

  Personally, I find it hard to believe and I think that this reeks of the very type of crony capitalism that Barack Obama claimed he was opposed to when he was running for president.