Harbinger Capital Partners LLC hedge fund just acknowledged its highly political founder Phillip Falcone and other key executives have received “Wells Notices”. Such communications are normally sent by the Securities & Exchange Commission to a target for fraud just before the Justice Department launches a civil and or criminal case. Although the Wells Notice appears to relate to allegations that Mr. Falcone used his hedge fund customers cash as his personal slush fund; an indictment of Mr. Falcone will also inflame the swirling crony capital investigation by the Congress of White House pay-to-play donations in support of a $14 billion scheme to siphon off part of the U.S. military and civilian Global Positioning Satellite (GPS)’s dedicated wireless bandwidth by a start-up company Mr. Falcone controls, called LightSquared.

LightSquared’s business model appeared to be the creation of an entirely new “4G” internet wireless network from the fringe safety zone bandwidth dedicated to the secure military and civilian GPS. Mr. Falcone, his wife Lisa Falcone, and LightSquared Chief Executive Officer Sanjiv Ahuja each made $30,400 political contribution to Democratic campaign organizations in 2010 to allegedly influence Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to allow the project to proceed under increasingly relaxed standards according to Congressional sources. A letter from Republican House members referred to e-mails between LightSquared representatives and White House officials about attendance at fundraisers for President Barack Obama that coincide with LightSquared contacts: “While some may call it a coincidence, we remain skeptical.”

LightSquared’s FCC operating license had originally included strict provisions intended to ensure the network would be primarily a satellite-based system, with terrestrial components serving as a backup when users were not able to link with a satellite. But these provisions were softened via several license modifications; including the FCC granting LightSquared permission to sell terrestrial-only handsets as a concession to help the company raise billions in financing.

The FCC had ordered testing and Congressional committees on science, armed services and transportation held hearings to determine if the LightSquared plans to offer wireless Internet services to 260 million people would cause harmful interference to GPS operations. In September Congressional investigators asked Jacob Lew, director the Office of Management and Budget and John Holdren, director of the Office of Science & Technology Policy for records of all contacts by LightSquared or its affiliates with staff of the agencies.

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Greece is about to default on its public debt or ruin the European Union, or both. The Greeks are destroying themselves today much as they did during the Peloponnesian War. This looks like the inevitable result of the welfare statism and entitlement mentality that is destroying the entire Western world. We see similar forces of anarchy at work in the “Occupy” movements in American cities.

An important factor in these movements is the fundamentally anarcho-syndicalist tenor of the union movement, which demands an ever greater share of national income. Public-sector unions like the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees have been prominent in the “occupy” movement. Wisconsin AFSCME proudly sent pizzas “in solidarity” with the Wall Street occupiers.

Rutgers University labor economist Leo Troy calls public-sector unionism “the new socialism.” The old socialism was based on state ownership of the means of production. The new socialism involves the transfer of an ever greater share of the economy to the public sector. Government at all levels took about 5% of GDP a century ago and 13% on the eve of the Great Depression. The New Deal increased the proportion to one-third by 1960. We are in the forty percent range now, and the full nationalization of health care will put us over half.

Unions have been a primary force in the expansion of state power. Even the reputedly “conservative” American Federation of Labor called for “the abolition of the wage system.” A.F.L. President Samuel Gompers put organized labor’s goal as simply “more” — exactly what Johnny Rocco, the Al Capone-like figure portrayed by Edward G. Robinson in the 1939 film “Key Largo,” explained as his ultimate end. The New Deal’s expansion of state power was based principally on private-sector unionism that began with the “occupy Flint” sit-down strikes of 1936.

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The St. Cloud Regional Airport is banking on a recently announced $750,000 federal grant to land an airline at the airport that’s been virtually deserted since Delta terminated service in and out of St. Cloud in late 2009. Despite a $5 million makeover of the terminal two years ago, St. Cloud’s airport has mostly sat idle as the city desperately seeks new commercial airline partners. St. Cloud received $750,000 in federal stimulus funding to assist with a portion of the renovation, but the project has thus far amounted to a passenger boarding bridge to nowhere.

The latest federal subsidy comes under the little-known Small Community Air Service Development Program (SCASDP), which provides temporary help to small airports to attract and maintain local air service through marketing and revenue guarantees. St. Cloud officials said the taxpayer gift would go a long way toward courting a new carrier, mostly by offsetting the financial risks involved with getting new service off the ground. In other words, the federal government is subsidizing the airport so the airport can subsidize the airlines. “One hundred percent of it will go towards what we call a minimum revenue guarantee. It’s really putting a pot of money somewhere set aside that in the event that airline loses money or has some start up costs or whatever it might be that they’re able to pull from that and make themselves whole,” airport director Bill Towle told the St. Cloud Times.

While increasing St. Cloud’s chances of attracting air service, analysis by the Freedom Foundation of Minnesota suggests the program fails to deliver for communities more often than not. In fact, a federal audit found that half of SCASDP grants failed to meet their objectives or failed to continue to provide air service capable of competing in the marketplace after the subsidies dried up.

Federal auditors have consistently raised questions about the overall lack of effectiveness of the $20 million per year FAA program. An Office of Inspector General 2008 audit revealed that just 30 percent of subsidy recipients were successful in achieving and sustaining their desired results for at least one year. The 40-page report concluded that “70 percent of the grants in our review failed to fully achieve their objectives. Specifically, 50 percent of the grants were unable to achieve any of their articulated grant objectives or were unable to sustain grant benefits beyond the grant horizon.”

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The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has basically been shut down thanks to the Senate Democrats addition to pork. 4,000 FAA employees have been furloughed until further notice. 70,000 construction workers must now sit on their hands as all airport construction has halted. And the federal government is loosing $200million a week in airline ticket taxes because they are not authorized to legally collect the tax.

What has led to this massive shut down? Senate Democrats refusal to curb a wasteful government subsidy of $200 million known as the Essential Air Service (EAS) program.

As of last Friday, the FAA has lost its authorization to spend money and levy fees because Congress couldn’t come to an agreement on a transportation bill. House Republicans are currently purposing a temporary transportation bill to last through September allowing time for the two parties to come together on a larger agreement. Included in the bill is a provision that would curb the EAS program.

The EAS program was originally created in 1978 as a subsidy to help out small and rural airports as the government stepped back from regulating routes and fares. The program was intended to last 10 years. Over three decades later, the program is still in existence serving over 140 airports; its budget keeps exploding and now the program functions only to subsidize routes that would have been abandoned year ago.

The EAS program subsidizes a rural airport in Lewistown, Montana. In 2007, that airport reported that it averaged .6 passengers per flight. Last year, an EAS route between Atlanta and Macon made many flights without a single passenger on board, which resulted in an annual per-passenger subsidy of $464 to keep that route running. And in Kansas, EAS pays three airports in Dodge City, Garden City and Liberal to remain open. All are within 75 miles of each other.

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House Republicans have spent the last few months trying to put an end to a sneaky union move that might mean American workers lose their say in whether their shop forms a union. House Republicans have managed to head off the National Mediation Board by inserting a provision vetoing their efforts in a bill that would extend funding for the FAA. Now that this mission has come to a critical juncture, and the cooperation of House Republicans is absolutely critical to preserving workers choice (and, additionally, keeping government spending in check).

The National Mediation Board, an Obama crony-filled body connected tenuously to the AFL-CIO recently overturned decades of precedent when it determined that workers who chose not to participate – or could not participate – in an election to form a union did not receive a voice in the election’s outcome. Previously, a majority of all workers in a shop were required to form a union; if a worker was absent for a vote to form a union, that worker was counted as a “no” vote, thus imperiling union creation. Not content with results of recent elections, the NMB decided that unions could be formed with merely a majority of present workers, making forming a union much, much easier.

Back in April, the House GOP passed an FAA reauthorizatin bill that would have killed the NMB decision, restored workers choice, reduced wasteful government spending, cut back on restrictive airline industry regulations, and provided the FAA with the resources necessary to improve flight control and air traffic technology, all without levvying any new taxes or fees on American taxpayers. Of course, as with many bills that do what Americans want, Democrats vociferously opposed the measure in the Senate and passed their own bill with none of the benefits of the House bill.

Now, that bill is headed to a joint session, and suddenly the GOP has an unprecedented, rare opportunity.

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It’s been established that when the Obama administration can’t get part of its agenda legislated; they simply turn around and push it through the web-like bureaucracy at their disposal. Last year’s failed pro-union legislation was no exception; when ‘card check’ met a dead end in Congress, obscure government agencies like the National Mediation Board (NMB) put rules in place to ensure that unionizing elections swung in the unions’ favor anyway.

The NMB was created by that union-hating, capitalist pig Franklin Delano Roosevelt to oversee union elections in the air and rail industries. Under Obama, the board made its first pro-active rule in over 75 years of existence, changing the way union votes are counted to enable an entire workforce to be forced to unionize by a minority of votes.

The House has an opportunity to pass legislation that will turn back the clock on the administration’s overstepping of its boundaries, and send a strong “game over” message to the union bosses counting on the Democrats to line their pockets. Namely, the FAA Reauthorization and Reform Act, which includes a provision to overturn the NMB’s new rule and re-instate the system that has worked for decades.

The airline workers want this, and with a Republican majority in the House it should be a sure thing, right? Well, it’s not that easy. A handful of House Republicans, largely in union-heavy districts, are clearly more concerned with their re-election than with the mandate of fiscal responsibility and smaller government that put them in power in the first place.

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On Tuesday night, March 22^nd, two planes landed at Washington, DC’s Reagan National airport (DCA) without proper tower clearance.  As it happened, the air traffic controller, a career-veteran supervisor with decades of experience, had fallen asleep.  Despite radio hails and phone calls, the controller couldn’t be roused from his slumber, and the planes landed (without incident).

Ironically, earlier that day, NATCA, the air traffic controllers’ union, had started its annual safety conference.  Their reaction was predictable:  what is needed in the tower are more (presumably unionized) employees—someone whose job would be, one supposes, to keep the other person awake for the half-dozen flights that land at DCA between midnight and 6am.

If keeping tower staff awake is our primary concern, a $10 alarm clock, set to go off at regular intervals, would suffice just fine in this regard, and we can forego the tens of thousands of dollars a year in salary and benefits for the second man.  We could also co-locate other non-tower flight operations to the tower for the overnight shift.  But to focus on the number of overnight controllers or why people are falling asleep on the job ignores the bigger, and more important, picture.  This event underscores a deeper problem—one of security, and not safety.

In the days following this incident, a recording surfaced of a fellow air traffic controller operating in Warrenton, VA and in regular communication with the flights into DCA.  In that recording, Warrenton blithely tells the pilots of the plane that he has tried calling the tower at DCA to no avail.  And that’s it.

Considering that the airspace surrounding DCA is considered to have the highest security priority in the nation, encompassing as it does the White House, the Capitol, the Pentagon, the CIA, and just about every other essential federal agency.  This is the reason DCA was shut down immediately following the September 11^th attacks, and why the airspace remains among the tightest restrictions in the nation.

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No Commercial Flights, But Airport Still Hoping to Land More Federal Funds

St. Cloud Regional Airport (STC) touts lots of amenities on its website—a café, ATM, free wi-fi, free parking and a $5 million completely renovated terminal whose capacity went up dramatically from 30 to 200 travelers. There’s also a new $750,000 passenger boarding bridge secured with federal stimulus funds to keep travelers out of the elements while catching a flight.  One asset, however, the newly renovated airport notably lacks—commercial flights and passengers.

“We’re here to serve the public and serve them well and have adequate facilities,” Bill Towle, airport director, told the Freedom Foundation of Minnesota. “I would say the airport is a utility and we need adequate facilities to serve the public.”

Currently, an average of about one charter flight a month with 130 or so passengers uses the eerily empty 9,000 square foot glass-fronted facility.  Potential passengers checking the airport’s website are notified there’s “no commercial air service” available. Delta Connection flights between St. Cloud and Minneapolis were grounded at the end of 2009 due to weak customer demand. Both national rental car agencies pulled out of their airport offices months ago.

By then, it was too late. $3.125 million in federal aviation grants from user fees on fuel and tickets, $1.131 million in state airport funds, and $767,000 in local sales taxes were already spent on what’s in danger of becoming a terminal project in more ways than one.

“One thing we did not see is that Delta was going to pull out of here.  That was an absolute shock,” Towle said. ”We might not have done this improvement if we knew they were going to be gone.”

Soon the six Transportation Security Administration (TSA) baggage screeners based in St. Cloud will also depart, along with their high-tech, high-cost equipment. Assigned to other airports in the region for several months, the screeners have been offered jobs elsewhere.

“There’s no commercial flights, so there’s no need for screening,” said Luis Casanova, TSA spokesman.  “We’re pulling our screeners out in November and at some point, the equipment will be moved, too.”

Not so long ago, federal, state, and local transportation planners envisioned the St. Cloud facility as a tier-two “reliever airport” to ease air traffic congestion into Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, setting in motion the $5 million terminal upgrade and other spending for infrastructure improvements.

Officials forecast 25,000 or more commercial passengers would fly through STC in 2010 with a steady increase in traffic in future years, according to the project’s 2006 master plan.  Without Delta, however, about 1,000 passengers have boarded a handful of Sun Country charter flights to a Nevada casino resort this year.

“We got all those numbers approved by the FAA. The likely growth if we continued even as a status quo put us at 26-27,000 enplanements a year,” Towle said.

The controversy refocuses attention on the FAA’s Airport Improvement Program, which some critics say too often results in misplaced priorities and aviation funding. In the last decade, St. Cloud Regional Airport has received more than $24 million in FAA airport improvement grants, including funding for the terminal project, according to OMB Watch, an online database that tracks government spending.  Another national watchdog group indicates the St. Cloud airport received clearance for the terminal expansion despite the project’s low ranking of 35 out of 100 on the FAA’s own priority ratings scale.  The FAA states the rating “is the first evaluation factor and serves to categorize airport development in accordance with agency goals and objectives.”

Meantime, St. Cloud officials have launched an unusual campaign to attract another carrier, approaching local businesses for travel pledges in hopes of demonstrating significant local demand for air travel. With results falling short of the goal so far, the effort may depend on whether the city proves successful in obtaining a more familiar revenue stream–another $500,000 federal grant now under consideration at the FAA.

“Some of the ways we’d use that grant money would be to offset costs from start up of service,” Towle said.  “Additionally, if there’s any losses at the beginning maybe we could help reduce the cost of those losses…and maybe also help with marketing.”

Despite a shortage of commercial flights out of STC, there’s no shortage in requests for federal dollars.  Senator Al Franken’s website lists a $500,000 earmark request for improved runway lighting for the St. Cloud Regional Airport, while Senator Amy Klobuchar’s website lists a $1,000,000 earmark request for the same project.

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Federal stimulus plan’s spending on roads and bridges has had no effect on unemployment, research finds; “Spend a lot or spend nothing at all, it didn’t matter,” the analysis showed as “local unemployment rates rose and fell regardless of how much stimulus money Washington poured out for transportation”

· “It beats being at work!” Federal Aviation Administration spent $5 million to send 3, 600 managers to a conference in Atlanta that some say was little more than an excuse to throw a three-week-long party

· Congress spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to send politicians and staff on a junket to the global warming summit that failed to reach a climate agreement

· “Stealth” company whose address appears to be an empty office to receive $9.2 million federal grant

· The Postal Service’s top marketing executive directed more than $1.3 million in sole-source contracts to former business associates; As a result, some postal employees are sitting idle because the consultants are doing what previously were their jobs

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Senator Byrd earmarks $5 million in Defense funds for a company that no longer exists

House committee earmarks $103 million of Defense funds to contractors who employ the congressmen’s former staffers-turned-lobbyists

National Science Foundation studies the bug splatter on the front bumper of a moving vehicle

National Historic Site in Maryland created by a congressional earmark costs $638,000 a year and has fewer visitors than some Alaskan parks that can’t even be reached by road

New USDA research agency already wants more money

Like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Federal Housing Administration might need a federal bailout

Most Interior Department law enforcement programs can not accurately account for the firearms under their control and some of their guns are vulnerable to theft

Bureau of Land Management employees too cozy with special interest groups and lobbyists, according to the Inspector General

A new computer system key to the nation’s air traffic control system has already run into problems, raising doubts about whether it can be operational when the current computers must be replaced

California has paid more than $8 million in late-payment penalties over the last two years because Sacramento did not pay the bills when they were owed