Nice to have friends in high places.

Daily Caller:

The Daily Caller has obtained documents, emails and communications showing how President Barack Obama's Federal Communications Commission demolished wireless broadband company LightSquared's competition through a pattern of regulatory decisions apparently aimed at establishing an "open-access" Internet in the United States.

The FCC successfully green-lighted LightSquared's corporate formation in 2009 by allowing Wall Street hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners to purchase majority ownership in satellite company SkyTerra. A major obstacle that still remained in LightSquared's way was competitor GlobalStar.

GlobalStar had a similar operation to the one LightSquared was building at the time. A major difference, though, was GlobalStar's already-orbiting satellites, and the broadband Internet access it was already providing to Americans in rural areas of the country.

GlobalStar leased terrestrial spectrum to Open Range Communications, a company that provided broadband Internet access to customers in underserved parts of rural America. Open Range's business model depended on a 2008 loan, worth $264 million, from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service.

In 2008 the FCC gave GlobalStar a 16-month waiver from so-called "gating" rules, which required it to guarantee that its satellite service would be continuously available everywhere it offered broadband service, and also required it to maintain spare satellites in case of an urgent need. GlobalStar had said the issues its system faced would be fixed when it could launch 24 new satellites, which it planned to do.

Unfortunately for GlobalStar, circumstances beyond their control forced them to miss the deadline and that's when the FCC, the Department of Agriculture, and the White House all began to maneuver GlobalStar into bankruptcy.

It is a complicated story so read the entire article at the DC. Crony capitalism at its most blatant.