Rick Perry Rewards Friend with Our Money

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On Dec. 30, the last day of business, Rick Perry released another $4.5 million in taxpayer dollars to Convergen, owned by his friend and donor David Nance. A first payment was made in August. Two items from Laylan Copelin’s Austin American-Statesmen report jumped out at me:

Nance’s application for the money did not follow usual channels for approval. An Austin-area screening board rejected the initial application, and then Nance sidestepped another screening by a board that focuses on life sciences applications. Instead, he took his application to a 17-member statewide advisory board, made up mostly of Perry appointees, and asked Alan Kirchhoff, Perry’s director of economic development at the time, to intervene.

But why should Alan Kirchoff remain a mere director of economic development when the state is passing out free money?
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http://frontburner.dmagazine.com/2011/01/03/rick-perry-rewards-friend-with-our-money/

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1. "worse than the federal government’s investment in GM"

Says your FrontBurner story post at the end. Well at least GM paid off for the federal government and the people of the US. That's not something you will ever say about any of Perry's slush fund payouts to his contributors/donors. In fact it's the complete opposite. They make off like bandits with taxpayer money and nobody but us Dems seem to give a shit! :grr:

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-11-17/gm-ipo-raises-20-billion-selling-common-preferred.html">Business Week 11/17/10
GM IPO Raises $20 Billion Selling Common, Preferred

Nov. 17 (Bloomberg) -- General Motors Co. raised more than $20 billion selling common and preferred stock in an initial public offering that reduced the U.S. government to a minority shareholder.

GM’s owners, including the U.S. Treasury, sold at least $15.8 billion of common shares at $33 each, making it the second-largest U.S. IPO on record after Visa Inc.’s $19.7 billion sale in March 2008, a statement showed. An overallotment option and a sale of preferred shares may boost the total raised to $23.1 billion, more than the $22.1 billion sold by Beijing- based Agricultural Bank of China Ltd. in the largest IPO of common stock in history.

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GM’s IPO “is an important step in the turnaround of the company and for our work to recover taxpayer dollars and exit this investment as soon as practicable,” Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said in a statement. “It is now widely recognized that the taxpayers’ investment not only helped save jobs during the worst economic crisis in a generation but also gave the auto industry a solid foundation on which to build.”

DMN 12/31/10
Governor's office report says Texas owns 16.7 million shares in companies that got tech fund dollars
(snip)
The News reported that more than $16 million from the tech fund had gone to firms with officers or investors who were major Perry contributors. The governor denied that politics influenced decisions on tech fund awards.