This is what liberals do. They waste taxpayers damn money.
DeWitt, N.Y. — In 2014, the development arm of SUNY Polytechnic Institute agreed to build, with $90 million in state money, a factory in DeWitt for an LED light bulb manufacturer.
The company, California-based Soraa, agreed to create 250 full-time, high-tech jobs at Collamer Crossing Business Park and to encourage Soraa contractors and suppliers to create another 170 jobs in Central New York.
In return, the company would be allowed to lease the factory for $1 a month for 10 years.
But the deal with SUNY Poly’s Fort Schuyler Management Corp. did not require Soraa to spend any of its own money to build or equip the factory. And it contained no penalties if the company did not occupy the building or create the promised jobs. The company never even signed a lease.
So when Soraa recently said it no longer needed the factory and pulled out of the deal just as the state was completing construction of the 82,000-square-foot building, there was nothing the state could do about it.
The state was left with a factory, nearly fully equipped, but no company to use it.
One expert said using state money to custom-build a factory for a specific tenant is bad policy.
Obama did the same thing with Solyndra and liberals said nothing. Look at the beautiful facility that Socialist liberals built for nothing.
“You have a situation where the state could potentially wind up with a white elephant,” said John Bacheller, former head of policy and research for the state’s economic development office, Empire State Development. “I think it’s too much risk. When you provide a grant, the risk is limited to the amount of the grant.”
The state has found another company, but taxpayers will have to spend up to another $15 million to properly equip the building for the new company.
This time, state officials say they won’t repeat the mistake made in DeWitt again.
Empire State Development, a state economic development agency, took over the project from SUNY Poly a year ago after the college’s president, Alain Kaloyeros, was arrested on corruption charges and resigned from the university. ESD said a deal with a new tenant will include financial penalties if the company fails to meet its job commitments.
Alain Kaloyeros, seen here during a visit to Syracuse Media Group in 2015, was president of SUNY Polytechnic Institute when the college agreed to build a $90 million factory in DeWitt for Soraa, a California-based LED lighting manufacturer. He resigned in 2016 after he was arrested on corruption charges. (Ellen M. Blalock | syracuse.com)
Jason Conwall, a spokesman for ESD, said the penalties, or “clawbacks,” will be included in a grant disbursement agreement with NexGen Power Systems, a California start-up. ESD’s board of directors voted Dec. 21 to approve a grant of up to $15 million to NexGen for tooling and equipment for the factory.
In return, the company has pledged to create 290 full-time, high-tech jobs for the production of semiconductors at the facility and agreed to invest $40 million of its own money into the building. It will pay rent of $1 the first year and increasing amounts up to full market value in the 10th year, ESD officials said.
Conwall said the grant will be contingent on the company meeting its job commitments. Details of the grant’s terms will not be available until the grant disbursement agreement is executed later this month, but they will follow ESD’s standard practice of requiring companies to return a grant, or portions of it, if they fail to meet hiring milestones, he said.
ESD’s agreements generally require a company to meet a certain minimum amount of their job commitments within a specified period or be required to return a grant. In some cases, a company is required to return only a portion of the money if it falls just a little short of its hiring commitments.
ESD officials said no such “clawbacks” were put into SUNY Poly’s deal with Soraa because none of the $90 million in state grants used to build the factory went directly to Soraa. All of the money went into the building, which is still owned by the state, so there was no money to take back from the company, they said.
Former state budget director Robert Megna, who was appointed president of the non-profit Fort Schuyler Management Corp. in February 2017 following Kaloyeros’s departure, said the fact that Fort Schuyler retained ownership of the building was a good thing.
“While we can’t speak to the reasoning behind all the terms of the agreement with Soraa, which were made by the previous leadership, the facility was constructed to accommodate Soraa’s gallium nitride lighting business and no funding was provided to Soraa,” he said in a statement.
“All state funds were provided to the not-for-profit Fort Schuyler Management Corporation, and the building and the equipment are all owned by FSMC on behalf of New York State,” he said. “This model enabled the state to quickly adjust to changes in a very dynamic industry and make the facility available to NexGen for its production of gallium nitride semiconductor devices, modules and systems.”
Gov. Andrew Cuomo speaks at the Central New York Hub for Emerging Nano Technologies in DeWitt on Oct. 29, 2015, during his announcement LED lighting manufacturer Soraa would operate a state-built, $90 million factory in DeWitt. (Stephen D. Cannerelli | syracuse.com)
Conwall said Empire State Development takes a much different approach. It provides grants to assist companies with the cost of building facilities in the state, but it does not go the riskier route of building entire factories for them, he said.
He said ESD was fortunate to have found a new tenant to go into the DeWitt building. NexGen plans to make semiconductor power devices from gallium nitride, the same material that Soraa uses to make LED lighting. That means that NexGen can use much of the equipment already installed in the factory.
“It worked out because we owned the facility and found another tenant quickly that aligned really well,” the ESD spokesman said.
Though ESD has agreed to provide up to $15 million to NexGen for the purchase of tools and equipment, some of the $7 million not yet spent from the original $90 million in grants for the building could be used toward that $15 million commitment, he said. (The state had spent about $83 million of the $90 million on the factory and equipment by the time Soraa pulled out, officials said.)
NexGen was formed in California last year to make semiconductors for the electronics industry. It does not yet manufacture anything. The DeWitt facility will be its first manufacturing operation.
Dinesh Ramanathan, NexGen’s president and CEO and one of its founders, also was CEO of Avogy Inc., a Silicon Valley start-up that planned to make power sources for electronic devices such as computers.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced in 2016 that Avogy had committed to moving from California to a state-owned cleanroom facility in Rochester that the state agreed to upgrade with a $35 million investment of state money. The state never made the investment, however, and Avogy never made the move.
Avogy went out of business later in 2016. NexGen bought its technology and is starting up with new money from investors, according to Ramanathan.
NexGen has not publicly disclosed who its investors are.
Prior to Avogy, Ramanathan served as the executive vice president at Cypress Semiconductor for almost nine years, where he managed the company’s Programmable Systems Division and its Data Communications Division, according to NexGen’s website.
Prior to joining Cypress, Ramanathan held senior marketing and engineering positions at Raza Microelectronics; Raza Foundries, described as an “incubating venture capital company”; and Forte Design Systems, an electronic design automation company, according to the website.
ESD officials said they are confident that NexGen will succeed in DeWitt.
“NexGen is led by a management team and investors with a proven record and decades of combined experience building and operating high-tech businesses,” Empire State Development President, CEO and Commissioner Howard Zemsky said in a statement. “This gives us the confidence that the company will meet its commitment to bring hundreds of new, good-paying jobs to Central New York.”
The state may be fortunate in this case if NexGen is able to use the factory constructed for Soraa. But custom-built factories can be hard to sell or lease if a tenant walks away, Bacheller said.
The state should always require companies to invest more money into a project than the state does so they have a strong motivation to stick around and make the development work, he said.
“You always want the company to have skin in the game,” he said.
He said SUNY Poly may also have made a mistake constructing a factory for an LED light bulb maker, given the fact that LED light bulb production is increasingly dominated by low-cost Chinese manufacturers who have brought the price of LED bulbs almost down to that of incandescents.
“Unless you’re in a niche that the Chinese aren’t in, it’s the kind of business that is very risky,” he said.
NexGen says its semiconductor devices can be used in a wide array of applications such as LED power supplies, solar inverters, data centers and automotive applications.
The company will be getting the use of a building with up to $105 million in state money invested in it. NexGen’s capital investment will be far less by comparison – $40 million.
Bacheller said the state appears to be taking a substantial risk with NexGen, given that the company is a start-up with no manufacturing or sales track record of its own. However, he said Empire State Development may be making the best deal it could after inheriting a bad situation from SUNY Poly.
“They’ve already got a building up and they’re stuck with it,” he said.
Soraa walks away from $90M factory that NY built; $15M more brings new tenant
Soraa said they would not come without “tens of millions” in additional money from NY state.
This is how muslims act. These are the moderates muslims.
The government of Berlin has decided to create women-only “safe spaces” on New Year’s Eve in order to prevent potential migrant sex attacks that have plagued New Year’s celebrations since 2015.
In order to avoid a repeat of the Cologne sex attacks, the Berlin government announced the creation of women-only spaces in the area near the Brandenburg Gate for New Year’s Eve. The “safety zone” will be, according to organisers, a space for women to go who may have been harassed or feel uncomfortable, and will be staffed by members of the Red Cross, Kronen Zeitungreports.
Hundreds of thousands of party-goers are expected to attend the celebrations in Berlin and authorities say that security will be heightened to the point where backpacks, alcohol and other items will be totally prohibited.
Last year Berlin, along with several other major German cities, saw a number of sex attacks occur on New Year’s Eve.
Event spokeswoman Anja Marx toldReuters, “We are doing this for the first time. The police requested it after they did it at the Munich Oktoberfest this year and it worked out well.” She also noted that trained psychological personnel would also be available on site.
According to Marx, the security costs for the event have reached well over 100,000 euros.
Along with an increased police presence of both uniformed and plainclothes officers, 1,400 firefighters and volunteers will be on hand to put out any potential fires caused by fireworks. Last year firefighters were forced to respond to more than 400 fires.
Other cities in Germany have also ramped up their security, like Hamburg, where police have deployed new camera technology to better identify suspects involved in crimes.
In Cologne, where in 2015 hundreds of sex attacks were reported, city officials have been criticised for handing out anti-rape wristbands as part a of a “respect” campaign to discourage further attacks.
Last year the number of attacks in Cologne greatly decreased but police were slammed by some for allegedly racially profiling North African migrants in order to tackle the problem.
Many victims from 2015 identified migrants as being behind the vast majority of the sex attacks that occurred that year.
Noreen Lagahri, she is a Muslim and two weeks ago she was arrested for planning to bomb a Church in Pakistan. She confessed that she planned to do suicide attack on the Church and she was working for Al Qaeda and Taliban. But now she has been released from prison by the Pakistani government because they say that her life will be ruined if she stays in jail so she will now continue her studies.
This woman is a Christian and Pakistan and the Islamic Terrorist want her killed.
Asia Bibi (Asiya Noreen Bibi), a Christian sister who was arrested on false charges of blasphemy. She has been in jail for 9 years and is facing death penalty for a crime she didn’t even commit just because she is a Christian. The western world still do not understand that Christians in Pakistan are facing worst kind of persecution and genocide.
Thank Obama For This Mess and Don’t For Get Nikki Was Excited To Meet Barry.
Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, noted this week that there is mounting evidence showing that Iran is indeed arming Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen in violation of the U.N. resolution that codifies the nuclear deal between the Islamic Republic and world powers into international law.
During a U.N. Security Council meeting on Tuesday, Haley identified the evidence as Iranian-manufactured anti-tank guided missiles, a drone known as a kamikaze unmanned aerial vehicle and SHARK-33 explosive boat material.
“All of these weapons, recovered from attacks and planned attacks on a G20 country [Saudi Arabia], were made by Iranian weapons industries tied to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps,” said the U.S. ambassador.
“We have an opportunity to confront the Iranian regime for its actions that are clearly in violation of Security Council resolutions,” she added. “The international community must demonstrate that we are committed to ensuring accountability for the full spectrum of Iran’s malign behavior.”
Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran are regional rivals fighting a proxy war in Yemen.
“This is the Secretary-General’s fourth report on the Iranian regime’s lack of full compliance with Resolution 2231,” also said Haley, referring to the U.N. resolution that put the nuclear deal into international law form. “And it is the most damning report yet. This report makes the case that Iran is illegally transferring weapons.”
In its fourth and most recent report on the issue, U.N. Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres cautions that Iran may be ignoring the international body’s call to stop developing ballistic missiles, adding that the United Nations is probing the Islamic Republic’s suspected transfer of weapons to Houthis in Yemen.
Jeffrey Feltman, the U.N. undersecretary-general for political affairs, highlighted steps the international body can take to pressure Iran into abiding by the nuclear pact, notes CBS News.
“Based on the violations of the Secretary-General’s report, there are a few options that we can use to put pressure on Iran to adjust their behavior: The Security Council could strengthen the provisions of Resolution 2231; We could adopt a new resolution that makes clear that Iran is prohibited from all activities related to ballistic missiles,” proclaimed Feltman.
In October, U.S. President Donald Trump refused to re-certify Iran’s compliance to the controversial nuclear agreement reached by the Islamic Republic and world powers led by the previous U.S. administration in July 2015.
Haley has accused Iran of violating the terms of the agreement, recently revealing what she described as “irrefutable evidence” that the Islamic Republic broke the rules by providing military assistance to the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
In his most recent report, the U.N. secretary-general “refers to debris from missiles fired by Houthi militants from Yemen into Saudi Arabia in July and November of this year … The inventory at the warehouse in Washington removes any shred of doubt that the missiles are from Iran.”
During a press conference in Washington, DC, last week, Haley presented what she described as recovered pieces of an Iranian-made Houthi missile fired from Yemen into Saudi Arabia in November.
At least since the Houthi takeover of the Yemeni capital Sanaa in late 2014, U.S. and Saudi Arabia officials have asserted that Iran has been arming the Shiite rebels.
In March 2015, the Saudis formed a U.S.-assisted coalition to combat the Houthi threat in neighboring Yemen and restore the internationally-recognized government of Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi.
The Houthis in Yemen have repeatedly fired missiles allegedly built by Iran across the border into Saudi Arabia.
Houthis have also targeted the U.S. Navy in international waters off the coast of Yemen with missiles that allegedly originated in Iran.
Tehran has long denied the assertions that it is providing military support to the Houthis.
Bob Mueller Reassigned Peter Strzok: These Bastards Are Corrupt
Special counsel Robert Mueller removed a veteran FBI agent from his team amid an investigation into the agent potentially sending anti-Trump text messages, according to new reports on Saturday.
Three people close to the matter told The New York Times that Mueller reassigned Peter Strzok from the team investigating Russia’s election meddling to the FBI’s human resources department.
Strzok is a veteran FBI investigator who previously worked on the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of State, as well as the investigation into potential connections between President Trump’s campaign and Russian officials.
The Times reported that Strzok was removed from Mueller’s team after the Department of Justice’s inspector general launched an investigation into text messages sent by the agent that could appear to contain anti-Trump views.
The agent reportedly exchanged text messages with FBI lawyer Lisa Page, whom he was dating, during the campaign and Clinton investigation that appeared to support the Democratic presidential candidate, people with knowledge of the matter told The Washington Post.
The Post could not reach Strzok or Page.
“Immediately upon learning of the allegations, the Special Counsel’s Office removed Peter Strzok from the investigation,” Mueller spokesman Peter Carr told The Hill. “Lisa Page completed her brief detail and had returned to the FBI weeks before our office was aware of the allegations.”
The news comes just one day after Mueller’s team charged former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn with lying to FBI agents. Flynn pleaded guilty to the charge.
