Exactly what is wrong with the big business-Washington relationship:

Wireless startup LightSquared has laid off nearly half of its workforce and filed for bankruptcy, but isn’t parting with its extensive network of Washington lobbyists.

Philip Falcone and his investment firm, Harbinger Capital Partners, invested billions of dollars in LightSquared’s plan to build a high-speed wireless network that would have served more than 260 million people, but federal regulators denied it permission to launch in February over concerns that it would interfere with GPS devices…

Last quarter, at least 14 different firms lobbied for LightSquared, according to disclosure forms. The company spent more than $2.8 million on lobbying in 2011, according to records, roughly quadrupling 2010’s total of nearly $700,000.

LightSquared developed a technology that tends (in tests) to interfere with GPS.  Rather than fix it, why not just find friends in high places?

There is no right to success in business.

viaBankrupt wireless firm LightSquared cuts employees, but not lobbyists, by Brendan Sasso and Kevin Bogardus at Hillicon Valley.