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BigLouie · 06-18-2011, 10:58 AM

While the funding for public education is being cut seriously here is a perfect example of one of Rick Perry's pal getting free money from the state. Note this clown only had to put up $1,000 of his own money to get 4.5 million. Hey where can I get deals like that. Nothing like a little fraud on your application is it.

UPDATE 11:40 a.m.: Two of Convergen Lifesciences three directors, who were listed on the company’s application for a $4.5 million state grant, say they have never served on the board.
Sha’Chelle Manning said she was invited to join the company’s board but she never participated because of other business and family obligations. Likewise, Thomas Kowalski said he would have become a director at the first board meeting that he attended, “but I have not been to a board meeting, and I’m not a director.”
“I really don’t know anything that’s going on with the company because I haven’t participated,” he said.
That would leave only David Nance, a company founder, as a director, according to the 2009 grant application.
It’s unclear whether Nance has added other board members to the company
UPDATE 11 a.m.: The state, which gave Convergen Lifesciences half of the $4.5 million in August, paid the second half of the grant on Tuesday, the day before the company released its application and other documents.
Earlier:
The founders of Convergen Lifesciences Inc. had invested $1,000 of their own money when they asked the state of Texas to give them $4.5 million to help get a new lung cancer-fighting drug closer to market, according to documents the Austin American-Statesman obtained Wednesday.
Convergen’s co-founder, Austin businessman David Nance, a friend and political contributor to Gov. Rick Perry, sued the state in January to block the release of his company’s grant application to the Texas Emerging Technology Fund and other documents that Attorney General Greg Abbott deemed were public information.
The Statesman, which had requested the documents under the Texas Public Information Act, joined the lawsuit and obtained the documents as part of a settlement.
The state paid Convergen half of the $4.5 million last August, when Perry and legislative leaders awarded the grant. The second half of the payment was made Tuesday, the day before Convergen agreed to release its grant application and other documents.
Convergen’s application touts Nance as a business and biotechnological leader without mentioning the bankruptcy of Introgen Therapeutics Inc., where he was CEO. Introgen failed in 2008 after the Food and Drug Administration denied its application to market a cancer-fighting therapy.