Posted on 04/02/2017 8:38:37 AM PDT by MarvinStinson
On Thursday, the New York Times published an article on a vote in the Senate that was headlined: “Senate Lets States Defund Clinics That Perform Abortions.”
The article, by Jennifer Steinhauer, bitterly described how a measure under the Congressional Review Act passed the Senate, with a tie-breaking vote by Vice President Mike Pence.
A reader pointed out that a correction in yesterday’s Times admitted that the reporter (and any editor who may have read the piece prior to publication) lack a high-school level knowledge of the Constitution:
Correction: March 30, 2017
"An earlier version of this article misstated the circumstances in which the vice president of the United States can cast a vote in the Senate. He can vote only to break a tie, not to vote on significant policy measures that are short 60 votes."
The original version of the article reveals multiple levels of ignorance. Apart from not knowing the Vice President’s constitutional role in the Senate, did the reporter really believe that the Constitution includes a reference to “significant policy measures” on which the Vice President can vote? And she apparently thought that the Senate’s current filibuster rule is embedded in the Constitution.
This is reminiscent of the occasion when the Times bungled the process for amending the Constitution, and then couldn’t even get it right in its subsequent correction.
But that’s not all! The Times also grossly mischaracterizes the Congressional Review Act, the statute under which yesterday’s vote took place:
"The measure fell under a somewhat obscure and, until recently, rarely used Congressional Review Act that allows a new Congress to undo actions of the old Congress during the first few months of the year."
Again, the Times’s ignorance is appalling. The Congressional Review Act has nothing to do with “undo[ing] actions of the old Congress.” (A current Congress can always undo the actions of any past Congress, if it has the votes and the president’s signature.) Rather, the CRA provides a procedure whereby Congress can disapprove and nullify regulatory rules issued by federal agencies. It is incredible that the Times employs a reporter who writes for its “Politics” section and does not know this.
The reporter’s error is all the more egregious, since her own article quotes Senator Joni Ernst, who correctly stated the nature of the vote:
“It should be the right of our states to allocate sub-grants under the Title X program in the way that best fits the needs of the people living there,” she said. “Unfortunately, like many other rules issued during the Obama administration, this rule attempted to empower federal bureaucrats in Washington and silence our states.”
This second error has not yet been corrected by the Times.
No wonder, as President Trump likes to say, the New York Times is a failing newspaper!
They can get things right, they just choose not to because they decided a long time ago that they didn’t wish to be real reporters anymore- They decided that the deceitful liberal agenda was more important than reporting the news
Just more Fake News.
The truth doesn’t matter to the MSM—Only the Leftist narrative does.
I don’t bother with newspapers, the ABC alphabet news organizations, and liberal radio. I have enough problems in this life without having my blood pressure blow a gasket in my heart!!! The Slimes is MSNBC in print, just as the papers in Seattle, SF, LA, Houston, Atlanta, Sodom on the Potomac, NY, Boston, etc. all are. Even here in my very small town in NE Alabama, the local rag is OWNED by the NY Slimes!!!!!!!! and the commie running it is a devouted commie from the Red Star of Moscow to the Red Star of North Korea. He loves the commies and hates anything America. So, why bother? It ain’t worth the hospital visit to fix the blown gasket.
Unfortunately LIVs are less competent. And believe what news rags say.
The NY Slimes is in competition with the LA Slimes to win the Slimes of the Year Award.
Carlos Slim Still Reaping Big Rewards From NY Times Loan
by Edmund Lee January 21, 2014
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-01-21/carlos-slim-still-reaping-big-rewards-from-ny-times-loan
Billionaire Carlos Slim is poised to double his money after investing $250 million in a 2009 lending agreement with the New York Times, showing how dearly the newspaper’s owners paid for his help.
Slim, who controls mobile-phone carrier America Movil SAB and is the world’s second-richest person according to data compiled by Bloomberg, already has earned $122 million from his loan to the Times, based on an annual interest rate of 14 percent and a 12 percent premium charged to the company when its debt to Slim was redeemed in 2011. Under the terms of the loan, the Times still owes Slim additional shares worth as much as $141 million based on the Jan. 17 stock price, thanks to options he received to buy shares at what is now a deep discount.
Slim’s loan to the Times gave the publisher time to sell some assets and bolster a digital-subscription strategy to offset slumping ad sales. The agreement with Slim required the parent New York Times Co. to accept terms that effectively reduced a stock market windfall five years later. By selling 15.9 million shares at a fraction of their market value, the company risked giving up more than $100 million it could raise through an offering to the public.
“The Times had financial issues when they borrowed money from Carlos Slim,” said Thomas Graham Kahn, president of Kahn Brothers Advisors, a Times Co. investor. “They’ve gone from a position of having to pay high interest rates on their loans to where they’re net cash-positive.”
Arturo Elias, a spokesman for Slim, declined to comment, as did Abbe Serphos, a spokeswoman for Times Co.
Interest Rate
The 14 percent interest rate charged to Times Co. on Slim’s loan, which was announced Jan. 19, 2009, compared with the average bond yield of 13.41 percent that day for similarly rated borrowers on the Bank of America Merrill Lynch 1-to-10-Year BB U.S. High Yield Index. Standard & Poor’s rated Times Co. BB- at the time, three steps below investment grade. The publisher’s ranking is now one step lower at B+.
The interest on Slim’s loan was the highest rate Times Co. paid on debt dating back to at least 1995, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
As of last week’s close, Slim’s profit from the loan stood at $263 million, including the loan’s interest and premiums and the warrants issued by Times Co. as part of the loan deal. They let Slim buy shares for $6.36 apiece, less than half Times Co.’s $15.22 close last week in New York trading. That gives Slim $8.94 in potential profit for each of the 15.9 million shares he’s allowed to buy.
Expiration Date
The warrants expire on Jan. 15, 2015 — meaning Slim must make his move soon. The company has set aside the shares and is prepared to sell them whenever Slim exercises the warrants.
Times Co. gave Slim such a profitable deal because it found itself under pressure in early 2009, with a $400 million credit line months away from expiring. Rather than hurry to sell off businesses for cash amid the chaos of the global financial crisis, the company made the deal with Slim, giving it breathing room it used to eventually find buyers for units such as About.com and the Boston Globe.
The interest on Slim’s loan cost Times Co. about $35 million a year — more than double what it was paying in interest for the expiring credit line. By late 2010, the publisher was able to raise the money it needed to refinance Slim’s loan, issuing $225 million of six-year bonds with a more palatable 6.625 percent coupon.
Risks Remained
While the loan paid a good interest rate, and the warrants offered the chance for a profit, Slim’s deal with Times Co. wasn’t without risk. Newspapers were hemorrhaging as the Internet provided competition for advertising. Times Co.’s sales had dropped 8 percent in 2008, and they continued to decline every year until 2012.
Still, Slim continued to express confidence in Times Co.’s management and its controlling owners, the Ochs-Sulzbergers. The family has turned things around by beginning to charge a subscription for online access, cutting costs and hiring an outside chief executive officer in Mark Thompson.
Thompson is determined to create new digital-subscription products while reorganizing the sales staff to buoy advertising revenue. Times Co. hit a five-year closing high of $16.09 at the end of last year.
“I don’t see why their earnings should not take them up to $20 a share in a few years,” said Kahn, whose firm holds 5.4 million Times Co. shares.
Daunting Task
The company still faces a daunting task in vying for subscribers and advertising dollars, and only one out of nine analysts who cover the stock recommends buying it, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
A $263 million return is still a drop in the bucket for Slim, whose $69.6 billion fortune puts him behind only Bill Gates among the world’s richest, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Slim, who turns 74 next week, gets most of his net worth from the companies he controls in Mexico, led by America Movil, Latin America’s biggest wireless company.
Besides his Times Co. stock warrants, Slim also holds 11.9 million shares of the company, mostly accumulated before the loan deal. He didn’t disclose what he paid for the bulk of that stock, making it difficult to calculate how much he has profited from the stake, though he has collected about $1 million in dividend payments.
What’s clear is that lending money to Times Co. helped the company recover from a low point, protecting that early investment.
Bigger Stake
The most important business stories of the day.
Get Bloomberg’s daily newsletter.
Enter your email
Sign Up
If the billionaire chooses to exercise his warrants and keep the shares, he would own almost a fifth of Times Co. Slim’s loan in 2009 raised concerns that one of the most venerated U.S. newspapers would be beholden to the Mexican billionaire, who battles accusations of being a telecommunications monopolist in his home country. “Who is Carlos Slim, and does he want the paper of record?” read a headline in the New Yorker. “Let’s keep an eye on Senor Slim,” media columnist Jack Shafer wrote in Slate.
A takeover, however, is unlikely given the publisher’s dual-class share structure, which gives the Ochs-Sulzberger family a firm grip over the company’s board.
Slim is already the publisher’s second-largest shareholder with about 8 percent. His stake only allows him to vote for Class A directors, a group that represents no more than a third of the company’s board seats. The Ochs-Sulzberger family’s Class B shares let it elect the remaining two-thirds of the board, giving it effective and lasting control. Class B shares aren’t publicly traded.
Slim has consistently said he believed the publisher would overcome its struggles because its reputation and name recognition would help it survive the difficult transition from print to the Internet.
As he put it in a 2009 interview: “That is one of the best newspapers and brands in the world.”
Thank you, Joni.
Donald Trump on NY Times: ‘Very Rich Mexican’ Carlos Slim ‘Owns a Big Chunk of the Paper,’ ‘Has a Lot of Power Over the Paper’
by MICHAEL PATRICK LEAHY 19 Feb 2016
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/02/19/donald-trump-on-ny-times-a-very-rich-mexican-owns-a-big-chunk-of-the-paper-and-has-a-lot-of-power-over-the-paper/
Donald Trump is offering a possible explanation for the biased reporting on him by the New York Times.
“The New York Times is not exactly positive to Donald Trump. I’m very strong on illegal immigration and the border,” Trump told Stephen K. Bannon, executive chairman of Breitbart News and host of Breitbart News Daily on Sirius-XM’s Patriot.
“We either have a border or we don’t. If we don’t have a border, we don’t have a country. These people are pouring through like swiss cheese, drugs are pouring in. The Times never talks about the drugs, they never talk about the crime,” Trump said.
Bannon noted that Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim now has a significant ownership interest in the Times.
“Carlos Slim came in and I believe he now owns up to 15 percent of the New York Times,” Bannon said, noting that some believe he “was looking for a platform to influence American policy.”
“Well, certainly, people should know about it,” Trump responded. “They may be doing the work of somebody else. Certainly a very rich Mexican owns a big chunk of the paper and has a lot of power over the paper.”
A slightly larger picture of the NY TIMES expert on US congressional procedure.
That’s a man wearing a wig!
Carlos doesn’t give a big bears a$$ !
He’s just ‘getting even’ with USA.The NYTimes folks don’t even realise they’re being duped/used/abused by a man who looks down on them as ‘Americanos del Norte’. (SP?)
All MSM does is control emotions-—and they Lie if the “news” doesn’t promote their “Narrative” (flipping “Good and Evil” to erase Christian Ethics and destroy our “Justice” (virtue) System). Got to control the Minds of the children and useful idiots.
Good reminder.
Also remember that Slim is ethnic Lebanese with plenty of connections there, and many believe Slim is just a front man for shady Mexican ex-Presidente Carlos Salinas.
The NYT is a Mexican newspaper.
Don’t you just love it when well versed writers take apart the left with simple truth.
The entire New Times URINALISM Staff, Lacks a High-School level of knowledge, of the US Constitution!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.