Posted on 05/02/2013 2:54:27 PM PDT by onyx
Threats by members of the Los Angeles City Council to use the city’s pension funds to penalize investors if they sell the Los Angeles Times to Charles and David Koch could be illegal and unconstitutional, experts say.
A proposal by councilman Bill Rosendahl would allow the city to yank investments by the city’s three pension funds in the Tribune Co., which owns the Times, if the company opts to sell the paper to someone who does not uphold “the highest terms of professional and objective journalism.”
Rumors that libertarian industrialists Charles and David Koch might buy the paper spurred him to propose the motion, Rosendahl told the Times. He did not respond to a request for comment.
“Frankly what I hear about the Koch brothers, if it’s true, it’s the end of journalism,’’ Rosendahl told the paper.
The Koch Brothers are reportedly considering purchasing the Tribune Co., which owns the Times, though they are also said to be uninterested in the company’s other media properties, which include 23 local television stations, a national cable network, and other newspapers.
“We cannot support the sale of the Times to entities who Times readers would view as a political transaction first and foremost, turning L.A.’s metropolitan daily into an ideological mouthpiece whose commitment to empirical journalism would be unproven at best,” Rosendahl wrote.
Legal experts say Rosendahl’s political motivations in directing the city’s pension funds could run afoul of the Kochs’ First Amendment rights.
A Koch spokesperson declined to comment on the issue.
“The government generally can’t discriminate against government contractors based on the content or viewpoint of the contractors’ speech,” University of California Los Angeles law professor Eugene Volokh said in an email to the Washington Free Beacon.
(Excerpt) Read more at freebeacon.com ...
Koch Industries is not a publically traded company. L.A. couldn’t purchase stock if they wanted to.
Everywhere we look Liberals are trying to suppress and shutdown conservative speech.
These people care as much for liberty in their actions as they do for their garbage.
Hilarious. Apart from all the laugh lines about the sacred standards of journalism practiced by the LA Times as now constituted, there’s the additional piquant irony of the stony broke and deep in the red LA pension fund being brandished as a weapon by the same liberal pinheads who turned the city into a basket case.
Your talking about the L.A city council, there is no depth too low for them to go. They make Soros look conservative.
Civil Rights violation. Very clear.
” Koch Industries is not a publically traded company. L.A. couldn’t purchase stock if they wanted to.”
LOL....correct. And the Koch bros are worth 66 billion, so they don’t care: )
Tote and spew the Communist line.
The reason to sell your stock in the LA Times is because it is a failing business model. However, if you want to sell because it is the PC things to do, well I guess that is okay as well.
But if you think your selling will have any effect one way or the other you don’t understand the way stocks work.
In order to sell, someone else has to buy. The more people wanting to buy then sell, the price of the stock goes up. If more people want to sell then want to buy, the stock goes down.
Outside of the stockholders none of that has any effect on the business itself (unless they own a lot of their own stock).
This all reminds me of how Rush will pick who will win a football game depending on which teams name is more PC. It the City of Los Angeles wants to pick stock based on how PC they are then go for it. The sooner they go bankrupt the better.
I hope they invest a lot in Green Energy and Battery Cars and wind mills. We know how these PC industries are doing.
An animal is most dangerous when it is cornered. The Libs can’t really hide their true colors anymore.
Damages in the stratosphere. LA City needs to back off, pronto.
If the Koch brothers offer LA Times subscriptions online, I’d buy one because they’d be one of the few conservative, large newspapers in the country.
yank investments by the city’s three pension funds in the Tribune Co., which owns the Times, if the company opts to sell the paper to someone who does not uphold “the highest terms of professional and objective journalism.”Hellooo?... the reason LA Times has to be sold is because it's CRAP.
Its outrageous... that the pension funds are still invested in the old buggy whip firm now. They should be placed in someplace financially viable regardless of who the old white elephant gets pawned off on.
Only a stupid liberal would invest pension fund money into a dying medium anyway.
Charles Foster Kane: You’re right, I did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million dollars this year. I expect to lose a million dollars *next* year. You know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I’ll have to close this place in... 60 years.
“An animal is most dangerous when it is cornered. The Libs can’t really hide their true colors anymore.”
Nope but so far they have proven themselfs pritty darn good at iqnoring them.
I for one Hope the Koch Brothers get into the media buiness to start putting out SOMETHING other than what the left spews.
But they need to be warned. Just as leftist everywhere work to suppress the means of conservative speech they also work in the big advertisement company’s to suppress conservative speech.
Theses people are willing to do anything and everything to see to it that we are not heard. We are going to have to build our own client list. Talk directly to industry & business leaders to sell our advertisement spots.
>> Everywhere we look Liberals are trying to suppress and shutdown conservative speech.
Which is simply a violation of the 1st Amendment.
Not to mention that if the Koch’s buy the place, the shareholders by definition will have to sell.
These economics-challenged morons are running DOWN the price for the LA Times by this kind of talk -— for the benefit of Koch and against the benefit of the unon pension funds.
AWESOME!
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