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April 22, 2006
Oops! Never Mind
The reporters and editors who produce the New York Times seem pretty clearly to be word people, not numbers people. Of course, they often get the words wrong too. But their problems with numbers are hard to understand or excuse.
On April 20, the Times ran an article by Jennifer Steinhauer on the problems the City of Houston has experienced in coping with refugees from Hurricane Katrina. A principal theme of the article was that the federal government had failed to come through with needed or promised help:
Seven months after two powerful hurricanes blew through the Gulf Coast, elected officials, law enforcement agencies and many residents say Texas is nearing the end of its ability to play good neighbor without compensation.
That theme, of course, fit well with the Times' "bash Bush" obsession. Today, however, the paper admitted in its corrections section that it had completely misrepresented the facts:
A front-page article on Thursday about strain on government services in Texas caused by hurricane evacuees misstated the number of evacuee children in Houston public schools and the amount of Federal aid the state has received. The most recent count, in late February, showed 5,475 students, not 30,000. The aid is $222 million, not $22 million.
As Junie B. Jones says: Boom! Do the math. The Times reported that the feds had contributed $733 per student. In fact, the feds have paid $40,548 per student. One can only surmise that the people who run the newspaper are beyond embarrassment. (OK, that's not quite fair, since some of the federal money has gone for policemen and other costs imposed by the Katrina refugees. But still, you get the drift.)
Oh, that's not quite all. Today's paper included a second correction for another article, published the day after the Houston piece:
An article yesterday about criticism of the Small Business Administration's response to the 2005 hurricanes misstated the value of loans the agency has provided to victims. It is $842 million, not $336 million.
Well, that article wasn't so bad. It was only off by a factor of 2.5. By the Times' standards, that's pretty good. What a funny coincidence, though. Why is it that the Times' math is always wrong in the same direction?
Posted by John at 08:53 PM
Burn, Burkle, Burn!
Did the NYT get scammed by a PR-worthy anecdote?
By Mickey Kaus
Updated Saturday, April 22, 2006, at 8:14 PM ET
New York Times Scammed by Clinton-Burkle Spin? The NYT's John Broder and Patrick Healy describe the origins of the life-giving friendship between Bill Clinton and Ron Burkle with a PR-perfect paragraph that should have set off the BS-meter:
The two men first met when Mr. Clinton was running for president in 1992 and touring neighborhoods in Los Angeles that had been torched during riots after the acquittal of several police officers charged with beating Rodney King. Mr. Clinton noticed that some supermarkets were still open, and asked why, his aides recalled. He was told that those stores were not burned because the owner, Mr. Burkle, treated his customers and employees fairly. Mr. Clinton asked to meet him.
Hmm. Too good to check? Not if you have NEXIS! At the time of the riots, Burkle owned a chain of markets called Food 4 Less. (He apparently didn't acquire Ralph's markets until 1994.) Here's the lede paragraph of a June 1, 1992 story in the Orange County Business Journal:
Ron Burkle was in the middle of a meeting in a downtown Los Angeles hotel room when the Rodney King verdict came in last month. As word of the ensuing riots spread, television sets in the room were turned on. Burkle, chairman of La Habra-based Food 4 Less Supermarkets Inc., soon found himself watching intently. Buildings were burning. His buildings.
When the smoke finally cleared, Food 4 Less tallied its losses. The operator of the Boys' Markets, Viva and Alpha Beta stores that provide inner city residents with most of their groceries had sustained some $ 25 million to $ 30 million in riot-related damage. At the height of the riots, 44 of its stores had been shut down. A handful were burned to the ground. Another dozen were so badly damaged that it would take from a month to several months to make them operational once more.
Burkle says he never once considered turning his back on his turf.
"When you watch your stores burn and watch the looting, you can get upset by events," he says. "It would probably be easier to just abandon (the inner city). But we're not going to do that." [Emphasis added]
Is NEXIS too expensive for the NYT? Let's all chip in and buy them a subscription. ...
P.S.: What other Burkle-related BS is the gullible NYT buying into?
April 23, 2006
More Financial Influence At Chez Clinton (Updates)
The New York Times reports on a highly lucrative position given to Bill Clinton by billionaire financier Ronald Burkle, the man who claims to have been extorted by a New York Post gossip columnist, Jared Paul Stern. Supposedly Burkle got infuriated by reports that he would be purchasing a modeling agency for the former president to oversee, and the Post columnist required over $200K to keep any other salacious rumors from reaching Page 6. However amusing the proposition of Bill Clinton working in modeling agency may be, the Times uncovers a more problematic relationship between Burkle and Clinton given the likelihood of a Hillary Clinton presidential run:
After leaving the White House in 2001, former President Bill Clinton was inundated with business and job offers, from investment-bank partnerships to seats on corporate boards. He turned them all down, with one exception: He agreed to be an adviser to a family of funds run by the Yucaipa Companies, a California private equity firm controlled by one of his best friends, the billionaire Ronald W. Burkle.
Mr. Clinton's arrangement with Mr. Burkle is an unusual one for a former president, giving him the potential to make tens of millions of dollars without great effort and at virtually no risk, according to Mr. Burkle and advisers to Mr. Clinton. Mr. Clinton's role is to help find investment opportunities for Yucaipa projects, give credibility to the funds and champion their mission of investing in poor areas to corporate executives, union leaders and others. But he has put up little of his own money and has no day-to-day responsibilities over how the more than $1 billion in the funds is invested.
Does this sound fishy to anyone? This billionaire has raised millions of dollars for Bill Clinton in the past, and now does the same for Hillary. In fact, Burkle just held a big Beverly Hills fundraiser for Hillary this past Friday evening. The arrangement between the billionaire and the former president -- and hopeful presidential spouse -- allows Burkle to stuff tens of millions of dollars into the bank accounts of the Clintons in return for no significant work on behalf of the fund itself. All that Burkle requires of Bill Clinton is to stand up and make a few speeches. This sounds ominously similar to Hillary's 10,000% return on her commodities investment while Bill served as governor in Arkansas.
The Times reports that one of the major investor in Burkle's funds is the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS), the retirement fund that often acts as a big dog in political matters. Its board tends to skew Democratic and conducts political battles on behalf of the liberal and leftist agenda. CalPERS jumped into Burkle's Yucaipa funds in a big way in 2002 -- shortly after Bill Clinton came aboard. They now fund almost half of the portfolio that provides Bill Clinton with his enormous salary and light workload.
The Yucaipa funds have provided a solid return, mostly by focusing on risky ventures in underserved areas. Clinton doesn't get paid unless the funds grow past 9% in a year. In 2005, it grew over 50% in one fund and 28% in the other. It appears that many people wish to put their money where the Clintons go, including New York Comptroller Carl McCall, who sank the state pension fund into Yucaipa just after Hillary endorsed his bid for governor over former Clinton aide Andrew Cuomo.
But where does Yucaipa put that money? Front Page Magazine reported in January that some of it went to Al Gore -- what a coincidence! -- for his cable-TV venture. Despite the fact that Yucaipa supposedly exists to provide opportunities for underprivileged and depressed communities worldwide, they saw fit to sink millions into Current Television, which is neither minority owned nor located in an economically-disadvantaged area. It also invested in a Diversified Investment Management Group acquisition of Piccadilly Restauarants, and DIMG is apparently a front for Burkle. It has invested in at least one minority-owned business: Sean John, the clothing firm owned by rapper P. Diddy -- hardly an example of uplifting the disadvantaged.
It appears that the Times has described a archetype for political payoffs and control, with Burkle holding the reins and the Clintons at his beck and call. This is the kind of corruption that First Amendment violations like the BCRA can never touch, and which really present a danger to the electoral process. New York should hold the Clintons responsible for this transparent money-laundering scheme, but likely will shade its eyes and bask in the celebrity of the pair. Americans outside of the Empire State will have to hold Hillary accountable in 2008.
UPDATE: I forgot to mention one of the most recent initiatives by the Yucaipa Funds -- they want to invest in a particular segment of an economically-disadvantaged industry, according to the New York Sun in late March:
A private investment group whose board of directors includes President Clinton made a bid yesterday to take over a dozen daily newspapers owned by Knight Ridder, including the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Mr. Clinton serves as a senior adviser to the Yucaipa Companies, a Los Angeles-based investment firm that has joined with a journalists' union, the Newspaper Guild, to seek control of the 12 newspapers and gradually transfer ownership to the news outlets' employees. ...
"The Yucaipa Companies are putting in a bid today for the 12," a spokeswoman for the union, Candice Johnson, said in an interview. She declined to say how much the union-backed group is offering. "We think the bid will be a very strong bid," she said.
The papers on the auction block include both of Philadelphia's leading newspapers, the Inquirer and the Daily News, as well as the St. Paul Pioneer Press and the San Jose Mercury News. Industry analysts have estimated that the dozen newspapers will fetch between $1.4 billion and $2 billion.
So the Yucaipa Funds, which supposedly exists to invest in poor neighborhoods and minority-owned businesses, wants to allow the Clintons access to twelve major newspapers just in time for the presidential election. I wonder whether my local St. Paul Pioneer Press will endorse Hillary two years from now?
UPDATE II: It's a good thing that Yucaipa performs so well. Its employees have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democratic coffers since 2000, mostly from Burkle. He gave $100,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in August 2001, $100,000 to the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee in December 2001, and another $20,000 to the DCCC in November 2003. He donated a whopping $500,000 to the DNC in November 2002, just at the first Bush midterms. (Terry McAuliffe must have been pleased.) He donated $25,000 to a DNC subsidiary in 2004.
Burkle has spent over $785,000 in the past three election cycles on the Democrats. Interestingly, only $4500 of that got spent in the 2006 cycle. It looks like he has found another method to influence Democratic politics.
UPDATE III: The Burkles spent $4500 so far in this cycle, and only $74,350 in the 2004 cycle. They supported candidates such as John Edwards, Barbara Boxer, Patty Murray, Dianne Feinstein, and Ken Salazar. They spent almost ten times as much in the 2002 cycle, despite it not involving a presidential election; the $500,000 DNC donation covers two thirds of this outlay, but the remainder was three times what Burkle spent after Bill Clinton came aboard Yucaipa.
In 2000, the Burkles contributed over $340,000 to Democrats, including $4,000 to Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign -- $1,000 more than they spent on Al Gore's presidential campaign.
In 1998, the Burkles spent $229,000. All but $1,000 went to Democrats; the single Republican donation went to David Dreier.
1996: $155,000.
So why do the Burkles contribute so much less now than before Bill joined Yucaipa? Maybe because their money can go directly to the source.
Posted by Captain Ed at April 23, 2006 11:18 AM
