Mediaboss Marketing

America First Multifamily Investors, L.P.

OMAHA, Neb., Aug. 01, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- On July 29, 2022, America First Multifamily Investors, L.P. (NASDAQ: ATAX) (the Partnership) entered into a Second Amendment to Amended and Restated Credit Agreement (the Second Amendment) with Bankers Trust Company (Bankers Trust) which modifies certain provisions of the Amended and Restated Credit Agreement between the Partnership and Bankers Trust dated August 23, 2021. The Second Amendment extends the maturity date of the Partnerships $50 million secured, non-operating line of credit (the Line of Credit) to June 30, 2024 and provides the Partnership with two optional one-year extensions, subject to certain conditions and fees. The Second Amendment also modified, among other things, certain financial covenants, events of default, and certain restricted payment provisions to be consistent with the Partnerships other secured financing arrangements. The Partnership also entered into a new Revolving Line of Credit Note which bears interest at the 1-Month CME Term SOFR Reference Rate, which shall not be less than 0.10%, plus 2.50%.

The Second Amendment continues our strong relationship with Bankers Trust and enhances the functionality of the Line of Credit for managing our investment acquisitions and liquidity, said Kenneth C. Rogozinski, Chief Executive Officer of the Partnership.

About America First Multifamily Investors, L.P.

America First Multifamily Investors, L.P. was formed on April 2, 1998 under the Delaware Revised Uniform Limited Partnership Act for the primary purpose of acquiring, holding, selling and otherwise dealing with a portfolio of mortgage revenue bonds which have been issued to provide construction and/or permanent financing for affordable multifamily, student housing and commercial properties. The Partnership is pursuing a business strategy of acquiring additional mortgage revenue bonds and other investments on a leveraged basis. The Partnership expects and believes the interest earned on these mortgage revenue bonds is excludable from gross income for federal income tax purposes. The Partnership seeks to achieve its investment growth strategy by investing in additional mortgage revenue bonds and other investments as permitted by the Partnerships Amended and Restated Limited Partnership Agreement, dated September 15, 2015, taking advantage of attractive financing structures available in the securities market, and entering into interest rate risk management instruments. America First Multifamily Investors, L.P. press releases are available at http://www.ataxfund.com.

Safe Harbor Statement

Certain statements in this report are intended to be covered by the safe harbor for forward-looking statements provided by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements generally can be identified by use of statements that include, but are not limited to, phrases such as believe, expect, future, anticipate, intend, plan, foresee, may, should, will, estimates, potential, continue, or other similar words or phrases. Similarly, statements that describe objectives, plans, or goals also are forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties, many of which are difficult to predict and are generally beyond the control of the Partnership. The Partnership cautions readers that a number of important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in, implied, or projected by such forward-looking statements. Risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to: risks involving current maturities of financing arrangements and our ability to renew or refinance such maturities, fluctuations in short-term interest rates, collateral valuations, mortgage revenue bond investment valuations and overall economic and credit market conditions; and the other risks detailed in the Partnerships SEC filings (including but not limited to, the Partnerships Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, and Current Reports on Form 8-K). Readers are urged to consider these factors carefully in evaluating the forward-looking statements.

MEDIA CONTACT:Karen MarottaGreystone212-896-9149Karen.Marotta@greyco.com

INVESTOR CONTACT:Andy GrierSenior Vice President402-952-1235

Link:
America First Multifamily Investors, L.P.'s $50 Million Line of Credit Extended and Amended - Yahoo Finance

Killer Mike has a history of defending gun ownership as self-protection is something important to him.

In a new interview with The Guardian, the Run The Jewels rapper said hes a staunch defender of the Second Amendment, mainly because of Americas history of racism.

I will never be against the second amendment, he told the publication. Theres no way that someone who represents a community that are only 60-odd years out of an apartheid should be willing to give a weapon back to the government, as the police choke you to death in the street and people just watch and film.

Mike is also the son of a policeman, so he says he has sympathy for law enforcement but also says that his father discouraged him and his five sisters to not follow in his footsteps because the job was too dangerous. Additionally, he says police reform is very necessary.

I have not seen a will to get rid of police as much as Ive seen a want for police to be from the communities theyre policing and to be fair, rather than abusers of power, he said to The Guardian. We should be supporting the Police Athletic Leagues that deal with our young boys in particular before any trouble happens, more than we should be giving the police more rifles and bulletproof vests. The connection with the community is key.

No Killer Mike interview is complete though without talking music. Interestingly, he was asked about his Hip Hop beginnings, which started when OutKast member Big Boi spotted him rapping while he studied at Morehouse College.

Even though I won a Grammy, my grandma still complained that I didnt bring her a degree, Mike said of his collaboration with the Atlanta duo for their 2000 Grammy-winning album Stankonia. Dropping out is one of my biggest regrets, but Ive been given everything Ive ever wanted in terms of being able to have a rap career, so I need to make it better for the people around me and the people that come after me.

Read the full interview here.

Follow this link:
Killer Mike On Gun Control: 'I Will Never Be Against The Second Amendment' - BET

The Supreme Court just upended "the most fiercely polarizing issues in American life: abortion and guns," The Associated Press reports. On one day last month, the court's conservative majority expanded the Second Amendment to guarantee the individual right to carry concealed handguns, and the next day, they removed the constitutional right to abortion enshrined for 50 years in Roe v. Wade.

Among the many practical and political questions left in the wake of these two "momentous decisions," AP says, is "whether the court's conservative justices are being faithful and consistent to history and the Constitution or citing them to justify political preferences." In other words, is there some intellectual constancy in allowing states to ban abortion but forbidding them from regulating guns, or is the court's emboldened 6-3 conservative majority just flexing its newfound ideological might?

The conservative justices say they are consistently following a legal philosophy that relies on interpreting the text and original intent of the Constitution's authors to decide today's cases. When it comes to guns and abortion, "I understand how it might look hypocritical, but from the perspective of the conservative majority on the court, it's a consistent approach to both cases," University of Texas law professor Richard Albert tells AP. "I'm not saying it's correct, by the way, but from their perspective, it is completely consistent and coherent."

"We can debate about the meaning of the Second Amendment, but the Second Amendment does explicitly talk about the right to keep and bear arms, whereas the right to abortion access is not explicitly in the Constitution," adds Jonathan Entin, a law professor emeritus at Cleveland's Case Western Reserve University. "If that's where you are going to go, then maybe these decisions are not in such tension after all."

Sure, "in overruling Roe v. Wade, and with it nearly 50 years of American law, and expanding the reach of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, which is a jurisprudential innovation of more recent vintage, the Supreme Court wants the public to accept that history rules the present" and the Constitution enshrines "rules set in stone that no judge should dare disturb," Cristian Farias writes at GQ. But the truth is that "the high court's ultraconservative majority" made these changes "because they could."

"Even for a constitutional textualist," both of these "rights to possess a gun in public and to end a pregnancy in private have some basis in the Constitution," Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz writes at The Hill. "And both would seem to allow for some degree of state regulation. The reality is that these decisions, both of which fly in the face of long precedents, are solely a function of numbers," and the conservative justices have them.

And it's important to remember that "the current conservative majority is anything but conservative," Dershowitz adds. "It is a judicially activist majority comprised of justices with agendas.They decide cases more broadly than necessary, and they render decisions depriving the other branches of government of their legitimate powers."

There's no ideological or practical contradictions in the guns and abortions ruling, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) told Sky News. "Protecting our gun rights give Americans the right to defend themselves, and that protects life, and ending abortion also protects the life of the unborn who can't protect themselves, either."

"There's a twisted irony in watching a court with a supposedly pro-life majority hand down a ruling that will almost certainly lead to death," Paige Masten writes at The Charlotte Observer. The handgun ruling "will only put more guns on the streets, and make it harder for states to enact the gun safety measures we truly need." A new study by researchers at Stanford Law School and Duke University found that concealed carry laws boost gun crimes by between 29 percent and 32 percent.

Dobbs, the abortion ruling, will also increase the number of women forced to carry a pregnancy to term, and "more pregnancy means more likelihood of deaths," Rachel Hardeman at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health tells The Guardian. The states with abortion bans already have some of the highest maternal mortality rates in the U.S., which has the highest maternal mortality rate of any developed country.

"If you think about why people get abortions, it's often because it's not safe for them to stay pregnant," Amanda Jean Stevenson at the University of Colorado Boulder tells The Guardian. "The people who are currently having abortions are very likely to actually have higher rates of pregnancy-related deaths and maternal mortality than the people who are currently giving birth." Having an abortion is "much, much, much safer than staying pregnant," she adds, "way, way more than 14 times more deadly to stay pregnant."

Well, "you've got to hand it to the conservatives," at least "when it comes to sticking to their beliefs," Richard Wolf writes at USA Today. "Unlike the lawmakers who inhabit the other two branches, the justices weren't influenced by politics." And neither of "these absolutist decisions," Dershowitz writes at The Hill, will "be popular with a majority of Americans who support both reasonable gun control and reasonable access to abortion."

"The makeup of the court has historically been healthier when it more closely reflects the makeup and views of the American people," Chicago-Kent College of Law professor Carolyn Shapiro tells Reuters. "The court is doing things that I think are dangerous for the country, dangerous for the right of individuals, dangerous for democracy, and dangerous for its continued legitimacy."

"Up until a couple years ago, it used to be the case that where the court fell was well within the lines of the average Americans' positions," Maya Sen, a professor of public policy at Harvard University, tells The Washington Post. "Now we are estimating that the court falls more squarely in line with the average Republican, not the average American."

A final through-line in the guns and abortion decisions are that they highlight the limits of bans. "If banning abortion 'stops abortions,' let's ban guns and stop gun violence," Democratic campaign veteran Jon Cooper tweeted. But few if any abortion opponents believe bans will stop women from terminating their pregnancies, and, as David Freddoso argues at The Washington Examiner,"gun-control laws are big over-promisers."

The American Union of Swing Voters argues that "abortion bans are futile" and "gun bans are futile in an age of 3D printers."

David Frum compares the Supreme Court's abortion decision to Prohibition, both of which,he wrties in The Atlantic, "were and are projects that seek to impose the values of a cohesive and well-organized cultural minority upon a diverse and less-organized cultural majority." And like Prohibition, he argues, abortion bans "can work for a time, but only for a time. In a country with a representative voting system even a system as distorted in favor of the rural and conservative as the American system was in the 1920s and is again today the cultural majority is bound to prevail sooner or later."

"Abortion politics is about to transition from being the conservative ideologue's proof of purity to the Republican politician's most vexed and intractable quagmire," From writes. "We may all be surprised at how rapidly the politicians start looking for some escape."

Read the original here:
Questioning the intellectual consistency of SCOTUS - The Week

The federal cabinet on Monday passed the National Accountability (Third Amendment) Bill, 2022, with fresh legislation aiming to restrict the watchdog's role in corruption cases of over Rs500 million and taking away the president's authority to appoint accountability court judges.

The joint session of the Parliament on June 10 approved the National Accountability (Second Amendment) Bill, 2021. The bill was opposed and returned unsigned by President Arif Alvi before it became the law.

According to the documents of the new bill, available with Dawn.com, the offence of corruption and corrupt practices as per the National Accountability Ordinance (NAO), 1999, will be tied to the value of Rs500m. Hence, corruption cases under Rs500m will not come under the National Accountability Bureau's (NAB) ambit, if the bill is passed.

Likewise, Section 16 of the NAO has been replaced with an amendment that suggests that an accused will be tried for an offence under the ordinance in the court under whose territorial jurisdiction the offence was alleged to have been committed. Earlier, there was no territorial limits.

Meanwhile, in a proposed amendment to Section 19E, NAB's authority to allow surveillance with the help of a high court will be withdrawn, including any assistance from government agencies to be used against the accused in the trial.

The said section has been replaced with a new one which states that any person called to provide information in relation to an offence alleged to have been committed will be informed of the allegations against them so they can file their defence in court.

Another proposed amendment will strip the president of his authority to appoint judges of accountability courts in consultation with high court chief justices. That privilege will instead reside with the federal government.

Similarly, Section 20, which stated that whoever failed to provide the required information to NAB was punishable with rigorous imprisonment extendable to five years with a fine. Following the amendment, the said section will apply only to cases with a cash transaction over Rs2 million.

In an amendment to Section 31B, the chairman's powers to terminate cases and pending proceedings were further extended, including withdrawal of cases both partly or wholly, but subject to certain conditions.

Last month, the PTI approached the Supreme Court against the earlier NAB bill, with party chairman Imran Khan arguing that tweaks to the Ordinance would pave the way for public office-holders to get away with white-collar crimes.

Visit link:
Cabinet approves second NAB amendment bill in span of a month - DAWN.com

The attack at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, which left 21 people dead, is the second school tragedy in the United States, only after Sandy Hook, where 26 people were killed on December 14, 2012.

And now a shooting in Illinois' Highland Park, where so far six people have been killed and multiple wounded.

This new black chapter in U.S. history puts the spotlight on the responsibility of the National Rifle Association (NRA), which promotes freedom of gun ownership.

Although its leader, Wayne LaPierre, has denied any responsibility for his organization in past shootings and has fervently defended gun ownership.

The NRA emerged in 1871 as a recreational group designed to "promote and encourage rifle shooting on a scientific basis," notes the BBC.

In 1934 it took its step into politics, when it began to send to its members draft legislation related to facilities for acquiring armaments.

It was that same year when he promoted the approval of the National Firearms Act.

Years later, in 1968, it achieved a new regulation of the same type that facilitated access to these items.

Mainly, it is to promote the freedom to own firearms among civilians, based on a controversial defense of the Second Amendment.

The Association attacks any measure that restricts the right to bear arms as an attack on freedom.

It also strongly opposes even measures such as attempts to ban the sale of assault rifles to civilians or devices that multiply the lethal power of semi-automatic weapons.

In 2018, Donald Trump claimed that what many people don't understand "or don't want to understand" is that "friends" who work at the NRA, like LaPierre, are "great people" and "great American patriots."

The number of members it has is not exactly known, as the NRA claims to have more than five million followers, although opposing groups say the number is lower and that its leadership inflates the figures.

However, research by the Pew Research Center, conducted in 2017, revealed that around 19 million people recognize themselves as members of the organization, even if they do not actively militate in it.

The Association has lobbied hard to prevent any gun control measures under the argument that these make the United States a safer country and that it is a right backed by the Constitution, an argument that has become controversial in the face of the increase in mass shootings in the country.

Despite the Sandy Hook school shooting in 2012 and the Marjory Stone Douglas school shooting in 2018, the NRA has rejected proposals to impose controls on sales and has claimed as solutions putting armed police in schools and not giving guns to "mentally ill" people.

The NRA was ranked as one of the three most influential lobbying groups in Washington, according to a survey conducted by Fortune magazine in 1999.

An investigation by The Washington Post, notes that the NRA has interfered over the years to slow down gun control investigations and has moved its influence on the passage of legislation and endorsed or rejected candidates for governor, Congress or the presidency.

The BBC notes that since 1968, the Association created an Action Committee aimed at supporting or fighting politicians depending on their position on gun control.

They also conduct campaigns to influence public opinion on the image of candidates.

In addition, the NRA donates large amounts of money to politicians who support the deregulation of gun sales.

Excerpt from:
National Rifle Association: What is it and how important is it in the U.S.? - Marca