San Francisco’s billionaire environmental activist and Democrat mega-donor Tom Steyer joined a group of consumer advocates supporting a California Senate investigation to determine if an “oligopoly” is the reason the price of California regular gasoline at $3.19 a gallon is $.78 higher than the national average, the Sacramento Bee reports.
California government entities and their unions are panicking because Obamacare’s punitive 40% “Cadillac Tax” beginning in 2018 will directly hit the low-deductible and broad-provider network type of “platinum” healthcare coverage that public employees have enjoyed under the California Public Employee Retirement System (CalPERS).
Media observers are claiming that Ellen Pao’s loss in her $160 million gender discrimination claims against her former venture capitalist employer Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byer means a dark future for women in Silicon Valley. But women already control 36 percent of small businesses, hold 50 percent of all management positions and account for 60 percent of college students. With rising economic power, women seem destined to eventually dominate Silicon Valley and much of American business.
Google, Inc. is complaining about what it says are unfair media reports regarding the company’s business practices, including lobbying.
In a shockingly short deliberation for such a highly-visible gender discrimination lawsuit, a San Francisco jury of six women and six men ruled against former junior partner Ellen Pao on all four of Pao’s claims of gender discrimination and retaliation against the prestigious Silicon Valley venture capital firm of Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers.
Earlier this week, Breitbart News broke described how hedge funds paid too much for venture investments and are actually losing money on many public offerings. Now a new report by pitchbook.com called “Are IPO down rounds to blame for dearth of VC tech IPOs?” reveals that the number of venture-backed tech companies seeking to go public is dwindling to a trickle. If the initial public offering (IPO) window closes, Silicon Valley could face a Dot-com Crash Version 2.0.
In a shockingly short deliberation for such a highly-visible gender discrimination lawsuit, a San Francisco jury of six women and six men ruled against former junior partner Ellen Pao on Friday on the three most important claims brought against the prestigious Silicon Valley venture capital firm of Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers.
Despite the February 21 settlement of a bitter labor dispute at West Coast ports between employers and members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), whose members command average wages and benefits of about $1,200 a day, the continuing bottleneck is still causing job and revenue losses across many US industries.
The Wall Street Journal recently published a strange piece called “Why Cable TV Beats the Internet, For Now.” Despite pay-TV losing 1.4 million customers last year, it seems the WSJ is device-challenged and unwilling to embrace the obvious future dominance of Internet streaming media. And the war to discount your cost for pay-TV is heating up.
The five-week-long and very salacious trail against Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers for alleged sexual discrimination against Ellen Pao went to the jury Wednesday. The former junior partner is demanding $16 million for sexual discrimination and up to $144 million for punitive damages. Her suit has paved the way for a coming tsunami of diversity litigation across Silicon Valley.
By doubling the percentage of electric power generation that must be “renewable” by 2020 to 33 percent, California–with the highest poverty rate in the nation–will continue paying the highest utility rates in the nation.
Following Benchmark Capital partner Bill Gurley’s warning last week at the South-by-Southwest conference (SXSW) that “we are in a risk bubble”, Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times all sounded the claxon horn Monday morning that New York hedge funds and mutual funds are flooding into late-stage venture capital-back tech companies in the futile hope of making a killing when the firms go public.
Testimony finished on Friday in Ellen Pao’s sex discrimination trial against Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPBC) and closing arguments are scheduled for Tuesday. Soon the trial will be in the hands of the six women and six men of the jury
Competition is about to crank up in the emerging plug-in luxury vehicle sector, with Mercedes debuting its C350e plug-in hybrid-electric sedan this September at about half the cost of Tesla Model S sedan. Mercedes will also become the first car company to deliver diesel powered full-size sedans and SUVs at discounts to gasoline equivalents.
Potential Democratic Presidential candidate Gov. Jerry Brown told NBC News’ Meet the Press on Sunday that a letter that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) sent to all 50 governors urging them to block or ignore the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed carbon pollution regulations was “a disgrace.” Brown is somewhat of a hypocrite on the issue, because his family’s wealth reportedly comes from control of two huge imported oil trading firm.
U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia in February 2014 ruled that AT&T Inc. was ineligible to appeal a $40 million patent verdict in favor of Two-Way Media LLC because its attorneys from Sidley & Austin LLP and Davis Cedillo & Mendoza Inc. failed to file an appeal by the court’s deadline. Sidley & Austin LLP appealed what is essentially its malpractice based on the court’s electronic docket lacking full disclosure of the court’s order. But in a split panel decision, Federal Circuit refused to reverse the decision.
In what is sure to lead to a customer scandal and heighten a U.S. Antitrust Probe, Federal Trade Commission (FTC) staffers determined in an undisclosed report that Google, Inc. allegedly used an algorithm to manipulate search results to favor their own less relevant search over competitors. The alleged Google fraudulent practice only became public when FTC staffers inadvertently shared the document with the Wall Street Journal.
A year ago, the Inland Empire cities of Riverside and San Bernardino were ranked as “Among Slowest To Recover Since Recession,” in unemployment rates, median income and home prices. But those low costs have sparked a new economic boom as Riverside and San Bernardino counties’ job growth now only trails the Silicon Valley tech hubs of Santa Clara and San Francisco counties, according to a report released Thursday at an Ontario economic conference.
California’s Employment Development Department (EDD) announced that job growth in tech-strong Santa Clara County, a.k.a. Silicon Valley, hit 5.2 percent in February. Employment growth is now at the highest point since the Dot-com Bubble in 2001.
The City of San Bernardino, now in default, has asked a judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed by two creditors that loaned money in good faith to the city and want the same repayment terms as the California Public Employee
Opposition to U.S. energy expansion has been growing, despite American fracking driving world energy prices down by 60%. But Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Representative Jim Bridenstine (R-OK) are taking a leadership role by introducing a 14 point ‘American Energy Renaissance Act’ to remove federal impediments to energy exploration, development, and export.
The U.S. Energy Information Administraiton (EIA) has released a Drilling Productivity Report (DPR) that shows the U.S. drilling rig count in the four major “tight-oil” regions of the Permian, Eagle Ford, Bakken, and Niobrara fields fell 32%, from their October peak of 1160 to 780 rigs. However, despite a 65 percent crude oil price decline and the rig count at the lowest level in almost four years, the EIA predicts that production from these four regions is 500,000 barrels per day higher than in October. That translates to a $25 per barrel break-even price, meaning U.S. crude oil prices will remain low.
One of the pleasures of driving up Highway 99 is to stop in Selma, California at the Sunkist Raisin Store to buy the biggest and juiciest chocolate covered raisins on earth. But it seems that no all is copacetic in Sun-Maid Raisin land these days. The Supreme Court is beginning to review rules associated with a growers’ co-op that could spell the end of cartel management of raisin supply and pricing.
The world premiere of Alex Gibney’s “Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine” at South-by-Southwest in Austin was expected to be a celebration of the life and times of the departed founder of Apple Inc. Instead, the movie trashes Jobs and ridicules the global outpouring of emotion that greeted the Apple leader’s 2011 death. Gibney slimes Jobs as less than rock star or a writer of fiction, “but merely a man who sold us things.”
Ashton Kutcher took on the character of Steve Jobs for a Hollywood movie, but he also channeled Steve Jobs’s life and has made about $100 million in early-stage technology investments through his venture capital fund, called A-Grade Investments.
