Capitalists

Silicon Beach is mourning the death of entrepreneur and Ecomom co-founder Jody Sherman this week. Sherman, 47, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, officials said. Since his death Monday, several L.A. tech bloggers, friends and venture capitalists have taken to Twitter, Facebook and personal blogs to share memories of Sherman, who co-founded Ecomom in Santa Monica in 2009. The company, which sells eco-friendly and healthful products for children, mothers and the home, moved to Las Vegas about a year ago. The messages also emphasized the need for a more open dialogue about the pressures of creating a start-up and running a business, with entrepreneurs and others calling on the tech community to open up and offer support to colleagues who may be suffering from depression.

WASHINGTON - President Obama on Wednesday will nominate venture capitalist Thomas Wheeler as the nation's top telecommunications regulator, tapping a major campaign fundraiser with long ties to the media and the telecom industries, White House and industry officials said. Wheeler, managing director of Core Capital Partners in Washington, D.C., would replace Julius Genachowski as chairman of the five-member Federal Communications Commission board. Democratic Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, who was mentioned as a candidate, will take over as acting chairman when Genachowski steps down in the coming weeks.

Re "Uneasy Calm Settles Over Jakarta," May 17: Reading the list of capitalist rats deserting Indonesia--General Motors, FedEx, Citibank--reminds one of 20 years ago, when Iran descended into chaos. Large capital is drawn to undemocratic regimes, where it is convenient to exploit the masses for the short term. With democratic rights limited, unions banned and an elite willing to do business, American capitalists forsake our heritage for the "opportunities" of investment. Indonesia proves this is a dubious recipe for long-term economic growth as well as a tragedy for the populace.

Mon dieu ! C'est la vie . There. I imagine that will about cover France's reaction to U.S. tire magnate Maurice "Morry" Taylor Jr.'s scathing criticism of French workers. In case you missed it , Taylor, head of Titan International, minced no words when responding to Arnaud Montebourg, France's minister for industrial renewal, who had suggested that Titan might want to take over an ailing Goodyear tire factory in Amiens. In a letter to Montebourg, he said: "Sir, your letter suggests you would like to open discussions with Titan.

In what would have been an unaccustomed move for a Silicon Valley venture capitalist not too long ago, Alan Salzman recently flew to Copenhagen to attend a conference on climate change and schmooze government policymakers. His mission: Explain the role of venture capitalists and their green-tech start-ups in cleaning up the environment. "All aspects of clean tech bump up against government regulations," said Salzman, whose firm, VantagePoint Venture Partners, has funded such high-profile firms as electric car maker Tesla Motors Inc. and solar power plant developer BrightSource Energy Inc. A few years ago, venture capitalists rarely ventured too far from Sand Hill Road, a stretch of low-slung office parks nestled among redwood trees in the hills above Stanford University that is home to some of the world's biggest venture firms.

For cartoonists of a certain age, it used to be so simple. There was us, and there were the pigs: crony capitalists, clueless chauvinists and head-banging cops. For the capitalists, like Pat Oliphant's sloppy bankers or John Sherffius' morphing Wall Street icon, the symbol is making a comeback, not that it ever went away. As Steve Breen demonstrates, bacon-bearing politicos have been the place-holders for the unflattering visual sobriquet for years. Pork chops anyone? -- Joel Pett

Re "U.S. Firms 'Work' for China Workers," World Report, July 19: We at the Federation for a Democratic China, a worldwide organization, firmly believe that international business interests can be induced to contribute positively to China's democratization--a win-win situation on a long-term basis. A good place to start is a code of conduct to prevent them from being vulture capitalists. R. T. HUANG Los Angeles

Under capitalism, the average citizen enjoys more freedom and greater happiness than under any other economic system. Therefore, I have been a longtime advocate of the establishment of the Saturday before Labor Day as a national holiday, Capital Day. I believe that competition is our healthy way of cleaning up non-competitive firms, which do not provide consumer products at good prices. Success in our economic system is not guaranteed, as many entrepreneurs try several ventures before they succeed.

Re "Truth Is, We Need More Goldwaters," Commentary, Aug. 16: Pete Hamill should know that those of us who miss Barry Goldwater are large in number, represent many shades of political opinion and long for elected leaders who give citizens the respect of telling them the truth. For us Republicans who still remember our party's environmental legacy, Goldwater is a genuine hero. Goldwater was a deeply patriotic man who understood in his bones that conservation of America's great natural heritage is truly conservative, unlike the mob of shouting pundits, crony capitalists and spin-doctoring buffoons whose twisted ideology brands protection of our air, water and land as radical.

Rosscomp Corp. said it has suspended operations while executives negotiate with creditors and prospective buyers to determine whether the company will survive. The ailing Santa Ana computer parts maker said it received from creditors a second notice of default for non-payment of more than $100,000 in interest and principal on $938,000, two-year convertible subordinated notes.

SAN FRANCISCO - Nirav Tolia is trying to build the next big social network - block by block. Nextdoor is like Facebook but for a neighborhood: a private network to find a baby sitter, borrow a cup of sugar, organize a block party or spread word of a break-in. It's not the first time a start-up has tried to network neighbors, but Nextdoor is one of the first to gain momentum. So far, more than 8,000 neighborhoods across the country have signed up for the service, including Laurel Canyon and Atwater Village.

Silicon Beach is mourning the death of entrepreneur and Ecomom co-founder Jody Sherman this week. Sherman, 47, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, officials said. Since his death Monday, several L.A. tech bloggers, friends and venture capitalists have taken to Twitter, Facebook and personal blogs to share memories of Sherman, who co-founded Ecomom in Santa Monica in 2009. The company, which sells eco-friendly and healthful products for children, mothers and the home, moved to Las Vegas about a year ago. The messages also emphasized the need for a more open dialogue about the pressures of creating a start-up and running a business, with entrepreneurs and others calling on the tech community to open up and offer support to colleagues who may be suffering from depression.

Pow! A novel Mo Yan, translated from the Chinese by Howard Goldblatt Seagull Books: 386 pp., $27.50 This year's Nobel laureate in literature is an author who somehow manages to write books with brazenly political themes while living in a dictatorship. Mo Yan's latest novel, "Pow!," is a thinly veiled assault on the frayed moral fabric of that hyper-capitalist country known as Communist China. The characters in "Pow!" do awful and disgusting things, most of them involving meat.

A New York State judge gave a light sentence to a Los Angeles venture capitalist and philanthropist for his participation in a pay-to-play corruption scandal involving former New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi. Elliott Broidy, 55, on Monday pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of attempting to receive a reward for official misconduct, the New York attorney general's office said. The judge let him change his plea to a misdemeanor from a felony and spared him jail time. Broidy provided important evidence in a case against former New York Comptroller Alan Hevesi, who served as the sole trustee to a $125-billion public pension fund, Justice Lewis Bart Stone said.

Maybe the attraction is Silicon Beach, the swath of Los Angeles that is home to so many tech start-ups. Or maybe it's just the beach. Either way, Northern California technology titans and wannabes increasingly are sinking money into trophy homes from the Hollywood Hills to the beach in a kind of Silicon Valley south. Making tsunami-like waves so far this year are three Westside transactions: •Billionaire venture capitalist and hedge fund manager Peter Thiel cherry-picked a house in the Hollywood Hills this spring for $11.5 million.

Re "Blame the sinner, not capitalism," Opinion, July 10 Jonah Goldberg has hit the nail on the head. We do need to hold the sinners accountable for their bad deeds. Now that Goldberg has diagnosed the illness, I would like to hear how he suggests we cure the patient, which is the electorate's failure to punish venal officials, the government's failure to punish the sinner and civil society's failure to police malice and buffoonery. Should we reintroduce public shame for these bad actors?

I read with amusement the front-page story "Firms Pick Up Travel Tab for State Pension Officials" (Sept. 8). As a teacher of political science at Cal State Fullerton and a contributor to the Public Employees' Retirement System, I was pleased to learn that my pension funds are being supervised by people aware that we live in a global economy. I have no choice but to trust that these officials will make the wisest financial decisions possible given the worldwide options existing in the international marketplace.

Democratic Sen. Alan Cranston's campaign for a fourth term in November has a number of strategic elements, not the least of which are a special appeal to younger voters and a heavy solicitation of campaign contributions from the housing and real estate industries and from venture capitalists. This weekend, Cranston sent a message to all those groups by announcing new legislation and by taking on the Senate Finance Committee's new tax reform bill.

China Daily, the largest English-language newspaper in China, carried a front-page headline last week: "Village Gratitude Shows Integrity of Task. " Not clear what that's about, and the opening sentence isn't much help: "On a hot afternoon, Zhou Yi picked up a bag of freshly boiled eggs that had been left on the doorstep of the committee office in Chaqulak village in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. " I figured this must be some feel-good story about the noble, uncorrupted country folk taking care of the less fortunate in their midst.

The latest insult to Mitt Romney's pride is that he stands a good chance of losing the primary in Michigan, his boyhood home. His dad was a popular Michigan governor, but that was a long time ago and Mitt has not lived in the state for 46 years. The ties are growing tenuous. Four years ago he won the primary against John McCain, but, in that race, Romney was the favorite of the right wing. This time around, they have a new darling, Rick Santorum. Born-again voters are being reborn for Rick while shunning Mitt, the political apostate from godless Massachusetts.