Your daily briefing for all the top news in Energy, Technology, Finance, and Politics.
Energy
GOP takes aim at Obama climate tactic story
POLITICOPRO (Subscribe)
Erica Martinson
The latest report that the Obama administration will seek an international climate change pact without congressional approval drew fresh criticism from GOP climate skeptics and pols who complained the strategy was the move of an “imperial President.”
Climate plan spooks Dems
THE HILL
Timothy Cama
President Obama’s election-year plan to win a new international climate change accord is making vulnerable Democrats nervous. … One Democratic strategist said the proposal would put swing-state candidates who are critical to the party keeping its Senate majority “in front of the firing squad.” “You’re … making it more difficult for them to win and certainty putting them in a position to lose,” the strategist said. Several vulnerable Senate Democrats kept mum on the issue.
A climate for change: A solution conservatives could accept
WASHINGTON POST
Editorial
The EPA rules can’t be as clean and efficient as market-based plans such as Mr. Van Hollen’s. That reality could persuade some industry groups and some Republicans to seek a bargain that would replace the EPA efforts with a less bureaucratic approach. Conservatives who truly favor free markets over central planning should come to the table. If they cannot muster the intellectual courage, Rep. John Delaney (D-Md.) has a smart second-best idea: Let states escape the EPA’s centralized regulation if they enact their own carbon taxes instead.
One Democrat’s gamble on climate change
POLITICO
Andrew Restuccia
This Rust Belt state is one of the last places you might expect to wage a winning Senate campaign by trumpeting climate change to liberals at Netroots Nation and boasting about voting for cap and trade. But Michigan Democrat Gary Peters is making the climate cause a central message in his neck-and-neck Senate campaign, in a state that for decades built gas-guzzling cars into a foundation of the U.S. economy.
Alaska Referendum Upholds Tax System for Oil Companies
NEW YORK TIMES
Kirk Johnson
A hard-fought ballot referendum that would have overturned Alaska’s system of taxing oil industry profits, put to voters last week but until now considered too close to call, has failed by a narrow margin, with absentee ballots counted this week nailing down the outcome.
America’s coal heartland is in economic freefall — but only the most desperate are fleeing
WASHINGTON POST
Chico Harlan
Miners, modestly educated but accustomed to high pay, are among the hardest group of American workers to retrain. They also tend to challenge one of the tenets of economics logic — that people will go elsewhere to find jobs. Even though the economy is growing in northern parts of West Virginia, driven by a natural gas boom, those in the geographically isolated southern parts have shown a tendency to stay put, even if it means sliding toward poverty.
Why abundant coal may have ‘cursed’ the Appalachian economy
WASHINGTON POST
Ryan McCarthy
Harlan’s piece raises the question of whether West Virginia miners are better off moving away from the troubled local coal mining industry — and certainly some are trying. But is West Virginia’s economy better off moving away from one of its most valuable natural resources? In economics, there’s a fairly sizable body of research on the idea of a “resource curse” — that is, the theory that countries blessed with abundant natural resources are often cursed with higher poverty levels and lower growth.
Technology
Timothy Wu for Lieutenant Governor
NEW YORK TIMES
Editorial
Albany needs an independent voice, someone who can bring fresh ideas to a very stale and often corrupt political culture. Timothy Wu is the one who best fits that bill.
Outage casts shadow on TWC-Comcast deal
POLITICOPRO (Subscribe)
Alex Byers
Time Warner Cable experienced a widespread Internet outage Wednesday morning, a disruption that comes at a bad time for the company and its potential acquirer, Comcast, as they make the case to regulators for their $45 billion merger.
This year’s net neutrality debate has completely missed the point
WASHINGTON POST
Larry Downes
As far as the Internet is concerned, Congress and the White House got things very very right in 1996. A million piece of hate mail to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and new terminology can’t change the past. Let’s hope it won’t change the future either.
Comcast’s Generosity Wins Charities’ Support for Merger
NATIONAL JOURNAL
Brendan Sasso
Comcast is proud of the millions of dollars it donates every year to charities and nonprofit groups. Now, those groups are paying back Comcast’s generosity by supporting its bid to buy Time Warner Cable.
Uber’s War on Lyft Could Prompt Federal Investigation
NATIONAL JOURNAL
Dustin Volz
The San Francisco start-up’s aggressive recruitment methods are already well documented, but the size and sophistication of its exploits revealed by The Verge could warrant an antitrust investigation by the Federal Trade Commission or state attorneys general, according to several antitrust experts and former government officials interviewed by National Journal.
Microsoft targets vacationing Hill staffers with e-mail privacy ad campaign
WASHINGTON POST
Hayley Tsukayama
Microsoft, getting a jump on the fall political season, took out full-page ads in the Outer Banks Sentinel, Martha’s Vineyard Times and Rehoboth Beach’s Cape Gazette to remind Washingtonians on vacation about e-mail privacy laws. The ads are part of an ongoing campaign by Microsoft to convince lawmakers to reform the laws.
Finance
Bureaucrats gone wild: Feds describe racial hostility, discrimination inside new Obama agency
WASHINGTON TIMES
Kelly Riddell
Evidence gathered by congressional investigators, internal agency documents and Washington Times interviews with workers discloses scores of cases of U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau employees seeking protection from racially offensive, sexist or discriminatory behavior…
Warren Buffett Betrays America
POLITICO
Rich Lowry
It must have been a bitter moment for President Barack Obama when he got the news that his favorite economic guru not only doesn’t like paying taxes but hates America.
Dethrone ‘King Dollar’
NEW YORK TIMES
Jared Bernstein
There are few truisms about the world economy, but for decades, one has been the role of the United States dollar as the world’s reserve currency. … But new research reveals that what was once a privilege is now a burden, undermining job growth, pumping up budget and trade deficits and inflating financial bubbles. To get the American economy on track, the government needs to drop its commitment to maintaining the dollar’s reserve-currency status.
Holding Bankers Accountable
NEW YORK TIMES
Room for Debate
Can more be done to hold bankers accountable or is there a good reason the Justice Department has reached settlements without prosecuting individuals?
US probes wave of cyber attacks on banks
FINANCIAL TIMES (Subscribe)
Tom Braithwaite and Hannah Kuchler
US authorities are investigating a new wave of cyber attacks against American financial institutions, including JPMorgan Chase, the largest US bank by assets.
Politics
A year-long fight against the forces of darkness
WASHINGTON POST
Ahmed Khalaf Al-Dulaimi
We have lost so many brothers, sisters, sons, daughters and friends, of all ages, while fighting this battle. We are proud, and we are fighting because we want to live free, because we want to rid the world of this cancer that has hijacked our religion, because we are concerned that a generation will be brainwashed to glorify death, suicide bombings, beheadings. History will not forgive us if we allow this cancer to spread. It must be stopped. We cannot stop it alone.
Immigration Clash Could Lead to Shutdown
NEW YORK TIMES
Michael D. Shear and Julie Hirschfeld Davis
Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, has said his party could seek to prevent Mr. Obama from taking unilateral action on immigration by removing the funding for it in the annual budget, which will be the top order of business when Congress returns from its break and must be passed by the end of September. Injecting the immigration issue into the annual budget discussions raises the possibility of a spending stalemate that could lead to another government shutdown in the fall.
Dems paint GOP as shutdown party
POLITICO
Burgess Everett
Democrats hear only one thing when Republicans talk about fighting President Barack Obama’s immigration agenda or GOP plans for controlling Congress: government shutdown. In fundraising requests, media appearances and conference calls, Democrats are painting Republicans as the “shutdown party” just in time for the midterm elections that coincidentally hit right after the one-year anniversary of last year’s October shutdown.
Countdown to Kicking Out Harry Reid
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Karl Rove
Republicans seem to have three Democratic seats likely flipped—Montana, South Dakota and West Virginia—and while it won’t be pretty or overwhelming, three to five more seats look like they will fall the GOP’s way. If Republicans hold on to Kentucky and Georgia, as appears increasingly likely, that will be enough to kick out Harry Reid, install Mitch McConnell as Senate majority leader, and rein in Mr. Obama during his last two years in office.
Deficit Forecast Trimmed as Rates Stay Low
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Damian Paletta
The U.S. government’s deficit over the next decade will be smaller than previously forecast, as a protracted period of low interest rates has slowed the increase of debt payments, the Congressional Budget Office said on Wednesday.
Lawmakers Want Congress to Decide on Military Action Against ISIS
NEW YORK TIMES
Julie Hirschfeld Davis
A bipartisan group of lawmakers on Wednesday called for Congress to debate and vote on whether to authorize President Obama to take military action against Sunni militants in Iraq and Syria.
NLRB Case Tests Who Employs Contract Workers
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Melanie Trottman
Just a month after a controversial decision involving employees of McDonald’s Corp. franchisees, businesses are bracing for a new action by federal labor regulators that could lower the barriers between companies and the contract workers they use. The National Labor Relations Board is re-evaluating its decades-old standard for deciding when contractual business arrangements render one business a “joint employer” of workers employed by another.
Why Bobby Jindal needed to sue the Obama administration
WASHINGTON POST
Sean Sullivan
As an early champion of Common Core, Jindal could face criticism in the Republican primary. What better way to blunt the backlash in advance than to become a sworn enemy of the program?
