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Energy
FEMA targets climate change skeptic governors, could withhold funding
WASHINGTON TIMES
Dave Boyer
The Obama administration has issued new guidelines that could make it harder for governors who deny climate change to obtain federal disaster-preparedness funds. The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s new rules could put some Republican governors in a bind. The rules say that states’ risk assessments must include “consideration of changing environmental or climate conditions that may affect and influence the long-term vulnerability from hazards in the state.”
Science Museums Urged to Cut Ties With Kochs
NEW YORK TIMES
John Schwartz
Dozens of climate scientists and environmental groups are calling for museums of science and natural history to “cut all ties” with fossil fuel companies and philanthropists like the Koch brothers. A letter released on Tuesday asserts that such money is tainted by these donors’ efforts to deny the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change.
Mercurial Regulators Making Fishy Calculations
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Brian Potts
This large number of hungry, pregnant fisherwomen is one of the many outlandish assumptions that the EPA made when calculating the health benefits of its most expensive rule ever: the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards for power plants. Although the EPA completed its mercury rule in 2012, various industry groups and states challenged it in federal court, and the case, Michigan v. EPA, has finally reached the Supreme Court.
Can Cruz win the oil primary?
POLITICO
Andrew Restuccia and Elana Schor
Republicans widely champion an energy platform based on expanded oil and gas drilling, opposition to EPA climate regulations and approval of the Keystone XL pipeline. But Cruz has gone beyond that by pushing legislation to lift the 1970s-era ban on crude oil exports — a prime industry cause that has some congressional Republicans nervous about catching the blame if gasoline prices rise. And while some of his potential White House rivals also want to phase out the federal mandate for blending ethanol into gasoline, Cruz made a point of starkly staking out that position in corn-rich Iowa.
Global warming is now slowing down the circulation of the oceans — with potentially dire consequences
WASHINGTON POST
Chris Mooney
According to a new study just out in Nature Climate Change by Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and a group of co-authors, we’re now seeing a slowdown of the great ocean circulation that, among other planetary roles, helps to partly drive the Gulf Stream off the U.S. east coast. The consequences could be dire – including significant extra sea level rise for coastal cities like New York and Boston.
An inviting opportunity for the American energy renaissance
WASHINGTON TIMES
William O’Keefe
Last month the White House submitted President Obama’s annual economic report to Congress. Nestled in the findings is a compelling case for lifting the country’s antiquated ban on natural gas exports.
Technology
Internet Providers Sue to Kill Net Neutrality
NATIONAL JOURNAL
Brendan Sasso
Telecom companies filed a pair of lawsuits Monday in an attempt to reverse the Federal Communications Commission’s new net neutrality rules. The suits are expected to be the opening shots in a long legal war against the controversial regulations. USTelecom, which represents AT&T, Verizon, and other companies, filed its lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, while Alamo Broadband, a small Texas-based wireless Internet provider, filed its suit in the U.S. appeals court based in New Orleans.
Marco Rubio and Cory Booker have a plan to make your wifi faster
VOX
Timothy B. Lee
Wifi chips can communicate only on certain frequencies, and as the technology has gotten more popular, those frequencies have gotten more and more crowded. Sometimes this causes download speeds to slow to a crawl. New legislation from Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) aims to address this problem by expanding the number of frequencies wifi chips can use to communicate. However, the new frequencies have been slated for use in advanced car-to-car communication technology that could help prevent car crashes in the future. The big question is whether it’s possible for these technologies to coexist.
Did the National Broadband Plan spur innovation?
WASHINGTON POST
Larry Downes
The seeds for the National Broadband Plan were sown in the early days of the Obama administration. Perhaps the next president will call for a second plan that will build on the successes of the first. And learn from its misfires.
The FTC beefs up technology investigations with new office
WASHINGTON POST
Andrea Peterson
The Federal Trade Commission is already the de facto government watchdog for digital privacy. Now, the agency is hiring more people to investigate how technological advancements affect consumers.
Finance
Despite Regulatory Advances, Experts Say Risk Remains a Danger to Large Banks
NEW YORK TIMES
Mayra Rodríguez Valladares
With all the new laws and regulations since the financial crisis, it would be easy to believe that the banking industry is safer. Unfortunately, speakers at the Federal Reserve conference at George Washington University on Friday offered a range of reasons for why that’s not the case. First, the regulatory framework remains fragmented. Not only do we have “a dual state and federal banking charter system,” as former Representative Barney Frank told the audience of regulators, bankers, lobbyists, consultants and academics, we also have three national bank regulators, 50 state bank regulators and two derivatives regulators, not to mention different regulators for securities, broker-dealers and insurance companies. Private equity and hedge funds remain largely unregulated. It is unreasonable to expect that all these entities would communicate, not to mention work well together, to detect the next crisis.
SEC chief forges ahead on financial adviser regs
THE HILL
Kevin Cirilli
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Mary Jo White will tell Congress Tuesday that she is moving forward with stringent new regulations for financial advisers, according to prepared testimony obtained by The Hill.
Bill Takes Aim at S.E.C. Waivers for Firms That Broke Law
NEW YORK TIMES
Peter Eavis
The Securities and Exchange Commission faces new pressure from Congress to make it harder for lawbreaking companies to hold on to important privileges that help them raise money in the markets. Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, is set to announce on Tuesday legislation that takes aim at how the commission grants the privileges. The announcement will coincide with the appearance that day of Mary Jo White, the S.E.C.’s chairwoman, before the House’s powerful Financial Services Committee, where Ms. Waters is the leading Democratic member.
Politics
Israel Spied on Iran Nuclear Talks With U.S.
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Adam Entous
Soon after the U.S. and other major powers entered negotiations last year to curtail Iran’s nuclear program, senior White House officials learned Israel was spying on the closed-door talks. … The espionage didn’t upset the White House as much as Israel’s sharing of inside information with U.S. lawmakers and others to drain support from a high-stakes deal intended to limit Iran’s nuclear program, current and former officials said.
The Cruz Candidacy
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
The good news for GOP voters is that their field of candidates in 2016 is going to be deep, offering many varieties of conservative leadership. Mr. Cruz’s challenge will be showing that his polarizing style is a better bet than the conservative governing success that many of the others have already had.
Cruz tests the limits of conservatism in his run for president
WASHINGTON POST
Dan Balz
If there is such a thing as being too conservative to be elected president of the United States, Ted Cruz is having none of it. Announcing his candidacy for the Republican nomination Monday at Liberty University, the first-term senator from Texas offered himself as the pure essence of conservatism and challenged the tea party and evangelical wings of the Republican Party to rise up behind one of their own and take control of the party and the country.
Hillary Clinton Tests Two Themes for 2016: Working Together and Inequality
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Laura Meckler
Hillary Clinton road-tested two themes likely to shape her pitch to voters in the 2016 presidential campaign—the value of working together and the need to combat economic inequality—during a panel discussion with Democratic groups on Monday.
As 2016 Race Begins, National Security Moves to Front Burner
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Gerald F. Seib
The broadest issue atop the agenda still figures to be the widespread sense of middle-class stagnation: the sense that even as the economy improves on a macro level, on the micro level many families aren’t seeing commensurate improvement in wages, job security or economic confidence. But that sense of domestic unease now will share more of the stage with a sense of global uncertainty. Wrap it together and David Axelrod, the chief strategist for both of President Barack Obama’s presidential runs, says “the race will be about security writ large.”
