InsideSources

Your daily briefing for all the top news in Energy, Technology, Finance, and Politics.

Energy

Time to “Simmer Down” on Fiscal Crises
FUEL FIX
William O’Keefe
Fiscal brinksmanship – those seasonal scenarios during which our government tiptoes to the edge of the latest government shutdown, fiscal cliff, or sequestration – has become as much a part of the Washington political culture as seersucker on summer Thursdays. And thanks to the fact that we have grown accustomed to funding our government through an unending series of continuing resolutions rather than following the comprehensive annual budget process.  Unfortunately, this trend is likely to continue for a long time to come.

Shale Boom Helping American Consumers Like Never Before
BLOOMBERG
Dan Murtaugh and Lynn Doan
Oil traders might see the 27 percent slide in global prices as a bear market. For U.S. consumers, it’s more like an early holiday gift. The drop in crude has pulled retail gasoline down more than 50 cents a gallon from the year’s high in April. That means annual savings of $500 for the average U.S. household, which consumes about 1,000 gallons of fuel a year, according to data from the Federal Highway Administration and Energy Information Administration.

Calls to Use Yucca Mountain as a Nuclear Waste Site, Now Deemed Safe
NEW YORK TIMES
Matthew L. Wald
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Thursday released a long-delayed report on the suitability of Yucca Mountain as a disposal spot for nuclear waste, finding that the design met the commission’s requirements, laying the groundwork to restart the project if control of the Senate changes hands in the elections next month.

Texas Plant to Capture, and Then Reuse, Carbon
NEW YORK TIMES
Matthew L. Wald
At Capitol Aggregates, a cement plant near San Antonio, the Skyonic Corporation of Austin, plans to open a $125 million factory next week that will make industrial chemicals. Instead of mining natural deposits of carbon found underground, the plant will capture the carbon emitted from making cement — a rich source — and use it to produce chemicals like sodium bicarbonate and hydrochloric acid by reacting it with rock salt.

Technology

Google overtakes Goldman Sachs in US political donations
FINANCIAL TIMES (Subscribe)
Sarah Mishkin and Gina Chon
Google has surpassed Goldman Sachs as a US political donor in a sign of Silicon Valley’s increasingly assertive efforts to shape policy and counter critical scrutiny in Washington.

FCC aims for spectrum’s upper reaches
POLITICOPRO (Subscribe)
Brooks Boliek
The FCC will reach into the future Friday as it launches an investigation into a slice of the airwaves that could help fuel 5G mobile gadgets.

The FBI Wants More Access to Your iPhone. Congress Is Standing in the Way.
NATIONAL JOURNAL
Brendan Sasso
As the tech giants get better at encryption, however, law-enforcement agencies are turning to Congress for help, asking lawmakers to make it mandatory for the tech companies to make their devices more accessible. FBI Director James Comey made that case personally on Thursday, saying at the Brookings Institution that police need new legislation to help them catch criminals who are using encryption to hide incriminating evidence. … “I’d be surprised if more than a handful of members would support the idea of backdooring Americans’ personal property,” Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and vocal privacy advocate, said.

Analysts Ask What’s Next for Google
NEW YORK TIMES
Conor Dougherty
Google is still pulling in money hand over fist, but Wall Street is hungry for the company’s next act. On a conference call with analysts on Thursday, after Google reported its third-quarter earnings, the questions came fast and furious: How will Google match Apple’s new payment system? Can YouTube topple television? Is Google serious about trying to challenge Amazon on same-day delivery?

Obama nominates former Google exec to lead U.S. Patent Office
WASHINGTON POST
Nancy Scola
The White House announced Thursday that it will  nominate former Google lawyer Michelle K. Lee to lead the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, potentially handing Silicon Valley a key victory and ending a two-year tussle for the agency’s leadership​. Lee has been managing the 10,000-employee Patent Office day-to-day since being appointed deputy director in January. But efforts to permanently elevate her to director have been stymied by powerful outside groups —particularly pharmaceutical companies, which backed an industry insider for the job.

Cord-Cutters Rejoice: CBS Joins Web Stream
NEW YORK TIMES
Emily Steel
A new era of à la carte television arrived in earnest this week — seemingly all at once and more quickly than many industry executives and television fans had expected. And with it, the virtual monopoly that cable, satellite and telecommunications companies have had over TV programming is dissipating. Just one day after HBO said it would start an Internet-only offering, CBS announced on Thursday its own subscription streaming service that lets people watch its live programming and thousands of current and past shows on demand.

Prices Add Up With a la Carte TV
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Joe Flint, Shalini Ramachandran and Keach Hagey
But cord-cutters should be careful what they wish for. A future where television viewers subscribe to each channel individually could be cheaper for young people who only watch two or three channels, industry executives said. But analysts say that for households filled with people of differing tastes or fans of many channels, this future could make the average cable TV bill—which hovers at around $90—seem like a bargain.

Finance

Jack Lew, Investment Killer
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
The hyperpartisan Mr. Lew and fellow Democrats conjured their anti-inversion scheme as a populist riff to help retain Senate control in November’s election, but on the present polling it won’t turn out that way. Instead it’s reinforcing how clueless this Administration is about the sources of economic growth and confidence. “Global growth and job creation continue to disappoint,” said the Treasury in a semiannual report to Congress this week. Thanks to the Obama Treasury, which we doubt will ever understand why.

Government Forecasters Might as Well Use a Ouija Board
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Ed Lazear
Government economic forecasts receive a great deal of attention and are used to make a case for or against legislation or public policies. How good are the forecasts? The answer: not very. Forecasting is an inexact science at best, and the trust that Congress and the public invest in these estimates is not warranted.

Yellen Goes on Road to Investigate Health of the Jobs Market
NEW YORK TIMES
Binyamin Appelbaum
In her first year as Fed chairwoman, Ms. Yellen has made a point of showing public interest in the plight of the unemployed and in programs seeking to help them. Her first public speech after assuming the helm, in Chicago in April, highlighted the stories of three workers. That trip included a similar visit to a job-training program. She has maintained the view that the job market is far from good health, and that monetary policy can help, even as some Fed officials argue the Fed’s work is done.

Stock market turmoil and the global debt trap
WASHINGTON POST
Robert Samuelson
Six years after the onset of the financial crisis, the world still has too much debt. The total in 2013, according to the McKinsey Global Institute, came to about $186 trillion. This includes government debt, corporate bonds and loans to individuals, families and businesses. Since 2008, the amount has actually increased by about $34 trillion. The numbers are so large that it’s hard for ordinary mortals to connect them with the world economy’s ability to grow at a decent and self-sustained pace. Doubts about this underlie the stock market’s recent turmoil.

What Markets Will
NEW YORK TIMES
Paul Krugman
In any case, the next time you hear some talking head opining on what we must do to satisfy the markets, ask yourself, “How does he know?” For the truth is that when people talk about what markets demand, what they’re really doing is trying to bully us into doing what they themselves want.

Politics

Frustrated Hispanics Are Down on This Year’s Midterms
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Arian Campo-Flores
Hispanic voters appear likely to sit out this year’s midterm election in even larger numbers than usual, potentially depriving Democrats of a voting bloc that could make the difference in several tight races. Many Latinos are angry that efforts to overhaul federal immigration policy are stalled in the Republican-led House, voters and advocates say. But they also are disappointed that President Barack Obama put off any executive action on the issue, including a potential ratcheting back of deportations, until after the election.

A wave for House Republicans?
POLITICO
Alex Isenstadt
Aiming to stretch the political map, two prominent conservative groups, American Action Network and Congressional Leadership Fund, on Friday will announce a joint $3 million investment in seven House races, including contests in deep blue districts that are just now starting to be seen as realistic targets for Republicans. They’re not uttering the W-word that rhymes with cave, at least not yet. But Republicans are encouraged by what they’re seeing in the homestretch of the House campaign and are determined not to let an opportunity pass.

Senate Republicans See a Win, Not a Wave
NATIONAL JOURNAL
Emily Schultheis
National Republicans believe they will retake the Senate on Nov. 4. But don’t call it a “wave.” Asked by reporters at a pen-and-pad briefing Thursday how confident he was that his party would gain control of the chamber, National Republican Senatorial Committee executive director Rob Collins said: “We are going to win the Senate. I feel very good about that.”

Ebola, Wall Street stock slide deepen ’14 gloom for Dems
THE HILL
Mike Lillis and Kevin Cirilli
The Democrats’ midterm prospects took a beating this week as concerns over the Ebola virus and a jittery economy churned up countless grim headlines and darkened an already-dissatisfied national mood.

CDC director’s challenge: Deadly Ebola virus and outbreak of criticism
WASHINGTON POST
Lena H. Sun, Lenny Bernstein and Joel Achenbach
Frieden, the 53-year-old doctor who for the past five years has served as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is immersed in an epidemiological and political crisis. He has become the face of that crisis, and more than that, the voice. It’s a deep voice, sonorous, and he speaks slowly, deliberately, assuredly, and he declared at the end of September: “I have no doubt that we’ll stop this in its tracks in the U.S.” But his confident statements have had to compete with the onslaught of bad news, including the infection of two health-care workers in Dallas, and he is now on the defensive.

Ebola vs. civil liberties
WASHINGTON POST
Charles Krauthammer
In the face of a uniquely dangerous threat, we Americans have trouble recalibrating our traditional (and laudable) devotion to individual rights and civil liberties. That is the fundamental reason we’ve been so slow in getting serious about Ebola.

Bipartisan solutions, not blame, can help in managing Ebola
WASHINGTON POST
Editorial
Now that both parties have revealed their preference for effective national government, they can think more clearly about Washington’s budgetary issues. Sequestration is more symptom than cause; the root problem is a general refusal to tackle entitlements, tax breaks and other sacrosanct programs, which leaves the discretionary budget to bear the brunt of deficit reduction. And even if there’s no evidence that budget cuts “caused” the mistakes in the Ebola response, it’s likely that more resources, more thoughtfully allocated, may be needed in the near future. The broader lesson is to readjust federal priorities so that leaders actually have the capacity to prevent and, if necessary, govern through crises — and not just blame each other for them.

Who Do They Think We Are?
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Peggy Noonan
The administration’s handling of the Ebola crisis continues to be marked by double talk, runaround and gobbledygook. And its logic is worse than its language. In many of its actions, especially its public pronouncements, the government is functioning not as a soother of public anxiety but the cause of it.

Caracas 181, Kerry 0
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
Venezuela’s economy may be imploding, with a debt default looming, but the enemy of the United States on Thursday managed the diplomatic coup of being elected to the United Nations Security Council. So much for the Obama Administration’s political and moral influence with the “international community.”

Health research needs boost from bold innovators
USA TODAY
Ann Romney
At a time when the horizons of science have never spread wider, researchers and their supporters must rethink both the goals and the model of scientific research. It is a time for bold ambitions, not incremental steps. Millions have experienced moments like the one I did in 1998. We owe these patients more than incremental progress. Ultimately, we owe them cures.