Your daily briefing for all the top news in Energy, Technology, Finance, and Politics.
Energy
No, BP Didn’t Ruin the Gulf
POLITICO
Geoff Morrell
BP has said consistently, for more than four years, that it would do the right thing. We meant what we said, and we’ve lived up to our word. To date, we have spent more than $27 billion on response, clean-up and claims. But we should not be accountable for damages caused by the acts of others, or those conjured up by opportunistic advocacy groups. And we should certainly not be liable for damages that stem from problems that have plagued the Gulf for decades. After all the faulty forecasts, it’s time to base our understanding of the Gulf’s condition and the spill’s impact on facts—not fiction.
Falling oil price raises concerns for shale
FINANCIAL TIMES (Subscribe)
Ed Crooks
In a downturn, higher-cost supply is most at risk, and the need for horizontal wells and hydraulic fracturing – “fracking” – in shale reserves means they are more expensive to develop than many oilfields in the Middle East.
The Upside of Lower Oil Prices
NEW YORK TIMES
Editorial
But it’s not bad for Saudi Arabia, the kingpin of the global oil industry. Saudi Arabia has ample cash reserves to withstand a drop in income, shows no inclination to reduce production and seems to prefer putting a squeeze on its geopolitical rivals in Iran and Russia. For the United States, it’s a mixed bag. American oil production is soaring, and lower prices could slow production of shale oil, which is expensive and needs higher prices to be profitable. But lower oil prices mean reduced costs for consumers and businesses and a boost for economies across the industrialized world.
NRC Chairwoman Allison Macfarlane to Leave Agency
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Amy Harder
The chairwoman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Tuesday that she plans to step down in January, after a two-year run in which she sought to calm the agency amid clashes between her predecessor and the other commissioners.
The dirty effects of mountaintop removal mining
WASHINGTON POST
Editorial
For decades, coal companies have been removing mountain peaks to haul away coal lying just underneath. More recently, scientists and regulators have been developing a clearer understanding of the environmental consequences. They aren’t pretty.
For E.U. Climate Meeting, Deep Divisions and High Stakes
NEW YORK TIMES
James Kanter
The leaders of the 28 members of the European Union are set to meet here on Thursday to reassert their global leadership in climate protection, but they will first need to finesse deep divisions over how to generate and distribute energy.
Technology
D.C. disconnect: Old laws vs. new technology
POLITICO
Alex Byers
Congress has not only failed to grapple with the industry’s big-ticket items like immigration and patent reform, it’s also sidestepped efforts to modernize lesser-known tech laws that affect average Joes across the country — from rules that shield people’s emails and Facebook messages from police, to the law that limits how much consumers can tinker with software on their smartphones or other devices. The stalled campaigns illustrate Washington’s struggle to update the nation’s antiquated tech laws, many of which were founded on rationales rendered obsolete by the evolution of the Internet and mobile devices.
Hatch outlines GOP’s tech agenda
THE HILL
Mario Trujillo
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) on Tuesday outlined his priorities for technology legislation in the next Congress — keying in on patent and immigration reform, as well as updates to email privacy protections. Hatch, the chairman of the GOP’s High-Tech Task Force, delivered remarks at the Overstock.com corporate office in his home state, arguing the United States must create a legal framework to stay ahead of other global competitors. “Government’s proper role is to act as a facilitator, creating an environment that encourages research and development to drive our prosperity and quality of life in the decades to come,” warning against “heavy-handed” regulation.
Obama Talks Up Net Neutrality, But Could Do More to Defend It
NATIONAL JOURNAL
Brendan Sasso
President Obama recently said he is “unequivocally committed” to net neutrality. Back in 2007, candidate Obama pledged that he would take a “backseat to no one” on the issue. But on a key issue in the debate, the White House has thus far kept quiet. … Instead, Obama has avoided taking a position on the most controversial piece of the net-neutrality debate: what authority the FCC should use to enact new open-Internet regulations.
Tech boosts lobbying on health data, drones
POLITICOPRO (Subscribe)
Tony Romm
Apple, Facebook, Google and other industry giants ramped up their lobbying between July 1 and Sept. 30, adding a variety of new business ventures to their agendas, according to ethics forms filed to the government midnight Tuesday. Apple, for example, spent more than $1 million and extolled the fitness-monitoring abilities of its new smartwatch. Google shelled out over $3.8 million and lobbied on unmanned aerial vehicles. And Facebook devoted $2.45 million and touted its work to expand Web access worldwide.
Where’s the NSA reform?
USA TODAY
Editorial
Choosing between privacy and security is never easy. But that’s not the choice here. The compromise measure would allow access to phone records with some smart safeguards. Americans would be no less safe, and the values they cherish would be better protected.
Don’t take away anti-terror tools
USA TODAY
Sen. Dan Coats
Following the 9/11 attacks, the American people demanded that the intelligence community have the capability to “connect the dots” and prevent terrorist attacks. Enacting major changes that diminish the very counterterrorism tools recommended by the 9/11 Commission will make our country less safe and more vulnerable.
Key Republican says cyber bill has 80 percent chance of passage
THE HILL
Cory Bennett
House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) says his cyber information sharing bill has an 80 percent chance of becoming law during Congress’s lame-duck session. “It might be the one bill that passes this Congress and gets signed into law,” he said Tuesday at a Bloomberg Government event. McCaul’s bill, which would allow the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and private sector to share cyber threat information, has the administration’s backing and passed the House in July.
Unraveling the Cable Bundle
NEW YORK TIMES
Editorial
Earlier this year, Netflix complained that some of its customers had a hard time watching its movies on their Internet connections from Comcast, Verizon and other companies. Those problems were resolved when Netflix agreed to pay the broadband companies to connect its system directly to their networks. That is why it is important that the Federal Communications Commission enact strong rules prohibiting broadband companies from blocking or interfering with Internet content. Regulators must also be careful not to allow the industry to become even less competitive as large companies like Comcast and AT&T seek to acquire smaller companies like Time Warner Cable and DirecTV.
Marc Andreessen wants the AT&T-DirecTV deal to go through
WASHINGTON POST
Brian Fung
Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen is urging federal regulators to approve AT&T’s massive, $49 billion bid for DirecTV, arguing it would help push “both broadband and video to a larger portion of the country.” In a letter to the Federal Communications Commission, Andreessen said the deal would help promote the rollout of broadband infrastructure, which would help the economy. “The merger will result in a much broader, rural wireless footprint,” Andreessen wrote, “as well as deeper fiber penetration.”
Finance
Jeb Hensarling faces potential threat to gavel
POLITICO
Jake Sherman, Lauren French and John Bresnahan
Oklahoma Rep. Frank Lucas is considering a challenge to Texas Rep. Jeb Hensarling for the chairmanship of the House Financial Services Committee, in what could be the first marquee power battle in the House this fall.
What Happened in Vegas
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mel Watt has one heck of a sense of humor. How else to explain his choice of a Las Vegas casino as the venue for his Monday announcement that he’s revving up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to enable more risky mortgage loans? History says the joke will be on taxpayers when this federal gamble ends the same way previous ones did.
Obama’s latest plan to boost the economy? Bring back subprime mortgages
VOX
Matthew Yglesias
Until now, that is, when recently installed Federal Housing Finance Administration chief Mel Watt is prepared to roll out a series of new Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac measures that should give the economy a kick in the pants. The only problem is, they just might lay the groundwork for the next crisis.
States Ease Laws That Protected Poor Borrowers
NEW YORK TIMES
Michael Corkery
Over the last two years, lawmakers in at least eight states have voted to increase the fees or the interest rates that lenders can charge on certain personal loans used by millions of borrowers with subpar credit. The overhaul of the state lending laws comes after a lobbying push by the consumer loan industry and a wave of campaign donations to state lawmakers.
Enforcer at Treasury Is First Line of Attack Against ISIS
NEW YORK TIMES
Julie Hirschfeld Davis
Every morning David S. Cohen descends into a fortified, cavelike complex in the bowels of the Treasury Department to pore through hundreds of pages of leads — from raw intelligence reports to polished threat assessments — to try to penetrate the vast and opaque finances of the Islamic State, the terrorist group capable of producing 50,000 barrels of oil a day.
After JPMorgan Breach, a Greater Push to Fortify Wall Street Banks
NEW YORK TIMES
Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Matthew Goldstein
This summer’s huge cyberattack on JPMorgan Chase and a dozen other financial institutions is accelerating efforts by federal and state authorities to push banks and brokerage firms to close some gaping holes in their defenses. Top officials at the Treasury Department are discussing the need to bolster fortifications around a critical area of cybersecurity: outside vendors, which include law firms, accounting and marketing firms and even janitorial companies, according to several people briefed on the matter.
Politics
Tom Coburn highlights ridiculous government spending in final Wastebook
WASHINGTON TIMES
Stephen Dinan
This year’s Wastebook does not show the $5,210 that the State Department tried to spend on a blowup, human-size foosball field for an embassy in Belize. But the fact that the project isn’t in Sen. Tom Coburn’s annual report on ridiculous spending choices is probably one of the biggest victories of the report, because it means the State Department canceled the project after the senator’s staffers asked about it. It’s the other 100 projects in the report — including subsidies for professional sports stadiums and grants to study gambling monkeys — that the Oklahoma Republican said should have taxpayers steaming.
In the new Senate, will independents rule?
POLITICO
David Rogers
If three’s a crowd, could three, even four independents be a force in the Senate after November’s elections? The chances are slim so long as the two dominant parties control the patronage of committee assignments. But the options still are intriguing given the historic rise of Greg Orman in Kansas and Larry Pressler’s long-shot revival in South Dakota.
Senate Democratic Officials Start Lashing Out At White House
NATIONAL JOURNAL
Josh Kraushaar
“The ineptitude of the White House political operation has sunk from annoying to embarrassing,” one senior Senate Democratic aide told National Journal. Another Senate official told the Washington Post that Obama’s comments were “not devised with any input from Senate leadership.”
The Democratic Panic
NEW YORK TIMES
Editorial
Many of these candidates are running in difficult political environments and are being careful about what they say or don’t say in hopes of preserving Democratic control of the Senate. They run the risk, though, of alienating important constituencies who prefer a party with a spine, especially black voters, who remain very supportive of Mr. Obama. By not standing firmly for their own policies, Democrats send a message to voters that the unending Republican criticism of the president is legitimate. There is much that is going right in this country, and there is still time for Democrats to say so.
Companies Try to Escape Health Law’s Penalties
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Anna Wilde Mathews and Julie Jargon
With companies set to face fines next year for not complying with the new mandate to offer health insurance, some are pursuing strategies like enrolling employees in Medicaid to avoid penalties and hold down costs. The health law’s penalties, which can amount to about $2,000 per employee, were supposed to start this year, but the Obama administration delayed them until 2015, when they take effect for firms that employ at least 100 people. Now, as employers race to find ways to cover their full-time workers while holding a lid on costs, insurance brokers and benefits administrators are pitching a variety of options, sometimes exploiting wrinkles in the law.
Ben Bradlee, legendary Washington Post editor, dies at 93
WASHINGTON POST
Robert G. Kaiser
Benjamin C. Bradlee, who presided over The Washington Post newsroom for 26 years and guided The Post’s transformation into one of the world’s leading newspapers, died Oct. 21 at his home in Washington of natural causes. He was 93.
