Your daily briefing for all the top news in Energy, Technology, Finance, and Politics.
Energy
The coming climate onslaught
POLITICO
Andrew Restuccia and Erica Martinson
The Obama administration is set to roll out a series of climate and pollution measures that rivals any president’s environmental actions of the past quarter-century — a reality check for Republicans who think last week’s election gave them a mandate to end what they call the White House’s “War on Coal.” Tied to court-ordered deadlines, legal mandates and international climate talks, the efforts scheduled for the next two months show that President Barack Obama is prepared to spend the remainder of his term unleashing sweeping executive actions to combat global warming. And incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will have few options for stopping the onslaught, though Republicans may be able to slow pieces of it.
Senate Democrats are weighing plan to approve Keystone — and save Mary Landrieu
WASHINGTON POST
Ed O’Keefe and Chris Mooney
Senate Democrats are working on plans to hold a vote authorizing construction of the Keystone XL pipeline — approval that Democrats believe might bolster the chances of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), who faces a tough runoff election next month.
The US and China just reached a major climate deal on cutting emissions
VOX
Brad Plumer
This is a very big deal. US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping just announced a major agreement to curtail greenhouse-gas emissions and tackle global warming over the next few decades. By itself, this deal won’t solve climate change — and it’s arguably not yet ambitious enough. But it’s a sharp break from the two countries’ long stalemate on the issue. And the agreement could help nudge along the ongoing UN climate talks, which are supposed to culminate in a global deal on emissions in Paris by December 2015.
China, America and Our Warming Planet
NEW YORK TIMES
Sec. John Kerry
There is no question that all of us will need to do more to push toward the de-carbonization of the global economy. But in climate diplomacy, as in life, you have to start at the beginning, and this breakthrough marks a fresh beginning. Two countries regarded for 20 years as the leaders of opposing camps in climate negotiations – have come together to find common ground, determined to make lasting progress on an unprecedented global challenge. Let’s ensure that this is the first step toward a world that is more prosperous and more secure.
Wobbling on Climate Change
NEW YORK TIMES
Piers J. Sellers
In September, John P. Holdren, the head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, was testifying to a Congressional committee about climate change. Representative Steve Stockman, a Republican from Texas, recounted a visit he had made to NASA, where he asked what had ended the ice age: “And the lead scientist at NASA said this — he said that what ended the ice age was global wobbling. That’s what I was told. This is a lead scientist down in Maryland; you’re welcome to go down there and ask him the same thing. …” That “lead scientist at NASA” was me.
Global Energy Demand May Outpace Supply in Future, IEA Says
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Sarah Kent
Global energy demand will dramatically increase over the next 20 years, but turmoil in many key producing regions and the difficulties in formulating the right energy policies mean the world may not be able to respond with adequate supply and meet its climate change goals, the International Energy Agency said Wednesday.
Technology
Net Neutrality Debate: Internet Access and Costs Are Top Issues
NEW YORK TIMES
Eduardo Porter
I once supported reclassifying broadband as a public utility under Title II of the Telecommunications Act, as the president is now proposing. The threat to free speech and innovation on the content side of the broadband economy seemed plausible enough to warrant a heavy hand. So far, however, the most awful situations have not come to pass. While this does not ensure they never will, it suggests that restraint can be achieved through lighter means that do not put at risk other crucial objectives — like broadening access to the Internet and tackling the nation’s very real digital divide.
Washington Can’t Stop Itself
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.
Whatever “liberal” used to mean, it now means a self-interested machine of influence peddling and rent extraction. Well do we recall Cass Sunstein, Mr. Obama’s colleague at the University of Chicago, saying President Obama would surprise the world by being a “smart” regulator. What a bunch of hooey that turned out to be. Meanwhile Americans are undoubtedly tired of hearing how Washington has become America’s richest, most recession-proof area code. Net neutrality is one more example of how it got that way.
Obama is only half right about net neutrality
FINANCIAL TIMES
Editorial
Much better therefore to create a genuinely competitive market for internet access where cable companies compete with other ISPs to provide connections over their own wires. This, after all, has been the approach taken in Europe with telecoms companies, where networks have been opened up by local loop unbundling.
The ‘net neutrality’ online power grab
WASHINGTON TIMES
Editorial
President Obama wants to put the Internet firmly under his control. He announced Monday that he would apply to the Internet centralized rules written for the age of the telegraph. For the Internet’s own good, of course.
Why Obama’s plan to save the Internet could actually ruin it
WASHINGTON POST
Larry Downes
While Obama has long supported the notoriously slippery idea of “net neutrality,” this is the first time the White House has explicitly asked the FCC to take specific action, let alone to embrace the most radical and legally uncertain approach being considered by the agency — what even many advocates for net neutrality consider to be the “nuclear option.” The president’s intervention is troubling, in part because as an independent regulatory agency, the FCC is supposed to be immune from White House influence.
An Internet Tax Save
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
The Internet is safe from new online sales-tax burdens, at least for the rest of this year. That’s the reassuring news from House Speaker John Boehner , who this week put a fork in a Senate plan to let America’s 9,600 state and local taxing authorities plunder the Internet.
The FCC weighs breaking with Obama over the future of the Internet
WASHINGTON POST
Brian Fung and Nancy Scola
Huddled in an FCC conference room Monday with officials from major Web companies, including Google, Yahoo and Etsy, agency Chairman Tom Wheeler said he preferred a more nuanced solution. His approach would deliver some of what Obama wants but also would address the concerns of the companies that provide Internet access to millions of Americans, such as Comcast, Time Warner Cable and AT&T. “What you want is what everyone wants: an open Internet that doesn’t affect your business,” a visibly frustrated Wheeler said at the meeting, according to four people who attended. “What I’ve got to figure out is how to split the baby.”
Obama Net-Neutrality Stance May Spur Fight With GOP
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Gautham Nagesh
President Barack Obama ’s call Monday for strong net-neutrality rules has hardened the political and ideological lines on government regulation of Internet traffic and increased the likelihood of a standoff with newly ascendant congressional Republicans.
In Net Neutrality Push, Internet Giants on the Sidelines
NEW YORK TIMES
Farhad Manjoo
Large Internet businesses have written a few letters to regulators in support of the issue and have participated in the back-channel lobbying effort, but they have not joined online protests, or otherwise moved to mobilize their users in favor of new rules. Why not? They may be too big to bother with an issue that primarily affects the smallest Internet companies.
Obama’s Call for Net Neutrality Sets Up Fight Over Rules
NEW YORK TIMES
Edward Wyatt
“Forbearance is a fig leaf here, especially when it comes to big issues like rate regulation,” said Michael Mandel, chief economic strategist at the Progressive Policy Institute, which dislikes the prospect of treating broadband like a utility. “The F.C.C. can forbear easily from day-to-day rate decisions. But I don’t see how they can stay out of that when there are big innovative leaps.” Mr. Mandel pointed to the introduction of the iPhone as an example. When that device was released, AT&T needed to develop a new type of data service package to charge consumers who wanted to use the iPhone’s ability to connect to the Internet. Any common carrier, as AT&T and other wireless providers would be considered under Mr. Obama’s plan, would need the F.C.C. to first approve such a new type of charge. Even if the commission said it did not want to rule on how much AT&T could charge, a consumer could petition the agency, arguing that its duty as a regulator is to determine how those data charges should be structured.
Media Companies Seek Judicial Review of FCC Decision on Cable Contracts
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Amol Sharma
Media companies sought the intervention of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to stop the Federal Communications Commission from requiring them to disclose details of TV contracts as part of two big ongoing merger reviews. TV channel owners including Walt Disney Co. , CBS Corp, Viacom Inc., 21st Century Fox, Time Warner Inc., Scripps Networks Interactive and Univision Communications Inc. on Monday requested an emergency stay of the FCC order and asked the court to vacate it.
Geeky trade deal could boost global tech
POLITICO
Doug Palmer and Katy Bachman
It could be the best thing to happen to tech geeks around the world in years. Video game consoles, GPS devices, loudspeakers, medical devices and even printer ink cartridges look likely to gain more access to international markets as a result of breakthrough between the U.S. and China on an upgrade to a 1996 tariff-eliminating trade agreement that President Barack Obama announced Tuesday in Beijing.
Finance
Why Wall Street Loves Hillary
POLITICO
William D. Cohan
While the finance industry does genuinely hate Warren, the big bankers love Clinton, and by and large they badly want her to be president. Many of the rich and powerful in the financial industry—among them, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman, Tom Nides, a powerful vice chairman at Morgan Stanley, and the heads of JPMorganChase and Bank of America—consider Clinton a pragmatic problem-solver not prone to populist rhetoric. To them, she’s someone who gets the idea that we all benefit if Wall Street and American business thrive. What about her forays into fiery rhetoric? They dismiss it quickly as political maneuvers. None of them think she really means her populism.
CFTC’s Giancarlo: New Rules Divide Swaps Market
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Katy Burne
A top U.S. regulator said new rules governing the multitrillion-dollar derivatives markets are sending swaps trading overseas, threatening Wall Street jobs and potentially destabilizing financial markets. In remarks he intended to deliver at an industry conference this week, J. Christopher Giancarlo, the lone Republican among four commissioners at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, said the agency’s rules have split the swaps market into domestic and foreign niches, as non-U.S. firms seek to avoid CFTC oversight.
Banks fined $3.2 billion in foreign exchange probe
USA TODAY
Jane Onyanga-Omara and Kevin McCoy
Regulators in the U.K., U.S. and Switzerland imposed civil penalties of $3.2 billion Wednesday on banks suspected of manipulating the $5.3-trillion-a-day foreign exchange currency-trading market. The U.K’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) announced it fined JPMorgan Chase $352 million (£222 million), Citibank $358 million (£226 million), HSBC $343 million (£216 million), the Royal Bank of Scotland $344 million (£217 million) and UBS $371 million (£234 million). The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said it imposed more than $1.4 billion in penalties – $310 million each for Citibank and JPMorgan, $290 million each for the RBS and UBS, and $275 million for HSBC.
Politics
Obama’s Immigration Temptation
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
If he does issue an executive order, we hope Republicans don’t fall for his political trap. He and many Democrats want Republicans to appear to be anti-immigrant. They want the GOP to dance to the Steve King-Jeff Sessions blow-a-gasket caucus. The smart play is to stay cool and keep working on the piecemeal reform that would make Mr. Obama’s executive order superfluous. The GOP could offer legal status on terms that provide more long-term economic security while also reducing the flow of future illegals. Everyone knows the U.S. is never going to deport 11 million men, women and children, so some form of legalization is inevitable. If Mr. Obama follows his familiar partisan script, Republicans have a chance to stand up for the rule of law and America’s economic well-being by passing immigration reform the constitutional way.
Delivering a solvent Postal Service, the bipartisan way
WASHINGTON POST
Editorial
OF ALL the tasks confronting the newly elected Congress, none is more basic, in terms of plain old democratic governance, than reforming the U.S. Postal Service. This workhorse agency, which epitomizes the federal government in the daily lives of ordinary citizens, is reeling from a double whammy: technological obsolescence and accumulated inefficiencies. Years of downsizing enabled the USPS to break even on its operations in fiscal 2013 (if you don’t count losses due to $5.6 billion in legally required retiree health-care prepayments ). Yet its bread-and-butter business, first-class mail, remains in long-term decline; the Postal Service’s only chance at a solvent future is to undertake further, more fundamental structural reform .
Harry Reid Remains Power Player As Senate Shifts
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Siobhan Hughes
A question now for Republicans taking over the Senate is whether Mr. Reid will try to be just as firm in the minority. Early clues could come as soon as Wednesday, as senators return to Washington Wednesday for their lame-duck session, in which Mr. Reid appears to be willing to run the Senate floor with a looser hand. That posture, if it continues after the GOP takes the majority in January, could go a long way toward determining whether gridlock continues in the Senate. Mr. Reid is planning to allow a limited number of amendment votes on Internet-tax legislation and may allow amendments on a defense authorization measure that is the annual blueprint for defense policy. That is a change from his prior posture, which allowed few such votes.
Rise of the Republican Pragmatists
NATIONAL JOURNAL
Josh Kraushaar
But many pundits are mistakenly looking to the past to determine the future of the new Republican-controlled Congress. With Republicans determined to improve their image in the run-up to a presidential election, and a crop of new, more-pragmatic members heading to Washington, all the signs suggest that the GOP will be eager to unite and advance a legislative agenda.
The 10 states that could decide the next Senate
POLITICO
James Hohmann
Even though conventional wisdom suggests this may be a short-lived Republican majority, interviews with nearly two dozen operatives in Washington and 2016 battleground states reveal a more nuanced picture of the next Senate landscape. The most vulnerable Democrats this year were up in very red states; the most endangered Republicans in 2016 will, with the exception of Illinois, be defending seats in purple terrain.
Latinos Lag Under Health Law
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Arian Campo-Flores
One quarter of Hispanics in the U.S. lack health insurance, the highest rate for any racial or ethnic group, according to census data. Reducing that number will be one of the Obama administration’s biggest challenges when it reopens health-insurance exchanges for a second year on Saturday. During the first year’s sign-up period, just 2.6 million of an estimated 10.2 million uninsured Hispanics eligible for coverage enrolled in health plans, according to an October report by the Department of Health and Human Services. The Latino uninsured rate among those ages 18 to 64 declined 18%, but that was a smaller percentage decrease than for other groups.
U.S. Bishops Struggle to Follow Lead of Francis
NEW YORK TIMES
Laurie Goodstein
Change is rattling the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church, as the American bishops hold their annual fall meeting here this week. The vast majority of them were appointed by Francis’ two more conservative predecessors, and some say they do not yet understand what kind of change Pope Francis envisions and whether it is anything more than a change in tone.
