Your daily briefing for all the top news in Energy, Technology, Finance, and Politics.
Energy
Obama’s punt on renewable fuel sets up fights in court, congress
BLOOMBERG
The Obama administration’s decision to put off issuing quotas for the use of renewable fuels this year sets up fights in Congress and the courts over a program that’s been bitterly contested for nearly a decade.
Where Is U.S. Energy Policy Heading Over the Next Two Years?
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Amy Harder
Next year’s Republican-controlled Senate is expected to come out strongly against President Barack Obama’s most consequential policies aimed at reducing the effects of climate change. The GOP-controlled House already has spent the past few years passing legislation curtailing Environmental Protection Agency regulations. Now the Senate’s next majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, is poised to put the upper chamber in lock step with the House on infrastructure and energy-efficiency bills as well.
Can the U.S. Government Revive Nuclear Power?
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Amy Harder
The Obama administration has said it’s committed to reviving nuclear power. To that end, the Energy Department is pursuing loan guarantees for new reactors, and the Environmental Protection Agency has proposed a rule to control carbon emissions from power plants, which some say could encourage the use of nuclear power since it is a carbon-free source of energy. But there are many factors holding the industry back, including an abundance of cheap natural gas in the U.S., as well as lingering distrust since the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan. Then there is the high cost of building nuclear reactors and questions about what to do with nuclear waste.
The Audacity Of John Podesta
NATIONAL JOURNAL
Ben Geman
Podesta undoubtedly has been ambitious, his approach both forceful and deliberate. And he’s brought to the climate agenda a level of inside clout that has been missing at least since former energy and climate czar Carol Browner left in early 2011. But whether he has created policy that is durable—regulations and initiatives not easily unwound by a freshly anointed GOP Congress or, after 2016, a Republican president—is far less certain. The White House knows this and is racing to get its new EPA rule well-enough rooted in the economy before Obama’s term ends that any attempt to yank it up later would be prohibitively difficult.
The Koch Brothers’ Next Frontier
NATIONAL JOURNAL
Ben Geman
But in statehouses nationwide—even those where Republicans are running the show—the GOP lacks the lockstep march on energy policy that is coming to define the national party. Certainly, a powerful faction working to undo the green-energy laws has swept through states over the past decade, but as in Kansas, their repeal efforts have repeatedly failed. … Taken in sum, the moves are evidence of a Republican brand of environmentalism that survives in the states years after it was snuffed out on Capitol Hill. But the GOP’s last green shoots might not last for long.
Where Oil and Politics Mix
NEW YORK TIMES
Deborah Sontag
After an unusual land deal, a giant spill and a tanker-train explosion, anxiety began to ripple across the North Dakota prairie.
Climate realities in light of the U.S.-China agreement
WASHINGTON POST
Robert Samuelson
Confronting global warming is so difficult because doing anything meaningful requires radical changes to all the world’s major economies — virtually abandoning fossil fuels when there is no easy substitute. Also, there is legitimate uncertainty over the extent of future temperature movements. Even many believers in climate change acknowledge that, while skeptics assert that the danger is overstated. History may judge the U.S.-China agreement a significant turning point in this struggle — or just a fleeting act of political symbolism.
India’s Obligation on Climate
NEW YORK TIMES
Editorial
It is in India’s interest to act. The droughts and floods that are likely to result from unchecked climate change will hit India particularly hard. The next round of climate talks convene in Lima, Peru, on Dec. 1. India should be willing to join other major emitters by indicating, at least in broad terms, how much it intends to limit greenhouse gas emissions — with details to be filled in at the climate summit meeting in Paris next year.
Why Keystone Is a Canard
POLITICO
Zachary Karabell
The factual realities of the project have become almost completely subsumed in Congress to what the pipeline represents. In short, the pipeline as a symbol has become far more significant than the pipeline as a pipeline. On one side, largely Democratic, we have the intense, passionate opposition of those who believe that climate change is a looming threat; on the other side, largely Republican but with some Democrats such as from Senators Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, we have the intense, passionate support of the energy industry and those who believe that America must do all that it can to become energy independent.
OPEC’s clout on line as decisive meeting looms
USA TODAY
Rick Jervis
If OPEC doesn’t curb production, WTI crude is likely to drop into the $60 per barrel range and possibly lower. This will make it tougher for independent producers to launch new drilling projects in places like the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas or the Bakken formation of North Dakota because they rely on high returns to finance the costly penetration and oil harvesting in those formations. If OPEC agrees to a cut, the crude could climb to $80 a barrel until production levels are confirmed early next year. The cartel would need to cut production by more than 1 million barrels a day to make any difference, analysts say. Though nice at the pump, a prolonged descent of crude prices could hurt the oil and gas industry and rattle the U.S. economy.
Technology
Obama, don’t treat Internet like a phone
USA TODAY
Christopher Yoo
The Internet is on the cusp of a great step forward. It is on the verge of moving past the relatively simple email and web-based applications to applications that are more complex. Preserving the commitment to the restrained regulation would be a far better way to make sure that the Internet remains a vibrant driver of jobs and innovation than would subjecting it to a century-old regulatory regime created for a bygone economic and technological era.
Net neutrality and the Internet balancing act
WASHINGTON POST
Editorial
Mr. Wheeler has taken a lot of flak, but he is right to seek a balance. The goal is to bar unreasonable behavior without discouraging investment in ever-more-robust networks.
Workers in Silicon Valley Weigh In on Obama’s Immigration Order
NEW YORK TIMES
Vindu Goel
President Obama’s executive order on immigration last week falls well short of what both immigrants and industry leaders were seeking. The most vexing issues they face, like speeding up the process for obtaining permanent residency and getting more visas for high-skilled technology work, would require an act of Congress.
Terrorists Get a Phone Upgrade
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Gordon Crovitz
Silicon Valley firms should find ways to comply with U.S. court orders or expect Congress to order them to do so. They also shouldn’t be surprised if their customers think less of companies that go out of their way to market technical solutions to terrorists and criminals.
FCC already prepping for net neutrality lawsuit
THE HILL
Julian Hattem
“The big dogs are going to sue regardless of what comes out,” Wheeler told reporters after the commission’s meeting on Friday. “We need to make sure that we have sustainable rules, and that starts with making sure that we have addressed the multiplicity of issues that come along and are likely to be raised.”
Supreme Court case tests the limits of free speech on Facebook and other social media
WASHINGTON POST
Robert Barnes
Parties on both sides of the groundbreaking case are asking the court to consider the unique qualities of social media. In this rapidly evolving realm of communication, only the occasional emoticon may signal whether a writer is engaging in satire or black humor, exercising poetic license, or delivering the kind of grim warnings that have presaged school shootings and other acts of mass violence.
Drone Flights Face FAA Hit
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Jack Nicas and Andy Pasztor
Highly anticipated federal rules on commercial drones are expected to require operators to have a license and limit flights to daylight hours, below 400 feet and within sight of the person at the controls, according to people familiar with the rule-making process.
Faster Broadband for Schools and Libraries
NEW YORK TIMES
Editorial
Next month, the Federal Communications Commission will consider a proposal from its chairman, Tom Wheeler, that would raise taxes on phone lines by a modest 16 cents a month to make sure that every public school and library has reliable and fast Internet connections. The commissioners should vote yes.
Finance
Weiss for Treasury Secretary
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
Antonio Weiss, President Obama ’s pick to serve as Under Secretary of the Treasury for Domestic Finance, is meeting some resistance on Capitol Hill—thanks to a new progressive double standard. Mr. Weiss is clearly not helping himself by knowing something about the financial markets he’ll be overseeing.
More Redistribution, Less Income
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
Presidents who put reducing inequality above increasing prosperity end up with less growth and opportunity that benefits everyone, and thus with more inequality. There’s also a lesson about the exhaustion of the liberal tax agenda. As a matter of arithmetic in a tax system as tilted toward the high end as America’s, the rich aren’t nearly rich enough to finance progressive ambitions.
Tax break negotiations stall on Capitol Hill
THE HILL
Bernie Becker
Neither Republicans nor Democrats are quite ready to budge in negotiations over a slew of expired tax breaks, lawmakers and aides said last week. Both sides want to wrap up talks soon over the so-called tax extenders, the dozens of expired tax breaks whose restoration has lately become something of a Christmas time tradition every two years. But with almost three weeks left before lawmakers want to break for the year, House GOP tax writers are still pushing to get as many business-friendly incentives – like those for research and expensing – extended without an expiration date, as they can.
The Week That Shook the Fed
NEW YORK TIMES
Gretchen Morgenson
The Federal Reserve Board prefers to operate in a shroud of secrecy, and its officials really don’t like having to answer to anybody. So it was fascinating to learn last week that the Fed is embarking on a soul-searching campaign. Its inspector general will take up the astonishing questions of whether the Fed’s big-bank examiners have what they need to do their jobs and whether they receive the support of their superiors when they challenge bank practices. Or, as the Fed put it, whether “channels exist for decision-makers to be aware of divergent views” among the Fed’s bank examination teams.
Rock Bottom Economics
NEW YORK TIMES
Paul Krugman
The fact that we’ve spent six years at the so-called zero lower bound is amazing and depressing. What’s even more amazing and depressing, if you ask me, is how slow our economic discourse has been to catch up with the new reality. Everything changes when the economy is at rock bottom — or, to use the term of art, in a liquidity trap (don’t ask). But for the longest time, nobody with the power to shape policy would believe it.
Does Wall Street Like Gridlock? It Depends on the Grid
NEW YORK TIMES
Jeff Sommer
Wall Street likes gridlock. That claim has been made for decades. When Washington is so thoroughly absorbed in political posturing and sniping that it can’t manage to interfere with Wall Street, the stock market is free to get on with the real business of America: making money. That’s the logic, anyway. It makes some sense, but there’s a problem with it: Strictly speaking, the numbers don’t support it — not if you use an institutional definition of Washington gridlock.
Politics
The Making of an Imperial President
NEW YORK TIMES
Ross Douthat
LET me be clear, as he likes to say: I believe that President Obama was entirely sincere when he ran for president as a fierce critic of the imperial executive. I believe that he was in earnest when he told supporters in 2008 that America’s “biggest problems” involved “George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all.” I believe he meant it when he cast himself as a principled civil libertarian, when he pledged to defer to Congress on war powers, when he promised to abjure privileges Bush had claimed. I also believe he was sincere when he told audiences, again and again across his presidency, that a sweeping unilateral move like the one just made on immigration would betray the norms of constitutional government. So how did we get from there to here? How did the man who was supposed to tame the imperial presidency become, in certain ways, more imperial than his predecessor?
Lamest lame duck
POLITICO
Burgess Everett and Manu Raju
Congress left for Thanksgiving without checking anything big off its to-do list during the lame duck, leaving just 10 days to fund the government when they come back in December and likely pushing big items like authorizing force against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant militants and the confirmation of an attorney general into 2015. As Republicans take the reins of both chambers of Congress for the first time in nearly a decade, their new agenda will be consumed with leftover business, a reality check for many in the party who had hoped to come out swinging in the new year on tax reform, trade deals, energy legislation and changes to Obamacare.
In Partisan Washington, Health Law Faces Grave Legal Technicalities
NEW YORK TIMES
John Harwood
Today the Affordable Care Act faces grave danger before the United States Supreme Court because such legislative repair work, once routine, has grown impossible.
Obama ramps up defense of immigration action; conservatives urge tough response
WASHINGTON POST
Robert Costa and Josh Hicks
President Obama on Sunday responded to Republican critics who have accused him of acting like an emperor with his recent immigration actions, repeating his challenge for Congress to “pass a bill.” Meanwhile, Republican leaders spent the weekend trying to craft a viable political response to the president’s immigration moves as outrage among the most conservative GOP elements continued to boil.
Rise of the Rust Belt Republicans
POLITICO
James Hohmann and Jake Sherman
A real battle of Midwest heavyweights might be looming next year in the Republican Party between Walker, Kasich, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence and Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder. The four heartland governors are all considering bids for the GOP presidential nomination, looking to run as Rust Belt success stories who can revive the party’s Reagan Democrat coalition and speak to the middle class in a way Mitt Romney could not. And Republicans looking to shed the image as the party of the 1 percent say a Midwestern state executive who’s created jobs and balanced budgets might be just what the GOP needs.
New Postmaster’s Goal: Act Like Private Sector
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Laura Stevens
Ms. Brennan, 52 years old, says the solution is hard work and competition—something she says she knows a little something about from her upbringing as one of seven children in an Irish Catholic family. “We’ve got to compete for business every day, and clearly we have to develop products and services that consumers want,” Ms. Brennan says. “While we’re challenged, I would say that there’s plenty of upside.”
Obama Is Damaging Hillary’s Chances
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Douglas E. Schoen and Patrick H. Caddell
President Obama ’s high-risk immigration gamble may have severe consequences for Washington, the country and the Democratic Party, most of all Hillary Clinton .
