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Energy
Barack Obama should unblock the Keystone pipeline
FINANCIAL TIMES (Subscribe)
Editorial
US climate policy is of vital importance and Mr Obama is right to see it as a crucial part of his legacy, but his decision on Keystone XL is not what will mark him down as a failure or success.
Will Obama’s energy review have any bite?
POLITICOPRO (Subscribe)
Darius Dixon
People across industry, government and the environmental community cheered when the Obama administration announced it would launch the federal government on regular, top-to-bottom reviews of the nation’s energy challenges, from aging pipelines to constraints on shipping. But now, many of them worry that the effort has been too ambitious and too rushed.
Committed to Carbon Goals
NEW YORK TIMES
Joe Nocera
NRG, Crane told an audience at the Aspen Ideas Festival this summer, is the country’s fourth-largest polluter. “We emit 60 or 70 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year,” he said, mainly because a third of its power is generated by coal-fired plants. “I’m not apologetic about that because, right now, owning those plants and operating those plants are critical to keeping the lights on in the United States.” But then he quickly added, “We have to move away from that.” And he has, reducing the company’s carbon footprint by 40 percent in the decade that he’s run the company. And, on Thursday, as The Times reported, he committed NRG to reducing its carbon emissions by 50 percent by 2030 and 90 percent by 2050.
Is It Time for the U.S. to Lift Its Restrictions on Oil Exports?
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Jason Bordoff and Tyson Slocum
After decades of declining domestic oil production, the country is in the middle of an unexpected boom. Driven by new technology that reaches previously inaccessible reserves, production has soared by millions of barrels a day. This surge has been a key factor driving oil prices down. So, should U.S. oil companies be allowed to sell that oil overseas?
Conservative group targets GOP members in ads against wind energy credit
THE HILL
Timothy Cama
The conservative Americans for Prosperity (AFP) is publishing advertisements pushing individual Republicans to oppose tax credits for wind energy. The ads launched Monday in the hometown newspapers of 15 GOP representatives in eight states who have not given clear positions on the wind energy production tax credit since it expired at the end of last year.
Technology
Why Mark Cuban opposes net neutrality: ‘I want there to be fast lanes’
WASHINGTON POST
Nancy Scola
CUBAN: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The Verizon decision [the January, 2014, court order that struck down the Federal Communication Commission’s 2010 passage of net neutrality rules] has created an opportunity for the FCC to introduce more rule-making. They shouldn’t. Things have worked well. There is no better platform in the world to start a new business than the Internet in the United States.
The FCC’s Taxman Cometh
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
The phone tax illustrates how Congress has ceded tax and spending power to the executive. The FCC can choose to raise the tax whenever it feels there isn’t enough money to spend on its favored constituencies. So the bureaucracy has another money pot without any appropriation from Congress. The GOP should repeal the tax or at the very least tell the FCC it can’t be increased without a vote in Congress.
Drone advocates warily watch for FAA rule
POLITICOPRO (Subscribe)
Kevin Robillard
Drone advocates are bracing for new FAA rules that they fear could drastically downsize the ambitions of their burgeoning industry, making the machines prohibitively expensive for small companies and smashing high-tech dreams of instant delivery by drone.
Finance
Obama Wants Middle Class Aid Before Corporate Tax Breaks
ROLL CALL
Steven Dennis
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Monday the president would “strongly oppose” a package of corporate tax cut extenders without doing something for the middle class. … Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew also ripped word of a potential deal. “An extender package that makes permanent expiring business provisions without addressing tax credits for working families is the wrong approach,” Lew said in a statement.
Going Private Is Paying Off for Dell
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Michael Dell
Every company in every industry is facing the same pressures and opportunities to compete in the digital age and the data economy. We need to find ways to get out of the destructive cycle of nearsighted decision-making and focus on a future that is far beyond the next quarter or fiscal year or election. In this fast-paced, uncertain time, one thing is certain: If we aren’t the ones inventing the future, someone else will be.
Senator Elizabeth Warren’s Misplaced Rage at Obama’s Treasury Nominee
NEW YORK TIMES
Andrew Ross Sorkin
It is rare to see such ferocious opposition to a nominee for a deputy position in the Treasury Department. It is rarer still when the objection comes from within the administration’s own party. Yet Ms. Warren’s wrath is misdirected, and her understanding of the so-called inversion deal on which she bases much of her opposition appears misinformed. On these issues, as she might say, “Enough is enough.”
Fed’s New ‘Cop on the Beat’ Role Put It in a Bind
NEW YORK TIMES
Peter J. Henning
As the Fed adds new duties to its traditional oversight of banks, it will have to grapple with how the revolving door can affect its role as one of the leading cops on Wall Street. The increased transparency that comes with enforcing the law has already made life for the Fed a bit uncomfortable.
GOP Lawmakers Tell SEC To Delay Pay Rule
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Andrew Ackerman
A trio of key Republican lawmakers are urging the Securities and Exchange Commission to drop its plans to soon require companies to disclose the pay gap between chief executives and their employees, warning it would be unduly costly and detract from more important SEC priorities.
Regulators Who Know Loans Better Than Lenders
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Richard Farley
Regulated banks are being told in no uncertain terms to stop arranging loans for the more risky, more leveraged borrowers, even though those loans are the most profitable and are quickly sold to investors—typically hedge funds, mutual funds and publicly owned vehicles like business development companies—not held by the banks, and so do not utilize FDIC insured deposits. Yet despite the healthy investor appetite, the federal banking regulators want the banks to rein in these profitable loans.
Politics
Analysis: The first Ferguson indictment goes to … the news media
WASHINGTON TIMES
John Solomon
When all the final details are reviewed and the smoke settles, one question that should be asked is whether the media’s age-old adage to “get it first, but first get it right” has been hijacked by a sentiment of “get it first, and hope it is right.”
The Ferguson Decision
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
President Obama took to the White House press room and offered his own counsel that any protest be peaceful, and he quoted the statement by Brown’s father that “hurting others or destroying property is not the answer.” In one of those surreal moments of this media age, Mr. Obama made those remarks while the cable networks showed scenes of protests, smoke in the streets, and riot police in Ferguson. The President spoke well about the progress America has made on race relations, while also pointing to the legacy of mistrust that often remains between police and “communities of color.” It was one of his better moments, and it ought to lead to dialogue and not destruction.
A Shake-Up Stops at One
NEW YORK TIMES
Mark Landler
Mr. Obama does not appear likely to replace his national security adviser, Susan E. Rice, who skirmished with Mr. Hagel over Syria policy and others. Nor is he mulling a change in his chief of staff, Denis R. McDonough, who has exerted heavy influence over foreign policy, at times acting almost as a shadow national security adviser. With his core team intact, and with none of the candidates to succeed Mr. Hagel likely to show the independence of Mr. Obama’s first defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, the White House seems likely to keep a tight leash on foreign policy for the remainder of Mr. Obama’s presidency.
Republicans Call for Re-Examination of U.S. National Security Policy
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Kristina Peterson
“This personnel change must be part of a larger rethinking of our strategy to confront the threats we face abroad, especially the threat posed by the rise of ISIL,” said House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio), using an alternative name for Islamic State. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), who will be majority leader next year, said Mr. Hagel’s departure “comes at a moment of great peril for our country” and that his replacement must “possess a sharp grasp of strategy, a demonstrated ability to think creatively and the willingness and ability to work with Congress.”
Ground Up Chuck
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
Why does national security adviser Susan Rice still have a job? Or spinner-in-chief Ben Rhodes ? Mr. Hagel was hired in part because Mr. Obama believed he would take orders from these visionaries. But as the world turned darker, the Pentagon chief began to represent the views of the generals who are increasingly worried about U.S. security. His worst sin appears to have been sending a memo in October pointing out that the President had to clarify his Syria policy for his campaign against Islamic State to succeed. Mr. Hagel was reflecting the views of senior Pentagon brass.
A Problem Beyond Mr. Hagel
NEW YORK TIMES
Editorial
Apart from these differences, Mr. Hagel was not well served by the fact that national security policy is tightly controlled by the White House, with Mr. Obama relying on a small group of aides, including Susan Rice, the national security adviser, for counsel. That process has often resulted in delayed and contradictory signals about Mr. Obama’s foreign policy agenda and the military strategies needed to carry it out. And, of course, all of this has come in for withering criticism from Republicans and many Democrats as well. Such confusion made Mr. Hagel’s job doubly hard, and it will pose a challenge to his successor.
Mr. Obama should keep an open mind in choosing his next defense secretary
WASHINGTON POST
Editorial
IF THE resignation of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel augurs a move by President Obama to shake up his national security team and reconsider his strategy in crisis areas such as Syria and Ukraine, then it will be welcomed. So far, there’s not much sign of it. Mr. Hagel has been a weak leader at the Pentagon who, at least in public, has been less of a force in policy discussions than some of the generals who report to him. But his thinly disguised dismissal came after reports that he had raised sensible questions about Mr. Obama’s overly constrained approach to fighting the Islamic State.
With Chuck Hagel’s departure, Obama is turning into George W. Bush
WASHINGTON POST
Dana Milbank
In a cruel echo of history, Obama is morphing into the president whose foreign policy he campaigned to overturn. Obama on Monday morning sacked his Pentagon secretary, Chuck Hagel, after huge midterm election losses in the sixth year of his presidency — just as Bush did in sacking Donald Rumsfeld after midterm losses in the sixth year of his presidency. As with Bush, the ouster comes as a war in the Middle East is going badly — then, the Iraq war, now, the bombing of the Islamic State terror group. Rumsfeld’s ouster led to the surge in Iraq, and Hagel’s departure comes amid signs of an expanded role for U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria. And, as under Bush, this guarantees that Obama will leave his successor an ongoing U.S. war in the Mideast — quite possibly the sort of ground war Obama vowed to undo.
GOP leaders uniting around plan to avoid shutdown
POLITICO
Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan
House Republican leaders are beginning to coalesce around a strategy to avoid a government shutdown in less than a month. The likely proposal would fund nearly the entire government through September 2015, but immigration enforcement related funding would be renewed on a short-term basis, according to several high-ranking GOP lawmakers and aides who described the plan as it stands now.
More Nuclear Time in Tehran
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
If Iran is sincere in wanting to remain a non-nuclear power it could open all its facilities to immediate and snap inspections and turn over all of its nuclear technology. That it won’t do so suggests it has every intention of playing along with the West until it can become a threshold nuclear power, even if it doesn’t have to test a weapon. Meanwhile, the Administration refuses to take no for an answer. Which means it’s time for Congress to assert itself after a year of forbearance. A bipartisan bill to toughen sanctions is ready to roll to the Senate floor, and a vote might be the only way to make Mr. Obama face reality.
On Iran talks, extension beats confrontation
USA TODAY
Editorial
One way to look at the year-long effort to negotiate a deal ending Iran’s nuclear weapons program, which missed its latest deadline Monday, is the way people saw the attempt to land a man on the moon in the 1960s. Failure is likely, and setbacks are guaranteed, but the potential reward is so great that the only sensible choice is to accept the risks and press on.
Apply more pressure on Iran
USA TODAY
Matthew Kroenig
Rather than additional sanctions, therefore, the Obama administration and Congress must make it clear to Iran and to our international partners that July 1 is a firm deadline. There will be no more extensions. Iran has several months to make a hard decision, and if it does not, the international community will impose the harshest remaining sanctions on Iran. With the option of another extension off the table and the no-deal path looking increasingly unattractive, this approach offers our best hope of getting Iran’s supreme leader to place verifiable curbs on his nuclear program.
