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Energy
Cuomo Bans Fracking
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
The natural gas shale boom has been a blessing for much of America in these otherwise difficult times—from Texas to North Dakota through Ohio and Pennsylvania. But the bounty won’t be coming to New York, where Governor Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday banned hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in the rich Marcellus Shale. New York follows Vermont as the only other U.S. state to ban fracking, joining such economic superpowers as France and Bulgaria.
Lima’s Magic Climate Beanstalk
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
The Lima confab has opened that one-sided bargain to all comers, bringing the world no closer to an anti-carbon policy except on paper by the global-warming lobby’s own definition. So ordinary Americans and Europeans will be forced to accept lower economic growth today, and these sacrifices will make no difference to the problem they are meant to solve.
Peru’s climate talks conclude without a big accord in reach
WASHINGTON POST
Editorial
The flexibility of the broad, voluntary plan leaves room for growth and improvement. More important, the scheme stands a chance of doing what no U.N. climate effort has accomplished: institutionalizing the expectation that all major emitters stake their international reputations on contributing. If it becomes the first of many rounds of meaningful international agreement, it will be a success.
White House Floats New Climate Guidelines for Energy, Infrastructure Development
NATIONAL JOURNAL
Ben Geman
The White House unveiled draft plans Thursday to ensure that federal agencies evaluate how certain energy, mining, construction, and other projects and policies will affect climate change before they move forward. The White House Council on Environmental Quality plan is meant to guide federal agencies as they review projects under the National Environmental Policy Act, a 44-year-old law that demands analyses of the environmental footprint of various decisions and projects that require federal approval. NEPA reviews are applied to projects and actions such as federal offshore drilling lease sales, highways, construction projects, pipelines, and others.
Electric Utilities Brace for New EPA Rules
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Cassandra Sweet
Electric utilities are bracing for the first federal rules on how they handle the millions of tons of waste ash produced by coal-fired power plants. The regulations, due Friday, are aimed at coal ash stored as a slurry in about 700 earthen pits around the country. The Environmental Protection Agency agreed to issue the rules as part of a legal settlement after a 2008 accident in Harriman, Tenn., where a dam failed and 5.4 million cubic yards of wet ash covered about 300 acres and flowed into two rivers.
Technology
Wanted: An International Rule of Law for Cloud Data
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Michael Chertoff
No internationally agreed-upon rule is perfect, yet a uniform, internationally accepted rule is better than none at all. The virtue of consistent rules lies in their ability to create clarity and ease of use among willing participants. We should strive for a transnational agreement on data availability tied to the protection of life and property, perhaps with some degree of judicial oversight. A system like that initially might be implemented throughout democratic nations and then spread globally. Meeting that goal would be a major achievement in creating security, clarity and consistency on the network and would stop the rush toward global cyber unilateralism.
Dirty data: Why the ’4 million public comments’ on net neutrality might not be what they seem
WASHINGTON POST
Nancy Scola
Now, more than a month later, there’s a fight roiling telecom policy circles this week over whether there were, in fact, nearly 4 million comments sent into the FCC, and how many of them actually were in support of those “strongest possible” rules.
Finance chairman: Web rules won’t lead to new taxes
THE HILL
Julian Hattem
“I wrote the Internet Tax Freedom Act,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wrote in a blog post on Thursday. “So I want to set the record straight about the false claim being peddled by opponents of net neutrality.” “The Internet Tax Freedom Act will protect the Internet from taxes regardless of how the FCC defines Internet access,” he wrote.
Sony aftershocks stoke D.C. piracy debate
POLITICOPRO (Subscribe)
Alex Byers
The D.C. arms of the content and technology industries have struck a more collaborative tone since the swift downfall of the Stop Online Piracy Act in 2012, offering to work together outside of legislation to stamp out digital copyright infringement. But efforts to find common ground are not the same as a cease-fire. News reports this week, rooted in part from leaked Sony documents and open records requests, indicate that movie studios and the Motion Picture Association of America have been working extensively behind the scenes to target Google.
Sony and Mr. Kim’s Thugs
NEW YORK TIMES
Editorial
Even a movie studio aware of Mr. Kim’s megalomania could not have fully anticipated this crime and the threats that followed. Unfortunately, Sony’s capitulation sends a signal to Mr. Kim and other criminals that they can succeed in extortion if they are creative and devious enough. Corporate executives are now rightly fearing increased hacking attacks against their computer systems.
North Korea’s intimidation of Hollywood cannot go unanswered
WASHINGTON POST
Editorial
The nation would not tolerate a ballistic missile landing in a movie lot; how should it respond to a cybermissile and a direct threat of violence? President Obama has signed a directive laying out criteria for the use of U.S. cyberforces for offense and defense. We hope he is reading it anew today.
Drop ‘The Interview’ on Pyongyang
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
We’ve long argued that the goal of U.S. policy toward North Korea should be the collapse of the Kim dynasty. Humor is one of the most potent weapons against totalitarian regimes, but governments aren’t good at intentional comedy. In this case Seth Rogen and James Franco have done the work. The Obama Administration can help release the movie into the wild and make it easy for the world to watch it.
Finance
How a Memo Cost Big Banks $37 Billion
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Andrew Grossman, Emily Glazer and Christina Rexrode
Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Elias was leafing through a pile of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. documents while tending to his newborn son in 2012 when he found something that came back to haunt the three largest U.S. banks. In a memo, one J.P. Morgan employee warned her bosses they were putting bad loans into securities being created before the financial crisis hit. The U.S. attorney’s office in Sacramento, Calif., soon started sending subpoenas to J.P. Morgan officials tied to the memo.
When Regulators Are Blind to Rules
NEW YORK TIMES
Floyd Norris
What happens when you turn over regulatory responsibilities to people who think there is really no need for regulation? The United States, and much of the world, tried that for a large part of the last quarter-century. Along the way, a series of crises sent out warning signals that were not heeded.
Mobile’s Rise Poses a Riddle for Banks
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Daniel Huang
This year, for the first time, U.S. customers interacted with their banks more through mobile devices than any other means, according to a new study by consultancy Bain & Co. Mobile interactions are now 35% of the total, more than any other type, including traditional online channels, automated-teller machines and branch visits, the report showed.
Politics
Panel calls for deep changes at the Secret Service
WASHINGTON POST
Jerry Markon and Carol D. Leonnig
An independent panel on Thursday recommended sweeping changes at the Secret Service, saying the elite protective agency is “starved for leadership” and calling for an outsider as director, hundreds of new agents and officers, and a higher fence around the White House.
A GOP Strategy Begins to Emerge
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Kimberley Strassel
Too many Republicans, particularly in the Senate, have yet to understand the limits of congressional power. Too many other Republicans, particularly in the Senate, lack the political courage to take policy risks (like corporate tax reform). Messrs. Boehner and McConnell have to search out a middle ground, something they’ll only be able to do by coordinating with their troops and with each other. Just as remarkable as the GOP victory on midterm night has been the GOP sobriety in the aftermath. It suggests the party is learning. Just maybe.
Amid Warren’s Rise, a Democratic Split Becomes Apparent
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Peter Nicholas
“In a world where there are more self-described conservatives than there are self-described liberals, is having a campaign that only tries to win by appealing to your base the right strategy?’’ asked Jack Markell, the Democratic governor of Delaware. “I would argue it’s not.”
Cuba’s cash boon for GOP
POLITICO
Kenneth P. Vogel and Tarini Parti
Democrats are applauding President Obama’s move this week toward normalizing relations with Cuba, but don’t expect those cheers to translate into campaign cash to protect allies who support the shift. In fact, the move is expected to be a financial boon for the other side, with affluent Cuban American donors already talking about spending big sums to challenge politicians who side with Obama, and to support rivals who oppose normalization. That cash rift could widen further if the presidential election pits a Democrat who favors normalization, such as Hillary Clinton, against a Republican who opposes it, such as Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio – both of whom hail from Florida, a key swing state with a very politically active population of Cuban expatriates.
Lawyers Create Big Paydays by Coaxing Attorneys General to Sue
NEW YORK TIMES
Eric Lipton
Much as big industries have found natural allies in Republican attorneys general to combat federal regulations, plaintiffs’ lawyers working on a contingency-fee basis have teamed up mostly with Democratic state attorneys general to file hundreds of lawsuits against businesses that make anything from pharmaceuticals to snack foods. The lawsuits follow a pattern: Private lawyers, who scour the news media and public records looking for potential cases in which a state or its consumers have been harmed, approach attorneys general. The attorneys general hire the private firms to do the necessary work, with the understanding that the firms will front most of the cost of the investigation and the litigation. The firms take a fee, typically 20 percent, and the state takes the rest of any money won from the defendants.
College ratings draft light on details
POLITICO
Allie Grasgreen
The highly anticipated draft release issued Friday morning was delayed twice before officials settled on an “end of the fall” deadline. (The winter solstice is Sunday.) It’s largely a list of things the department is considering in its analysis of which institutions offer students and families the biggest bang for their buck. And half the metrics — all of which aim to measure accessibility, affordability and outcomes — can’t even be measured right now. All told, it could be at least a few years before the system that the Obama administration envisions will be in place, though the plan is to rate more than 4,000 two- and four-year colleges by the start of the next academic year. And it will have to survive any challenges by Congress or the next administration.
