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Energy
‘Peak Oil’ Debunked, Again
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
Given this 130-year record of predictive failure, why does the end-of-oil myth persist? Part of it is that peak oil is more wish than prediction—a desire to see the end of fossil fuels to serve a larger political agenda. It is also a way of scaring governments into pouring money into alternative energy sources that can’t compete with oil and natural gas without subsidies and mandates. Predicting disaster can also be a profitable business and a path to speech-making celebrity. The happy ending is that the notion that the world is running out of resources always fails because the ingenuity of entrepreneurs, spurred by necessity and incentive, always exceeds the imagination of doomsayers. So we are learning again, and let’s hope memories will be longer this time.
Chris Christie Stumps for Energy, if Not for 2016, in Canada
NEW YORK TIMES
Michael Barbaro
Determined to let no doubts about his enthusiasm for the pipeline linger, Mr. Christie, the Republican governor of New Jersey, traveled to Canada to meet with the chief executive of the company trying to build it. He held a joint news conference with the premier of Alberta, who is aggressively pushing for it. And Mr. Christie delivered a speech to a group of Canadian energy executives who fervently support it — inside the Calgary Petroleum Club, no less. “On the merits, Keystone should have been approved a long time ago,” Mr. Christie said. “It is time — well over time — to get this done.”
Wind power tax credit faces bleak outlook
POLITICOPRO (Subscribe)
Darren Goode
Congress is poised to approve an extension of the credit only to the end of the 2014, and though several senators on both sides of the debate stopped short of predicting its demise, its fate will be in the hands of the Republicans who will control both chambers in the next Congress.
Oil industry opens door to some EPA methane action
POLITICOPRO (Subscribe)
Elana Schor
The American Petroleum Institute stopped short Thursday of opposing an extension of EPA’s air pollution rules for fracked gas wells to oil, suggesting an Obama administration path forward on methane that avoids a fierce battle with the fossil fuel industry.
US oil reserves at highest since 1975
FINANCIAL TIMES (Subscribe)
Ed Crooks
US proven oil reserves last year rose to their highest level since 1975, official figures have shown, in the latest sign of how the shale revolution has transformed the country’s energy supply outlook.
Technology
Obama’s New Web Tax
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
It’s now almost unanimous: President Obama ’s new plan to regulate the Internet would cost consumers billions. On Monday a leading Democratic think tank warned about the looming tax hike on America’s Internet users. … Now the Progressive Policy Institute reports that state and local regulators would join with the feds in gouging Internet consumers. That’s because states and localities have their own levies that would kick in if the Internet is officially deemed a monopoly telephone network. Authors Robert Litan of the Brookings Institution and PPI’s Hal Singer optimistically expect regulators to reduce the federal levy from the current 16.1%. But the analysts still forecast significant pain for Internet users.
Wheeler’s net neutrality wild cards: Clyburn, Rosenworcel
POLITICOPRO (Subscribe)
Brooks Boliek and Alex Byers
The spotlight has burned bright on FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler as the drama behind drafting new net neutrality rules plays out, but the other two Democrats on the commission could soon have starring roles. Wheeler will need Democratic Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel on his side to have the three votes to approve his open Internet rules.
In the ‘global struggle for Internet freedom,’ the Internet is losing, report finds
WASHINGTON POST
Nancy Scola
The year 2014 marks the moment that the world turned its attention to writing laws to govern what happens on the Internet. And that has not been a great thing, according to an annual report from the U.S.-based pro-democracy think tank Freedom House.
Issa takes top spot on Internet panel
THE HILL
Julian Hattem
After moving on from the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) will be the chairman of the Judiciary subcommittee on the Internet, Courts and Intellectual Property when Congress returns next year. … Yet the position should give Issa a strong hand when Congress looks to reform the nation’s patent laws, which is a top priority for the new year.
Who Should Own the Internet?
NEW YORK TIMES
Julian Assange
At their core, companies like Google and Facebook are in the same business as the U.S. government’s National Security Agency. They collect a vast amount of information about people, store it, integrate it and use it to predict individual and group behavior, which they then sell to advertisers and others. This similarity made them natural partners for the NSA, and that’s why they were approached to be part of PRISM, the secret Internet surveillance program. Unlike intelligence agencies, which eavesdrop on international telecommunications lines, the commercial surveillance complex lures billions of human beings with the promise of “free services.” Their business model is the industrial destruction of privacy. And yet even the more strident critics of NSA surveillance do not appear to be calling for an end to Google and Facebook.
Finance
Falling Oil Prices Create a Central Banking Conundrum
NEW YORK TIMES
Neil Irwin
There is little doubt that falling prices for oil and other commodities are good news for global consumers, as we noted last week. Less money spent on gasoline and other fuels means more to spend on everything else, in effect raising people’s real incomes. But the challenge Mr. Draghi and his fellow central bankers face is that they are trying — almost desperately — to attain higher inflation, closer to the 2 percent they target. And falling oil prices will drive inflation down further, particularly as the lower price of oil ripples through global supply chains and starts to affect more retail prices.
Terrorizing Taxpayers
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
For proof of Ronald Reagan ’s maxim that the closest thing to eternal life on Earth is a government program, consider the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002. What was sold to the public as a temporary backstop is becoming another permanent entitlement.
Deal to Extend U.S. Terrorism Insurance Hinges on Dodd-Frank Changes
NEW YORK TIMES
Jonathan Weisman
House and Senate negotiators all but reached agreement on Thursday to extend federal terrorism insurance for six years … To sweeten the deal for conservatives, negotiators added a measure to mitigate the impact of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act on unintended targets. It would give insurance companies more flexibility on capital standards that were initially intended for banks under the financial regulatory law. Another Dodd-Frank provision appears to be the last sticking point in the talks. Representative Jeb Hensarling, the Texas Republican who is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, would like to make farmers, ranchers, manufacturers and small businesses that use financial instruments to hedge risks exempt from capital requirements aimed at hedge funds and other financiers. But Democrats are balking.
Politics
The real fight is among the Democrats
WASHINGTON POST
Charles Krauthammer
From opposite sides of the (Democratic) spectrum, Schumer and Warren are trying to remake and reorient the Democratic Party post-Obama. So while Republicans are debating the tactics of stopping presidential lawlessness — an inherently difficult congressional undertaking, particularly if you still control only a single house — Democrats are trying to figure out what they believe and whom they represent.
Can the GOP Find Unity and Purpose?
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Peggy Noonan
Take no bait. Act independently and in accord with national priorities. Cause no pointless trouble. If there’s trouble, it should have a clear, understandable, defendable purpose. That is general advice for the new Republican congressional majority. They will be proving every day they’re a serious governing alternative to the Democratic-dominated establishment that has run Washington for six years.
An Immigration Game Plan for the New Congress
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Edward P. Lazear
To fix a system that the president admits is “broken,” Congress can pass legislation to deal with three issues. First, use market indicators to award green cards that favor immigrants in needed occupations and industries. Second, create a new class of visa that carries an annual fee, available to some of the undocumented, and provide for a guest-worker program. Third, use employer-based incentives to deal with illegal immigration, past and future.
On War and Immigration, Obama Faces Tests of Authority From Congress
NEW YORK TIMES
Jeremy W. Peters and Ashley Parker
Congress moved on two fronts Thursday to test the limits of presidential authority, with a surprising maneuver in the Senate to begin debating President Obama’s war powers against the Islamic State and a vote in the House to prohibit him from enforcing his executive action on immigration. With the two parties in a perpetual state of dispute, the actions represented a rare, if unplanned, shared view among liberals and conservatives: Through Congress’s passivity or its inability to compromise, it has ceded too much authority to an executive branch more than willing to step into the void.
GOP Takes Smoother Path to Fund Government
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Kristina Peterson
The GOP-controlled House appeared on track to pass next week a measure keeping the government running after its current funding expires on Dec. 11, with few detours or delays to appease the party’s conservative wing.
Obama’s last chance on defense
POLITICO
Dan Berman
Now, as Obama prepares to introduce his fourth defense chief, the Democratic thinker and policy-maker Ash Carter, the president’s own credibility on national security — and his relationship with the military — is on the line as never before. Yet almost no one expects the White House to show any greater deference to the Pentagon than under Gates, Panetta or Hagel. The White House isn’t looking for someone to send them strategy papers but to carry out the strategy the West Wing and National Security Council set and Carter’s well suited to that, former senior foreign policy officials say.
The loss of Rep. Mike Rogers as head of the House Intelligence Committee is a blow to bipartisanship
WASHINGTON POST
David Ignatius
The House intelligence committee, a rare island of bipartisanship in recent years, may soon become a more confrontational arena with the retirement of its chairman, Rep. Mike Rogers. Rogers (R-Mich.) is scheduled to be replaced by Rep. Devin Nunes, a conservative California Republican whose critical comments about Benghazi made him a favorite with Fox News. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) announced the Nunes appointment two weeks ago in what appeared to be a concession to right-wing Republicans who want a more adversarial role for this key committee.
Ferguson, Staten Island: Similar events bring very different reaction
WASHINGTON POST
Karen Tumulty
The shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., became an inkblot test illuminating the nation’s deeply rooted political and racial divides. The fatal use of a banned chokehold on Eric Garner, an asthmatic father of six and grandfather of two, in New York City seems to have had the opposite effect — bringing wide condemnation crossing racial, partisan and ideological lines. Conservatives have joined liberals in denouncing the Staten Island grand jury’s decision Wednesday as a miscarriage of justice.
The day of reckoning at the IRS
WASHINGTON TIMES
Sen. Pat Roberts
Comprehensive tax reform is the only real way to put this agency in check. We need to bring the laws and rules of federal taxes into the 21st century so our citizens can protect themselves from this kind of political targeting and scrutiny. We need to remove the fear and intimidation from the equation of dealing with the IRS. If we cut taxes and spending, we might even restore Americans’ trust in their government to rise to challenges of the day. We can protect the First Amendment and jump start our economy at the same time.
