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Energy
Fuel exports soar under Obama
ASSOCIATED PRESS
U.S. exports of diesel and gasoline have doubled since President Barack Obama took office, and the carbon embedded in them has meet political goals by taking it off America’s pollution balance sheet. But that does not necessarily help the planet.
Cost of Adapting to Climate Change May Climb to $500B, Says U.N. Environmental Agency
CNS NEWS
Patrick Goodenough
As Secretary of State John Kerry and other ministers prepare to join global climate talks in Peru, the U.N.’s environmental agency is claiming that the cost for the planet to “adapt” to global warming could be up to five times higher than previously estimated – a whopping $500 billion a year by mid-century. A new report by the U.N. Environmental Program (UNEP) states that the cost of helping developing nations adapt to rising temperatures “could climb as high as $150 billion by 2025/2030 and $250-500 billion per year by 2050.”
Oil Falls to 5-Year Low, and Companies Start to Retrench
NEW YORK TIMES
Clifford Krauss
The price of crude oil continued to collapse on Monday, plunging to a five-year low, as oil giants began to scale back their drilling ambitions and pare the ranks of their workers. On the same day that the American oil benchmark traded around $63 a barrel, down more than 4 percent, ConocoPhillips announced it would cut investment spending in 2015 by 20 percent, the biggest sign yet that major oil companies are contracting.
Supreme Court Rejects BP Plea to Review Deepwater Horizon Settlement
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Jess Bravin
The Supreme Court on Monday rejected BP PLC’s challenge to a 2012 class-action settlement of claims from the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion, declining to review whether millions of dollars in payouts improperly went to businesses that didn’t suffer damage from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
Technology
Vise tightens on FCC chairman in fight over Internet rules
THE HILL
Julian Hattem
“Traditionally, when the White House wants to let an independent administrative agency know what it thinks, it files a very detailed substantive letter with the commission pursuant to the disclosure rules,” said Robert McDowell, a former Republican member of the FCC. “Never has a president looked into the camera to make front-page, above-the-fold news directing the FCC to go in a particular direction.”
Wednesday Is Tax-the-Internet Day
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
As we went to press Monday, state legislators from across the U.S. were heading to Washington to demand more power to impose tax collections on the Internet. What is bound to enrage Web merchants and consumers alike is that they’re the ones paying for this lobbying campaign. You read that correctly. The National Conference of State Legislatures uses taxpayer money to lobby for higher tax burdens. The outfit enjoys a $27 million annual budget, and a spokesman notes that its “primary source of funding comes from dues that each legislature appropriates to support it.” That means state taxpayers. Other revenue sources include the federal government, so taxpayers get nicked twice.
U.S. Tech Giants Battle Europe’s Sovereign States
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Tom Fairless
Europe’s policymakers, accustomed to controlling key sectors of their economies, are struggling to get a handle on the fast-moving newcomers from across the ocean. Growth is weak and government revenues soft, and they see profits that once accrued to European industries from retail to media to taxicabs, being diverted—often lightly taxed—to Silicon Valley. They worry that critical industries such as autos may fall next.
European Internet Proposal Under Attack
NEW YORK TIMES
Editorial
In a speech last week in Berlin, Ms. Merkel said telecommunications companies should be allowed to divide Internet access into two tiers, one for “special services” like telemedicine and self-driving cars and one for everything else. Ms. Merkel said her proposal would encourage innovation by providing more reliable and secure service to applications that require it while guaranteeing that all other Internet traffic is treated equally by telecom companies. There are major problems with that approach.
Free-market academics want the FTC to weigh in on net neutrality. Here’s why it probably won’t.
WASHINGTON POST
Brian Fung
A group of academics who oppose strong government oversight of Internet service providers want the Federal Trade Commission to intervene in what’s become a highly polarized debate over the future of the Web. … “As it did in 2007, the FTC should caution the FCC by warning the agency of the adverse effects of adopting per se restrictions on potentially pro-competitive conduct,” said the letter, which was signed by, among others, Geoffrey A. Manne, executive director of the International Center for Law & Economics and Christopher S. Yoo, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Manne and Yoo have been leading skeptics of the argument for stiffer broadband regulation.
Senate looks to move on DHS cyber bill
THE HILL
Cory Bennett
The Senate is expected to move on a cybersecurity bill late Monday night or sometime Tuesday, according to industry observers. The measure would codify and clarify the Homeland Security Department’s (DHS) cybersecurity role, according to a draft obtained by The Hill. It would also expand some cybersecurity information sharing between the private sector and the DHS, but not by much, and not with the legal protections industry groups had coveted.
Warm West Coast Reception for China’s Web Czar (Chillier in Washington)
NEW YORK TIMES
Paul Mozur
Meeting with United States technology companies provided Mr. Lu with ample photo opportunities to show off back home. It also demonstrated that he could easily find eager partners in Silicon Valley, even as officials in Washington seek to play hardball.
Amazon threatens to move its drone research overseas
WASHINGTON POST
Brian Fung
Amazon is warning federal officials that it will “have no choice” but to move more of its drone research overseas if the company doesn’t get approval to test its fleet of unmanned delivery vehicles in the United States — and soon. Amazon argued in a letter made public Monday that the Federal Aviation Administration continued delay on developing drone regulations risks undermining its plans for Amazon Prime Air, not to mention the broader market for unmanned aerial systems (UAS).
Finance
Europe’s Dodgy Bank Stress Tests
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Benn Steil and Dinah Walker
The European Central Bank recently trumpeted the results of its yearlong, comprehensive stress tests of the euro-area’s 130 largest banks, suggesting it represented an important turning point in the region’s ongoing economic crisis. But we have subjected the results of the ECB’s stress tests to our own stress-test test—and what we found is disturbing.
U.S. Lowers One Hurdle to Obtaining a Mortgage
NEW YORK TIMES
Patricia Cohen
Hoping to lure more first-time home buyers into the housing market, the government on Monday detailed its plan to offer mortgages with a down payment of as little as 3 percent of the purchase price. … Some critics warned about the risk of repeating the subprime mortgage fiasco and opening the door to higher defaults among home buyers lacking any substantive equity cushion in case of another downturn in the market.
Fed Aims to Signal Shift on Low Rates
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Jon Hilsenrath
Federal Reserve officials are seriously considering an important shift in tone at their policy meeting next week: dropping an assurance that short-term interest rates will stay near zero for a “considerable time” as they look more confidently toward rate increases around the middle of next year.
White House defends Treasury nominee
THE HILL
Justin Sink
But press secretary Josh Earnest said Monday that Weiss had “deep expertise in the financial markets and economic issues.” “This is somebody who has a very good knowledge of the way that the financial markets work,” Earnest said. “And that is critically important when you’re asking somebody to take on a position in the Federal Government that has such a significant bearing on those markets.”
Politics
G.O.P. Donors Seek to Anoint a 2016 Nominee Early
NEW YORK TIMES
Nicholas Confessore
But the reality of all three candidates [Bush, Christie, and Romney] vying for support has dismayed the party’s top donors and “bundlers,” the volunteers who solicit checks from networks of friends and business associates. They fear being split into competing camps and raising hundreds of millions of dollars for a bloody primary that would injure the party’s eventual nominee — or pave the way for a second-tier candidate without enough mainstream appeal to win the general election.
A crowded GOP field for 2016 encounters donors reluctant to commit early
WASHINGTON POST
Matea Gold and Tom Hamburger
Despite the appeals, which have stepped up in recent weeks, many top donors have committed to being noncommittal, wary of fueling the kind of costly and politically damaging battle that dominated the 2012 primaries. Senior party fundraisers believe that most campaigns will not be able to fully set up their fundraising operations until at least the spring.
Can the Left Launch Its Own Tea Party?
POLITICO
Bill Scher
The extreme right has power, and that’s something the left hasn’t had much of for a long time. But in the aftermath of the party’s disastrous midterm performance, it’s very possible that the Democratic Party leadership will be facing its own Tea Party-style insurgency from the other side of the spectrum. “You’re going to get a fight within the Democratic Party. There is a substantial disagreement coming up,” Rep. Jerry Nadler, an outspoken Congressional Progressive Caucus member, recently told the Wall Street Journal.
White House and Republicans Clash Over C.I.A. Torture Report
NEW YORK TIMES
Mark Landler and Peter Baker
On the eve of a long-awaited Senate report on the use of torture by the United States government — a detailed account that will shed an unsparing light on the Central Intelligence Agency’s darkest practices after the September 2001 terrorist attacks — the Obama administration and its Republican critics clashed on Monday over the wisdom of making it public, and the risk that it will set off a backlash overseas.
Releasing the Feinstein report on the CIA in the middle of a war would be an act of exceptional recklessness
WASHINGTON POST
Michael Gerson
So why has Feinstein donned her Guy Fawkes mask? Tension with the CIA? Simple stubbornness? The main reason, I suspect, is different. Democrats who approved of enhanced interrogation at the time (such as Feinstein) must now construct an elaborate fantasy world in which they were not knowledgeable and supportive. They postulate a new reality in which they were innocent and deceived — requiring a conspiracy from three former CIA directors, three former deputy directors and hundreds of others. Occam would indicate a different answer: guilt, hypocrisy and betrayal.
G.O.P. Extracts Price for Averting Shutdown
NEW YORK TIMES
Jonathan Weisman and Ashley Parker
Congress prepared on Monday to scale back Michelle Obama’s school-lunch nutrition mandates and curtail some clean water regulations in a $1 trillion spending bill that would avert a government shutdown this week but extract a policy price from Democrats. Continued fighting over such policy changes threatened to delay a huge spending agreement that lawmakers hope to pass to keep the government funded past Thursday.
Mitch McConnell’s Obamacare gambit
POLITICO
Jennifer Haberkorn and Manu Raju
While no one believes repealing the Affordable Care Act is feasible with President Barack Obama still in office, Republicans are eager to use a special procedure that might let them kill at least a large piece of the law — potentially the Medicaid expansion, subsidies for purchasing health insurance or even the individual mandate — with only a simple majority.
CBO vs. dynamic scoring
USA TODAY
Editorial
If Congress wants to improve its credibility, admittedly a tall order, its best bet is to maintain a respected referee such as Doug Elmendorf and allow the budget office to keep score without interference from either sideline.
