Your daily briefing for all the top news in Energy, Technology, Finance, and Politics.
Energy
Though Scorned by Colleagues, a Climate-Change Skeptic Is Unbowed
NEW YORK TIMES
Michael Wines
Dr. Christy is an outlier on what the vast majority of his colleagues consider to be a matter of consensus: that global warming is both settled science and a dire threat. He regards it as neither. Not that the earth is not heating up. It is, he says, and carbon dioxide spewed from power plants, automobiles and other sources is at least partly responsible.
Harry Reid Gets His Man
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
More than 150 executive branch nominees are awaiting Senate confirmation, but Harry Reid is attending to his personal priorities. On Tuesday the Majority Leader pushed through a vote on Norman Bay to helm his sovereign government province, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Democratic superdonor Tom Steyer’s use of tax shelters draws Romney comparisons
WASHINGTON TIMES
Kelly Riddell
Tom Steyer, the billionaire environmental activist who is spending $100 million to help elect Democrats this fall, is rallying support for energy taxes that could impact everyday Americans. But when he ran his own hedge fund, Mr. Steyer sought to help wealthy clients legally avoid paying taxes, confidential investor memos show.
CO2 Project: Electricity Firm to Tap Greenhouse Gas for Oil Drilling
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Rebecca Smith
Carbon dioxide isn’t just a greenhouse gas that federal officials want to curb: It is also highly prized by the energy industry, which injects it into aging oil fields to increase their output. Coal-fired power plants vent carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, while oil drillers generally have gotten their CO2 from underground caverns or industrial plants. But electricity producer NRG Energy Inc. is trying to change that. With a new Japanese partner it disclosed Tuesday, NRG is planning to capture some of the carbon dioxide produced by one of its coal-burning power plants outside Houston and then pipe the gas to an oil field about 80 miles away.
Technology
Tech stocks tumble after Yellen’s remarks
THE HILL
Kevin Cirilli and Julian Hattem
With just two words — “substantially stretched” — Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen sent social media stocks tumbling on Tuesday and stirred rampant talk of a “bubble” in the market. The assessment, a part of the central bank’s annual report to Congress, was couched in technical language, warning that “risk-taking” in the social media and biotechnology sectors appeared to have increased, unlike in other industries where stock valuations have kept in line with historical averages.
F.C.C. Is Deluged With Comments on Net Neutrality Rules
NEW YORK TIMES
Steve Lohr
As of Tuesday, there were about 780,000 comments, far more than for any previous rule-making proceeding before the Federal Communications Commission. The agency is fine-tuning its rules to secure an open Internet, after a federal-court decision in January said it had to rethink its approach. … The deadline for the first round of comments was Tuesday, but has been extended to Friday. A second period for so-called reply comments will run until Sept. 10.
Internet access tax vote hurts sales tax bid
POLITICO
Kelsey Snell
The House quietly passed legislation on Tuesday that would permanently ban the government from taxing broadband Internet access. It’s a big win for Internet users, but it also puts a damper on prospects for creating a path forward for new ways to tax sales made online.
The Senate That Taxed the Internet
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
A cabal of state tax and local collectors is lobbying the Senate to hold the Internet Tax Freedom Act hostage. Their plan is to tie an extension of the longstanding ban on email taxes to their controversial plan to give states and municipalities new powers to collect sales taxes on transactions far outside their borders. Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, the number two Democrat, is mulling whether to lead the hostage-taking for these taxing interests.
The Senate bill on cell phone unlocking is a huge missed opportunity
VOX
Timothy B. Lee
On Tuesday, the Senate unanimously approved legislation to allow people to unlock their cell phones in order to take them to a different wireless carrier. The legislation must still be approved by the House of Representatives. The legislation became necessary after a controversial 2012 decision from the Librarian of Congress that raised the possibility that taking your cell phone to a new wireless carrier could violate copyright law. Unfortunately, Congress has chosen the narrowest possible approach to addressing the issue. Lawmakers have refused to rethink the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the law that created the problem in the first place.
Tech diversity? There’s no app for that: Our view
USA TODAY
Editorial
Silicon Valley companies are supposed to disrupt cozy business relationships and empower the creative-minded with cutting-edge technology. But in one key respect — its hiring practices — Silicon Valley is very much the old guard.
We’re owning up to the situation: Opposing view
USA TODAY
Dean Garfield
In recent years, we have launched national efforts to improve the situation, but there is more work to do. To be successful, we need partners from parents to policymakers who value a skilled education as an investment in America’s excellence. We must spark this change together because the stakes are high: More than the future of our businesses depends on it.
Finance
Obama Administration Urges Immediate Action on ‘Inversions’
WALL STREET JOURNAL
John D. McKinnon
The Obama administration joined the growing debate over U.S. companies reincorporating overseas for tax purposes, urging lawmakers to pass legislation to limit the moves. In a letter to leaders of the congressional tax-writing committees, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said lawmakers “should enact legislation immediately…to shut down this abuse of our tax system.”
Fed’s Yellen Hedges Her View on Rates
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Jon Hilsenrath
Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen defended keeping interest rates low before Congress on Tuesday, but opened the door a crack to earlier-than-planned rate hikes if the labor market continues its surprising improvement.
Janet Yellen on the Everything Bubble
NEW YORK TIMES
Neil Irwin
“While prices of real estate, equities and corporate bonds have risen appreciably and valuation metrics have increased, they remain generally in line with historical norms,” Ms. Yellen said. Translation: While she and the Fed have taken note of the trend we described last week, she does not buy the theory that there is a bubble forming.
A Misguided Campaign Against Payday Lenders
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Ronald L. Rubin
Informed consumers who take out a loan have calculated that they are better off with that loan than without it. A borrower’s desperation does not alter this equation. A man whose car is about to be repossessed may calculate that he is better off taking out a payday loan than losing his job because he lacks transportation. The government is blind to such motivations, and it can harm consumers by substituting its judgment for theirs. It is better to help consumers make good decisions than to make decisions for them.
For Proof Wall Street Is Changing, Look at Citigroup’s Numbers
NEW YORK TIMES
Neil Irwin
But at the same time, it’s wrongheaded to suggest that nothing has changed and that giant banks are carrying along on their merry way, endangering the economy and waiting for their bailouts. For evidence, take a look at numbers posted by Citigroup on Monday in this week in which several major banks are releasing financial results.
How to Spark Another ‘Great Moderation’
WALL STREET JOURNAL
John Taylor
The Federal Reserve Accountability and Transparency Act limits discretion and excessive intervention by our independent central bank, as its name implies, in a transparent and accountable way. It thereby meets Milton Friedman’s goal of “legislating rules for the conduct of monetary policy that will have the effect of enabling the public to exercise control over monetary policy through its political authorities, while at the same time . . . prevent[ing] monetary policy from being subject to the day-by-day whim of political authorities.”
Chris Dodd reaffirms push for single US prudential regulator
FINANCIAL TIMES
Gina Chon
Chris Dodd, the former US senator responsible for the landmark Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, said the idea of paring down the number of banking regulators could come back to life now that the public had seen the complexity of having so many oversight agencies.
Politics
Highways Need a Higher Gas Tax
NEW YORK TIMES
Editorial
About 10,000 motorists die each year because of inadequate road conditions, and millions of other Americans waste large portions of their lives stuck in traffic or stalled trains. The enormous cost to society of poor infrastructure grows every year, and most of the blame can be placed directly on a Congress that refuses to collect and spend enough money to fix it. On Tuesday the House made the situation worse with a sad excuse for a highway funding bill: A 10-month measure that keeps spending at an inadequate level and does not address the dwindling revenues that keep producing all-too-familiar cliffhanging crises.
Washington’s Highway Dodge
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
House GOP leaders are claiming the temporary nature of this patch is designed to give them another run at reform next year, perhaps with the support of a Republican-led Senate. We’ll hold them to that. The trust fund problem has been begging for a fix for years. This latest stopgap is a dodge, not a victory.
Poll: Immigration U.S. top problem
POLITICO
Jonathan Topaz
According to a Gallup poll released Wednesday, 17 percent of Americans think immigration is the country’s biggest problem, a major jump just from last month, when 5 percent listed immigration for the same question. This is the highest that immigration has ranked in the Gallup survey since 2006.
Liberals and Libertarians Find Common Ground in House
NEW YORK TIMES
Jonathan Weisman
From abortion to electronic privacy to background checks for gun purchases, a strange thing has been happening on the floor of the House as it debates its spending bills for the coming fiscal year: the stirrings of liberalism. The House on Thursday voted 221 to 200 to approve an amendment by one of its most vocal liberal members, Representative Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut, to ban federal contracts for companies that set up sham headquarters in offshore tax havens like Bermuda. Thirty-four Republicans bucked their party to push it to passage.
Looking to the Fall, Democrats in Senate Races Lead Fund-Raising
NEW YORK TIMES
Nicholas Confessore
Democratic candidates in most of the races that will decide control of the United States Senate raised more than their Republican opponents during the three months ending in June and entered the summer with bulging bank accounts, according to campaign finance reports filed Tuesday.
