Your daily briefing for all the top news in Energy, Technology, Finance, and Politics.
Energy
Obama Administration to Announce Stricter Oil Train Safety Standards
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Amy Harder
The Obama administration will unveil Wednesday new rules proposing stricter safety standards on trains carrying flammable fuels, including oil and ethanol, according to a Capitol Hill source familiar with the pending regulation. The rules, to be announced by U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, will include standards for tank cars, speed limits for trains carrying flammable fuels, brake standards and required testing for oil and other volatile liquids.
Senate poised to leave town without vote on gas exports
POLITICOPRO (Subscribe)
Darren Goode
“I think every day in international news adds to the need for America to build its energy strength, and we are building a broad consensus for that,” Landrieu said Tuesday. “It’s not divisiveness here. It’s just time is the enemy. We’re leaving in 10 days.”
Industry pans feds’ plan for gas exports
FUEL FIX
Jennifer A. Dlouhy
The Obama administration says its new plan for vetting proposals to sell liquefied natural gas overseas is aimed at streamlining the review process, but energy companies and aspiring exporters say the government’s approach could have the opposite effect.
Business groups fight EPA plant rules, eye legal action
WASHINGTON TIMES
Kellan Howell
A coalition of top business groups expressed rising concerns over the Environmental Protection Agency’s plans to cut carbon emissions from existing power plants, demanding more time Tuesday to respond and eyeing a legal battle against the Obama administration if necessary.
Europe’s energy policy strengthens Putin’s hand: Column
USA TODAY
Brett M. Decker
In the high-stakes geopolitical poker game over Ukraine, it’s a good bet that the West will blink first because Europe doesn’t hold a strong hand, and there is no sign that Putin is bluffing.
Technology
Google leads tech lobbying surge
POLITICOPRO (Subscribe)
Tony Romm
Google, Facebook, Amazon.com and Apple supercharged their lobbying in the second quarter of this year, reflecting the tech industry’s rapidly expanding interests — and influence operations — in Washington.
Startups pave roads beyond Silicon Valley
USA TODAY
Steve Case
But there is another side to this story, what I have routinely referred to as the “Rise of the Rest” — the belief that while Silicon Valley will remain dominant for the foreseeable future, new startup ecosystems will emerge all across the country and the geography for high-growth entrepreneurship in America will itself be disrupted.
Worldwide web of challenges as U.S. cedes Internet oversight
WASHINGTON TIMES
Meghan Drake
As the Obama administration prepares to cede a key oversight role for the Internet and domain names, technology officials say the next challenge for the Web will be to ensure accountability and preserve the Internet’s openness as a global communications and commerce network.
Finance
Senate panel mulls corporate tax inversions
POLITICOPRO (Subscribe)
Brian Faler
The ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee said he would not back legislation that is retroactive or “punitive,” that any measure must be deficit neutral so that it doesn’t result in a tax increase, and that it should push the tax code closer to a territorial system.
SEC Is Set to Approve Money-Fund Rules
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Andrew Ackerman
Under the SEC plan, “prime” money funds whose shares are held by corporations and large institutional investors will have to abandon a stable $1-a-share price and float in value like other mutual funds, according to people familiar with the matter. Investors in these funds would risk losing principal if the share price fell. Prime funds invest in short-term corporate debt. The plan also would allow all funds to temporarily stop investors from redeeming shares in times of market tumult or impose fees on them to do so, these people said, meaning corporations and other investors may not always have immediate access to their cash.
The Unbanked: Offering Small Fees, Banks Cater to Low-Income Customers
NEW YORK TIMES
Michael Corkery and Jessica Silver-Greenberg
These are not the customers a big bank would normally covet, let alone cater to. But an increasing number of the nation’s biggest lenders are doing just that, devising low-fee banking especially for customers with troubled finances. The products, including bare-bones bank accounts and prepaid debit cards, are hardly big money makers — in some cases, the banks barely break even.
The Importance of Shedding Some Light on Dark Pools
NEW YORK TIMES
Jared Bernstein
While once a scant few institutional investors quietly soaked in the dark pools, that’s no longer the case. According to Reuters, “Around 40 percent of all U.S. stock trades, including almost all orders from ‘mom and pop’ investors, now happen ‘off exchange,’ up from around 16 percent six years ago.”
Senator Criticizes Funds’ Borrowing for Stock Trades
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Ryan Tracy
A senior senator criticized a prominent hedge fund’s use of bank loans to buy stocks, asking U.S. regulators to investigate if financial firms are skirting legal limits on such borrowing.
Politics
The Odds of a GOP Wave Are Increasing
NATIONAL JOURNAL
Josh Kraushaar
To be fair, a lot of the disagreement stems from semantics—the definition of the word “wave.” Cohn argues that if Republicans merely sweep red-state Democratic seats and perhaps pick off a stray swing seat, it’s not a wave election—even if Republicans net seven seats on their way to the majority. … There’s also a methodological conflict at hand. Most political scientists define a wave in terms of House seats gained, because Senate contests only take place in one-third of the country. But in the House, gerrymandering and voter self-sorting have limited the universe of competitive seats. With a 234-seat majority, Republicans have already come close to hitting the upper limit of their representation.
Battleground Georgia: Democrats see 2014 flip
POLITICO
Edward-Isaac Dovere
Democrats here don’t have to wait for the demographic projections to come true. The state’s voting population is already much more African-American than even 10 years ago, Latinos are on the rise, and there’s a business community relocating to the Atlanta metro area at a pace that looks a lot like the migration to Northern Virginia and the North Carolina research triangle the past 15 years that turned both states into presidential battlegrounds. Those shifts, together with the surprisingly competitive candidacies of Senate hopeful Michelle Nunn and gubernatorial contender Jason Carter, have convinced more than a few Democrats here that the Republican lock on the Peach State could be broken as soon as November.
Crises Cascade and Converge, Testing Obama
NEW YORK TIMES
Peter Baker
Rarely has a president been confronted with so many seemingly disparate foreign policy crises all at once — in Ukraine, Israel, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere — but making the current upheaval more complicated for Mr. Obama is the seemingly interlocking nature of them all. Developments in one area, like Ukraine, shape his views and choices in a crisis in another area, like the Middle East.
Syrian death toll and extremist threat increases, but the U.S. does little
WASHINGTON POST
Editorial
It’s not easy at this late stage for the United States to intervene in Syria or Iraq in a way that would be constructive. But if one principle seems obvious, it is that moderate forces willing to fight the Islamic State should be aided — and quickly. Foremost among these are Syria’s secular rebels. The independent militia of Iraqi Kurdistan, which faces the Islamic State along a 900-mile front, is another clear candidate. Mr. Obama’s decision to stand back from Syria and Iraq has done much to create the present threat to the United States. Continued passivity will only make it worse.
An Ominous Health Care Ruling
NEW YORK TIMES
Editorial
The third judge, a Democratic appointee, called the majority opinion what it clearly was, a “not-so-veiled attempt to gut” the health care law. He argued that the law sought to achieve “near-universal coverage” of all Americans and that this could only be achieved with the help of subsidies working in tandem with a mandate that most Americans obtain health insurance or pay a penalty. It defies common sense to think that Congress really intended that there be no subsidies at all in 36 states.
D.C. Circuit Court ruling on Obamacare was wrong — but the 4th Circuit got it right
WASHINGTON POST
Editorial
FIRST BLAME Congress. Generally a useful rule these days, it certainly holds when considering Tuesday’s worrying, though possibly temporary, setback for the Affordable Care Act in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Blame Democrats who pressed through a bill containing contradictory language. Blame Republicans who, in their drive for full repeal, have declined to fix the ambiguities and unintended consequences that turn up in any sizeable piece of legislation. Blame the D.C. Circuit, too, for an unwise and unnecessary ruling that would dismantle much of the Obamacare system that has been slowly taking hold.
Upholding ObamaCare—as Written
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
Distinguishing between state and federal exchanges was no glitch or drafting error. In 2010 Democrats assumed that the unpopularity of ObamaCare would melt away and all states would run their own exchanges. Conditioning the subsidies was meant to pressure Governors to participate. To evade this language, the Internal Revenue Service simply pumped out a rule in 2012 dispensing the subsidies to all. The taxmen did not elaborate on niceties such as legal justification.
