Your daily briefing for all the top news in Energy, Technology, Finance, and Politics.
Energy
Senate GOP targets green ‘billionaire’s club’
POLITICOPRO (Subscribe)
Andrew Restuccia
Having long weathered attacks from environmental groups, the GOP is seeking to turn the tables on major green donors like Tom Steyer, digging into environmental groups’ finances and lobbing allegations of collusion and backroom scheming.
The Simmering Climate Battle Over Natural-Gas Exports
NATIONAL JOURNAL
Ben Geman
A fight is brewing over whether Energy Department regulators should weigh the impact of liquefied natural gas on climate change before granting companies permission to ship the product abroad. The dueling pressures on the department from industry officials and green groups are part of a wider dispute over whether natural gas is a friend or enemy in battles against global warming.
Energy Companies Rethinking Russia After New Round of Sanctions
NEW YORK TIMES
Stanley Reed
For months, American and European energy players have continued to sign deals with Russia, maintaining a posture that business was proceeding as usual. But top industry executives are now starting to acknowledge that the escalating tensions could sharply hurt Western oil and gas giants with major investments in Russia, as well as the service companies that are key technology suppliers.
U.S. Oil Exports Ready to Sail
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Christian Berthelsen and Lynn Cook
A tanker of oil from Texas set sail for South Korea late Wednesday night, the first unrestricted sale of unrefined American oil since the 1970s. How that $40 million shipment avoided the nearly four-decade ban on exporting U.S. crude is a tale involving two determined energy companies, loophole-seeking lawyers, and an unprecedented boom in American drilling that could create a glut of ultralight oil.
Religious Conservatives Embrace Pollution Fight
NEW YORK TIMES
Theodore Schleifer
Although many of the faith leaders came from traditionally progressive congregations, like black churches, synagogues and mainstream Protestant denominations, others were more conservative Christians who reflect a growing embrace of environmentalism by parts of the religious right. This week’s hearings on the new E.P.A. rule gave them an opportunity to make their argument that climate change hurts the world’s poor through natural disasters, droughts and rising sea levels, and that it is part of their faith to protect the planet.
Iowa Senate: Ethanol fuels a clash in corn country
POLITICO
Erica Martinson
Rep. Bruce Braley is betting the farm on corn — and Democrats’ hold on the Senate may be in danger if he’s wrong. The Iowan is touting federal support for ethanol while competing in one of 2014’s most critical Senate contests — and he’s banking on his ability to champion his state’s cause in D.C., where the corn industry’s political power has waned. While critics ranging from environmentalists to anti-subsidy fiscal conservatives have turned against ethanol, Braley is busy posing at gas stations that sell the corn-based biofuel, campaigning with farmers and pressuring EPA to protect the federal mandate that guarantees corn’s role in the U.S. fuel supply.
Technology
Case tests limits of post-Snowden privacy
POLITICO
Joseph Marks
After being considered by a New York federal judge, legal experts say the case could ultimately make its way to a federal appeals court or even to the U.S. Supreme Court. At stake is the way data, like email or documents stored online, can be kept out of the reach of the U.S. government — something that, since the Edward Snowden revelations, has appeal beyond just drug cartels and terror syndicates.
The Silicon Valley Shakedown
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Jason L. Riley
“There’s no talent shortage. There’s an opportunity shortage.” That was Jesse Jackson’s attempt to justify his current shakedown of Silicon Valley, where he’s trying to impose de facto black hiring quotas in the name of expanding “opportunity” for minorities. Once again, Mr. Jackson has got it wrong.
Patent Trolls’ New Strategy to Kill Patent Reform? Support Patent Reform.
NATIONAL JOURNAL
Dustin Volz
A company often accused of being one of the most frequent abusers of the nation’s patent laws is now endorsing a measure in Congress designed to slay patent trolls. But the quixotic move amounts to little more than a low-risk publicity stunt, the firm’s critics say, and belies its staunch opposition to reining in such nefarious behavior.
How patent reform’s fraught politics have left USPTO still without a boss
WASHINGTON POST
Nancy Scola
The directorship of the United States Patent and Trademark Office has sat vacant for more than 16 months, at once a reflection the fact that the world of patents has long been what one veteran observer calls a “backwater” and that it isn’t anymore — especially as the technology world has rapidly gained political might and turned its attention to figuring out how to pull the levers of government.
Internet Authority Pulled Into Fight Over Compensation for Terrorism’s Victims
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Drew Fitzgerald
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or Icann, is trying to fend off an effort by the Israel Law Center, an Israel-based civil rights organization that is seeking a lien on several domain name suffixes, such as .kp for Korea, .ir for Iran and .sy for Syria.
Verizon’s slowing down data for some of its heaviest users. And the FCC is calling them out on it.
WASHINGTON POST
Brian Fung
The Federal Communications Commission has sent a strongly worded letter to Verizon warning that changes in the way it handles mobile Internet traffic may violate federal regulations.
Finance
Argentina Default Imminent as Talks Collapse
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Nicole Hong, Taos Turner and Matt Day
Argentina teetered on the brink of its second default in 13 years after talks with bondholders collapsed late Wednesday. The setback, after glimmers of hope in recent days that a last-minute agreement could be reached, immediately sent Argentine stocks plunging in after-hours trading.
In Hedge Fund, Argentina Finds Relentless Foe
NEW YORK TIMES
Peter Eavis and Alexandra Stevenson
The hedge fund firm of billionaire Paul E. Singer has about 300 employees, yet it has managed to force Argentina, a nation of 41 million people, into a position where it now has to contemplate a humbling surrender.
World Weighs Fallout of Argentine Bond Case on Other Indebted Nations
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Ian Talley and Nicole Hong
The International Monetary Fund and others are warning that the legal rulings that forced Buenos Aires’ hand could imperil future debt restructurings. Already, they say, the case is driving bond issuers to rewrite their contracts to ensure that a small group of creditors wouldn’t be able to hold bond deals hostage.
Strong Growth in G.D.P., but Some Caveats
NEW YORK TIMES
Neil Irwin
Gross domestic product grew at a 4 percent annual rate in the second quarter of the year, far better than the 3 percent analysts had forecast, and a sharp turnaround from the 2.1 percent contraction (previously thought to be 2.9 percent) of the winter-weather-stricken first quarter. But there are some caveats. What drove the sharp expansion, and what does it mean for the future?
Janet Yellen sees first dissent in favour of Fed tightening
FINANCIAL TIMES (Subscribe)
Robin Harding
Charles Plosser, the hawkish president of the Philadelphia Fed, held out in a nine-to-one vote because he thought the intention to keep rates low for a considerable time after the Fed stopped buying assets did not reflect “considerable economic progress”.
The 2.1% Expansion
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
Nostalgists who recall the era of 3% annual growth have to go back nearly a decade to 3.3% in 2005 and 3.8% in 2004 to find it. Not a single year of the current recovery has reached the 2.7% or higher annual growth figures that prevailed from 2003-2006, much less the booms of the 1980s and 1990s. From the second quarter of 2009 when the recession ended to the first quarter of 2014, real GDP increased at an average annual rate of a mere 2.1%. Spurring faster growth ought to be the main goal of Washington policy, but instead President Obama continues to rely solely on the Federal Reserve.
Politics
Why the House of Representatives just voted to sue President Obama
VOX
Andrew Prokop
Boehner’s problem is that the vast majority of lawsuits brought by members of Congress against the president on policy issues have been dismissed for lack of standing. As Lyle Denniston of the National Constitution Center wrote, “Time after time, when members of Congress have sued in the courts, because the Executive Branch did something that they believe frustrated the will of Congress, they have been met at the door of the courthouse with a polite refusal to let them in.” The courts also tend to be skeptical of these suits because Congress has constitutional means by which it can check the president’s power on its own — by passing a new law, using the power of the purse to cut off funding, or through impeachment.
Labor Ruling Has Business Worried & Wondering
NEW YORK TIMES
Steven Greenhouse
After a federal agency’s decision that McDonald’s is jointly liable for the employment actions of its franchise operators, businesses across the United States were puzzling over the decision’s potential reach. Many feared that they, too, might fall under that broad umbrella.
Don’t screw this up, GOP senators tell their House counterparts
THE HILL
Alexander Bolton
After fumbling primaries in the past, the GOP believes it will win a majority in the upper chamber this fall — as long as the party can avoid self-inflicted wounds. To do that, Senate Republicans want their colleagues in the lower chamber to play ball and not hand Democrats anything that could turn out the opposition’s base or turn off independent voters.
Arab Leaders, Viewing Hamas as Worse Than Israel, Stay Silent
NEW YORK TIMES
David Kirkpatrick
After the military ouster of the Islamist government in Cairo last year, Egypt has led a new coalition of Arab states — including Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — that has effectively lined up with Israel in its fight against Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls the Gaza Strip. That, in turn, may have contributed to the failure of the antagonists to reach a negotiated cease-fire even after more than three weeks of bloodshed.
Ex-IRS official in tea party controversy called conservatives ‘crazies’ and profanity in email
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Stephen Ohlemacher
A former IRS official at the center of the agency’s tea party controversy referred to some right-wing Republicans as “crazies” and more in emails released Wednesday. A key GOP lawmaker says the remarks show that Lois Lerner was biased against conservative groups and targeted them for extra scrutiny.
Don’t reward VA for failing
USA TODAY
Sen. Tom Coburn
The bill would add thousands of new employees, but would do nothing to achieve better quality of care. The VA has hired 40% more physicians, far outpacing growth in the number of patients using the system. VA physicians who see far fewer patients than their private-sector counterparts, but receive similar compensation, are being paid for doing less work.
