Your daily briefing for all the top news in Energy, Technology, Finance, and Politics.
Energy
Steyer PAC gets just $501K from outside donors in July
POLITICO
Alex Guillén
The main donor to billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer’s super PAC is still Tom Steyer. Steyer’s NextGen Climate Action Committee took in just over $8 million in July, with around $7.5 million coming from Steyer’s own pocket, according to a disclosure the group filed late Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission.
Enbridge’s pipeline maneuver stokes greens’ ire
POLITICOPRO (Subscribe)
Darren Goode
One Canadian company has found a way to ship more oil into the U.S. without waiting for a presidential permit, avoiding the kind of endless limbo that’s bedeviling the Keystone XL pipeline.
Tiny Ghana Oil Platform’s Big Output Sparks Scrutiny
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Benoît Faucon and Drew Hinshaw
A small oil facility off the coast of Africa appears to be sending lots of crude to Europe, raising questions by Nigerian and U.S. authorities about whether some of it is pilfered Nigerian crude that they say is increasingly making it to global markets.
Natural Gas Production Falls Short in China
NEW YORK TIMES
Keith Bradsher
Despite heavy investment and strong government support, China’s natural gas production is growing at a slower pace than its decelerating economy. China’s production of natural gas increased just 6 percent last year and 4.4 percent in 2012. China’s main problem is that shale gas production has fallen far short of expectations. That has left the country relying on alternative methods considered also-rans by American standards, like pumping natural gas from coal fields.
Technology
Confronted With Grisly Images, Twitter Is Walking a Fine Line
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Yoree Koh and Reed Albergotti
Like its social-media brethren, Twitter tries to walk a fine line between a dedication to free expression, an aversion to being held legally responsible for the actions of its users, and the reality that people will use such platforms to share highly offensive material—a particular concern as it seeks to expand its advertising business. Twitter’s broad free-speech stance came into focus Tuesday, when the company said immediate family members could email a special address to request the removal of images and videos of deceased individuals.
Abusing Intellectual-Property Rights
NATIONAL REVIEW
Andrew Langer
Foreign governments that fund and control GSPTs are colluding with their countries’ private corporations. This massive subsidization by nations that host GSPTs tips the scales of the free market and undermines our nation’s economic interests and its role in global trade.
Comcast Takes the Netflix Fight to College Campuses
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Shalini Ramachandran
A new Comcast streaming TV service for college campuses, formally launched Thursday in a handful of schools, holds the promise of reducing schools’ bandwidth costs over time, college officials say. The service, which includes about 80 live channels and a robust on-demand library that can be streamed to tablets, phones and other devices, doesn’t require a physical set top box and is free for students with their room and board fees.
Smart Phones for Smart Kids
WALL STREET JOURNAL
John Doerr
For a long time we have known that strong teachers, motivated students and engaged parents are building blocks for a successful education. Now we know more: Free, powerful mobile apps are improving that learning.
White House cybersecurity czar brags about his lack of technical expertise
VOX
Timothy B. Lee
“You don’t have to be a coder in order to really do well in this position,” Daniel said, when asked if his job required knowledge of the technology behind information security. “In fact, actually, I think being too down in the weeds at the technical level could actually be a little bit of a distraction.”
Courts again rule against streaming upstart Aereo
USA TODAY
Mike Snider
A federal court will not hear Aereo’s argument that the streaming media company should be allowed to operate similarly to a cable company. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that Aereo will have to take its argument to the district court, according to court documents first reported by The Washington Post.
Finance
Banking in a Time of Cholera
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
The better way to understand this settlement is as Bank of America’s punishment for having been foolish enough to buy Countrywide and Merrill Lynch during the financial panic. On Thursday Justice issued a 30-page “statement of facts” concerning BofA’s alleged sins when issuing flawed mortgage-backed securities. But only a page and a quarter concerned mortgage securities issued by Bank of America before its acquisitions of the two flawed firms. The rest concerned Countrywide and Merrill. … The BofA extortion continues the Administration’s second-term campaign to appease its populist left by punishing banks one by one. The left is upset that Mr. Holder couldn’t find enough bankers to indict for actual crimes, despite five years of tireless effort. Maybe that’s because they didn’t commit any crimes. Instead like everyone else, bankers were swept away in a classic financial mania that super-easy Federal Reserve policy, Fannie and Freddie guarantees, and affordable housing policies did so much to promote. Bankers were bad risk managers, like their regulators.
Bank of America Papers Show Conflict and Trickery in Mortgages
NEW YORK TIMES
Michael Corkery and Ben Protess
Documents released as part of the $16.65 billion settlement between Bank of America and the Justice Department read like a highlight reel of the mortgage sins that fed the 2008 financial crisis. As part of the deal, the bank and the Justice Department agreed to a “statement of facts” that offers a window into some of the darkest corners of the Countrywide and Merrill mortgage machine that was responsible for funneling a stream of troubled loans that helped devastate the global financial system.
Tax deductions could soften BofA’s $16.65B deal
USA Today
Kevin McCoy
An estimated $10 billion to $11.63 billion of Thursday’s agreement with federal and state authorities could be claimed as deductions by the nation’s second-largest bank — producing roughly $4 billion in tax benefits — the watchdogs said.
Some homeowners could get hit with a whopping tax bill if they accept help through Bank of America’s settlement
WASHINGTON POST
Dina ElBoghdady
As part of the settlement, the bank agreed to spend $7 billion on helping struggling homeowners and communities, including lowering the mortgage balances of certain borrowers who owe more than their homes are worth. The problem is that some of these “underwater” borrowers might have to pay taxes on the debt that’s forgiven. In 2007, Congress adopted a law that spared homeowners from being taxed on the amount of the loan that was written off. But that tax break expired in December, and now that kind of relief can be counted as income by the IRS, an issue we wrote about in April.
Inversions Push Falls to Treasury’s Tax Man
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Damian Paletta
Mark J. Mazur, the Treasury’s assistant secretary for tax policy, is helping assemble a menu of administrative options for Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew that would aim to upend the economic benefits of the so-called inversions that occur when a cross-border acquisition allows a U.S. firm to avoid paying U.S. taxes. … Given Mr. Mazur’s power—a number of multibillion-dollar mergers this year could hinge on his recommendations—little is known about him outside the halls of Congress and the White House. But a review of his record and interviews with colleagues reveal him to be a careful economist with a focus on what he perceives as “fairness” in the tax code.
A Few Things the Fed Has Done Right
WALL STREET JOURNAL
John H. Cochrane
The Fed’s plan to maintain a large balance sheet and pay interest on bank reserves, begun under former Chairman Ben Bernanke and continued under current Chair Janet Yellen, is highly desirable for a number of reasons—the most important of which is financial stability. Short version: Banks holding lots of reserves don’t go under. … The Fed has started a “reverse repurchase” program that will allow nonbank financial institutions effectively to have interest-paying reserves. This program was instituted to allow higher interest rates to spread more quickly through the economy. Again, I see a larger benefit in financial stability.
Hawks Crying Wolf
NEW YORK TIMES
Paul Krugman
Even monetary doves like Janet Yellen, the Fed chairwoman, generally acknowledge that there will come a time to take the pedal off the metal. And maybe that time isn’t far off — official unemployment has fallen sharply, although wages are still going nowhere and inflation is still subdued. But the last people you want to ask about appropriate policy are people who have been warning about inflation year after year.
In Jackson Hole, Central Bankers and Easy Money Collide
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Jon Hilsenrath
Central bankers gathering here this week confront a global economy that has once again disappointed, leaving them reluctant in some places and unable in others to turn off spigots of easy money employed since 2008 to boost growth.
Politics
Unemployed by ObamaCare
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
Most of the political class seems to have decided that ObamaCare is working well enough, the opposition is fading, and the subsidies and regulation are settling in as the latest wing of the entitlement state. This flight from reality can’t last forever, especially as the evidence continues to pile up that the law is harming the labor market. … The [Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia] reports that 78.8% of businesses in the district have made no change to the number of workers they employ as the specific result of ObamaCare and 3% are hiring more. More troubling, 18.2% are cutting jobs and employees. Some 18% shifted the composition of their workforce to a higher proportion of part-time labor. And 88.2% of the roughly half of businesses that modified their health plans as a result of ObamaCare passed along the costs through increasing the employee contribution to premiums, an effective cut in wages.
Only 4 anti-Obamacare House Dems left for fall elections
POLITICO
Jennifer Haberkorn
Thirty-four House Democrats bucked their party to vote against Obamacare when it passed in 2010. Today, only four of those lawmakers are still in office and running for reelection this fall.
The Boys of Summer: July’s Biggest Super PAC Donors
NATIONAL JOURNAL
Scott Bland and Adam Wollner
Democrats dominate the list of notable July donors, as there have simply been more Democratic dollars flowing to that type of outside group this year. There’s still plenty of conservative money out there; it’s just that more of it is going toward non-profits, which don’t have to disclose their donors. Here are a handful of July super PAC donations that stood out.
Those Koch Attacks Are Working
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Kimberley Strassel
Mr. Reid’s Koch attacks also appear to be depressing donor giving to GOP Super PACs that could run their own attack ads and even the odds. Super PACs have to disclose their donors. That hasn’t bothered Democratic billionaires like former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, climate activist Tom Steyer or hedge-fund titan James Simon —all of whom have given multimillion-dollar donations to Senate Majority PAC. But Republican insiders say the Koch attacks, and the IRS targeting (and audits) have made Republican donors skittish of donor disclosure. They are still writing checks, though much of the money is going to 501(c)(4) organizations that don’t have to disclose their funding sources.
Congressional investigators say Bowe Berghdal swap violated law
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Pentagon broke the law when it swapped Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, a prisoner in Afghanistan for five years, for five Taliban leaders, congressional investigators said Thursday. The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office said the U.S. Defense Department failed to notify the relevant congressional committees at least 30 days in advance of the exchange – a clear violation of the law – and used $988,400 of a wartime account to make the transfer. The GAO also said the Pentagon’s use of funds that hadn’t been expressly appropriated violated the Antideficiency Act.
Stopping the worst people on Earth
WASHINGTON POST
Charles Krauthammer
These are the worst people on earth. They openly, proudly crucify enemies, enslave women and murder men en masse. These are not the usual bad guys out for land, plunder or power. These are primitive cultists who celebrate slaughter, glory in bloodlust and slit the throats of innocents as a kind of sacrament. … “People like this ultimately fail,” Obama said of Foley’s murderers. Perhaps. But “ultimately” can be a long way — and thousands of dead — away. The role of a great power, as Churchill and Roosevelt understood, is to bring that day closer.
Robert McDonnell throws his wife under the bus at trial
WASHINGTON POST
Eugene Robinson
How far would you go to stay out of jail? Would you publicly humiliate your wife of 38 years, portraying her as some kind of shrieking harridan? Would you put the innermost secrets of your marriage on display, inviting voyeurs to rummage at will?
How going nuclear helped the Senate
POLITICO
Burgess Everett
Since Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) changed Senate rules in November to ease President Barack Obama’s approval of most nominees, Democrats have churned through confirmations of dozens of new judges — giving them lifetime appointments that will extend the administration’s influence for years to come. Over a roughly equivalent period during the 113th Congress, the Senate confirmed 36 district and circuit judges before the rules change and 68 after, according to Senate statistics.
