InsideSources

Your daily briefing for all the top news in Energy, Technology, Finance, and Politics.

Energy

Oil Producers to Pump Up Lobbying to Remove U.S. Export Ban
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Amy Harder
The oil industry is gearing up for a postelection lobbying push to loosen the four-decade U.S. ban on exports of crude oil, saying that relaxing the prohibition would create jobs and stimulate the economy. But oil producers face several challenges in the effort, even if Republicans—frequent allies of the industry—win control of the Senate in this fall’s elections. While some GOP lawmakers favor lifting the ban, many others are signaling that they would resist the idea, particularly as voters remain concerned about its impact on gasoline prices.

Mystery remains for RFS verdict: Before or after election?
POLITICOPRO (Subscribe)
Erica Martinson
Most insiders expressed surprise when the agency said Friday that the rule had gone to OMB. Many, including key Iowa lawmakers, had come to expect that the final decision would not come until after the November elections, despite earlier speculation that the administration would put out a pro-ethanol ruling in time to help Democratic Iowa Senate candidate Bruce Braley.

The country’s sinking climate debate
WASHINGTON POST
Editorial
The EPA’s rules are a decent and, under the circumstances, necessary first step, but they would not cut emissions enough over the next century. And, for all of their benefits, they represent a cumbersome and expensive way to slash emissions. As full implementation looms, industry may press for more efficient policies that sting companies and consumers less, and Republicans may be willing to countenance market-based approaches to the climate problem.

The Climate Swerve
NEW YORK TIMES
Robert Jay Lifton
AMERICANS appear to be undergoing a significant psychological shift in our relation to global warming. I call this shift a climate “swerve,” borrowing the term used recently by the Harvard humanities professor Stephen Greenblatt to describe a major historical change in consciousness that is neither predictable nor orderly.

Spontaneous Solar Combustion
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
The sprawling Ivanpah solar power station in the Mojave Desert probably never would have been built without environmental activists and the subsidies and mandates they created, so there’s more than a little irony that BrightSource Energy, Google GOOGL and another clean-tech utility are now getting an education in the green opposition that bedevils other American businesses. Lobbies like the Sierra Club and Audubon Society are turning on solar farms for avian mass murder.

Technology

Google Fiber Is Fast, but Is It Fair?
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Alistair Barr
Telecom and cable companies generally have been required to blanket entire cities, offering connections to every home. By contrast, Google is building high-speed services as it finds demand, laying new fiber neighborhood by neighborhood. Others including AT&T Inc. T and CenturyLink Inc. are copying Google’s approach, underscoring a deeper shift in U.S. telecommunications policy, from requiring universal service to letting the marketplace decide. As Google’s model gathers momentum, it stirs up questions about whether residents of poor or underserved neighborhoods will be left behind.

The problem with the Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger
VOX
Timothy B. Lee
America’s largest cable company, Comcast, has signed a deal to buy Time Warner Cable, the second largest. The deal requires approval from the Federal Communications Commission, which is currently soliciting public comments on the transaction. The deadline for comments is on Monday.

A CDC for the Internet could help cut down on misbehavior
WASHINGTON POST
Editorial
What’s appealing about a cyber-CDC is that it might enjoy the kind of widespread respect that the Atlanta-based disease-fighting agency has earned. The analogy with biological threats is not perfect; adversaries in cyberspace are man-made dangers that can be agile and avaricious. Yet there may be a kernel of a valuable idea here: to create a new, federally funded research and development center for the cyberuniverse.

The Feds Stall Self-Driving Cars
WALL STREET JOURNAL
L. Gordon Crovitz
Regulators have overstated the need for new liability rules. An April report from the Brookings Institution concluded that existing contract and product-liability laws can account for self-driving cars “without delaying consumer access to the many benefits that autonomous vehicles will provide.” Owners covered by insurance will remain responsible for accidents, with auto makers and their software suppliers liable for design negligence. The inefficient legal system will not be any worse for self-driving cars than for human-driven cars—and there will be fewer accidents to litigate.

For Google’s Self-Driving Cars, It’s a Bumpy Trip
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Alistair Barr
Google Inc. GOOGL caused a stir earlier this year when it unveiled a self-driving car without a steering wheel, or pedals for braking and accelerating. But Google’s goal of an autonomous car is bumping up against new testing rules from California’s Department of Motor Vehicles. The rules, which take effect on Sept. 16, require a driver to be able to take “immediate physical control” of a vehicle on public roads if needed.

Questions for the Patent Office
NEW YORK TIMES
Editorial
Critics have long complained about the slow pace of its work and whether it is approving too many undeserving patent applications; it currently has a backlog of more than 600,000 filings. It’s important that Mr. Issa take a hard look at how the office is being managed.

Lawsuit puts ‘cloud’ over airwave auction
THE HILL
Kate Tummarello
“This lawsuit puts a cloud over the auction,” said one Republican FCC aide. “It would make sense for the Commission to work something out with the NAB.” One broadcast industry source said the FCC could avoid lengthy delays to the crucial auction if it is willing to work with the broadcasters. “The suit does not have to result in a delay,” the source said. “There are a couple of issues that if taken off the table, broadcasters would anticipate dropping the lawsuit.”

Finance

Central Bankers’ New Gospel: Spur Jobs, Wages and Inflation
NEW YORK TIMES
Binyamin Appelbaum
The last time the economic policy conference held here every August devoted its agenda to labor markets, it was 1994 and the Federal Reserve’s vice chairman scandalized the audience by suggesting central banks worried too much about reducing inflation and not enough about unemployment. Twenty years later, heresy has become gospel.

The Mystery Woman Who Runs Our Economy
POLITICO
Michael Hirsh
It’s not that Janet Yellen is mysterious by nature. She’s a regular person from Brooklyn. She has an open face and a warm smile and, as her predecessor Ben Bernanke told me recently, “more of the common touch than I did.” She also has a decade-long pedigree serving in various jobs at the U.S. Federal Reserve. (“If you were dreaming up a training school for Fed chairmen, it would be her life story,” her old colleague, Alan Blinder, once joked.) Yet there are so many unknowns about where Yellen is taking the newly empowered Fed that she’s making Alan Greenspan look plain-spoken by comparison. Seven months into her tenure, her favorite locution so far appears to be some form of “we don’t know.”

Fed’s Yellen Remains Mum on Timing of Rate Change
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Jon Hilsenrath and Pedro Nicolaci da Costa
Encouraged by progress in the U.S. labor market, but uncertain if it is enough, the Federal Reserve Board chairwoman and other officials who gathered here for a central-bank conference left the public guessing about when they will start raising short-term interest rates.

Why Interest Rates Need to Stay Low
NEW YORK TIMES
Editorial
There is no guarantee that keeping rates low for a “considerable period,” as the Fed leadership has pledged, will propel the economy forward. But it is all but certain the economy will backslide if rates are raised too soon. That’s because the economy’s critical underpinning — good jobs at good pay — has not yet been restored, and until it is, monetary support from the Fed and fiscal support from Congress are needed. Fiscal support has been withdrawn and reversed in recent years, a misguided move that has needlessly depressed growth and represents a failure of both policy and politics. Raising rates too soon would be a policy error on a par with that debacle, a mistake that the economy can ill afford.

Judge rejects Obama administration secrecy on Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac
WASHINGTON TIMES
Jim McElhatton
A federal judge has issued a stinging rebuke to the Obama administration’s recent attempt to shield documents from disclosure in a case that could yield important clues about the Treasury Department’s relationship with mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Government lawyers had argued they could redact key information before releasing records to the public by saying the documents related to the “deliberative process.” But in a ruling last month, U.S. Federal Claims Court Judge Margaret M. Sweeney rejected that, saying the government was illegally cutting corners.

Bank Fight Points to Bigger Battle Over Trade
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Damian Paletta
The likely scenario is that they agree to a short-term extension of Ex-Im’s mandate, possibly with some new restrictions on its involvement in trade deals. That would delay the bigger fight over the bank’s long-term future until at least year’s end.

One Way to Fix the Corporate Tax: Repeal It
NEW YORK TIMES
N. Gregory Mankiw
So here’s a proposal: Let’s repeal the corporate income tax entirely, and scale back the personal income tax as well. We can replace them with a broad-based tax on consumption. The consumption tax could take the form of a value-added tax, which in other countries has proved to be a remarkably efficient way to raise government revenue.

An Unfinished Chapter at Countrywide
NEW YORK TIMES
Gretchen Morgenson
Is Angelo R. Mozilo in the cross hairs again? Mr. Mozilo, the co-founder and former chief executive of Countrywide Financial, has largely escaped accountability for his outsize role in the mortgage crisis. But he may soon face a civil lawsuit from the Justice Department, according to news reports last week. The possibility of a new case against Mr. Mozilo came almost exactly seven years after the subprime mortgage machine he created and oversaw began to sputter and stall.

Politics

Obama hits the gas on regs
THE HILL
Tim Devaney
Groups that closely follow regulations are expecting the Obama administration to continue issuing controversial rules through the midterm elections, despite the political risk it could pose for Democrats.

Dems hold money lead, but face stiff headwinds this election cycle
THE HILL
Mike Lillis
Bolstered by a savvy online operation, Democrats on Capitol Hill have vastly out-raised Republicans on the campaign trail this election cycle. But the financial advantage has hardly put the Democrats in the driver’s seat ahead of the looming midterms. Instead, the party is fighting merely to survive November with its thin Senate majority – and a respectable House minority – intact.

‘Disconnected Obama’ needs to change conversation to help party in midterms
WASHINGTON POST
Chris Cillizza
The question for Obama and the Democratic candidates and consultants whose fate at the ballot box in November is inextricably linked to his is what, if anything, can be done to turn around this story line of a president increasingly unable — or unwilling — to steer the country (and the world) in the direction he wants it to go.

Events in Iraq, Syria and Russia further stoke debate about Obama’s worldview
WASHINGTON POST
Zachary A. Goldfarb
The week began with the breaking of the siege of Mount Sinjar in Iraq, thanks to U.S. bombing runs, and ended with the public beheading of American journalist James Foley in Syria and renewed Russian aggression in Ukraine. The juxtaposition of military success and public human failure has caused a sense of whiplash around President Obama’s foreign policy and further stoked the debate about his worldview.

Why Obama shouldn’t act alone on immigration
USA TODAY
Editorial
Unilateral action might energize Obama’s liberal base before the elections, but it would set a dangerous precedent for future presidents to act on other significant matters without the assent of Congress. Better to let the legislative process play out. Eventually, major immigration reforms will be enacted, either on a bipartisan basis or by a Democratic majority that will work its will against a marginalized GOP. The changing demographics of the American electorate make that inevitable.

Government should not hold for-profit colleges to a higher standard
WASHINGTON POST
Editorial
The for-profit sector can play a useful role in helping meet Mr. Obama’s goal of more higher education for more Americans. Not only do they account for 20 percent of the associate degrees granted in the United States but they also serve poor and working-class students who have little chance of entry into traditional higher education. Consider, for example, that 31 percent of the nation’s African American college graduates, and 28 percent of Hispanic graduates, came from for-profit schools in 2012-13 (the latest year for which data are available). The for-profit sector has shrunk under the weight of attacks of recent years, and over-stressed community colleges cannot fill the gap. If the gainful employment rules are promulgated as has been proposed, opportunities for non-traditional students are sure to become even more limited.