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

Energy

Will GOP control of the Senate affect energy policy?
THE HILL
William O’Keefe
… [E]ven if Republicans pick up the needed six seats to gain control, does it matter in terms of energy policy? I think that the answer is “not much.” Even though Republicans have been in the minority, they have been able to block most of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) legislative agenda, whatever it is. As the minority party, the Democrats would be able to use similar tactics to prevent Republicans from passing much of their energy agenda or acting on energy legislation passed by the House.

 

Gas price fears factor into oil export debate
FUEL FIX
Jennifer A. Dlouhy
Politicians voting for oil exports do so at their peril. That’s the takeaway from a poll of New Hampshire voters that some refiners were circulating to lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Thursday, as they step up their campaign to preserve the longstanding U.S. ban on exporting crude.

 

Oil Group Says Iowa Race Driving Obama on Ethanol
BLOOMBERG
Mark Drajem
An oil industry group complained today that the Obama administration is considering a boost in the U.S. mandate for using renewable fuels to help a Democrat locked in a tight race for a U.S. Senate seat from Iowa. Representative Bruce Braley, a Democrat in a near dead-heat with Republican state Senator Joni Ernst, has prodded President Barack Obama to reject a proposed cut in the requirement to use ethanol and other non-petroleum fuels. As the administration delays issuing a decision and the November election approaches, the American Petroleum Institute today said it is concerned that Obama may acquiesce.

 

Oil Glut Ignites Gasoline Price Swoon
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Nicole Friedman
Gasoline prices have tumbled from highs hit in June. And markets are signaling that consumers will get even more relief at the pump. A global glut of crude oil is the main driver behind the decline in gasoline. Relatively cheap oil has made it more profitable for refiners to produce gasoline and other fuels, and they have ramped up production to record levels.

 

Sanctions Over Ukraine Put Exxon at Risk
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Daniel Gilbert
When Exxon Mobil Corp. XOM +0.23%  Chief Executive Rex Tillerson detailed a deal to drill for oil in Russia’s Arctic Sea two years ago, he predicted that the project would strengthen the ties between the U.S. and Russia. Instead, Exxon has wound up in the cross hairs of U.S. foreign policy, which could threaten one of the company’s best chances to find and tap significant—and much needed—amounts of crude oil.

 

 

Technology

The Senate Still Wants to Tax the Net
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
Get ready for new taxes on your monthly Internet access bill. A pending plan on Capitol Hill would extend the current ban on such taxes—but only until just after the November elections. Pro-tax politicians think they can get away with soaking consumers once they’ve left the voting booth.

 

Privacy advocates, tech companies nudge Congress to protect ‘abandoned’ e-mails
WASHINGTON POST
Nancy Scola
Ranging from Adobe to the ACLU, from Facebook to FreedomWorks, and from Twitter to the Taxpayers Protection, a coalition of more than 80 civil liberties groups and tech companies has sent a pair of letters to Congress meant to nudge the House and Senate into moving ahead with a vote on legislation that would require e-mails stored longer than six months to be accessed only by a warrant.

 

Government’s Threat of Daily Fine for Yahoo Shows Aggressive Push for Data
NEW YORK TIMES
Vindu Goel and Charlie Savage
The federal government was so determined to collect the Internet communications of foreign Yahoo customers in 2008 that it threatened the company with fines of $250,000 a day if it did not immediately comply with a secret court order to turn over the data.

 

What’s really driving cyberattacks against retailers
WASHINGTON POST
Andrea Peterson
Security researchers say they’ve uncovered links to commentary that accuses the United States of fomenting unrest around the world in the code of the malware believed to have been used in a string of data breaches at U.S. retail stores over the past year, including a potentially massive breach at Home Depot. … But experts say those links don’t necessarily mean that ideology was the driving force behind the hacks. Instead, the key motivator was likely cold, hard cash.

 

In Brussels, Google Gets Roasted
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Frances Robinson
Google is intentionally sabotaging a European court’s ruling that Internet users on the continent have the right to have certain information about them removed from the U.S. tech giant’s search engine, a top European bureaucrat said Thursday.

 

 

Finance

Democrats’ whopper of a strategy flop
POLITICO
Ben White, Kim Dixon and Brian Faler
President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies hoped to capitalize on the recent wave of companies ditching the U.S. to slice their tax bill as a populist issue to fire up the progressive base and bash Republicans as slaves to corporate interests. So far, rather than becoming the political whopper that Democrats dreamed of, the issue has turned out to be pretty much a massive dud.

 

Partisan rhetoric on tax inversions hardens
POLITICOPRO (Subscribe)
Brian Faler
Sen. Orrin Hatch on Thursday lambasted what he labeled the administration’s “fixation” on corporate tax inversions, calling it “despicable” to question the patriotism of companies looking out for their own financial interests.

 

Apple Pay may have regulatory costs
POLITICOPRO (Subscribe)
Katy Bachman and Kate Davidson
Consumer advocates and industry officials expect the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to give increasing attention to the mobile payments market in the coming months. The agency enforces consumer protection laws related to credit and debit cards and has a division devoted to studying the card markets.

 

Banks Did It Apple’s Way in Payments by Mobile
NEW YORK TIMES
Nathaniel Popper
For the banks and credit card networks, Apple Pay could threaten some revenue streams, as the technology giant looks to assume a more central role in the financial universe. But the eager participation of banks and card companies suggests both Apple’s clout, and the recognition among financial institutions that they face broader challenges from upstart technology ventures, many of which are not as eager or willing as Apple to work with the incumbent financial industry.

 

Treasury Monitoring Swaps Loopholes at U.S. Banks
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Andrew Ackerman and Victoria McGrane
The Treasury Department is monitoring U.S. banks that are shifting some trading operations overseas to avoid tough U.S. swaps rules, according to a department official.

 

The Inflation Cult
NEW YORK TIMES
Paul Krugman
The persistence of the inflation cult is, therefore, an indicator of just how polarized our society has become, of how everything is political, even among those who are supposed to rise above such things. And that reality, unlike the supposed risk of runaway inflation, is something that should scare you.

 

 

Politics

The Reluctant Leader
NEW YORK TIMES
David Brooks
Everybody is weighing in on the strengths and weaknesses of the Obama strategy. But the strategy will change. The crucial factor is the man. This is the sternest test of Obama’s leadership skills since the early crises of his presidency. If he sticks to this self-assigned duty, and pursues it doggedly, he can be a successful reluctant leader. Sometimes the hardest victories are against yourself.

 

Legal Authority for Fighting ISIS
NEW YORK TIMES
Editorial
Mr. Obama may not wait long to ramp up military operations in Iraq and Syria. Congress should weigh in — and soon. If lawmakers approve military action, the authorization should be narrowly defined for the explicit purpose of battling ISIS, perhaps limited in time and geography. Any such document should not leave this president or his successor the ability to get the United States into wars without the people’s consent.

 

President Obama’s strategy can’t only be to shoot terrorists from the air
WASHINGTON POST
Editorial
A strategy built exclusively on killing terrorists will have no end. The United States must also help Iraqis and Syrians build institutions — police, courts, schools, businesses that offer jobs — so that terrorist organizations do not emerge again as soon as Americans look away. The term “nation-building” understandably is out of favor: It has a hubristic quality that rings especially false to Americans who have watched their countrymen die in Afghanistan and Iraq for so many years. America cannot “build” Iraq; Iraqis must do that. But Americans, if they want to beat back the Islamic State, must also be committed to helping Iraqis build Iraq.

 

Obama losing the confidence of key parts of the coalition that elected him
WASHINGTON POST
Karen Tumulty
Women surveyed said they disapprove of Obama by a 50 percent to 44 percent margin — nearing an all-time low in the poll. … Among younger voting-age Americans, Obama’s approval rating stood at 43 percent. That marked an 11-point drop since June among those 18 to 29 years old. Voters younger than 30 supported Obama by 60 percent to 37 percent in 2012. Meanwhile, support for Obama among Hispanics stood at 57 percent, which is down markedly from the first half of 2013, when approval among Latinos soared to about 75 percent.

 

No to immigration executive order: Our view
USA TODAY
Editorial
Though it might take some time before Congress musters the will to overhaul immigration, a plan to bypass the legislative process is not the answer. Not before the election. And not after it.

 

Doctoring in the Age of ObamaCare
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Dr. Mark Sklar
To improve quality, we need to unchain health-care providers from the bureaucracies that are strangling them fiscally and temporally. We can better control medical costs if we strengthen physicians’ relationships with their patients rather than with their computers.

 

GOP Senate’s first 100 days
THE HILL
Alexander Bolton
Republicans are putting together an agenda for the first 100 days of 2015 in case they win control of the Senate. Authorizing the Keystone XL pipeline, approving “fast-track” trade authority, wiping out proposed environmental regulations and repealing the medical device tax top their list.