Your daily briefing for all the top news in Energy, Technology, Finance, and Politics.
Energy
At least 150 major companies prep for carbon prices
USA TODAY
Wendy Koch
At least 150 major companies worldwide – including ExxonMobil, Google, Microsoft and 26 others in the United States – are already making business plans that assume they will be taxed on their carbon pollution, a report today says. The U.S. has yet to impose a price on heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions, but other nations are starting to do so as a way to address global warming so U.S.-based companies are factoring an eventual one into their plans, says the international non-profit CDP, formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project. The report is the group’s first one to look at corporate carbon pricing on a global scale.
Poll shows wide partisan gap in importance of environment
THE HILL
Timothy Cama
Sixty-nine percect of Democrats said the environment was very important, making it the third most important issue for them behind healthcare, at 80 percent, and economic inequality, at 70 percent, the Pew Research Center said Friday. Only 36 percent of Republicans found the environment very important, falling far behind issues like the economy, at 88 percent, and terrorism, at 87 percent. The environment saw the widest gap between the parties in terms of importance, Pew said.
Momentum builds to allow US oil exports
THE HILL
Laura Barron-Lopez and Timothy Cama
For the first time in decades there are calls within the House Republican conference to lift the ban on crude oil exports, signaling what could become a sweeping shift in U.S. policy.
GOP sees a Yucca revival if the Senate flips
POLITICOPRO (Subscribe)
Darius Dixon and Darren Goode
The Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project may be on ice, but its Republican backers are hoping they can revive it if their party wins control of the Senate in the November midterm elections.
Fracking Gives U.S. Energy Boom Plenty of Room to Run
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Russell Gold
Skeptics of the U.S. energy boom say it can’t last much longer because it requires drilling an ever-increasing number of wells. But the boom already has lasted longer than anyone would have imagined just a decade ago and has more room to run. That’s because oil and natural-gas wells have become more productive—an unrecognized but potent trend that should keep the fuels flowing.
Japan Nears a Nuclear Reboot
NEW YORK TIMES
Editorial
Fukushima showed that absolute safety of nuclear power is a dangerous myth, especially in earthquake-prone Japan.
Technology
John Oliver Makes People Dumb
WALL STREET JOURNAL
L. Gordon Crovitz
Converting the Internet into a utility would mean years of litigation and regulatory uncertainty, reducing investment in broadband. New entrants such as Google Fiber would lose the incentive to challenge the cable-and-telephone duopoly. Mr. Oliver’s viewers won’t be laughing anymore.
2 stores, 100M hacks. Where’s cybersecurity?
USA TODAY
Editorial
Whatever the responses, customers who entrust companies with their sensitive financial data (or even their selfies) deserve a lot better than the sort of “security” they’ve been getting lately from big retailers.
Retailers beef up cybersecurity:
USA TODAY
Sandy Kennedy
Cybercriminals are relentless. Their attacks are constant, highly sophisticated and not going away. Without a silver bullet, industry must be vigilant and embrace partnerships that are proven to work. Working together, we can improve debit and credit card security, identify threats and share information to best defend the entire payments ecosystem.
Tech plays it safe with political donations
POLITICOPRO (Subscribe)
Tony Romm
Campaign checks from the likes of Facebook, Google, Yahoo and others instead are landing mostly in the hands of incumbent lawmakers — not newer, fresher blood. Even after a year in which tech companies failed to win sought-after reforms to the country’s immigration and patent systems, the industry remains reticent to take risks in congressional races across the country.
The Future of Campaign Finance Reform May Rest With Silicon Valley
NATIONAL JOURNAL
Jamie Lovegrove
[Steve] Wozniak represents a growing tide of Silicon Valley leaders who have been applying their vast resources and network of followers to promote campaign finance reform. Other prominent Mayday supporters include PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel, LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, and Union Square Ventures’ cofounder Fred Wilson.
Tech chiefs in plea over privacy damage
FINANCIAL TIMES (Subscribe)
Richard Waters
The US tech industry has failed to appreciate the mounting global concern over its record on online privacy and security and must act fast to prevent deeper damage to its image, Silicon Valley’s top executives and investors have conceded.
Venture Capitalist Sounds Alarm on Startup Investing
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Yoree Koh and Rolfe Winkler
“I think that Silicon Valley as a whole, or that the venture-capital community or startup community, is taking on an excessive amount of risk right now—unprecedented since ’99,” said Bill Gurley, a partner at Benchmark, referring to the last tech bubble.
With Tech Taking Over in Schools, Worries Rise
NEW YORK TIMES
Natasha Singer
Technology companies are collecting a vast amount of data about students, touching every corner of their educational lives — with few controls on how those details are used. Now California is poised to become the first state to comprehensively restrict how such information is exploited by the growing education technology industry.
Why Consumers and Businesses Need Permanent Freedom From Internet Taxes
INTHECAPITAL
Ken McEldowney
Consumers beware: the cost of Internet on our smartphones, tablets, and home Wi-Fi could go up November 1st if the Senate does not act. Since 1996, the Internet Tax Freedom Act (ITFA) has prevented most states and municipalities from taxing Internet access to encourage Internet adoption and use. ITFA is set to expire on November 1st, and, if not extended by Congress, it could mean a tax hike for Internet users.
Finance
Elizabeth Warren the message machine
POLITICO
MJ Lee
Warren has focused with iron discipline on promoting a narrow set of core priorities — cracking down on Wall Street, helping student borrowers and giving the middle class more financial opportunities — while stubbornly refusing to get sucked into the political controversies and media obsessions of any given day.
We’re Number 32!
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
Any day now the White House and Sen. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.) will attempt to raise taxes on business, while making the U.S. tax code even more complex. The Obama and Schumer plans to punish businesses for moving their legal domicile overseas will arrive even as a new international ranking shows that the U.S. tax burden on business is close to the worst in the industrialized world. Way to go, Washington.
Did Apple just become a big bank?
THE HILL
Kevin Cirilli and Julian Hattem
Apple’s move into mobile banking could bring the tech giant under the same federal regulations as financial institutions.
Fed Chief Yellen Seeks Interest-Rate Consensus
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Jon Hilsenrath
As vice chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen was an unabashed advocate of easy money who pressed colleagues to embrace her view. As chairwoman she has taken a much different approach, becoming a restrained consensus seeker modeled after her predecessor, Ben Bernanke.
‘Flipped’ Bankers Aid U.S. in Foreign-Exchange Probe
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Christopher M. Matthews, Devlin Barrett and Emily Glazer
U.S. investigators have turned multiple bank employees into informants in a far-reaching probe of possible manipulation of currency markets, and are preparing to seek criminal charges against individual traders as early as next month, according to people familiar with the investigation.
Politics
POLITICO poll: 2014 voters gloomy over economy
POLITICO
Alexander Burns
Despite continued signs of a halting but persistent national comeback, midterm voters remain frustrated and unhappy with the state of the economy, according to the latest POLITICO poll of likely voters in 2014 battleground states. Many appear to blame President Barack Obama: 57 percent of these voters disapprove of his economic leadership. By every measure in the survey, a gloomy mood still pervades the electorate when it comes to kitchen-table issues: Just 23 percent say their personal financial situation has improved over the past year, versus 30 percent who say it has gotten worse.
POLITICO poll: GOP has edge on immigration in midterms
POLITICO
Seung Min Kim
The poll found that 35 percent of voters in the most competitive House and Senate races this fall said they approved of how Obama has dealt with immigration, compared with 64 percent who said they disapproved of the president’s handling of the issue. And by a narrow margin, more voters said they trust the GOP over Democrats on immigration.
50 days left until midterms, and Republicans keeping troops in line
THE HILL
Scott Wong
Fifty days before the midterm elections, Republican leaders are getting their troops in line as the GOP eyes something it hasn’t had in eight years: Control of both chambers of Congress. The party’s recruitment of strong candidates has resulted in no serious gaffes and has produced polling leads in several key swing states in the bare-knuckle brawl for the Senate. On Capitol Hill, Tea Party insurgents who forced a government shutdown last year are playing nice with GOP leadership in the campaign’s home stretch in a bid to keep the heat on President Obama and off a sometimes-divided GOP caucus.
In Iowa, Hillary Clinton issues populist call to action ahead of midterm elections
WASHINGTON POST
Philip Rucker and Dan Balz
Hillary Rodham Clinton jumped back into the partisan fray here Sunday, framing the November midterm elections as “a choice between the guardians of gridlock and the champions of shared opportunity” and warning Democrats of the consequences of complacency.
Senate showdown: GOP frets over Harkin seat
POLITICO
James Hohmann
Few states are more important than Iowa in the battle for the Senate this fall. But anxiety is rising within Republican ranks that deep-pocketed conservative donors and outside groups are not doing enough, as Democrats outspend them by millions of dollars to retain the seat of retiring liberal Sen. Tom Harkin.
The roughed-up American
WASHINGTON POST
Robert Samuelson
This is the true middle-class squeeze: People’s expectations about their living standards were set in the early 2000s, while their incomes and assets are stuck at levels 15 to 20 years earlier. The huge gap isn’t rapidly erased, even by a revived economy.
Covering for the IRS
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
The IRS targeting of conservative groups has now become a story about the cover-up. More than a year after the scandal became public, the most transparent Administration in history has done everything in its power to spin the story, stymie Congressional investigators and run out the clock.
Let’s reject the veiled isolationism of Obama and Clinton
WASHINGTON POST
Sen. Marco Rubio
A key lesson from President Obama’s first 5 1/2 years in office is that isolationism and disengagement, no matter how they’re disguised, only put more American lives at risk.
