InsideSources

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

Energy

Obama offers few climate details
POLITICO
Andrew Restuccia
Perhaps the most interesting thing about President Barack Obama’s climate change speech at the United Nations is what he didn’t say. Obama didn’t promise $1 billion to help poor countries adapt to the dire effects of climate change, like France did. And he didn’t offer any hints about how sharply greenhouse gas emissions would be cut in the years after 2020, like the European Union and several other countries did. Instead, the president on Tuesday delivered a forceful but largely detail-free speech that sought to reassure the world about the United States’ commitment to reaching a global climate change agreement at crucial talks in Paris at the end of 2015, while leaving the specifics for later.

Alaska’s Lessons for the Keystone XL Pipeline
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Stephen Moore and Joel Griffith
The lesson of the Trans-Alaska pipeline is that we can build pipelines in ways that protect the environment while yielding large economic benefits. The naysayers were wrong 40 years ago, and policy makers should give scant credence to their arguments against Keystone today.

Climate talks should model after ozone pact
USA TODAY
Editorial
But the bottom line is the same: Collective international action, even at a time of global tensions, can head off environmental catastrophe. And the sooner action is taken, the better, because the atmosphere can take decades to recover.

Don’t constrain energy growth
USA TODAY
Chip Knappenberger
Overall, the world needs more energy, not less. Whatever changes in the climate that are to come, humanity will be better prepared and more resilient if we are healthier, wealthier and wiser. Restricting our ability to progress in these areas is not a good solution.

The Benefits of Easing Climate Change
NEW YORK TIMES
Eduardo Porter
This time, though, advocates come armed with a trump card: All things considered, the cost of curbing carbon emissions may be considerably cheaper than earlier estimates had suggested. For all the fears that climate change mitigation would put the brakes on growth, it might actually enhance it.

Companies in Bakken Shale Fight Limits on Oil Trains
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Chester Dawson
Executives from the top oil companies in the Bakken Shale told state regulators that their crude is safe to transport by train, opposing possible requirements that they make the oil less volatile before shipping it. The industry pushback comes as North Dakota considers new rules on treating crude to stabilize it, spurred by growing public concern about the safety of oil-laden trains crisscrossing the country.

Look out below: Danger lurks underground from aging gas pipes
USA TODAY
John Kelly
About every other day over the past decade, a gas leak in the United States has destroyed property, hurt someone or killed someone, a USA TODAY Network investigation finds. The most destructive blasts have killed at least 135 people, injured 600 and caused $2 billion in damages since 2004.

Technology

43% of companies had a data breach in the past year
USA TODAY
Elizabeth Weise
A staggering 43% of companies have experienced a data breach in the past year, an annual study on data breach preparedness finds. The report, released Wednesday, was conducted by the Ponemon Institute, which does independent research on privacy, data protection and information security policy.

Net Neutrality? No! Global Internet Freedom Hangs in Balance
CNS NEWS
Robert McDowell
As I outlined in my testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 17, unnecessary expansion of the government’s reach into the operations of the Internet is providing cover and encouragement to foreign regimes (such as China, Russia and Iran), as well as multilateral and intergovernmental regulatory bodies, to establish, as Vladimir Putin said, “international control of the Internet.”

The FCC wants to police your Internet provider. But so does the FTC.
WASHINGTON POST
Brian Fung
The FTC’s main authority derives from Section 5 of the FTC Act, which allows the agency to sue companies for “unfair or deceptive” business practices. That includes ISPs. “A broadband provider that makes commitments — either expressly or implicitly — regarding its privacy and security practices, and fails to live up to such commitments, risks violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act,” the FTC wrote. In addition, ISPs can be held liable under two other laws designed to protect children’s privacy and consumers’ credit. But here’s where it gets messy with the FCC. There’s a carveout in the law that lets the FCC handle all enforcement matters related to “common carriers” — a group that includes, for example, telephone companies.

Websites Are Wary of Facebook Tracking Software
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Reed Albergotti
Online retailers and publishers are pushing back against Facebook Inc.’s efforts to track users across the Internet, fearing that the data it vacuums up to target ads will give the social network too much of an edge.

Finance

New Tax Rules Will Slow, Not Halt, Inversion Deals
WALL STREET JOURNAL
John D. McKinnon, Liz Hoffman and Hester Plumridge
The Obama administration’s move to tighten rules on corporate inversions should discourage new deals, at least for a while, by making them harder and less profitable, tax experts said. On Tuesday it already was roiling some pending transactions. … “Some of these transactions are going to become a little less profitable. Some are going to become a lot less profitable,” said Ronny Gal, a pharmaceutical analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. “The logic remains for most of them, but companies may attempt to rethink the terms.”

Can Jack Lew Add?
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
Many economists are downgrading their expectations for U.S. growth. So naturally the Obama Treasury this week rolled out a plan to discourage investment in America. … “Inversion transactions erode our corporate tax base,” said Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on Monday. Mr. Lew may be famously ignorant on matters of finance, but now there’s reason to question his command of basic math. Corporate income tax revenues have roughly doubled since the recession. Such receipts surged in fiscal year 2013 to $274 billion, up from $138 billion in 2009.

Cracking Down on Corporate Tax Games
NEW YORK TIMES
Editorial
Everyday taxpayers face similar “taxable events” routinely. When you withdraw money from a tax-deductible retirement account, for instance, you owe tax. If you don’t withdraw the money, you owe tax when you reach a certain age. The reason corporations don’t face the same kinds of rules is that Congress doesn’t impose them.

Mr. Obama’s action against corporate tax ‘inversions’ just a short-term fix
WASHINGTON POST
Editorial
Tax-law experts generally agree that Treasury’s moves amount to an aggressive use of its existing legal authorities, not an illegitimate overextension of them, though that assessment may be tested in court. The new policies will be effective immediately; they won’t affect previously completed inversion deals but could apply to some that are in process and any that might be proposed hereafter. In short, the measures could chill the use of a tax-avoidance strategy that had been increasingly popular among U.S. corporations in recent years — and increasingly unpopular among voters — saving the government some or all of about $2 billion in revenue lost annually. As Mr. Lew was the first to admit, however, the new actions are in no way a substitute for a broader reform of the U.S. corporate tax code. They are, at most, a short-term fix for one specific manifestation of the code’s overall inefficiency.

Finding a Door Into Banking, Walmart Prepares to Offer Checking Accounts
NEW YORK TIMES
Hiroko Tabuchi and Jessica Silver-Greenberg
Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, is teaming up with Green Dot, known for its prepaid payment cards, to supply checking accounts to almost anyone over 18 who passes an ID check. Daniel Eckert, senior vice president at Walmart, said on Tuesday that the accounts would be available nationwide by the end of October. The accounts are intended to be low-cost alternatives to traditional bank checking accounts, with no fees for overdrafts or bounced checks and no minimum account balance.

Wall St. Bankrolls Ex-Executive as He Sues Over A.I.G. Bailout
NEW YORK TIMES
Ben Protess and Aaron M. Kessler
Maurice R. Greenberg, 89, the former A.I.G. chief executive who still holds a large stake in the insurance company, filed the lawsuit on behalf of fellow shareholders. He has now raised several million dollars from three Wall Street companions to help cover the cost of the case. The investors, who are entitled to a cut of any damages Mr. Greenberg collects from the government, contributed about 15 percent of the tens of millions of dollars in legal costs, according to people with knowledge of the arrangement.

Politics

In Syria, Obama stretches legal and policy constraints he created for counterterrorism
WASHINGTON POST
Greg Miller and Karen DeYoung
After spending nearly six years of his presidency installing a series of constraints on U.S. counterterrorism operations, President Obama has launched a broad military offensive against Islamist groups in Syria that stretches the limits of those legal and policy enclosures.

Wrong Turn on Syria: No Convincing Plan
NEW YORK TIMES
Editorial
With so much at stake and so much unknown, before he gets any further into this operation, Mr. Obama needs to get Congress’s approval and prove that he has fully accounted for the consequences of this foray into Syria.

Wrong Turn on Syria: Helping Assad?
NEW YORK TIMES
Editorial
It’s fair to assume that President Bashar al-Assad of Syria was awed, but not shocked, by the barrage of bombs that American planes dropped early Tuesday over insurgent-held areas in northern Syria. It appears, in fact, that he was quite pleased.

American Bombs in Syria
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
No U.S. President should ever start a war he doesn’t intend to win, and wars rarely go as smoothly as advertised in advance. Now that he has attacked ISIS, Mr. Obama must show that America is the strong horse.

Conservative lawmakers secretly plot to oust John Boehner
THE HILL
Scott Wong
For months, several clusters of conservative lawmakers have been secretly huddling inside and outside the Capitol, plotting to oust John Boehner from the Speaker’s office when House Republicans regroup after the November elections.

Americans Are O.K. With Big Business. It’s Business Lobbying Power They Hate.
NEW YORK TIMES
Neil Irwin
Is it a good thing or bad thing for corporations to be strong and influential? Only 31 percent of Americans answered that it is a good thing, among the lowest of the countries surveyed and far below the 60 and 70 percent levels in some emerging countries.

President Obama plays the campaign calendar blues
POLITICO
Edward-Isaac Dovere
The White House is in the final stages of preparing a midterm campaign schedule for President Barack Obama through October that has only one color code: deep, deep blue. In just the past few weeks, the list of expected stops has shrunk, with several campaigns that were requesting the president as recently as late August now pulling back those requests.

Ann Romney: Dem rhetoric ‘offensive’
POLITICO
Lucy McCalmont
Ann Romney on Tuesday skewered Democrats’ claim that there’s a GOP “war on women,” calling the accusation “offensive” and saying it won’t work as a campaign tactic. “It’s ridiculous, honestly, I mean I don’t think they’re getting very far with that, by the way. It’s not going to work. I think women are a lot smarter than that, and that’s kind of offensive to me, to tell you the truth,” Romney said in an interview with Neil Cavuto on Fox News in response to a question about both the so-called “war on women” and DNC chief Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s recent comments about Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.