Tea Party Test In Mississippi
Tea Party hopes to oust another incumbent today. W. Post: "Republican Senate candidates Thad Cochran and Chris McDaniel returned to core campaign themes ahead of a Tuesday runoff election as GOP leaders nervously looked on ... right-wing activists and national conservative groups, such as the Senate Conservatives Fund and the Tea Party Patriots, are pouring into Mississippi to look for alleged voter fraud. Since the state does not register by party, the activists say that Cochran’s outreach to Democrats — emphasizing his record of securing federal funds for state schools and social programs — could tilt the election. Cochran’s allies said the poll watching is a thinly veiled attempt to intimidate voters, especially black Democrats, in a state with a history of racial division."
Bitter GOP fight may give Dems an opening. The Hill: "Democrats are gleeful that those divisions could open the door for their nominee, centrist former Rep. Travis Childers, to woo disaffected Cochran supporters. That new math could complicate the GOP calculus for the six seats the party needs to flip Senate control."
SCOTUS (Mostly) Backs EPA
"The Supreme Court’s latest greenhouse-gas ruling is a 97% victory for the environment" says Grist's Doug Kendall and Mei-Wah Lee: "...the court held that the Environmental Protection Agency may regulate the greenhouse gas emissions of any 'major emitting facility' already required to receive a permit under the Clean Air Act’s Prevention of Significant Deterioration ('PSD') program ... on to the bad news. By a narrow 5-4 vote, the court’s conservatives concluded that the Clean Air Act neither compels nor permits the EPA to adopt an interpretation of the act that triggers the PSD program’s permitting requirements solely because of its greenhouse gas emissions ... if the government had prevailed in full, the PSD program would have covered approximately 86 percent of stationary sources of greenhouse gases. With Scalia’s split decision in UARG, the PSD program will cover 83 percent of the problem ..."
"Bipartisan Report Tallies High Toll on Economy From Global Warming" reports NYT: "...a coalition of senior political and economic figures from the left, right and center, including three Treasury secretaries stretching back to the Nixon administration ... called Risky Business ... commissioned an economic modeling firm that often does work for the oil and gas industry, the Rhodium Group, to assemble a team of experts who carried out the risk analysis ... Coastal counties, home to 40 percent of the nation’s population, will take especially large hits from the rise of the sea, which could swallow more than $370 billion worth of property in Florida and Louisiana alone by the end of the century ... long before homes and businesses along the coast are entirely inundated, the researchers said, owners will face escalating damages from flooding. That poses substantial risks to taxpayers, who subsidize the National Flood Insurance Program, which has already been put more than $20 billion in the red by storms of recent years."
Sen. Majority Leader Reid offers GOP trade that would allow anti-EPA vote. The Hill: "The amendment, pushed by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), would require that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ensures the new [climate] rules would not result in job losses or high electricity bills ... Reid said he would allow a 51-vote threshold for the vote against the EPA rules if Republicans agree to not filibuster roughly six bills that are important to Democrats."
Breakfast Sides
50th anniversary of Freedom Summer as voting rights being rolled back. The Nation's Ari Berman investigates: "The fiftieth anniversary of Freedom Summer happens to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder, where the Supreme Court’s conservative majority invalidated Section 4 of the VRA [Voting Rights Act] on June 25, 2013. As a result, states like Mississippi, with the worst history of voting discrimination, no longer have to clear their voting changes with the federal government ... Since the 2010 election, twenty-two states have passed new voting restrictions ... According to the Brennan Center: 'Of the 11 states with the highest African-American turnout in 2008, 7 have new restrictions in place. Of the 12 states with the largest Hispanic population growth between 2000 and 2010, 9 passed laws making it harder to vote.' These disturbing facts suggest that the strong protections of the VRA are still needed."
"Hillary Clinton to announce youth jobs push" reports AP: "Hillary Rodham Clinton is encouraging companies to train and hire young people, offering a new jobs pitch during her family's annual domestic policy summit as she considers another presidential campaign. The former secretary of state was launching a project called 'Job One' at the Clinton Global Initiative America meeting Tuesday, featuring hiring, training and mentoring initiatives from 10 companies, including The Gap, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft and Marriott."
WH rejects bipartisan gas tax hike to support Highway Trust Fund. The Hill: "Obama has previously opposed suggestions from transportation advocates to up the gas tax, but a plan emerged in the Senate last week to implement a 12-cent hike over the next two years to prevent a bankruptcy in highway funding this summer ... Obama has suggested that lawmakers instead use revenue from a corporate tax reform proposal, considered unlikely to become law this year."
Fed crackdown on risky Wall Street lending falling short. Bloomberg: "A crackdown on risky corporate lending by U.S. regulators is doing too little to shake up Wall Street, where the biggest banks are proving to have a hammerlock on the market for underwriting leveraged loans. The same top five banks have arranged about 47 percent of U.S. junk loans sold this year to institutional investors, comparable to their share in all of 2013 ... While the Federal Reserve and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency have since last year expressed concern that lending standards are deteriorating, leveraged-loanissuance has still managed to top $303 billion this year, the third-biggest first half on record."
Border crisis is an argument for immigration reform, says W. Post's Greg Sargent: "The main GOP argument has been that Obama’s refusal to enforce immigration law is responsible for the crisis, because it has created a draw for parents to risk sending kids north, on the belief they will be allowed to stay ... [But] passing reform would help remove one reason for current crossings: Confusion about U.S. law over the long term."
