LABOR, ECONOMY & THE CLIMATE - page 49

The Senate may have struck a deal that gets President Obama one step closer to securing fast track Trade Promotion Authority, however the administration still has a lot of work to do to cajole skeptical Democrats in the House. And they’ll have to start at the top. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday compared TPA to a “get-out-of-jail-free” card that applies not just to President Obama and the Trans Pacific Partnership, but to the next president and whatever trade agenda she or he… Keep Reading

A major oil company has received permission from the Obama administration to begin drilling for oil in remote and dangerous waters off Alaska, just three years after the company’s first incursion into the Arctic ended in disaster and allegations of corporate neglect. The move by the White House on Monday to grant conditional approval to Shell Gulf of Mexico to resume drilling operations in the Chuckchi Sea off Alaska elicited a sharp rebuke from environmentalists, who accused the administration of rushing to green light “risky… Keep Reading

Former Pentagon chiefs, top spooks, and key architects of the 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq urged Congress on Thursday to pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), saying the deal has “tremendous strategic benefits.” David Petraeus, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell and Leon Panetta joined 13 other retired military leaders in signing on to a letter to Congressional leaders, which declared the potential failure of the TPP to have “harmful strategic consequences.” “TPP in particular will shape an economic dynamic over the next several decades that… Keep Reading

Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen donned something of a critical theorist’s cap on Wednesday, citing research that laments financialization and the subsequent “’rent seeking’ activity that may promote inefficiency” it allegedly caused. “Recent research has raised important questions about the benefits and costs of the rapid growth of the financial services industry in the United States over the past 40 years,” Yellen noted at a gathering sponsored by the Institute for New Economic Thinking in Washington. According to her prepared remarks, on “Finance and Society,” Yellen… Keep Reading

New Department of Transportation rules aimed at preventing accidents involving oil-carrying trains are too weak, and won’t be implemented until too late, according to lawmakers and public interest groups keenly focused on the issue. Calling it a “significant improvement over the current regulations,” Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx publicly issued the rule on Friday. The edict will affect rail transporters of flammable fossil fuels, most of which currently originates from North Dakota and Montana, in the form of Bakken crude. Noting, however, that most of the… Keep Reading