Check out Wednesday’s newsletter!
|
|
Top Stories
The Trump Bump: Early Gamble On The Donald Pays Off For Backbenchers
The Gist: As establishment Republicans in Washington come around to a bombastic Trump, DesJarlais has emerged as a liaison between skeptics, the media and the Trump campaign, massaging fears that Trump is a loose cannon with promises that Trump is more reserved and thoughtful behind the scenes.
Texas Board Of Ed Candidate Who Said Obama Was Prostitute Loses Runoff
The Gist: Even though Mary Lou Bruner went into Tuesday’s runoff election in Texas as the frontrunner for a seat on the state board of education, she ultimately lost the election Tuesday night to Keven Ellis, a chiropractor and local school board president in Lufkin.
Warren Blasts ‘Small, Insecure Money-Grubber’ Donald Trump (VIDEO)
The Gist: During a Tuesday speech, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) escalated her attacks on Donald Trump, describing his candidacy as an “urgent threat” and declaring that his past statements about the economy and Wall Street disqualify him from becoming president.
From The Reporter’s Notebook
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) on Tuesday came to Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) defense and urged people to “lay off” the Vermont senator for his decision to stay in the race, TPM’s Allegra Kirkland wrote. “I’ve had conversations with Bernie, he’s a good person, he’s doing his best to effectuate what he believes in, and I have no criticism of Bernie at this stage,” Reid said, according to the Associated Press. “I think we should just kinda lay off Bernie Sanders a little bit, OK?” he continued.
Agree or Disagree?
Josh Marshall: “It all comes down to a simple point. You may not like Gawker. They’ve published stories I would have been ashamed to publish. But if the extremely wealthy, under a veil secrecy, can destroy publications they want to silence, that’s a far bigger threat to freedom of the press than most of the things we commonly worry about on that front. If this is the new weapon in the arsenal of the super rich, few publications will have the resources or the death wish to scrutinize them closely.”
Say What?!
“If we take your assumption and Clinton’s supporters’ assumption of the logical conclusion, you know what we should do? We should go back to a monarchy and not have any elections at all.”
– Bernie Sanders, who currently has 1,533 delegates to Clinton’s 2,293. 2,383 are needed to secure the Democratic nomination.
BUZZING: Today in the Hive
From a TPM Prime member: “Nuclear and renewables are similar is structure as an investment since they both require higher capital costs for construction, but then benefit from negligible or zero fuel costs during operation – on other words the time-until-profit is longer. Investors don’t like this. The longer it takes to start making money for real, the more risk there is. Note also that regulatory agencies protect the rate-payers interests by placing controls on how much investment cost can be passed on in electricity rates, so investors cannot simply jack up rates to get a faster pay-back. And in an national energy market individual utilities will be competing nationally. For nuclear power the problem is worse than renewables. The capital cost per watt of output is higher, and so the pay-off time is longest. And nuclear plants cannot be built incrementally – you must go big to go at all. This creates the risk of capital sunk into a project that cannot be recovered due to lower cost competitors. A financial incentive, or regulatory system change, to reduce this stranded cost risk would be needed to get any significant nuclear power adoption.”
Related: TPM’s longform series on renewable energy.
Have something to add? Become a Prime member and join the discussion.
What We’re Reading
The college debt crisis is worse than you think. (The Boston Globe)
Is Donald Trump’s hair a $60,000 weave? (Gawker)
|
|
