Beltway political class is now a seething criminal mob that views an advanced society of 300 million people as dirty urchins who have no choice but to submit. GOP will love Obama's Ron Binz for FERC. Binz sees 'broad societal benefits' of no CO2, 'natural gas a dead end' v CO2. This is genocide.

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"Mr. Binz assured Xcel that it could pass on to rate payers, with a guaranteed return, whatever capital investment was necessary to replace the working coal assets."

7/29/13, "Ron Binz's Rules for Radicals," Wall St. Journal Editorial

"President Obama's rule-makers have amped up major regulators like the Environmental Protection Agency and now they're turning to more obscure outposts. Take the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, which oversees electric transmission and interstate pipelines. Or used to.

Now FERC has deputized itself as a Wall Street regulator. This month the commission squeezed Barclays BARC.LN -0.50% for $435 million for alleged energy-market manipulation, the largest penalty in FERC's history and more than all of its previous fines combined. Another $410 million fine will soon hit J.P. Morgan, according to a Journal scoop.

Yet that will seem minor if the next FERC chairman is Ron Binz—the most important and radical Obama nominee you've never heard of. An electric regulator in Colorado from 2007 to 2011, Mr. Binz is the latest Presidential nominee who doesn't understand the difference between making laws and enforcing them.

No, that's unfair. Mr. Binz doesn't care about the difference. In a recent interview with the Association for the Demand Response and Smart Grid trade group, reflecting on the lessons of his Colorado job, he nodded at the "judicial role" of regulators. But then he mused about their "legislative role" too: "I saw the commission not simply as an umpire calling balls and strikes, but also as a leader on policy implementation."

This philosophy is especially troubling for a commission like FERC, which is supposed to be an even-handed arbitrator independent of the executive branch. FERC's narrow legal obligations include protecting the affordability and reliability of the U.S. power supply and electric grid—goals that are in more than a little tension with Mr. Obama's anticarbon program. The law is a nuisance when you think you're saving the planet.

Mr. Binz was supposed to fill a similarly neutral role in Colorado when then Democratic Governor Bill Ritter appointed him chairman of the public utility commission. Prior to his tenure, that job consisted of consumer protection and ensuring that electricity was low-cost. But Mr. Ritter wanted to do something about climate change, and Mr. Binz told the Denver Post in 2007 (using the third person) that "There's an expectation that the chair will carry a banner for the new administration."
 
Mr. Binz became the point man for legislation that would all but force several Denver-area coal plants to convert to natural gas though they weren't slated for retirement. He even negotiated terms directly with the Colorado power company that it was his responsibility to regulate, Xcel Energy XEL +0.40% .

Mr. Binz assured Xcel that it could pass on to rate payers, with a guaranteed return, whatever capital investment was necessary to replace the working coal assets. Documents obtained by the Colorado Mining Association under a state open records law show that Mr. Binz promised "extraordinary cost recovery." In a March 2010 email, he wrote that "I think it's more nearly a self-fulfilling prophecy—the larger (and faster) the cost burden in the Company's approved plan, the stronger the basis for the Commission to adopt extraordinary regulatory measures to assure the Company's financial health." 

In other words, the more Xcel spent in the name of the Ritter-Binz political agenda, the more Mr. Binz would use the discretion he gave himself in the law he wrote to give Xcel favorable treatment. When Stockholm syndrome set in with Xcel and the company took the deal, Mr. Binz exulted that "the eagle has landed." It was great for everyone except the consumers involuntarily funding it.

Mr. Binz would almost certainly commander the same extralegal powers at FERC to perpetrate similar abuses, regardless of congressional intent. "Regulation needs to shift from its backward-looking focus on costs, to a forward-looking emphasis on value and desired societal outcomes," he says. In a 2012 report for the consultant Ceres subtitled "What Every State Regulator Needs to Know," Mr. Binz added that "Both regulators and utilities need to evolve beyond historical practice," and he encouraged utility commissioners to expand their mandates to include his subjective conception of the "broad societal benefits" of low- or no-carbon power.

FERC was a sleepy regulator until the Obama Presidency, but it has statutory powers that could be turned into anticarbon weapons, such as the authority to impose fines of up $1 million per day for what it claims are violations. They also include the power to block energy mergers and the construction of terminals, pipelines and transmission.

You can bet that Mr. Binz will be creative and political, and don't be so sure his only target is coal. At an Edison Foundation panel this March, he called natural gas a "dead end" technology because "on the carbon basis, you hit the wall in 2035 or so." He added that "We have to do better on carbon than even natural gas will allow us to do." This is unusual in that the greens usually pretend to support gas to make outlawing coal seem more reasonable. Mr. Binz let the mask slip.

Mr. Binz is part of the White House's damn-the-voters strategy of imposing through regulation what Congress won't pass, and now he wants to glide into FERC without protest. But the Senate's advice-and-consent role is especially important because a FERC chairman has broad powers, much like a CEO's, even if other commissioners dissent—and the chairman is not supposed to carry Mr. Obama's banner. Mr. Binz's record and methods deserve far more scrutiny than they have received."

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Comment: The problem is that the GOP agrees with Obama's 'damn the voter strategy.' The American public has no one to protect it from a genocidal executive branch.

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3/27/13, "Is the Republican Party America's Achilles Heel?" American Thinker, Steve McCann

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 "Obama re-election helped GOP House Speaker Boehner": NPR

12/8/12, "Once Boxed-In, Boehner May Finally Be Master Of The House," NPR, Frank James

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2/20/13, "As Country Club Republicans Link Up With The Democratic Ruling Class, Millions Of Voters Are Orphaned," Angelo Codevilla, Forbes 

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10/20/11, "The lost decade," Angelo M. Codevilla, Claremont Inst.

"America's current ruling class, the people who lost the War on Terror, monopolizes the upper reaches of American public life, the ranks of those who make foreign and domestic policy, including the leadership of the Republican and Democratic parties. It is more or less homogeneous socially and intellectually."...



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