The five-member FERC board can only have three members from the same political party, and in 2006 the board contained three Republicans. Trying to staff the board vacancies, President George W. Bush asked Sen. Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) for a recommendation. Reid picked Wellinghoff, who was a registered independent. Bush nominated Wellinghoff to hold a Democratic position on the board, filling a post that would run through June 2008; the Senate re-confirmed Wellinghoff in December 2007 to a five-year term that expires in June 2013.

Jesus H Christ!  Dubya had Dingy Harry do his vetting for him?  There's the fuggin problem with moderates right there.  They aren't worth a damn and they open doors for disasters down the road.

But the president is responsible for choosing the board's chairman.

And, to everyone's surprise...

In 2009, Obama asked Wellinghoff to serve as the interim chair at the FERC while the president considered other candidates. In March 2009, Obama chose to remove the interim label from Wellinghoff's title.

Well, no sh!t.  Chairman SoetorObama at Gummint Motors is trying to peddle his crappy plug-in Volts to the sheeple.  Who else would ObaMao want running a Jimmah Carter created 'independent' gummint agency regulating energy other than the dipsh!t EcoTard that wrote the plan for useless plug-in cars.

"When I was asked earlier about the issue of coal, you know, under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad. Because I'm capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name it, whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, uh, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers."

And yet, in the absence of these plants, we will forever import inefficiently generated electricity over a thousand miles of prairie at a ridiculous premium just because Jennifer Granholm said we don't need the local power and because Barack Obama feels a need for electricity prices to skyrocket.