Please stop hiding behind the “Pay Their Fair Share” mantra of the radical environmentalist agenda. Mining is the most capital intensive industry there is and its fraught with risk. US mining isn’t even competitive in the global market for essential base metal commodities. Out of your own mouth, you admit that you want Freeport McMoRan “to pay its fair share of Renewable Energy Standard and Tariff (REST) fees.” In other words, you want them to make a healthy contribution to the subsidization of the alternative energy industry which, to date, still can’t get a launch, as do other core industries using private funds, without taxpayer forced funding. That’s what you really want them to do. The state of California went down the same path you suggest in this article with the Mountain Pass rare earth metals mine which was finally shut down because of environmentalist induced anti-mining legislation. As a result, the Chinese picked up the gauntlet and became the controller of 97% of the world’s rare earth market. Then, finally, the US realized that its entire economic future, aside from Federal Reserve currency manipulation, depends on the availability of rare earth metals and yet the Chinese have us by the jugular. Rare earth metals are essential to all electronics manufacturing and to the emerging alternative energy industry itself. Imagine that, the same tax/fee policy you recommend is now the single largest impediment to the development of the alternative energy industry because policies like yours killed the US rare earths mining industry which was critical to the alternative energy industry emergence. Karma is a bitch, isn’t it Commissioner. The mining industry made this state what it is, its one of the largest employers, one of the largest contributors to the arts and the development of our state physical infrastructure, but you want to increase their operating costs, thereby squeezing their operating margins in an inelastic globalized market for copper which will further make our foreign competitors stronger. Of course, that will lead to further failure of the US economy. People like you are an impediment to the recovery of the US economy and its ability to become competitive in the global marketplace. Thank God we had four other Commissioners that have a better understanding than you of what it takes to get back on our feet in a global marketplace for essential commodities.