Congressman Upton Demands Declassification Of Censured Cap-And-Trade Cost Estimates

One of the most ambitious projects undertaken by the Administration and Goldman Sachs, that seeks to entrench the Wall Street oligarchy, is cap-and-trade. Yet, just like all the other initiatives percolating in Obama's docket, there are still many open question marks surrounding this mega-project. And specifically its costs.

Recently congressman Fred Upton, a vocal opponent of cap-and-trade, submitted the following letter to Tim Geithner demanding increasing disclosure in a FOIA response, which had had key figures censored, whose disclosure would have provided much needed cost-side information.

In response to a FOIA request, Administration officials deliberately censored figures that specify the annual costs cap-and-tax will impose. The Treasury documents appear to confirm what Upton has been saying all along, that cap-and-trade is a national energy tax that will devastate American families.

As Upton points out, the Treasury blatantly removed the one most critical figure:

I am particularly interested in the one-page document entitled Domestic Climate Policy that was prepared by Judson Jaffe.  The Jaffe document omits important figures, most glaringly, on the annual costs under a cap-and-trade regime, stating, “It will raise energy prices and impose annual costs on the order of XXXXXXXX dollars.”

And the Congressman further goes to point out just what the incremental tax to fund a program that will asymmetrically benefit certain Wall Street enterprises:

Study after study has predicted cap-and-trade will result in skyrocketing energy bills and massive job losses.  The Congressional Budget Office conservatively estimated that meeting the mandated reductions would cost $864 billion, while some anticipate closer to $1.5 trillion. CBO also predicted gasoline costs would increase by 77 cents per gallon and diesel by 88 cents.  And now Treasury documents suggest families will see an annual increase of $1,700, at a minimum.

But when it comes to the squid, you have to pay in order to play. And as for the fabled transparency that Obama promised, which alas ends up with white out (or in this case black out) being generously applied to critical items that should be made known to the entire US population:

The censorship of these documents does not correlate with the Administration’s efforts for greater transparency, and raises many serious questions regarding one of the Administration’s leading initiatives that stands to eliminate millions of jobs and affect every single American citizen at a time when the national unemployment rate hovers just below ten percent.

One could go further and say that the cloud of opacity under which not just this but all administrations have been operating for decades, in direct complicity with such institutions as the Fed, the Treasury, and various regulators, also has to be done away with. Yet that would mean a complete change of a multi century status quo, and a direct threat to the ruling financial-political-kleptocratic oligarchy. And the last thing that anyone in control (of either power or money, or both) would like the average American to know is how deep the stream of prevarication flows. In retrospect, if last year's near-catastrophic events did not cause anything to change, now that the Lehamn and AIG implosion are merely a repressed memory, one can be sure that absent another systemic collapse, it will be more and more difficult to get the well-entrenched organizations to open up. Alas, by the time the next bubble pops, it will be too late as there will be nothing left to salvage.

h/t Richard