Man, that didn’t take long. Van Jones is out a matter of days and the administration does a complete (if unwitting) backflip.

Greenwire reports today that “The Treasury Department’s chief economist . . . Alan Krueger said the repeals [of energy subsidies], which Treasury estimates would raise roughly $31 billion over a decade, aim to wipe out what he called market-distorting subsidies that create inefficiencies and encourage over-investment.”

That’s gonna hurt when President Obama gives his end-is-nigh, green-jobs-will-rescue-us speech at the UN General Assembly on the September 22. They’ve gone and said it, it’s out there: energy subsidies — like every other subsidy — distort markets, create inefficiencies, and encourage over-investment.

Of course, the administration was specifically addressing tax-break subsidies provided to encourage hydrocarbon production. That is, subsidies going to things that work — hydrocarbons providing the overwhelming majority of our energy. Just imagine how mean they’re going to be when specifically discussing “green energy” subsidies, which don’t work. Talk about creating inefficiencies, “green” energy is the embodiment of that, even without the subsidies (without which “green energy” wouldn’t exist).

On a related hypocrisy front, Chairman of the House Special Committee on Global Warming Ed Markey has expressed further outrage over fraudulent lobbying on the global-warming agenda. His outrage, sadly, remains tightly focused on some letters sent from a lobbying firm, which the Wall Street Journal’s coverage suggests might have been a set up. Regardless, lying in this forum, as in others, is wrong. Sadly, Markey and the rest see no issue in the fully exposed campaign of Red Hot Lies being used to advance the green agenda.