The institutional and establishment flailing over the exposure of the “green jobs” myth has yielded a possible trove of documents, but also gone from personal attacks to desperate lies. These guys have been gotten to, but good.

First, I’m told by the relevant Freedom of Information Act officer that there are about 500 pages responsive to my FOIA to DoE and NREL about internal machinations over enlisting a taxpayer-funded agency to charge two non-economists with the task of assailing an economic analysis, in often personal terms against the authors, which analysis happened to embarrass the president for repeating easily debunked mythology. And these pages are, um, being redacted right now. Apparently the specifics of a smear job are considered “pre-decisional.” If it takes a judge to tell them that “embarassing,” “damning,” and “possibly career-ending” are not FOIA exemptions, so be it.

This volume could actually mean two things, which are not mutually exclusive: either there was an intense flurry of back-and-forth about what to do, making the hatchet-job assignment, and fretting over their having been caught out telling conflicting tales about it; and/or they’re burying me with all papers referenced as a good way to hide the juicy stuff. When FOIA responses are overly productive, I tend to be suspicious — based on experience. We’ll see in early December.

Second, the Spanish minister for industry, tourism, and trade gave a curious interview to the Houston Chronicle posted late last week. Apparently seeking to downplay the importance of March findings by a research team at King Juan Carlos University that his government acknowledged in an April Royal Decree, the minister said things like “It’s a small private university, which is not very relevant. It has a nice name but not very much content.”

Mmm. Nada to see here.

Except even Wikipedia gets this one right: KJC University in Madrid is a public institution. It is home to four campuses, several academic specialty research centers, and more than 17,000 students — and for some time home to, among others, renowned Austrian economic theory stalwart Jesus Huerta de Soto, holder of Spain’s highest award in economics and of whom the “green jobs” study’s lead author (Gabriel Calzada, PhD) is a protégé. Regardless, trying to denigrate the government school is just another form of ad hom in apparent response to its refusal to de-certify the study as an official academic product despite repeated insistence from a different government minister. How sleazy can you get?

The minister also falsely said the study “compares the destruction of jobs in the housing sector, which has been because of the crisis, to the increase in the employment of the renewable energy sector in the last few years.” No, it does not. One of the study’s authors writes in an e-mail: “We do not say anything even remotely close to this. If he read it, he is a liar. If he has not read it, he is an incompetent and a liar.”

The minister made that up to dismiss the study as irrelevant. That would be the study that was affirmed in the April Royal Decree, by the way.

The good news is the minister’s dishonesty immediately rekindled interest in the study’s findings, granting it new life in the news cycle. The issue was breaking news on the widely read Libertad Digital, the subject of a debate on ES Radio, addressed last night on Intereconomía Radio, and today Dr. Calzada had a live interview on the subject on LDTV.

Thanks, lying minister!

Indeed, one of the study’s authors has already headlined a response piece in Spain, “Did Sebastian need to lie?”

Well, no, he didn’t need to, any more than DoE had to go dishonest and ad hominem. But it does seem that that is how these people operate. It’s what they do — their only move. It beats arguing facts that are clearly not on one’s side, I suppose.