How Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi beneficiaries are funding climate lawfare
The Picower family is forcing shoddy electric appliances into every American home to assuage their guilty consciences.
As the single-largest beneficiaries of Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, the Picowers have plenty to feel awkward about. One way they’re excising the guilt is by financing climate change lawsuits and leftwing judicial influence schemes that will strip Americans of conveniences they take for granted – say hot showers or efficient dishwashers.
As my organization, the American Energy Institute, explained in a recent report, leftwing city governments and blue states are suing energy providers over climate change, with the goal of forcing unpopular lifestyle products into every home. The plaintiffs could achieve that goal through government spending financed by legal awards. Alternatively, the terms of a settlement might require energy companies to change product offerings. A leftwing lobbying campaign disguised as judicial education is midwifing this effort. And the Picowers are paying for all of it, according to the Daily Wire.
The family chieftain, Jeffrey Picower, invested early with Madoff, and ultimately profited over $7 billion off of Madoff’s fraud. A court-appointed trustee in charge of recovering money for Madoff’s victims would later maintain Picower “knew or should have known” that Madoff was running a fraud. The returns Madoff generated for Picower were too incredible to be believed – as much as 950% in one year. More damning still, Picower never let his money ride with Madoff. He withdrew his earnings on a quarterly basis for years.
The Picower family paid back their ill-gotten gains – no real act of justice, considering that stolen wealth surely begat new opportunities to make money. Thereafter, they put their last $200 million toward endowing a new philanthropic organization, the JPB Foundation, to salvage the family name.
The JPB Foundation has given $4.45 million to an entity that pays for the lawyers litigating the climate change cases. The foundation gave another $2 million to the Climate Judiciary Project, the aforementioned liberal influence campaign passing itself off as” judicial education.”
None of this is too surprising. The climate change lawsuits are premised on a luxury belief par excellence – that ordinary Americans should forgo reasonable comforts in favor of products that cost more money or perform poorly (or both). There isn’t much demand for progressive lifestyle products among middle and working class families, as the upward distribution of wealth through federal environmental giveaways proves.
Take the $7,500 tax credit available for electric vehicle purchases, an Obama-era program better thought of as welfare for the rich. Almost 80% of EV tax credits were claimed by people making at least $100,000 per year, according to a 2021 study. Embarrassed Democrats revised eligibility rules through the Inflation Reduction Act by withholding the credit from the top 5% of wage earners.
It’s easy to understand why EVs aren’t popular with Americans of typical means. Whatever the savings in terms of maintenance or refueling, the upfront costs are high, even prohibitively so. Many are understandably reluctant to drive a vehicle with an effective range of 200 miles or so, particularly where charging stations are still uncommon. The climate plaintiffs don’t much care. Some are planning to invest climate lawsuit proceeds into charging infrastructure or create procurement consortiums with like-minded jurisdictions to manufacture demand for EVs.
A defining characteristic of liberal guilt is its insistence that penance is not a personal matter. Penance must be foisted without consent on all the rest of us. After all, there are no individual solutions to systemic problems. Such indifference to the preferences of others – psychopathy if you prefer – was at the heart of the Madoff fraud, and it animates climate lawfare too.
Jason Isaac is Founder and CEO of the American Energy Institute and a Distinguished Fellow for Life:Powered at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. He previously served four terms in the Texas House of Representatives.