Yesterday, Shukla and GMU got notice that they have piqued the interest of a congressional committee, and via a written notice are required to preserve documents for an impending Congressional investigation and to provide proof that all employees of IGES/COLA have been notified that they are aware they can’t destroy documents. As we follow the unraveling behind the scenes and new FOIA documentation, rumors of some aberrant behavior in the past have begun to surface from former colleagues that suggest we might be dealing with the same sort of ego induced blindness that led to the downfall of IPCC chairman Rajenda Pachauri. The combination of information WUWT is being given behind the scenes suggests to me that this episode is going to get far worse for Shukla and GMU before it gets better.
At issue is at least 63.5 million dollars from the National Science Foundation, and where it went, whether it was used for the purpose intended, and who benefited from that money. The problem at hand seems to be that there may have been more than a little “double dipping” going on with that grant money as Steve McIntyre pointed out in Shukla’s Gold:
NSF policies purportedly regulate research compensation for members of university faculties by limiting their compensation in the academic year to their university salary, while permitting them to top up their university salary in summer months, but set their compensation at the monthly rate of their university salary (the “two-ninths rule”, as follows:
611.1 Salaries and Wages
- All Grantees. All remuneration paid currently or accrued by the organization for employees working on the NSF-supported project during the grant period is allowable to the extent that:
- total compensation to individual employees is reasonable for the work performed and conforms to the established policy of the organization consistently applied to both government and non-government activities; and
- the charges for work performed directly under NSF grants and for other work allocable as indirect costs are determined and documented as provided in the applicable Federal cost principles.
- Colleges and Universities. Section J.10 of OMB Circular A-21 establishes criteria for compensation work performed on government projects by faculty members during and outside the academic year.
NSF’s policy is:
- Academic Year Salaries. To be based on the individual faculty member’s regular compensation for the continuous period which, under the policy of the institution concerned, constitutes the basis of his/her salary. Except as provided in GPM 616.2, “Intra-University Consulting,” charges to Federal grants, irrespective of the basis of computation, will not exceed the proportionate share of the base salary for that period.
- Periods Outside the Academic Year. During the summer months or other periods not included in the period for which the base salary is paid, salary is to be paid at a monthly rate not in excess of the base salary divided by the number of months in the period for which the base salary is paid. NSF policy on funding of summer salaries (known as NSF’s two-ninths rule) remains unchanged: proposal budgets submitted should not request, and NSF-approved budgets will not include, funding for an individual investigator which exceeds two-ninths of the academic year salary. This limit includes summer salary received from all NSF-funded grants.
Andrew Dessler, who, like most climate academics, has consistently denied that research funding has any impact on alarmism, summarized the above policy as follows:
Texas A&M pays 10 months of my salary to teach. The other two months of my salary are paid out of grants for doing research, but the University sets the amount I receive during those two months equal to the m$158.06onthly rate that the University pays me the other 10 months. Thus, the vast majority of my salary is completely disconnected with research.
There are many other obligations on recipients of federal research grants, many of which are summarized in the NSF Grants Manual.
George Mason University Policy
Shukla has been on the faculty of George Mason University since 1993 (1984-1992 University of Maryland) and, during that time, has obtained federal grants both in the name of George Mason University and the Institute for Global Environment and Security Inc. discussed below).
George Mason, like most universities, has a policy on conflict of interest, including a detailed policy on conflict of interest in federally funded research. Under such policies, “non-profits” are classified as “business”, a protocol that seems very apt when large salaries are withdrawn by insiders from a closely-held “non-profit”:
“Business” means a corporation, partnership, sole proprietorship, firm, enterprise, franchise, association, trust or foundation, or any other individual or entity carrying on a business or profession, whether or not for profit.
The University conflict of interest policies require comprehensive and formal disclosure of personal and family financial interests to the Office of Sponsored Programs.
This policy applies to any person who is responsible for the design, conduct, or reporting of any research funded by a Federal agency. The responsible parties listed in this policy act as institutional officials for purposes of policy implementation, enforcement, and reporting.
Financial Conflict of interest” (FCOI) means a significant financial interest (SFI) directly and significantly affecting the design, conduct, or reporting of the federally funded research.
“Significant financial interest” means a financial interest consisting of one or more of the following interests of the investigator (and/or those of the investigator’s spouse and dependent children) that reasonably appears to be related to the investigator’s institutional responsibilities:
Investigators who apply for any federally funded research must disclose certain financial interests related to that research. Specifically, each investigator must provide a list of his or her known SFIs (and those of his or her spouse and/or dependent children) related to the investigator’s institutional responsibilities.
As a part of the university’s application for federal funds, each investigator must certify (1) that he or she has no such interests or (2) that he or she has such interests and has disclosed them through the institution’s disclosure process. The Office of Sponsored Programs maintains custody of the investigator’s certification.
So, as you can see, there are strict rules on how that money can be used. McIntyre adds commentary that suggests in addition to nepotism, there’s a quantity friends and family all feeding from these NSF grants:
Shukla Compensation
Despite the various changes in grant structure, one constant (or rather steadily increasing amount) has been the several sources of compensation to Shukla and his wife.
In 2001, the earliest year thus far publicly available, in 2001, in addition to his university salary (not yet available, but presumably about $125,000), Shukla and his wife received a further $214,496 in compensation from IGES (Shukla -$128,796; Anne Shukla – $85,700). Their combined compensation from IGES doubled over the next two years to approximately $400,000 (additional to Shukla’s university salary of say $130,000), for combined compensation of about $530,000 by 2004.
Shukla’s university salary increased dramatically over the decade reaching $250,866 by 2013 and $314,000 by 2014. (In this latter year, Shukla was paid much more than Ed Wegman, a George Mason professor of similar seniority). Meanwhile, despite the apparent transition of IGES to George Mason, the income of the Shuklas from IGES continued to increase, reaching $547,000 by 2013. Combined with Shukla’s university salary, the total compensation of Shukla and his wife exceeded $800,000 in both 2013 and 2014. In addition, as noted above, Shukla’s daughter continued to be employed by IGES in 2014; IGES also distributed $100,000 from its climate grant revenue to support an educational charity in India which Shukla had founded.
Discussion
There is a surprising link between the George Mason department and one of my earliest adversaries at NSF, David Verardo, Mann’s handler at NSF, who told him in 2003 that he didn’t have to provide data to me – that Mann was entitled to his view of climate and I was entitled to mine. Verardo’s wife, Stacey Verardo, is a colleague of Shukla, Kinter, Klinger and the others in the AOES department at George Mason, while Verardo himself is a member of the Adjunct Faculty at George Mason.
The most important point about all this?
There’s apparently an $800,000 annual salary and an organization full of Shukla family members that has produced next to no results for the millions received. Even NSF on their own web page acknowledges that only one paper has been produced out of a 4.2 million dollar grant.
Just think of what climate skeptics could do with money like that if we actually got it rather than the purported proverbial “big oil check” we are so often accused of getting?
In addition to the Federal law related to NSF grants, the other real teeth of the matter here is the law governing state employees: state employees may not be compensated by another employer for work that falls under their state employee remit. In this case that would include scientific research by a Professor (a state employee) i.e. Shukla himself.
It seems this went overlooked by GMU for awhile, but there are indications that somebody might have seen the looming problem that threatened to derail the gravy train, and made some changes.
From what can be ascertained at this point, prior to 2013, all the NSF grants flowed through Shukla’s IGES organization to the subsidiary organization COLA. Now, the NSF grants apparently bypass IGES and go directly to GMU and COLA.
WUWT commenter “lokenbr” noted yesterday:
It’s almost as if someone recognized the inappropriate nature of the previous arrangement and shut it down.
Though given the Schedule A filed in May 2015 along with a statement of financial interests by COLA director James Kinter it seems like they are still one and the same entity:
Source: Kinter, James – SOEI – 2015 (PDF)
Former Virginia State Climatologist Dr. Pat Michaels quipped on WUWT yesterday: (bold mine)
It would appear that there’s about $31.5 million in overhead (1/2 of 63 million) that should have gone to GMU, but the grants were run through the consulting company, in clear violation of the rules for state employees. This is money that the taxpayers of Virginia had to pony up instead.
IGES’ Form 990 shows Shukla worked 28 hours per week for it. That can only happen if the Dean approves an overage beyond the eight hours allowed.
GMU’s faculty Dean had to know about the magnitude of the money flowing through IGES and into the Shukla family.
GMU’s Provost had to know this, because no Dean would permit that all that overhead to not go to the university on his or her own.
Perhaps the President knew.
NSF had to know this.
NOAA had to know this.
NASA had to know this.
Apparently each one of these entities felt they were above the law. You may be looking at the largest science scandal in US history.
Note: initial publication of this post was missing an image and quote from Pat Michaels due to operator error of the Publish/Save button. The missing elements were added within a couple of minutes. Some spelling and formatting corrections and a link to Kinter’s SOEI have also been added.
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What is the likelihood that Shukla will ever have to pay this money back?
Zip.
Correct, we have a government that does not care about corruption from certain quarters.
We have a government that typically awards corruption and has a CAGW-oriented agenda. However, the electorate is now aware of it, much to the dismay of the government. Time for a big, big reset.
In a plea bargain arrangement it’s very high, just the fact that there’s a potential fraud case here, with penalties that include 20 years of incarceration, tends to drive the defendant to a plea bargain. Also a good chance GMU needs to can him, to protect their backside.
I worked in the defense industry for 6 years, and I can tell you that the Fed Bean Counters are some of the most tenacious creatures on earth.
Are you kidding? NOTHING will come of this. Some will go through a Kabuki theater of concern and outrage, and it will dwindle down to nothing. Absolutely guaranteed. If for no other reason than the people involved are “too big to fail”. But another big reason is that they are on the “right side of history”.
In the past I worked in aerospace and also managed a large lab at a major research university. During my aerospace days the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) tended to conform to your description. The NSF audit function was a joke. The university had a significant amount of DoD research funding, enough to have resident DCAA representative. There was also an Office of Naval Research resident representative. They were all congenial folks but would never make it beyond AA level to use a baseball metaphor. We can only hope that the good Congressman will send in the Government Accountability Office. (Hint hint!)
Let’s see, entering the final year of a presidential election race. The Democrats are already looking down for the count even against a field of anemic insubstantial Republicans.
A) The Democrats can throw the Shukla’s under the bus and claim the moral high ground.
B) The Congressional Republicans are no fools and as Texas Rep. Lamar Smith (R) has already demonstrated, neither lazy nor slow.
C) The Democrats can turn a blind eye, using their illegal partisan agency approach to stifle prosecution at least temporarily.
D) Don’t worry about the Republicans, there is liberal blood in the water and both houses of Congress will be looking for their share.
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has taken the National Science Foundation (NSF) to task before for sloppy accounting and results tracking. It isn’t likely that the OMB will allow this caper to slip by without making some glorious public examples.
Then there is the Office of Inspector General (OIG) which by itself sounds simple, but is anything but. Depending on the specifics of who, where and what, there can be quite a number of very interested glory hunting Inspector Generals.
e.g. Just at the Federal level;
Department of Education
The Honorable Kathleen Tighe, Inspector General,
Government Accountability Office
Adam Trzeciak, Inspector General,
National Science Foundation
Allison Lerner, Inspector General,
are just the opening interest players. Any IG who thinks their territory might have some Shukla or GMU trespass footprints will show interest and demand paperwork.
How tenacious are the Fed Bean Counters when the beans they’re counting are their own?
This affair will change the AGW machine only if a spotlight is shined on it by politicians and the MSM.
I’m with Bill on Kabuki theater.
Aren’t US Congressional committees where important bills go to die? Or at least get buried.
Even if the IRS or other US Federal auditors get involved, we’ve seen recently how high-placed IRS bureaucrat idealogues can persecute other ideologies and get a pass from their “overseers” in Congress.
We can only hope. But fraud in the sub-$1M range is probably noise to US Federal “regulators”.
When they’re looking OUTSIDE.
Inside the gov?…not so much.
FREE JON CORSINE!!! In order for there to be a plea bargain, there must be a prosecution from the Obama regime. Won’t happen.
Nada
My experience with a NASA investigation in a similar case is that he will most likely have to pay back those amounts deemed to have been fraudulently used. Also I would expect the university to take action if any of their rules have been circumvented (which seems likely), although I’m not very confident that GMU will do so.
No, it will be swept under the rug to protect their reputations.
Noble Cause Corruption makes this case very different from a NASA or Defense Department investigation. In those cases the MSM would be all over the story looking for whistleblowers, and wagging their fingers at the evil-doers. They would and have lit a fire under the appropriate prosecutors.
Can anyone see that happening when government grantee is a global warming alarmist? Ain’t gonna happen. Outside of a very few right-leaning news outlets, the major players in the MSM will entirely ignore this story. It goes against the whole nature of the narrative they pitch every single day.
1000i
* for those who don’t know i is the imaginary number, it’s value is the square root of negative one.
> i thought that was j ?? or izzat a 90 degree left turn ??
g
in any case, the exact value of pi is : – Ln(-1) .sqrt(-1)
g
Mmmmm…pi!
It’s = it is or it has; its is the possessive. It seems that this distinction has been lost, somehow.
There should be no doubt any a rational mind that the whole AGW “Climate Change” Alarmism is being driven by the Largest Scientific Scandal in Modern History.
Virginia is also one of the states piloting a reenvisioning of higher ed tied to the reenvisioning of K-12 called Common Core is many states originally. (Virginia did not need because it adopted the Common Core of Learning back in the 90s). In other NSF grants I have researched tied to the constructivist Math and Science Partnerships that are controversial, the PIs would brag to officials from other states on how to get administrators throughout the university systems to comply with pushing the desired vision. In the 2009 minutes I have from a DC NSF meeting, a Georgia PI brags about the system telling adminiistraors at all the unviersities and colleges that their promotions, raises, and contract renewals will be tied to the ability to bring in research grants. The NSF grants tied to education and Climate Science are viewed as the easiest to get because you do not need to have the expense of a lab. The grants are primarily for advocacy.
Of course. There is obviously an enormous gravy train here, completely outside of people who really do climate science (who are probably, for the most part, honest about their work and working within the rules). Otherwise we wouldn’t see the endless parade of papers on how global warming (predicted by models, not observed) will affect butterfly populations on particular hillsides in California (without any actual observational work being done on the actual butterfly population or whether or not it is being affected by climate change or the fact that all the trees on the hillside are being cut down to build houses).
In the end, even the 2/9ths rule fails to display the dependency. Yes, you can only get 2/9ths of your salary (summer salary, basically) from a typical academic grant, although there are exceptions. However, the University almost always makes far more than your salary from the 54% indirect costs charged to the grant. For example, if you have a salary of (say) $100,000 (including benefits) and have a grant for $250,000, the University gets over $130,000 for indirect costs, you pay yourself 2/9’s or $22,000 out of the $120,000 remaining, and you have enough left over for a student or two, a postdoc partially supported by teaching, and some equipment. The University pays you the remaining $78,000 “for teaching” and maybe pays your postdoc to teach a course and reduce the burden to your grant, but even allowing for actual overhead — lab space that already exists in buildings long since paid for, electricity, bookkeeping, computer/network services outside of line items in the grant — you can see that they are likely to break even to win a bit. From what I understand it is break even or lose a bit, but even so it is usually a myth that the faculty person is really supported “by teaching”. It’s complex — money flows from here and there out of the tuition stream, any endowments the University might have, and indirect cost money on grants, and is rearranged to “keep the University alive” because in the end, a big-science physics or chemistry lab with a $2 million budget ($1 million of which is indirect cost money for the Unversity might end up de facto subsidizing the Philosophy department, whose faculty really is supported by teaching/tuition as getting anything but tiny grants is difficult indeed.
This system “works”, for the most part — I don’t want to criticize it too harshly because it does work in the public interest to keep higher education alive and (incidentally) the US as one of the premier industrial powers on the planet as we produce a steady flow of well-educated humans and new ideas and technologies. But, like all open systems of this sort, it generates self-organized structures that exploit the cash flow and use it to grow. There are all sorts of rules intended to prevent this, and to ensure that research paid for by grants is done honestly and well, but the system has many incentives for abuse as well as disincentives. Duke is downright fascist in policing their grants, as they have to be — if you get blacklisted by the NSF or NIH it is sayonara for any research university. I don’t even have grant support any more but I fill in a conflict of interest form every year with explicit questions that would detect nepotism, vested interest in companies that do business with Duke, and so on. Duke is enormously intolerant of this — they are still smarting (and probably still under scrutiny) from an incident involving a medical researcher faking data a few years back.
I have no idea what George Mason was thinking, if indeed they were turning a blind eye to nepotism and featherbedding galore with federal grant money, but the consequence of this if proven could be devastating to the University. They could have their ability to administer federal grants at all revoked, indefinitely. If this happens, it could literally destroy the school. Unfortunately, they are way, way over a threshold of sanity here. If $63 million in grants is involved and congress is looking, there will be no protection from the righteous wrath that will descend on them. That’s not chump change (although it is over a fairly long time).
On the other hand, both George Mason and Shuklas deserve due process. Which I’m sure that they will get. In the meantime, I’d suggest not rushing to judgment no matter how attractive the prospect of the perfect karmic balance that would result from a letter suggesting RICO be applied to skeptical funding that had the direct outcome of RICO being applied to the funding of the letter writer.
I’ll say one thing. I’ll bet that the outside (of GM and IGES) signers of this letter are deeply, deeply regretting the fact that they let themselves be talked into it. Because in the fullness of time the grant investigation will — quietly — descend to their own funding as well. If they’ve received money or support through IGES there will likely be harsh words and scrutiny from the grant officers involved.
rgb
rgb,
Thanks for your insights into this facet of higher ed.
Concerning your comment about the RICO20 signers:
Once I’ve read some of Prof. Shukla’s tin-eared, self-aggrandizing materials and saw the signs of nepotism, I started thinking he cannot possibly be very popular in the climate science community. The stuff on his IGES web pages simply looks bad even before anyone starts digging into the details.
I have no doubt the signers now regret joining Shukla’s RICO appeal but why in the world did they go along in the first place? I’m glad they did because it gives the taxpaying public a chance to get some sunlight into the whole complex, but what were they thinking?
To be clear, I’m not asking you to speculate but to me this is the most mysterious part of the ugly affair right now. It looks so stupid it defies explanation even when one considers the self-righteous politicization, hype and habitual overreach in today’s climatology.
I can see how these 20 came to believe signing the “Rico Letter” addressed to the President. They have had support for their fraud from some of the biggest institutions and people in Government and thought that nothing would happen to them. Their heads were bigger than their common sense. They’ve gotten away with all this for so long it became normal to them and, in their minds, acceptable and accepted.
For the lesser involved of the 20, they just got sucked into the hype, but probably also have some fingers in the honey pot. Regret now.
Now, for those people at NSF, NASA, NOAA who were aware of what was going on, when will the investigation get to them. That is an even more serious problem IMHO.
Correction:
I can see how these 20 came to believe signing the “Rico Letter” addressed to the President was okay and wouldn’t become a problem for them.
“””””….. — I don’t want to criticize it too harshly because it does work in the public interest to keep higher education alive and (incidentally) the US as one of the premier industrial powers on the planet as we produce a steady flow of well-educated humans and new ideas and technologies. …..”””””
I thought we imported (immigrated) all of those knowledgeable people from the third world, on H1B visas ??
According to a study done by AIP or some similar Physics organization, of all of the PhD physics graduates “produced” by USA universities, only 30% ever get a full time job applying their well education, and new ideas and technologies.
5% get a part time job doing that but then have to change fields to keep working.
65% of them never ever get a full time paying job doing their very well educated thing.
It seems that the thing that they are good at, and did the pioneering work on in their PhD thesis, is of no earthly interest to anybody else but them. They are the world’s leading authority on something that absolutely nobody else has any interest in; to the point that they would pay money for somebody to do that for them.
They typically end up as post doc fellows at some think tank or institution swilling at the public trough or bleeding some well endowed foundation.
So if you want to be the leader in your field; beware, you might be the only one in your field.
But note: 30% did have the good sense to do their thesis on something practical that somebody else would pay money for them to do.
I thought of getting a PhD in ice cream making; but it seemed to be an already well occupied field. I decided it was more fun, and useful to be an Engineering Physicist, or maybe that’s a Physicist Engineer.
g >> G
I would love to be an engineer.
Out there on the open prairie, no one to bother you…all that open sky and those two gleaming tracks stretching off into the distance…
This is corruption of academia on a massive scale.
Orwell’s 1984: your future is dependent on your collaboration
Anyone else notice a pattern with the current US administration and cronyism/favoritism, to the point of the FBI investigating and raiding the offices of US Fed government’s “CTO” friends’ businesses and offices?
Does the US Fed government really need a politicized office of the “CTO”?
I’m w/George E. Smith’s comments above, on US government-preferred immigrant classes and political pandering. To add specific names and organizations:
Search for yourselves:
Aneesh Chopra, Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
Vivek Kundra
Sushal Bansal
FBI
Optimal Solutions and Technologies
GRPA
And I’ll bet foregivenous only applies to Universities that have signed onto the “sustainability” agenda.
It is about time somebody stepped up to the plate to bring these criminals down.
Throw the RICO act at them [RICO20]
RICO requires racketeering.
RICO is intended to combat ‘organized crime’, not nepotism or even bad book-keeping. However, regularly collude with an organized (loosely defined) group to commit injury (also loosely defined) in support or defense of the organization; especially in regards to pecuniary interests and one comes close to RICO boundaries. Something that other ‘climate team members should pay attention to.
Rico was not nor is not intended to be used against anything but organized crime.
A RICO prosecution and conviction requires:
1. That a person”
2. through a pattern”
3. of racketeering activity (organizational)
collection of unlawful debt (funds)
4. directly or indirectly-
(a) invests in, or
(b) maintains an interest in, or
(c) participates in
5. an enterprise
6. the activities of which affect/cross interstate commerce.
All elements of a RICO offense, including the
two or more state or federal offenses which constitute
“racketeering activity,” must be proved beyond
a reasonable doubt.”
Shukla and GMU are not RICO candidates; though their ‘RICO letter’ does come under collusion, but there must be a history of similar activity. One whinging finger pointing letter is not RICO.
The original RICO statue “was” instituted to deal with organized crime, aka Mafia style racketeering, but the law has been broadened on a Federal level and each state also has it’s own RICO laws that can be applied on a state level.
But, no one here, that I can see, has suggested that the “whinging finger pointing letter” that these 20 people signed constitutes a RICO offense. That would be stupid. What constitutes a RICO offense is the “pattern” of their behavior over decades of work in their “scientific” fields, of funneling Federal and State grant money through their own personal “organizations” so that they can “participate in activities that affect, cross interstate commerce”. Such as using NSF grant money for scientific research to fund a school in another country, or to pay friends and family members to run your “foundation”, instead of doing actual scientific research with that money. Every grant they misapplied constitutes “one act/one Federal or State offense” and there are more than enough to establish the “pattern” required by RICO.
Precisely. Mr. “industrial-strength stupid” Eschenbach fails to perceive that “the climate consensus” of alleged “scientists” has been (and continues to be) colluding in theft of value by deceit.
Peculation in Kreis Shukla (masculum et feminam creavit eos) particularly, but more generally in the knowing statement of falsehoods in the climastrologists’ applications for grants to fund their Cargo Cult “research.”
Hasn’t anyone reading here ever been advised about the harrowing liabilities to which a scientific investigator subjects himself simply by signing a grant application containing assertions which he knows to be false?
Bear in mind that the members of this “#RICO20” cadre – like most of the self-anointed “climate consensus” clowns – are not only men of the authoritarian left but are beyond doubt classifiable as Social Justice Warriors (SJWs), demonstrating the pathognomonic traits of all such gibbering “political correctness” puckers.
It’s also worth drawing upon Vox Day’s same work for element #7 of the proper formula by which to address the climate catastrophists who are exercising the Alinsky playbook to which all Social Justice Warriors hew:
Forcing the public and private enterprise,
1. through a pattern of force or harassment (racketeering), with the additional gun of government,
2. based on fraudulent lies
3. to follow practices which enriches themselves.
Shukla is guilty.
His money did not come from freely donated money, people who chose to and agreed with him.
His funds came from taxpayer funds to enforce a pattern of lies to enrich himself and his family.
.
I have put in for several NSF grants – very small amounts.
One was capture of contaminants in drinking water systems ($6,000).
Another was carbon capture of flu gasses in power plants. ($12,000)
Another was near-net carbon-carbon material play dough that becomes harder than diamond. ($22,000)
Another was final prototype test of slurry to capture of contaminants in fracking fluids for recycling. ($15,000)
.
I actually would have produced something that had a purpose and reedy to be commercialized for a very small fraction of the money he received.
.
Imagine how many other ideas and projects out there got thrown out into a dumpster because this grandiose toad needed to buy a new home.
The way the scam works is as follows:
1. Government agencies ‘grant’ money to a not-for-profit organization.
2. The executives allocate a large portion of the grant to themselves as salary.
3. A portion of the grant or the salary is further allocated to 1 or more not-for-profit organizations.
4. The latter organization donates money to a political entity supporting the campaigns of 1 or more politicians who voted to fund the grant money.
It’s an elaborate kickback scheme, or circle of corruption.
In many cases, they don’t even disguise the kickback. In the case of Universities, many are the largest contributors to political campaigns themselves.
While that may have been true at one time, the use of RICO has strayed far away from organized crime.
“Today, federal prosecutors use RICO routinely to win easy convictions and prison terms for individuals who in the course of business run afoul of federal regulations. For every John Gotti who is brought down by RICO, many obscure business owners and managers are also successfully prosecuted under this law.”
More here:
http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?a=215
Everyone is due their chance for rebuttal. But this appears to be a very ugly tip to a very large iceberg of hubris, self denial, and corruption. Thank you Anthony and contributors for turning over a rock and allowing some sun to shine on this festering sore.
Perhaps if we lance this boil we can begin to heal the broken aspects of the scientific community before the rot reaches a point of no return.
Thank Roger Pielke Jr. and Steve McIntyre, they got the ball rolling.
Yes, they deserve a huge thank you also.
WUWT has carried the word to the next level. We shall see if the next level of media are open-minded enough to give this some exposure, or if they will continue their tradition of motivated activism and selective reportage.
Hear hear!
I’m still waiting on the BBC picking up the story…
Thank you, gentlemen. What about the 19 others who signed the document. Are they being committed to an insane asylum?
van Loon, they might not be heading for an asylum, but I suspect many are also being considered for detailed audits. If there’s one bad apple, there’s probably others.
Cheers
I agree. I’m sure they are all very, very sorry they signed. I don’t quite know what people like Trenberth were thinking. Overall, I tend to respect him as being basically honest and comparatively objective. But yes, I’m guessing they will all get audited in time, especially if they received any money or support through IGES itself. Most of them are probably pretty safe, if they are at a University that takes its grant administration rules seriously, as most do AFAIK. There could be some question if they got money for “consulting”, though. That’s something that is legal under most University policies and as long as there is no vested interest or conflict of interest, not a problem for grants. For example, I’ve done and continue to do a bunch of consulting work or entrepreneurial work over the years for companies doing stuff completely irrelevant to my research interests and as long as I limit the time I spend on it to stay within certain permitted levels and clear any IP that Duke might have an interest in Duke, and the granting agencies, do not care. But if it is used to redistribute grant money through a loophole outside of the rules regulating grant support… that might be a problem. If favors (like signing a sketchy document) were exchanged (even if there was no clear quid pro quo) there could be a problem. Or not. It gets pretty complex somewhere in there…
Absolutely! Than you Roger Pielke Jr and Steve McIntyre!
What would make for a great follow up is an analysis of value for money. What did the NSF get for their $63 million?
” I don’t quite know what people like Trenberth were thinking.”
I do not pretend to know what they were thinking, but the letter itself gives us all a very big clue.
Just taking the letter for what it requests, what they were thinking that they could use their influence as bigshots to call down the unfathomably might and wrath of the justice department to steamroll people, who had the temerity to disagree with them, into oblivion.
Put another way, they wanted to have terrible things happen to people they dislike. Things like jail, or huge fines, or perhaps merely career ending criminal investigations. Bad things. While they sat back and patted themselves on the back for being so clever to think of such a grand way to punish other scientists, academics, and anyone else who was on the opposing side of a loaded political propaganda issue.
Very simply…they wanted to harshly punish people for getting in the way of their plans and schemes.
Or maybe not…maybe it was all just an innocent attempt to punish people for the criminal act of being skeptical.
Yes, Big kudos to Roger Pielke Jr, and Steve McIntyre. Excellent work guys. Thank you.
Another point…This is big enough that you guys may want to ask the distinguished Arctic researcher, Prof. Wadhams how to stay out of trouble with all this going on. Get some pointers from him… ; )
1/2 sarc
. . . yes, Roger Pielke Jr, and Steve McIntyre were the initiators of disciplined and carefully considered revelations . . .
John
A first step would be to not allow universities to contribute in any way to political campaigns. They subsist primarily on public money.
It could be a pun. Maybe Shukla wasn’t getting any cost of living adjustments from the University?
or royalties from a sex novel.
What a wonderful gift this is to tax paying citizens. Finally we get a glimpse into the deep, dark hole that criminal embezzlers pour our hard earned money into. Let’s hope the truth will be completely exposed here and appropriate measures taken to reimburse the public treasury. Thank you Anthony, Steve and all the others for bringing this issue to light.
Thank you Mr Watts, Tony Heller, Paul Homewood, Mcyntire ect., for pursuing this to the end! LOL
The VW software did it.
That can’t be. they’re spewing filth whether they’re on the test stand or not.
Hope there’s lots of competent computer forensics and forensic accountants available.
I imagine there will be alot of “dog ate my private mail server” and sgt. Schultz “i know naaaating” coming out of this
You guys realize, I hope, that the response from the believers will be something along the lines of “This doesn’t change the science.” Although I always like to see shysters go down, and this is big, I’m not sure this is a true science scandal if it only affects the funding, rather than providing proof of biased outcomes.
Hopefully if one stops the funding then there will be less pseudo-scientific papers.
True. It’s not going to affect anything on our debate, though it does undermine the “poor underfunded environmentalists versus the rich evil oil companies” meme, which people still trot out despite the laughable falsehood.
However, if it gets more scrutiny of funding, then that’s good for all of us as taxpayers, and it’s good for getting rid of corruption.
Ah, good points, I only briefly thought about that aspect and then just as quickly forgot about it.
True. However, the Shukla case will hopefully show to the public corrupt nature of the agencies that fund science and tchnology. And this is grat and eeded development…
Well there are two thoughts that occur.
First of all, if there is one ‘Black hat’ in the climate community, how many more are there ?
Secondly, if inquiries show that a lot of public money isn’t actually going on the science, how much public funding will they keep dishing out to science that is – ahem – ‘settled’?
Personally, the whole thing hasn’t been about the science for over 10 years. Its been about political and economic expediency. Pork barrel politics to the Greens and the renewables boys.
If the grift associated with teh political part of climate change can be exposed, that’s the end of the politics of climate change, and it can go back to being an arcane corner of science,
In the UK, the Daily Telegraph Earth section, that used to be 90% stories about climate change, this week only has one.
And we are in the run up to Paris FFS!
Climate change simply isn’t interesting any more.
While it isn’t a ‘black hat’ so to speak, GMU is a Virginia State college.
Yes, every other Virginia State college is on the hot seat along with GMU. It is prudent for any investigator to look over the paperwork for similar colleges.
a) especially if there is a trail of communications or discussions regarding interesting topics
b) oddly, if there is a distinct absence of expected communications or suspicious blank spots.
One does wonder about UVA and their ‘circle the wagons’ over past emails. A history of Shukla or GMU communications to various UVA staff/members regarding FOIA topics just might prove interesting.
It does answer the “why would they do this [falsify data]?” objection from the believers.
Ah, yes, I can see what you mean.
No, I’m sadly certain that this will be used as an example of how climate change disbelievers attack the good, hardworking scientists that are fighting so hard to save the world from the 3%.
I think you are wrong. At least I hope so.
The reason i think that is because everyone is familiar with greed and graft.
They are not theoretical things to most people.
People know that other people getting rich on government pork means less money for other things.
Or at the very least, higher debts and deficits.
And most people do not get fat raises every year, or have two huge income streams, at least one of which appears to be for doing little if anything to actually earn it.
No, I think most people will hate the sound of this.
It will make them literally sick to think of their hard earned tax dollars going to fund a lavish lifestyle for a greedy and corrupt cabal of snobbish fat cats.
Fat cats in the private sector are one thing.
Fat cats on the public dime are quite another.
Let’s not forget too that the Foundation in question was financed not to produce ‘science’ but to research means of making the propaganda pushing false ‘climate science’ more effective.
In effect, the taxpayer has been paying vast sums to enable the liars to find improved and more effective ways of lying to them! That in itself is a major scandal, never mind the personal nest-feathering.
Who cares what the believers think, say, do. It’s futile to try to convert them at this point. What exposing this stuff WILL do is keep the majority of the public not trusting scientists, keeping their minds open…sceptical! And Cook and Lew and Nutty and others will continue to scratch their heads and dream up even wackier theories for why the public just will not accept their faked consensus.
( Hint for “science communicators”, if people can’t trust the way you behave as a person, or find the things you do and say outside of your office/lab to be offensive/stupid/condescending /illegal/ unethical etc…they ALSO won’t trust anything you do or say as a “scientist” either.)
Every single event like this is another hole in their boat. None of them is going to sink them on its own, but each one helps and they are riding low in the water these days.
+10
Truth be told, there is not a lick of value in ANY of the handful of climate science papers I have viewed. I’m going to extrapolate and say that this applies to virtually all of them. They are virtually all conjecture. There is no way to get valid data to judge validity of hypothesis, without waiting a lifetime (or two or three…). Thus they instead rely on climate models, which themselves are not proven (in fact early indications are that they are crap!). It’s freakin unbelievable! How the morons administering grants don’t see this – oh wait, I forgot, they are in on it. All the way to the top, obummer and his bozo chief science advisor. The good news is, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. This is a deep and incestuous rathole, and the Rightous Right is going to rain a holy shitstorm down on them, leaving no orifice unexplored. Mainstream media will finally figure out they have been had. And that’s when all hell breaks loose on climate science as a whole. Federal funding goes to zero overnight for this malignant field. No more cli sci papers. No more funding for any universities supporting this crap field. The whole lot of them having to get real jobs where they actually produce something of value (burgers anyone?). The only thing anyone will notice is how nice it is to not have to listen to these chicken littles anymore. Oh man, this is better than a wet dream!
A happy day it will be.
From your keyboard to Lamar’s eyeballs.
“How the morons administering grants don’t see this – oh wait, I forgot, they are in on it.”
Agree. The sheer intellectual dishonesty of climate change of the magnitude it has become doesn’t likely happen without the ‘ol boys’ in charge at all levels also being intellectually dishonest when doling out the billions they control.
+1
Hope this snowballs and gets big enough to actually make the media start doing their jobs. Time for the nonsense to end. $63 million? For what? I’d like to know. Go Lamar go!
This will come to nothing, unfortunately.
Look at what libs are doing about the Planed Parenthood baby-parts-supermarket and you’ll know what I mean.
In Brazil, we say that “this is going to end in pizza”.
Just spread it around to everyone you can and let the chips fall where they may. We got an election coming up, and people are sick to the point of puking about this noise.
Remember to check for tire tracks on the hard drives.
Dont the Feds keep copies of emails of citizens? They do according to Edward Snowden, they do!
They do! I even have a newest best friend that seems to do the scrolling for me on this site. What a time-saver.
Tip of the iceberg: See for example Duke University Prof. Robert Brown’s comment regarding Paris’ looming COP 21, posted just yesterday in WUWT.
Tens if not hundred of billions disbursed to deviant Warmists over decades have produced only contrived data-sets, invalid statistics, patently fabricated inputs (read, “adjusted”, “smoothed”, etc.– absurdly anti-scientific, biased, one-way only propaganda exercises) constituting fraudulent Grand Theft immune to any honest institutional accounting whatsoever.
Recalling the U.S. Weather Service’s “Blowtorch Winter” forecast issued 10/20/2015, in light of the Old Farmers’ Almanac 2016 projection of “super-cold with heavy snow” throughout New England we await with interest whatever purblind asininities this criminally-deficient agency excretes two weeks from now.
Issued 10/20/15?
This will be all over every front page in every major newspaper and on every tv news channel won’t it?
That was a lovely dream I was just having, back to reality now.
The reality is an invite to the WH.
Ah, if only someone in the Obama administration had thought of that earlier. A shot of Obama and Shukla together in front of the WH would have been priceless.
Some have been able to record this mischief for posterity, so don’t give up the dream.
http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2015/09/29/rico20-letter-to-president-obama-disappears/
Another important question is why is so much cash being handed out to the climate change proponents.
The NSF is just throwing money around like it is candy – millions of it at a time that is.
Dicktasterships do not have to accede to the con-scent of the misgoverned.
How did that one skip past the censors?
IGES also distributed $100,000 from its climate grant revenue to support an educational charity in India which Shukla had founded.
===============
that is certainly generous of the NSF to approve funds marked for scientific research to instead be diverted offshore.
Is this allowed? His brother appears to be the manager at that college too.
I looked up IGES on the US System for Awards Management (SAM) and COLA is IGES. Its a dba (doing business as) not even a registered subsidiary. It’s just a brand. IGES is listed on Maryland corp lookup as a non-stock (non-profit) corporation with Jagadish Shukla as the principle and registered agent.
Please – principal. I don’t think any principles are involved here. 🙂
ha. Shukla is THE principle. Now state the theorem….
don’t not-for-profit organization have rules as to insider salaries and compensation? otherwise what is to prevent the tax free status being abused and simply used as a mechanism to avoid paying taxes?
http://www.iges.org/aboutiges.html
The Institute of Global Environment and Society, Inc. (IGES) – a non-profit, tax exempt research institute, incorporated in the State of Maryland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_non-profit_laws
If an organization is to qualify for tax exempt status, the organization’s (a) charter — if a not-for-profit corporation — or (b) trust instrument — if a trust — or (c) articles of association — if an association — must specify that no part of its assets shall benefit any of persons who are members, directors, officers or agents (its principals).
As I understand it, salary is exempt from those rules. So as long as IGES didn’t directly pay for their plane trips to Cancun, Copenhagen, or Lima, I doubt that part has been violated.
501c3’s routinely have staff and pay them from unrestricted contributions. Else, how could they function? Restricted contributions may not inure to the benefit of trustees, officers, employees, etc. However, I presume the NSF grants have restrictions and the salaries paid at IGES may have been in violation of restrictions.
Can you say “David Suzuki”? He took tons of money out of his foundation. He finally resigned due to Canadian Revenue Agency looking at his lobbying efforts which aren’t allowed by a “Charity”.
Seems to be a bit more common than we would like to think. Just look at how much of funds donated to charities are used in “administration” a opposed to disbursed to the “recipients”. United Way is awful. The Salvation Army distributes the highest amount of their receipts compared to other organizations to the poor and needy.
I suspect that some people feel that no amount of received money is too much for Saving the Earth (TM)
Especially if it goes into their own pockets.
+127 and a trip to Paris.
That is a very large part of it in a nutshell. Cause-driven mentality forgives you for things you haven’t even done yet. It justifies any damage you might do, people you might step on, any tactics you might employ. This is why these types are the most dangerous – they won’t stop. It’s the sort of mentality that fed the Inquisition, Eugenics, and witch-burnings – you are not swayed by screams if you have the courage of your cause. And very few people will run across a field with a bomb strapped to their back who believe they are in the wrong.
This is what scares me – warmists have essentially convinced a large portion of the world that humanity itself is destroying the planet – particularly the US – and basic survival activities too – heating homes, food production, transportation – the sorts of things we’re pretty much going to have to keep doing for as long as we’re all here. And I routinely hear humanity described as a ‘scourge’ or a ‘plague’ – and in particular I don’t like that ‘ninety-percent population reduction’ chorus. In this environment, lunacy such as genetically-altering humans thrives.
I’ve always said the biggest threat from Global Warming is what people might do to ‘save’ us from it.
For the “common-good” are indeed very old and often used arguments and used to justify just about anything.
Oh, yes, people who torture us for our own good will never rest. At least those who do it for evil purposes will take a break now and then.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
– C. S. Lewis
And this is just one, previously unknown,
deceiverreceiver of government funds for global warming research. What about the other billions?And prosecuting systematic and widespread peculation of this sort under the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statute is still somehow supposed to be “industrial-strength stupid”?
Indeed it is industrial strength stupid. Look at the well-deserved opprobrium and vituperation directed in this and other threads at the people who suggested using RICO to settle scientific questions … and you want to deliberately go out and get exactly the same opprobrium and vituperation directed at YOU for making exactly the same suggestion?
Not much industrial strength smart in that …
Now, I’m sure you’ll say something like “but we’re aiming it at the right people” or “we’re prosecuting people who are wasting US government funds” … but that’s just what the people who want to use RICO on the skeptics are saying.
w.
Agreed, RICO has been abused by prosecutors for what amounts to political persecution. This is what Shukla et. al. were encouraging with their letter to Obama. RICO needs to be repealed and replaced with legislation that will focus on organized crime as the original legislation intended. Anyone, good or bad, can be abused by RICO. As you imply, be careful what you ask for.
A point well taken. But by treading too lightly, one risks being involved in a bazooka fight armed with only a fly swatter.
Willis I’m a big fan and still waiting on you to write a book.
I agree that the RICO venue is a bad idea, I do think prosecution of some sort for fraud (theft) of public money is warranted. As well I understand that many of our problems stem from our asking government agencies to help us. We almost always regret having asked.
How would you propose to remedy the situation? I have yet to see relief for skeptics from any government agency and don’t expect to either.
cheers
@ur momisugly Willis Eschenbach
October 2, 2015 at 10:43 am
It has taken 35 plus years for the warming meme to take on a life of its own. It will take another 35 years and a few nasty winters to reverse the trend. I believe in “Climate Change”. My kids believe in “Global Warming” because that is what they have been taught in school, in their “environmental” and forestry classes, and they are constantly inundated with EXTREME Climate Change events by the media and politicians. So they become “believers” just as I have always been a believer in “Climate Change” because I studied it for years as a personal interest and later on as an educational and business interest in engineering and farming. Plus I learned about weather and climate at the knee of my grand parents and great grand parents.
Belief systems will take a long time to change.
Thanks for keeping a cool head Willis.
Sorry, but I would advocate the opposite approach. Investigate both sides for RICO violations and let the chips fall where they may. A side-by-side comparison of $xxx,xxx,xxx,xxx tax payer dollars possible being used criminally vs $xx,xxx,xxx dollars of private money possibly used illegally would at least shut some people up as to who is “buying” scientist to produce certain results.
And leave the science, itself, out of it.
I have no problem with private sector pay being set at whatever the business can afford, but it is about time that there was serious scrutiny of the amount of money paid out of the public purse. In my opinion this needs complete overhaul.
I do not see why anyone who is being paid out of public funds should be paid more than $200,000 per year (no matter how clever the accounting is). If someone on the public payroll has in addition a private source of income, then the amount paid by the tax payer should be reduced so that the total income that that person does not include any state/public money that would bring the annual salary above $200,000.
why is the government taking money from people making less than $50k and giving it to people making $200k? has the government taken on the role of Reverse Robin Hood. Take from the poor to give to the rich.
ferd
I understand (and basically agree) with your point, However, just for the record, people making under $50k (in the USA) do not pay much in taxes (Social Security FICA withholding, yes; taxes, no)
you only just noticed this ferd ?
@ur momisugly Chip Jarvert
Any chance I can get you to prepare my federal income taxes Chip?
“For the record”: A married couple making $40,000/yr with no adjustments to gross income and taking the standard deduction has a taxable income of $19,700 and an “Income Tax” bill of $2,051.
That $2,051 is pretty darn significant to folks trying to scrape by on $40k/yr.
I’m bothered by the idea that people get investigated and incarcerated for expressing their views on a political subject. If he hadn’t written this letter, no one would have noticed.
Oh, really? Now that people have “noticed”, how is it that you call these financial shenanigans, political?
As Old fighter pilots say: ” Tracers work equally well in both directions !! ”
g
George,
That is an infantry saying.
By the time a fighter pilot sees tracers he is probably already hosed.
Actually if a fighter is flying really fast he might be shot down by his own tracers. Documented in Korea – Sabre jets in a dive could be hit by their own ammo traveling in an arc while they were accelerating downward in a straight line.
Looks a bit like Shukla may have been hit by his own bullet.
Soooooooooooooooooooooooooo, you kind of lost me here. How is committing fraud (allegedly) considered political speech?
Too bad for Mr.Shukla that he made the poor decision to stand up, wave and yell “LOOK AT ME” and is shocked to find that people did.
MikeN, isn’t double dipping is illegal?
He’s not being investigated for expressing his views and if he is incarcerated, it won’t be for expressing his views.
He’s being investigated because he recently pronounced to the world that he was flagrantly violating the law.
Why do you desire to change the subject?
Of course it is criminal actions. I don’t like the idea that because someone says something people don’t like, then people go hunting for if this person has done something criminal
MikeN October 2, 2015 at 10:07 am
Seriously? This joker proposed throwing my friends and allies in jail because he doesn’t like their science, and in response people looked into his own actions … and you find this somehow wrong?
If the reports are true, he’s a crook. Not only that, he’s a stupid crook, because he stood up and waved a flag and shouted “All my enemies should be thrown in jail!” … and now you’re surprised when people investigate his past?
Really? Neither you nor he saw that coming?
I mean, I can see him being that deluded, but what on earth did you expect to happen?
I’m sorry, but your attempt to cast him as the victim in this piece simply doesn’t work.
w.
You see, people are simply saying stuff that the “RICO20” “didn’t like”. So the RICO20 asked the President “to go hunting for if those people had done something criminal”. That indeed, was a nasty idea, but let me officially welcome you to Earth.
The hilarious part is that THEY were engaging in the exact type of behavior that they want to accuse others of.
If you don’t engage in criminal behavior, you have nothing to worry about.
MikeN: Isn’t that EXACTLY what Shuklas and the Rico20 were calling for … criminal investigations and incarceration of people for expressing their views on what has become a very political issue?
They petitioned the President of the United States to use RICO (which was designed to go after mobsters) in order to shut down debate on global warming!
How does that differ from what you are complaining about???
So much so that I was not sure just which side Mike N was referring to.
MikeN, have you never heard the expression, those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones? This result should always be expected, and there are no exemptions for greenhouses.
That’s the way the world works. If you want to keep your illegal actions hidden, then don’t stand up and proudly declare them to the world.
I strongly suspect that it’s not the investigation that bothers you, rather who is being investigated.
It’s a bit like Ward Churchill at the U of Colorado. He made some pretty offensive comments about people killed in 9-11, and an investigation figured that was academic freedom. But the investigation also put Churchill on the radar screen, and found evidence of plagiarism and fraud. Churchill was canned. He got his tenured job by claiming he was Native American. In reality he was as Indian as the Lone Ranger’s Tonto, but the University didn’t want to touch that issue, what with affirmative action, discrimination, diversity, and all those worm cans that would put a university with zillions of federal bucks on the federal diversity radar. I don’t think Churchill ever had to pay back any of his questionable pay. He filed a countersuit on the grounds that the original investigation was a violation of academic freedom, but the findings of plagiarism stood and he’s still canned (now doing the leftie speaking circuit).
There’s other cases of non-tenured faculty not being fired, but, er, not being renewed, either, for presenting non-politically correct lessons (from intelligent design to faulting corporate donors). In those cases there was no investigation or evidence of fraud or plagiarism, so someone just forgot to renew their contracts.
There was a later situation at the same university of an employee being investigated for presenting data in class that was allegedly encouraging students to disbelieve global warming and was “inappropriately polical”. Worse, having a disbeliever on board could jeopardize the university’s ability to cash in on the global warming gravy train. But a faculty committe found no evidence of fraud or plagiarism, only that the offensive data was not what they wanted shown in class. He wasn’t canned, but simply never asssigned to teach that particular class again (so they haff ways….).
In Shukla’s case I don’t think it really matters now how the case was discovered – even if by his own arrogant blabbering – but now that it has, he’ll enjoy the facts of the case.
I wonder if other RICO Twentysomethings are having paper fires in their backyards today?
MikeN
Gee, Mike. I doubt these guys’ political views are being investigated – I suspect it’s their fraud.
You appear to be advocating that these clowns should get some kind of immunity for the consequences of their political statements. You need a lesson in “free speech” is different than “consequences of free speech”.
It is ironic they stepped in this coup while advocating to curtail free speech via Federal RICO prosecutions.
As you dig for gold, the hole can get too deep to crawl out of