By Jason Isaac
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.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
Jeffery Picower died in 2009. His widow settled with the Madoff recovery trustee for $72 billion. She started JPB with money she still had after the settlement. The recovery trustee is closing down this month, after claiming to have payed off the Madoff victims.
For all that JPB may or may not be funding climate change charities, I wonder if this little hit piece isn’t actionable. Maybe Barbara Picower will sue.
What is actionable?
Quote the specific language. Everything looks to me to be clear statements of fact, or obvious opinion.
“As the single-largest beneficiaries of Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, the Picowers have plenty to feel awkward about.”
Were they the single largest beneficiaries? The dependent clause after that statement is certainly opinion.
In America you are allowed to publish articles that say unflattering things about people you disagree with. You can even voice your opinions in that article about those people.
The offended people then have the right to publish their own rebuttal, or their own opinions about the topics at hand.
As do I.
For all that I am a fan, a former constituent and one time voter for Issac, this is a poorly aimed smear, and all the worse for going for the Picower widow, rather than the really big players; say for instance the Michael Bloomberg, Rockefeller family, or the Carlos Slim Helu heirs. Why waste the ammo against a pisant?
And why would she feel awkward at all? Madoff wasn’t Jeffery’s only source of income, and she’s paid off his debtors out of his estate in the biggest settlement on record. The foundation is surely a tax avoidance in itself Whether or not she’s actually in control, or an out of touch figurehead (like those don’t exist) is immaterial — even the numbers quoted are small change compared to the whole climate action con. Go down the list of donors to e.g. Sierra Club, and Picower a pittance.
I’d say she had a better cause than did the bs Mann v Steyn case. But she’s unlikely to take any action directly or through the foundation. Just makes the hit piece mean spirited as well as mis-directed.
Without Picower letting it be known that Madoff was a ‘financial genius windfall’ for investors, Madoff would not have been able to rip-off the people that he ripped off. (Did Picower keep his successful investment as a secret …?)
“Why would she feel awkward?” Simply because she was associated with, and was the largest beneficiary, of the The largest scam. Not arguable.
Was guilt the reason for endowing a ‘lawfare’ organization? I don’t know. Can they sue me (and win) if say it is guilt? I doubt it? Are they assholes for endowing said organization? Yes.
“Debt” is paid off. Jeffery is dead 16 years. Bernie for four. Part of the settlement is the tacit agreement that, as she claims, Barbara Picower did not know about Jeffery’s behavior, and such knowledge was never claimed (however much we are skeptical of that claim). She’s small fish. The settlement case is over. Isaac doesn’t even have the courage to mention Barbara by name, but hers is the only name on the paperwork.
Isaac may mean well, and may still be seriously ticked off, but you don’t get to be the champ by punching down. A dumb move, IMO, by an author and politician who could do better.
She is asshole for endowing the said organization.
If everyone would tell her this (in one form or another) she may not continue financing harmful organizations.
Re: “Jeffery Picower died in 2009. His widow settled with the Madoff recovery trustee for $72 billion.”
$72 billion? Sorry, that is incorrect.
The amount was $7.2 billion. $7.2 billion was the full amount of alleged fraudulent returns – paid over two decades – to a non-profit, charitable trust, set up by Jeffry Picower.
In addition, Madoff owned a highly profitable, completely legal, stock brokerage, completely separate from his fraudulent investment company.
After selling the successful legal business, and, after recovering substantial amounts of unlawful returns, 94% of Madoff’s investment clients recovered 100% of their investment money.
These lawsuits are based on the results from fraudulent climate models. Can we get a legal decision that any climate model with an equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) greater than ‘too small to measure’ is fraudulent? This should put a stop to the lawfare. The evidence for the fraud is already published in the scientific literature. It is discussed in ‘A Nobel Prize for climate model errors’, Clark 2024.
There also a new Tom Nelson podcast on this topic, https://youtu.be/PsM4aOmCb_U. The transcript is also available at https://tomn.substack.com/p/podcast-summaries.
The “science of climate change” hardly counts as being part of the scientific literature. It appears to be nothing more than a website that hosts skeptical articles without any rigorous peer review process.
Pure nonsense and silly ‘Argumentum Ad Verecundiam’ BS.
JMHO, but this post is not up to the usual WUWT quality standards.
I can’t help but compare what Madoff did to what our government has been doing. Madoff offered outlandish opportunity for those willing to trust their money to him. Some of his investors did very well most didn’t. Our government promises to create clean, abundant and affordable power for all using the free wind and sun that is already all around us. Not to mention the transportation and appliances they prefer.
The government takes our money and gives it to people who claim they can make all of this happen. Many of these outfits have taken our money only to close up shop a few years later or make outlandish agreements with the government to receive money even when they don’t produce anything or to say they can’t survive with the price they agreed to so threaten to back out unless they get more money.
The main difference here is that investors chose to invest with Madoff, the government just took our money whether we liked it or not. The other difference is that Madoff was held accountable our government hasn’t been held accountable. On the contrary they go around bragging about how much they have pissed away.
Who is the criminal here.
Then the (govt) family, feeling guilty about (a portion) of those that they harmed, think they can offset the associated harm by creating ‘helpful’ programs (utility payments, first time homebuyer credits, rental assistance) to mitigate the higher costs from the forced govt ‘investments’).
Time to exit the great moral imperative of their times-
BlackRock departs climate investment group
When they start charging for electricity at those recharging stations and the demand causes price increases, one can see how the EV initiative will pale.