By Jason Isaac
To assuage their guilty conscience, the Picower family pushes shoddy electrical appliances into every American home.
As the biggest beneficiaries of Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme, the Picowers have a lot to worry about. One way to absolve oneself of guilt is to fund climate lawsuits and left-wing justice influence programs that deprive Americans of amenities they take for granted—like hot showers or efficient dishwashers.
As my organization, the American Energy Institute, explained in a recent report, left-wing city governments and blue states are suing energy providers over climate change, aiming to force unpopular lifestyle products into every home. Plaintiffs could achieve this goal through government spending financed by court bonuses. Alternatively, the terms of a settlement could require energy companies to change their product offerings. A left-wing lobbying campaign disguised as legal education is supporting these efforts. And according to the Daily Wire, the Picowers are paying for everything.
The head of the family, Jeffrey Picower, invested with Madoff early on and ultimately benefited from Madoff's $7 billion fraud. A court-appointed trustee responsible for recovering funds for Madoff's victims later claimed that Picower “knew or should have known” that Madoff was committing fraud. The returns Madoff achieved for Picower were incredible – up to 950% in one year. What's worse is that Picower never let his money gamble with Madoff. For years he withdrew his earnings quarterly.
The Picower family paid back their ill-gotten gains – not a real act of justice considering the stolen wealth certainly opened up new opportunities to make money. They then invested their final $200 million in endowment of a new philanthropic organization, the JPB Foundation, to save the family name.
The JPB Foundation has donated $4.45 million to a body that pays lawyers litigating climate change cases. The foundation donated another $2 million to the Climate Judiciary Project, the aforementioned liberal influence campaign that masquerades as “legal education.”
None of this is all that surprising. The climate lawsuits are based on a luxury belief par excellence—that ordinary Americans should forego reasonable comfort in favor of products that cost more money or perform poorly (or both). There is not much demand for progressive lifestyle products among middle and working class families, as evidenced by the upward distribution of wealth through government environmental handouts.
Take the $7,500 tax credit for electric vehicle purchases, an Obama-era program that would be better thought of as welfare for the rich. According to a 2021 study, nearly 80% of electric vehicle tax credits were claimed by people earning at least $100,000 per year. Embarrassed Democrats overhauled the Inflation Reduction Act's eligibility requirements, denying credit to the top 5% of wage earners.
It's easy to understand why electric vehicles aren't popular among average-income Americans. Regardless of the savings in maintenance or refueling, the upfront costs are high, if not prohibitive. Many are understandably hesitant to drive a vehicle with an effective range of around 200 miles, especially where charging stations are still rare. The climate plaintiffs don't care. Some plan to invest proceeds from climate lawsuits in charging infrastructure or create procurement consortia with like-minded jurisdictions to increase demand for electric vehicles.
A distinctive feature of liberal guilt is its insistence that repentance is not a personal matter. Penance must be forced upon all of us without consent. Because there are no individual solutions to systemic problems. This indifference to the preferences of others – psychopathy, if you will – was at the heart of the Madoff fraud and also animates climate legislation.
Jason Isaac is the 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.
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