Ten days ago I reported on a letter sent to President Obama, signed by twenty well-heeled climate cultists, asking the government to file RICO corruption charges against people who disagree with them. The lead signatory of the letter, Jagdish Shukla, a professor at George Mason University and front-man for the non-profit called IGES (where he posted the letter online), has since removed it and declared that it was inadvertently posted on the web site (after it was inadvertently sent to the president or linked in the press release?)
There was nothing inadvertent about it. It was a deliberate act of hubris that has come back to bite him in the a**!
Since its publication Shukla and other signatories are coming under detailed financial scrutiny from,…I’ll just call it THE INTERNET. Rocks turned, closets searched, skeletons…
The #RICO20 (as they are called) who frequently accuse their intellectual opponents of being bought and paid for by special interests have some explaining to do. At least one of them (so far) has been enriching themselves and family members at the trough of the biggest climate special interest of all, the Federal Government.
Roger Pielke Jr recently made the remarkable discovery that, in addition to his university salary from George Mason University (reported by Pielke as $250,000), Jagadish Shukla, the leader of the #RICO20, together with his wife, had received a further $500,000 more in 2014 alone from federal climate grants funnelled (sp) through a Shukla-controlled “non-profit” (Institute for Global Environment and Security, Inc.), yielding total income in 2014 of approximately $750,000.
Actually, the numbers are even worse than Pielke thought.
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Pielke had quoted Shukla’s 2013 university salary, but his university salary had increased more than 25% between 2013 and 2014: from $250,816 in 2013 to $314,000 in 2014.
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In addition, the “non-profit” organization had also employed one of Shukla’s children (not reported, but say $90,000); and,
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IGES transferred $100,000 from its climate grants to a second corporation controlled by the Shukla family (the Institute for Global Education Equality of Opportunity and Prosperity, Inc.), which in turn transferred $100,000 to an educational charity in Shukla’s home town in India, doubtless a worthy charity, but one that Shukla could have supported from his own already generous stipend.
What did I say in that Sept. 20th post?
“The cold, hard irony? This is “projection” on the highest order. And nothing says ‘we can defend our scientific theory on its merits’ like, “Hey sugar-daddy, please make disagreeing with us a crime.”
Ding! Ding! Ding! (This might be a good time to scroll back through the comments under that last post…)
Shukla could also be guilty of double-dipping in violation of NSF and George Mason University ethics rules and everyone who signed that letter that is fiscally aided and abetted with public money (and that’s all of them) is up for the Internet equivalent of a body cavity search and the internet is watching.
But the running away has only started.
In their retraction of the RICO letter IGES (Shukla) claim that they are shutting down the non-profit because they have completed all their projects. But, but, the National Science Foundation is still actively updating details on a $4 million dollar grant that does not expire until 2017. NSF doesn’t seem to think that IGES is done. And what about the other millions poured into the “non-profit”? Completed all their projects? (You can get all the ugly details on that here.)
Shukla got “climate drunk” on the taxpayer dime, peed on his own pompous leg, and it is getting warmer. Burning, even. Shukla benefited. His family. George Mason University. Even a charity in India eventually got a piece of the action for which you paid.
This could be as spectacular as the “hiding the decline” emails (popcorn stock could soar) as the #RICO20 (or at least Shukla) find themselves suspected of using climate change to swindle the taxpayers of millions.
It would be as funny as hell if turns out this was all coordinated.
