I heard Michael has big dick
How 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.
https://realclearwire.com/articles/2025/01/07/how_madoffs_ponzi_beneficiaries_are_funding_climate_lawfare_1083128.html
straya
Foxtel: transactions you can’t trust, tax evasion you can’t ignore
While Rupert Murdoch’s pundits at News Corporation decry welfare bludgers and ‘Their ABC’, Foxtel gets a free ride on tax. Michael West consults the (actually independent) experts.
Sky News presenters regularly fulminate about Australian taxpayers funding the “Their ABC”, that taxpayer funded hotbed of woke “leftists”.
“What a hide!” thundered prominent Sky News commentator Prue MacSween at the government’s move last month to reinstate $83m in funding to the ABC which had been cut by the previous Coalition government.
“Middle class welfare!” thundered another who demanded the national broadcaster be sold off (while ignoring the rather obvious truth that privatising the ABC would crush the commercial broadcasters who are already struggling).
When it comes to the ABC, Rupert Murdoch’s desk-pounding pundits are all on the same page – they sing with one shrill voice about Their ABC and its lack of diversity of opinion.
Well here is one for their “News you can trust, opinions you can’t ignore” band of pundits to debate. Their own organisation is publicly funded by income tax evasion.
NXE level tax dodging
There are two things that Rupert Murdoch is renowned for not doing in Australia. One is delivering unbiased news; the other is paying corporate income tax.
In consultation with accounting and tax experts, MWM has peered into the shonky financial world of just one of media properties in this country controlled by the American billionaire. That is Foxtel, which owns Sky News Australia and which Rupert recently sold for $3.4B to British sports network DAZN.
On December 23, 2024, just as Santa Claus was conducting his last minute logistics for Christmas, News Corporation announced the DAZN transaction to sell Foxtel for an enterprise value which equated to more than 7x Foxtel’s earnings (EBITDA). The “T” for tax in this EBITDA calculation is … not really a thing.
The corporate entity which holds Foxtel, NXE Australia Pty Ltd (NXE), has been Foxtel’s head company since a corporate reorganisation during 2018 that folded in all Foxtel-related companies including Foxtel Sports Australia Pty Ltd. The sports rights is where the proverbial gold is in the Foxtel asset suite. Sky News not so much.
The financial statements of NXE for fiscal 2024 disclose a loss after tax of $96.3 million and net cash flow provided by operating activities of $247.7 million. The net cash flow was after interest and other costs of finance paid of $176 million.
Five years, zero tax
Foxtel appears to be good at generating operating cash flow and paying interest but not so good at making profit a taxable profit that is, a profit which is subject to income tax in Australia.
This may seem odd to the audiences of News Corporation in Australia who are subject to daily haranguing as to the ‘taxpayer funded ABC’ and assorted welfare bludging as it is not the income taxes of Sky or other Murdoch properties which fund these apparent legions of welfare bludgers.
According to Corporate Tax Transparency Data published by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), NXE, or Foxtel, has paid no income tax in any of the five years from 2019 to 2023.
An analysis of the accounts of Foxtel prepared for MWM (which is unlikely to be covered by the learned pundits of Sky News despite their avid sermonising about Australia’s national interest) shows that NXE has generated $14B of total income across this five-year period.
The total tax payable across this period however is $0. The average total income is $2.8B per year for this government mandated monopoly media asset, while the average tax payable is $0 per year. For 2023 the numbers are: total income $2.8 billion and tax payable $0.
My, my.
They have form. They managed to cream off $4.5B a few years ago by creating a soufflé of ‘goodwill’ (which is not cash) which magically transmogrified into cash they siphoned overseas.
MORE
https://michaelwest.com.au/newscorps-foxtel-welfare-tax/