I wrote yesterday about George Mason University professor Jagadish Shukla. Besides being the lead signatory of a now-vanished letter recommending the federal government use RICO laws to prosecute skeptics of anthropogenic climate change, Dr. Shukla is also the head of the Institute of Global Environment and Society — a cozy perch, nearly entirely government-funded, from which the Shukla family (Jagadish, his wife, and their daughter constitute three-fourths of the official staff) has pocketed $5.6 million in taxpayer dollars since 2001.
As of yesterday, the House’s Committee on Science, Space, and Technology has opened an investigation into Dr. Shukla’s activities. According to chairman Lamar Smith (R., Tex.), the committee has
serious concerns because IGES appears to be almost fully funded by taxpayer money while simultaneously participating in partisan political activity by requesting a RICO investigation of companies and organizations that disagree with the Obama Administration on climate change.
The committee has ordered Dr. Shukla to preserve all records created since January 1, 2009.
We’ve suggested in the past that climate science is a racket, but who knew it had its own Lucchese family?