BERNIE, BRIDE AS BONNIE, CLYDE
FBI trailing ‘socialist’ Sanders and wife over bank loan deal
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and his bride, Jane, have become the Bonnie and Clyde of national Democratic politics — the law is hot on their trail as the lovebirds restlessly move from one hideout to another.
The difference, of course, is that Bonnie and Clyde were dirt poor, while Sen. Sanders, the 75-year-old Social Justice Warrior, reported an income of $1,052,000 last year.
And Bonnie and Clyde lived in their car. Mr. and Mrs. Sanders own three fabulous homes — a four-bedroom in Burlington, a townhouse on Capitol Hill, as well as their new summer cottage on Lake Champlain that they bought for $575,000 cash last summer.
The “cottage” is in North Hero — the working-class hero now summers in Hero.
As Bernie is wont to say, “The issue of wealth and income inequality is the great moral issue of our time, and it is the great political issue of our time.”
Yes, and it apparently pays quite well, too.
But it’s a 24/7 job, bringing the war back home, as Bernie et al. used to say. And as he once tweeted: “How many yachts do billionaires need? How many cars do they need? Give us a break.” To which someone responded: “Which of your houses did you tweet that from, comrade?”
Bernie used to rail about “millionaires and billionaires.” Now he mostly blasts “billionaires.” I guess he’s OK with millionaires now that he is one.
Bernie and Jane, you may recall, are such devoted socialists that back in 1988 they honeymooned in the old Soviet Union.
From 2004 to 2011 the missus was president of tiny Burlington College, for which she was paid $160,000 — sweet, especially when added to Bernie’s $174,000-a-year take as a crusading share-the-wealth Marxist.
Meanwhile, Jane’s daughter Carina Driscoll, herself a local hack Democrat pol, started something called the Vermont Woodworking School, to which Burlington College was soon funneling hundreds
of thousands of dollars. Another nationwide search!
In short, the Sanders were operating Burlington College like UMass Boston, as a hackerama of the North.
Eventually Jane decided that Burlington should buy a nice 33acre lakefront tract of land from the Diocese of Burlington and relocate the campus there. But she needed a $6.5-million loan. The local bank OK’d it, on the condition that the school come up with $2.27 million in pledges.
Jane agreed to that requirement, in writing, but in the end she could only come up with $676,000. The school began hemorrhaging cash. An old story: They ran out of Other People’s Money.
Jane Sanders took a $200,000 buyout, the school went belly-up, and the FBI began asking questions about the bank loan.
According to The Associated Press, a local Republican has alleged that Sanders’ Senate office pressured the bank to make the loan. Sen. Sanders denies everything, calling the attacks “pathetic” and describing his wife as “the most honest person I know.”
Showing his age, Bernie becomes cranky when asked about the G-men sniffing around. He’s feeling the heat, if not the “Bern.” Any day now he’ll be bellowing, “Get off my lawn!” As he snapped at one TV interviewer: “It is a sad state of affairs in America, not only when we have politicians being destroyed, but when there are attacks against elected officials.”
This sort of thing was never permitted in the Soviet Union, comrade. An apparatchik was expected to have one or two dachas, and any petit bourgeoisie who questioned it — off to the gulag!
If only the Sanders could prove their innocence conclusively. Sadly, though, shortly after the school folded last year, its main office was burglarized, and according to the Vermont news website VTDigger, its computers, external hard drives and main computer server were stolen. There were no signs of forced entry.
Don’t you hate it when that happens?
Now the Sanders are lawyering up. And those damnable capitalist-roader running-dog outfits like Judicial Watch are FOIA’ing documents. Now Judicial Watch has discovered that as part of its deal with the Diocese, Burlington College was required to take over a home for 16 people with disabilities on Diocesan property. Sanders agreed to find new homes for them. But in 2010, she wrote to the Diocese’s lawyer: “It is simply not fair to expect the College to continue the burden of the expenses associated with housing both your population and ours.”
Burden? Taking care of the destitute is a now burden, for socialists? Mrs. Bernie sounds like one of those heartless Republicans who wants to push Granny in a wheelchair off a cliff — oh wait, that’s the old 2012 TV ad the Democrats have resurrected to run against the GOP.
Well, you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs. Some comrade said that. Wonder how many lakefront dachas he owned.
Order Howie’s new book, “Kennedy Babylon: A Century of Scandal and Depravity,” at howiecarrshow.com.