Tag Archives: Jane O’Meara Sanders

Not With a Bang, But a Whimper

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Vermont’s longest-running Cold War ended this week, with Seven Days waving the white flag and surrendering to Sen. Bernie Sanders.

It had been nine long years since Bernie had deigned to speak with Vermont’s leading weekly newspaper. The streak ended this week, with Seven Days accepting what was presumably a limited sit-down dedicated to one of the senator’s favorite issues, the plight of America’s senior citizens.

Ultimately it means little to nothing, but it made me a little sad. Way back in December 2017 when I helmed the gone-but-not-forgotten Fair Game column, I covered one of the great events of the Burlington social/political calendar: the late Tony Pomerleau’s annual Christmas shindig. It was a blatant exercise in noblesse oblige, with Pomerleau footing the bill for a big dinner and holiday gifts for selected members of the Queen City’s neediest. And every top-rank political type felt obliged to kiss Pomerleau’s ring, including America’s most notorious Democratic Socialist.

Bernie and Tony had a longstanding relationship, going back to the former’s first days as mayor of Burlington. Sanders had just won a shock victory in 1981, but he didn’t let it go to his head (at least not immediately). He realized he needed to find common ground with The Great and Good of Burlington, including its leading real estate mogul. The unlikely pair did indeed figure out how to work together, which helped get Sanders’ mayoralty off the ground and set the stage for his very successful political career.

Okay, I’m making a short story long. Point being, I wanted to get a quote or two from Sanders about this Odd Couple partnership. That was all. I approached him before the event, when he was glad-handing his way around the room. He seemed amenable at first, but that changed when I mentioned the magic words “Seven Days.” He said “Not right now” and turned away. He could have added “And not ever, either,” but it went without saying. At the time, Bernie held a grudge against Seven Days because it dared to cover some of his rare missteps. I was just caught in the crossfire.

As I walked up to him I started recording on my phone, and captured the entire 10-second exchange. I’ve saved it ever since for sentimental reasons, which is why I can quote it back to you now.

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Commence Website Scrub In 3…2…1…

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Well, this is embarrassing.

The Sanders Institute, the vanity project vaguely defined policy nonprofit founded by Bernie and Jane Sanders, has a distinguished list of “Fellows,” a title with few if any actual duties.

It’s impressive. Robert Reich, Bill McKibben, Cornel West, Danny Glover, Ben Jealous, Nina Turner…

… and Tulsi Gabbard.

Oops.

Gabbard used to be an interesting political phenomenon with some solid progressive credentials, but she long ago became an unreliable self-guided policy missile. She just had a star turn at, ahem, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), where she “defended parents protesting at school boards, attacked Big Tech censorship and referred to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as an ‘autocratic leader’ for his response to the trucker protests against COVID-19 mandates,” according to the Washington Times.

I don’t see much of Bernie’s agenda in there.

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What’s with all the secrecy, Bernie?

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Two recent stories on VTDigger raise further questions about a subject that ought to concern every open-minded Vermont liberal: Why is Bernie Sanders so secretive — and so defensive — about his personal finances?

The latest article explains how Sanders skated around federal disclosure requirements for presidential candidates. Federal law mandated disclosure by mid-May, but Sanders’ attorney requested a 45-day extension. When that was running out, he asked for another.

By the time the second extension was on fumes, Sanders had formally ended his presidential bid. No longer a candidate, no longer required to disclose.

The Sanders campaign requested the delays because Bernie was so busy, what with being a presidential candidate and a Senator and all. But four things about that:

— All the other candidates were also busy running for president, and presumably managed to file.

— Bernie wasn’t exactly spending much time on his Senatorial duties, what with skipping virtually every Senate vote from January to July.

— He had a fully-staffed, big-ass campaign operation. Surely someone could have been tasked with preparing the disclosure.

— as Sanders consigliere Michael Briggs said elsewhere in the story, the disclosure “would have looked pretty much the same” as his Congressional filings in past years.

But… if it would have been “pretty much the same”, wouldn’t it have been a breeze to prepare?

Sorry, I don’t buy it.

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Why won’t Bernie talk about his finances?

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Big story on VTDigger a few days ago, detailing the weird secrecy around much of Bernie Sanders’ campaign spending.

The campaign funneled a cool $82 million through an obscure media-buying firm located in a suburban DC house. Old Towne Media LLC did the media buys for Sanders — despite having no track record to speak of. $82 million is roughly 40 percent of Bernie’s total campaign expenditures.

The ad agency, established in 2014, has almost exclusively served the Sanders campaign, and the company keeps a low profile. It has no website and no listed phone number. A full list of principals isn’t publicly available.

The principals of Old Towne are two longtime colleagues of Jane O’Meara Sanders who have worked on some of Bernie’s past re-election bids. But it’s a big leap from staffing a slam-dunk campaign in little old Vermont, to playing a crucial role in a bid for the presidency

But hey, perhaps Bernie values loyalty over experience.

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Burlington College and its ex-president

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We could have seen this coming, but hope sprang eternal… until it died, poetically, in the snows of mid-May. Burlington College finally gave up the ghost after several years of trying to overcome one of the dumbest decisions ever made by a college president.

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I have to agree with Ms. Hallenbeck. For those just joining us, Jane O’Meara Sanders was president of Burlington College from 2004 to 2011. In her antepenultimate year, she engineered a massive land deal that put the college deep into hock: the college agreed to buy 33 acres of land and some buildings for $10 million from the Diocese of Vermont, which was liquidating assets to help pay the consequences of its long-suppressed pedophilia scandal.

Burlington College, with a student body of 200, had to assume millions in debt to acquire the property. But Sanders had a Big Plan. She was going to greatly expand the campus, nearly quadruple the student population, and dramatically increase fundraising.

In the depth of the Great Recession.

When liberal-arts colleges were dropping like flies.

It was a terrible idea on its face.

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