Wolf in Donkey’s Clothing
2nd February 2016
James E. Miller doesn’t much like Bernie Sanders.
Sanders has propelled himself to the near-top of the Democrats’ favorite list based on, among many things, his support for a “living wage.” “The current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is a starvation wage,” the irascible senator proclaimed at a Capitol Hill rally last year, “and [it] must be raised to a living wage.” That’s a nice, and unrealistic, sentiment. But the problem is that Sanders doesn’t think his own employees deserve that kind of pay. According to the Media Research Center, the Sanders campaign pays its interns only $12 an hour. That’s a hefty sum for phone bankers and coffee fetchers. But it’s not enough to pay apartment rent and feed a family. Does Bernie not think his college-age employees deserve to live securely?
Sanders’ “do as I say, not as I do” approach also pertains to the app economy. Not one to let an industry operate away from the watchful eye of the government, the senator says he has “serious problems” with companies like Uber because they are “unregulated.” And yet, as a study by National Journal showed, Bernie used the ride-sharing service Uber for 100% of his taxi rides for the first six months of his campaign. For a company that skirts worker protection laws, one might think Mr. Solidarity would refuse to patronize Uber.
Then there is the coup de grâce: Sanders used his congressional campaign war chest to enrich his family members. An investigation by the neocon outlet Washington Free Beacon reveals that Sanders’ wife, Jane O’Meara Sanders, collected a cool $90,000 from her husband’s House campaign in return for consulting services from 2002 to 2004. Bernie’s stepdaughter Carina Driscoll also collected $65,000 from the campaign during the same period.
The shady dealings don’t stop there. O’Meara Sanders reportedly abused her privileged position as president of Burlington College from 2004 to 2011. Under Mrs. Sanders’ tenure, the college paid $500,000 to the Vermont Woodworking School, which was run by Driscoll. Additionally, the school gave an all-inclusive Caribbean resort run by family friend Jonathan Leopold $68,000 for a study-abroad program. After O’Meara Sanders stepped down from head of Burlington College (not before inflating donor pledges for a loan application from the local Roman Catholic Diocese that cost the bishopric administration nearly $2 million), payments to the resort and woodworking school ended. Funny, that.
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