A lot of the criticism aimed at Bernie has more to do with his obnoxious, triumphalist and cult-like supporters online than his policies. No one knows how many real life individuals they represent, and how many might be trolls, ratfucking Trump supporters or even employees of the Russian propaganda ministry. But they are a real phenomenon online, and it's not hard to meet people with this attitude in real life who are distinctly American (and usually young, male and bearded).
To my eye, Bernie does deserve at least partial blame for obnoxious Berners because he promotes a black-and-white worldview that does not allow for honest disagreement by people acting in good faith. Everyone who doesn't support him is "corrupt," "corporate," and basically evil.
Has he ever admitted he was wrong? I don't think so, and that's a bad sign.
But the biggest scandal for Bernie is right in front of our faces -- the fact that he is a life-long career politician, a guy who has been running for office since his senior year student body election (in 1958, no exaggeration). Bernie has cut deals with corporate interests (like the National Rifle Association, and backers of the F35 fighter and a nuclear waste dump in a poor, Latino community in Texas). He has earned nearly $5 million of taxpayer money directly, and then enriched his wife and daughter further with campaign funds.
The first person he ever voted for -- by his own admission -- was himself, and it couldn't have been before 1971 (when he was 31). The idea that he is "an outsider" or a "fresh voice" is ridiculous. He's just a career politician who pisses a lot of people off and has trouble getting bills passed -- which is not the same thing at all.
Quotes
Scandals:
Corruption: funneling government money to his wife and stepdaughter
Nuclear Waste Dump (environmental racism)
Girl trouble: Bernie's bizarre sexual theories
Abuses his workers
Odd ties to Russia
Demagoguery: secrecy, spin and conspiracies
Sources
Home
Quotes
"Some people say I am very hard to work with. They say I can be a real son of a bitch. They say I can be nasty, I don't know how to get along with people. Well, maybe there's some truth to it."
-- Bernie Sanders
"The Waste Authority does a scoping study. The scoping study says this [nuclear waste dump site] is not scientifically suitable, but the Waste Authority goes ahead and chooses this community. Why not? Disproportionately poor, disproportionately Latino. This is an issue of environmental justice."
-- Sen. Paul Wellstone, opposing the nuclear waste bill that Bernie Sanders pushed through Congress
“It reflects very poorly on [Bernie Sanders]. Shoving this [nuclear waste dump] down people’s throats is not progressive politics. It was business as usual. It’s a classic case of rich people from a white state shifting something they don’t want to a poor minority community somewhere else.”
-- Dr. Robert Bullard, dean of the Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University
"I guess our campaign just said 'Why bother?'"
-- Jane Sanders, after Bernie's campaign asked for two extensions, then simply refused to release a required financial disclosure in 2016.
"It sure looks like the Sanders campaign abused this [disclosure extension]"
-- Richard Skinner, of the Sunlight Foundation, a pro-transparency in government group
"Jesse [Jackson] believes that serious social change is possible within the Democratic Party. I don't."
-- Bernie Sanders
"President Kennedy was elected while I was [in college] at the University of Chicago, that was 1960. I remember being physically nauseated by his speech, and that doesn't happen very often. He debated Nixon on Cuba. And their hatred for the Cuban Revolution, both of them, was so strong."
-- Bernie Sanders
-- Quote Sources
Corruption: government money for his wife and step-daughter
Bernie has put a lot of money in his family's (and his own) pocket by hiring his wife and step-daughter onto government payrolls, and he has done this consistently for 35 years. You might think this is common, but it's a rare kind of corruption (though Donald Trump does it all the time.) Most politicians trade favors for campaign donations, which bring them power but not actual money. Bernie and Jane Sanders bought a third house -- with an acre of lakefront property -- immediately after the 2016 election, paying $570,000 in cash. No mortgage or loan -- they literally wrote a check for the entire amount.
On the night Bernie was elected mayor of Burlington, Vermont, Jane O'Meara introduced herself to him. As soon as he took office, he created a city job for her and they married in 1988. Today this would be illegal, though to be fair, sexual harassment and giving jobs to girlfriends were more widely accepted in those pre-Anita Hill-hearing days.
But even back then, it was still corrupt, funneling government money to someone close to him. And he has never stopped. In the early 1990s, he paid his wife $30,000 out of campaign funds as a commission for buying TV ads and for "consulting," according to Bernie's campaign manager Jeff Weaver. At the same time, he paid his step-daughter Carina Driscoll (Jane's child from a previous marriage) $65,000 for work she had never done before -- serving as Bernie's campaign manager, fundraiser, office manager and database manager (!).
This is an ongoing family tradition. In 2004, Jane Sanders moved into a job as president of Burlington College, which went bankrupt a few years after she was forced to resign in 2011. But before she quit (with a $200,000 severance package even larger than her $150,000 salary), Jane Sanders funneled $510,000 of college money to her daughter Carina's woodworking school -- from a college with a total annual budget of only $5 million -- even though woodworking had not previously been part of the college's curriculum. She sent another $68,000 of college money to the son of Bernie's old friend (and Jane's former supervisor at her city job) Jonathan Leopold, to pay for free snorkeling trips at his Caribbean resort (Andro's Beach Resort, in the Bahamas).
These payments were all canceled after Jane Sanders resigned, but the school was mortally wounded from the $10 million in debt she pushed it to take on. Burlington College was put on probation by its regional accrediting body in 2014 due to its finances, and it closed for good in 2016 due to "the crushing weight of debt." The land that Jane Sanders arranged to buy was sold to a wealthy real estate developer at a discount.
Even today, the Sanders' joint tax return -- the one Bernie refused to release for so long -- shows that Jane received $4,900 in 2014 for serving on the Texas Low Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission (which Bernie played a key role in creating, by pushing an authorizing law through Congress). That commission manages the nuclear waste dump -- in a poor, Latino area of Texas -- that Bernie helped create, so that he could keep Yankee Vermont's radioactive waste out of Vermont (which is 94.33% white).
And in 2016, after ending his campaign, Bernie and Jane Sanders founded a 501(c)(3) "nonpartisan" nonprofit called "The Sanders Institute" which does not disclose its donations (though it does list some donors). It produced almost no content in its first year, but it paid David Driscoll -- Jane's youngest son -- $100,000 to be the director (one fifth of its entire budget), and also picked up Jane's travel expenses to places like Italy and Alaska.
-- Sources
Vermont is a small, progressive and 99.4% white state -- but it had its own nuclear power plant. As Vermont's only member of the House of Representatives during the 1990s, Bernie Sanders wanted to get rid of the plant's nuclear waste, but Not In My BackYard (NIMBY). Even though Vermont has huge granite deposits which are excellent candidates for long-term nuclear waste storage, Bernie co-sponsored, voted for and pushed through Congress a bill that authorized the creation of an interstate commission to ship the radioactive waste off to a poor Latino part of Texas, the tiny town of Sierra Blanca.
Congress was involved because no one wanted to support a national nuclear waste dump, so Congress hit upon the idea of interstate "compacts" -- states either had to store nuclear waste they generated in-state, or form interstate agreements with another state willing to acccept it (in return for lots of money.) Only one state has ever approved a compact and dumped their waste remotely: Vermont, which sends its waste to Texas, currently receiving $1,000 per cubic foot of Vermont Yankee waste, and up to ten times that amount for waste from other states.
A compact needed an authorizing bill approved by Congress, and there was plenty of opposition from three very different groups. Environmentalists (led by progressive U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota) focused on the risks but also raised the issue of environmental racism; Progressive Magazine called the project "New England's Pay Toilet."
Another group was the residents of Sierra Blanca, who drove 2,000 miles and marched the last hundred to beg Bernie Sanders not to push through this bill, noting that studies had shown it was going to be built on top of earthquake faults. He eventually agreed to talk with just three of them and said "You're not going to like what I'm going to tell you." He was right about that. When they asked him to at least visit the site to see it for himself, he replied "Absolutely not! I'm gonna be running for re-election in the state of Vermont." When they showed up at his rally to protest, he walked off the stage to avoid them.
The third opponent was the government of Mexico, which ironically used the environmental mechanisms created in the NAFTA treaty that Bernie Sanders opposed so fiercely, to slow the project.
This is a key point. Bernie Sanders knew exactly what was wrong with this plan, because his usual ally Paul Wellstone -- and the residents of Sierra Blanca who traveled across the country -- told him to his face, citing scientific studies. Wellstone added amendments to allow the local residents to oppose the dump in court if they could prove racial or ethnic discrimination motivated the signing; Bernie Sanders led the successful effort to remove those amendments.
None of this was secret. A predecessor commission in Texas had picked Sierra Blanca precisely because its poor, Latino residents wouldn't have enough clout to stop it. How do we know this? Because they said so directly in a written report. According to the Austin Chronicle:
Located in one of the poorest counties in Texas, Sierra Blanca is a low-income, predominantly Mexican-American community, a fact not lost on the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Authority (TLLRWDA). The Authority commissioned a study back in 1984 as part of its effort to locate its radioactive dump site. Authors of the study recommended targeting special populations such as "Hispanics, particularly those with little formal education and low incomes," but cautioned against "increasing the level of knowledge" of those same Hispanics too much, lest they turn against the dump like everyone else.
The twist is that the opponents of Sierra Blanca won -- because the dump needed further approval from a local Texas licensing board, and even they couldn't stomach it. That was mostly because an earthquake hit the site -- just like environmentalists and scientists had predicted -- just two weeks before the election day for governor George Bush Jr.'s re-election. He quickly changed his position to oppose the plant, and the Texas state board denied the permit.
But there was another twist -- the radioactive waste dump wasn't killed. It just moved to Andrews County, hard on Texas' border with New Mexico, another poor and mostly Latino area. Waste Control Specialists (WCS), who runs the dump, started storing waste there in one of two dumps the same year Bernie pushed through the authorizing law (1998). WCS got final approval for long term storage of Vermont waste in 2009. Jane Sanders joined the commission that managed it the year it formally opened (2012), andWCS steadily kept applying for (and receiving) regulatory approval to store more and more deadly forms of nuclear waste, from an increasing number of states.
At this point, it is the only long term nuclear waste dump approved in the United States during the last 40 years, and there's a very good good chance that it's the only one that will ever be approved again. (The first two are very old, located at the Hanford Nuclear Reserve in Washington state and The dump is in a very unpopulated, desolate area with conservative, pro-dump politicians and lots of room to grow.
And the biggest irony of all, is that creating this radioactive waste dump is pretty much the only real change that Bernie Sanders has accomplished in his 30 years in Congress.
-- Sources
Men of Bernie Sanders' generation -- including Joe Biden and Michael Bloomberg -- grew up in a heavily misogynistic culture, and it's hard to shake. Biden is "handsy" (over-huggy) and has been accused of non-consensual hair sniffing; Bloomberg presided over a highly misogynistic, hard-ass culture at his company.
Bernie Sanders' weirdness comes out in different ways, mostly in his older writings for the Vermont Freeman newspaper. But he also keeps hiring his girlfriend (now wife) to paid positions she has no experience at, which is deeply problematic of course. Then there are the times he shushed Hillary Clinton during a debate and told his wife not to stand next to him -- pushing her out of the way no less -- at the podium while taking cheers on stage in 2016.
Bernie's not talking about his alternative medicine theories much since he started running for president, but he has written about them a lot, and many seem to revolve around women and sex. For example, he wrote that men get prostate cancer because as boys they had "an old bitch of a teacher (and there are many of them)". Women, on the other hand, get cancer of the lady bits if they're not free enough with their sex lives. “Sexual adjustment seemed to be very poor in those with cancer of the cervix, (who) were found to have a lower incidence of orgasm during sexual intercourse," he wrote. Later in the same article: "The manner in which you bring up your daughter with regard to sexual attitudes may very well determine whether or not she will develope (sic) breast cancer, among other things. How much guilt, nervousness have you imbued in your daughter with regard to sex?"
For the record, scientists have completely debunked theories that stress, celibacy or "a cancer personality" lead to cancer. The only link between sex and cancer is HPV (human pappiloma virus), and there is now a vaccine for the most dangerous strains.
Bernie's sexual theories aren't limited to cancer, either. His columns -- written when he was a 30-year old divorced man -- contain a lot of creepy musings on how exciting sexual violence is. “A man goes home and masturbates his typical fantasy. A woman on her knees. A woman tied up. A woman abused. A woman enjoys intercourse with her man — as she fantasizes being raped by 3 men simultaneously. ... Have you ever looked at the Stag, Man, Hero, Tough magazines on the shelf of your local bookstore? Do you know why the newspaper with the articles like, 'Girl, 12, raped by 14 men' sell so well? To what in us are they appealing?"
Yet another column paints the countercultural struggle as "Life Versus Death", imagining a "beautiful Revolution" expressed as more sex for men -- "when a girl pushes aside all that her mother has 'taught' her and accepts her boyfriend's love." The Revolution is the triumph of Life -- "Life is young (at any age), alive, open and nonfearing. Life can take his clothes off and be naked with friends."
Granted, these articles were written a long time ago; the Vermont Freeman shut down years ago. But Bernie has never taken back or renounced the arguments he made (though he tried to pass off the rape fantasies as "bad fiction," which makes no sense -- they were in a non-fiction newspaper column).
Anyone with a grandpa or great-grandpa knows that it's hard for old men to shake all of the outdated attitudes they grew up with. Bernie spoke at an alternative health conference when he was 68, still pushing the link between stress and cancer, and introduced legislation to fund alternative medicine in 2013.
-- Sources
Abuses his workers
Amy Klobuchar and Donald Trump are notorious for abusing their staffs: yelling, throwing things (and in Trump's case, firing anyone who doesn't agree with every crazy thing he says.) But Bernie Sanders has a similarly bad reputation, earned over years, which might explain why he ended up relying on his wife and stepdaughter to fill key rolls on his congressional campaign staffs. He also shared Trump's anger at the media whenever he doesn't like what they report.
Like Ralph Nader, it seems likely that Bernie's strong belief in his mission makes him feel that it's "more important" to get things done than to treat his staff like human beings.
Here are some things that people who've worked for him have said:
-- "As a supervisor, he was unbelievably abusive. He did things that, if he found out that another supervisor was doing in a workplace, he would go after them. You can't treat employees that way."
-- "Bernie was an asshole. Just unnecessarily an asshole."
-- "He yelled in meetings all the time. He'd yell, 'I don't want to hear excuses! I want to get it done!'"
-- "I think he's got a ton of conviction. I just think he's kind of harsh to a fault. He's so focused on his issues that he doesn't have a softer side. I don't think he's a very nice man."
-- "At his best, Sanders is a skilled reader and manipulator of people and events. At his worst, he falls prey to his own emotions, is unable to practice what he preaches (though he would believe otherwise) and exudes a contempt for those he derides, including his staff."
-- Sources
Odd ties to Russia
One of Donald Trump's biggest vulnerabilities is his subservient and clandestine relationship with Russia and Vladimir Putin, but Bernie Sanders will not be able to use that issue against Trump because of his own weird connections to Russia.
As of February 2020, Trump is already attacking Sanders for his "honeymoon in Russia." (coming soon)
-- Sources
Sources
Quote Sources -- Back
Nasty to staff -- "Marking History In Vermont" by Steve Rosenfeld (Bernie's former press secretary), (Hollowbrook Publishing) 1992, quoted in SEven Days Vermont (newspaper), "Anger Management: Sanders Fights for Employees, Except His Own" By PAUL HEINTZ, August 26, 2015
Senator Wellstone -- Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 77 (Monday, June 15, 1998) [Pages S6349-S6356]
Bullard quote -- Bernie Sanders' Nuclear Waste Votes Divide Texas Activists, by Jamie Lovegrove, Texas Tribune, Feb. 28, 2016
Jane Sanders "why bother?" & Richard Skinner quotes-- Sanders' wife defends non-disclosure, vacation home buy," by Dave Gram, Brattleboro Reformer, August 18, 2016
Jesse Jackson diss -- "Sanders Says Independents Offer Much", by Jim Emmons, the Rutland Herald, July 22, 1988
John Kennedy diss - "Bernie Sanders Interview," by Chrissie Damon, University of Vermont Gadfly, December 1, 1987
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Corruption Sources -- Back
"Jane Says: Sanders' Secret Weapon or a Political Liability?," by Paul Heintz, Seven Days Vermont, June 17, 2015
"Sanders admits campaign paid family members," by DAVID GRAM, The Rutland Herald, April 14, 2005
"Q&A: Jane Sanders, President of Burlington College Robert Smith, editor and freelance writer for The Message for The Week, interviewed Jane Sanders at Burlington College" by Robert Smith, Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility, Oct 17th, 2007
"Burlington College to close under weight of debt," by Zach Despart, Burlington Free Press, May 16, 2016
Burlington College's IRS Form 990, schedule L (Business Transactions involving Interested Persons) at ProPublica.org: 2012 (for fiscal year 2011), 2011 (for FY 2010), 2010 (for FY 2009).
Sanders' wife defends non-disclosure, vacation home buy," by Dave Gram, Brattleboro Reformer, August 18, 2016
"Sanders Institute has little to show for first year and $500K," By Jasper Craven, Vermont Digger, July 30, 2018
"Sanders' 'summer camp' in Vermont becomes fodder in debate," by LISA RATHKE, The Barre Montpelier Times Argus, Feb 20, 2020
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Environmental Racism Sources -- Back
Sanders to Sierra Blanca: "Drop Dead!" by Olive Hershey, Texas Observer, September 11, 1998
Bernie Sanders' Nuclear Waste Votes Divide Texas Activists by Jamie Lovegrove, the Texas Tribune, February 28, 2016
What You Should Know About Bernie Sanders And A Controversial Proposal To Bring Toxic Waste To Sierra Blanca," by Dan Solomon, Texas Tribune, February 29, 2016
Did Bernie Sanders Support Dumping Nuclear Waste in a ‘Poor Latino Community’? A conservative group's Facebook meme gets some basic facts right but leaves out important context.", by Dan MacGuill, Snopes.com, June 15, 2018
What a Dump: What Does Gov. Bush Have Buried in West Texas?, by Nate Blakeslee, the Austin Chronicle, March 13, 1998
Paul Wellstone's speech against the Texas-Vermont-Maine Compact, [Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 77, June 15, 1998, Pages S6349-S6356.
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Weird about Women and Sex Sources -- Back
How Bernie Sanders Learned to Be a Real Politician: A portrait of the candidate as a young radical," by Tim Murphy, Mother Jones mgazine, May 26, 2015
You Might Very Well Be the Cause of Cancer”: Read Bernie Sanders’ 1970s-Era Essays, by Tim Murphy, Mother Jones Magazine, July 5, 2015
"Man -- and Woman," by Bernie Sanders, the Vermont Freeman, February, 1972. (There's a photo of it on Snopes.)
"Cancer, Disease and Society," by Bernie Sanders, the Vermont Freeman, December 19-22, 1969, p. 6-7
"The Revolution is Life Versus Death," by Bernie Sanders, the Vermont Freeman, November 14-17, 1969, page 9-10
"Bernie Sanders' Long History With Alternative Medicine" by Sam Frizell, Time magazine, March 6, 2016
"For Bernie Sanders, radical views once extended to theories on what causes cancer "I have my own feelings about what causes cancer," Sanders said in 1988." by Olivia Rubin, ABCNews.com, February 27, 2020
"Bernie Being A Dick to His Wife on National TV - "Don't stand next to me." by John Avignone, YouTube, March 26, 2016
"For Bernie Sanders, radical views once extended to theories on what causes cancer "I have my own feelings about what causes cancer," Sanders said in 1988." by Olivia Rubin, ABCNews.com, February 27, 2020
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Bad Boss Sources -- Back
"Anger Management: Sanders Fights for Employees, Except His Own " by By Paul Heintz, Seven Days Vermont, August 26, 2015
Odd ties to Russia Sources (coming soon) -- Back
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