@chuckvw But while they're wasting time eating our own, the Repugs will be eating our lunch, yet again. The Democrats have an amazing talent for suicide.

establishment dems will have his back...

@orlbucfan

There are real questions about how she represented donation pledges to the bank to obtain big loan for school land purchase.

have not seen how she would have profited personally, but that may not be necessary.

may also have been some dealing with a local "godfather", but that may be a different thing.

Let's see if Bernie can stop saying "Russia" long enough to remember MFA is a good idea.
Jane can take care of herself.

This nonsense went down during the campaign. It didn't grow legs then, and it sure won't grow them now. Rec'd!!

@Centaurea

Brady Toensing was not just Trump's Vermont campaign manager and vice-chairman of the Vermont Republican Party. He is a right-wing attack dog and provocateur. His job is to stir up trouble for those whom the Republicans view as the enemy, and it seems to run in the family.

Brady's mother is Victoria Toensing, a DC lawyer and right-wing political lobbyist. Since the 1990s, she and her husband, Joe diGenova ( a former US Attorney), have been well-known as Republican activists and operatives. They were integral players in the Repub shenanigans during Bill Clinton's administration and impeachment. I would assume that during his time working for Karl Rove, David Brock had occasion to work with Toensing and diGenova.

Edited to add: In fact, now that I think about it, I seem to recall Brock talking about Victoria Toensing in his book, "Blinded by the Right".

@CS in AZ

It would take me longer than I can spend this morning to do a line by line of it. However, I have dealt with consultants and attended many board meetings. Consultants who will report back with exactly what the person or committee that hired them wants to hear are quite common. In fact, quite often their reports are pretty much a re-hash of what they were told during their initial interviews.

A firm I worked in once got rid of a married partner's mistress that way. She worked for the firm and no one had the wherewithal to tell him she had to go. So, in a huge firm, the -consultants decided that this low-level person was our major problem. He was too smart to be fooled--heck, no one was fooled--but he too smart to risk his own power in the firm. As the partner in charge of hiring and firing, he fired her, though I have no doubt he more than made it up to her afterward.)

Board meetings. Typically, the majority of the board does not show up at the company, except for board meetings. This is especially so of larger not for profits, who put busy, notable people on the board for prestige. The President, who is also usually one of the directors, makes a presentation to the board. See where I'm going?

And, what the "outside directors" care about most are (1) getting the meeting over with and (2)their respective own reputations and personal liability. A report from an outside consultant and the President covers their asses.

I'm not saying the above is what happened or even that anything is wrong with it. All I'm saying is that's how this stuff usually happens. And, IIRC, this article would have come out before donors denied making the pledge JS told the bank about, which is the important issue. And, I think the only ones who really know whether those donors lied kr JS lied or something in between, both, are JS and those donors.

FYI. A former neighbor who is a lawyer once got deep in financial trouble and was scrambling to save her condo. She asked a friend to write her a note, so my neighbor's total picture would look good to the bank when she applied for either a line of credit or a refinance--I-ve forgotten which. She got it. When she defaulted, the bank tried to collect on the note and my neighbor's friend came clean. I don't know how my neighbor avoided jail. I suspect it was by handing the condo over to the bank without forcing a foreclosure.

I'm not saying something like that was involved in Burlington, but it could have been.

A Look At Jane Sanders' Role In The Closure Of Burlington College

This article was published on May 18, 2016, after the college announced it was closing.

Sanders said she was brought on in 2004 as a "turnaround" president as the college faced financial and accreditation problems. But she said those problems were solved under her seven-year tenure.

"We moved from a commuter school to a master's institution, we moved from one acre to 32 acres and beautiful buildings," Jane Sanders said. "We had a development plan in place when I left — it was in excellent financial condition. And one only needs to look at the data to see that. The final audit was quite good."

"Well if you ask the current board members, they will quite definitively say it was taking on this $10 million in debt that basically set us on a downward spiral," Freese said.

But when it comes to placing blame, none of those individuals are blaming Jane Sanders by name.

"I have not spoken to a single person in the administration or the board who is naming names, but they are attributing it to the debt that was taken on under her tenure," Freese said.

Jane has her own story about differences with the Board of Trustees and why she left, that there was a change in leadership that didn't agree with her vision or plans, so they pushed her out, or she "decided to leave" because, as she put it, the Board runs the school.

The Board approved the loans and the land purchase and the expansion plans. The Board has a financial committee whose job is to look at the numbers and determine if plans will go forward. Jane was their employee. They are all being careful not to say "she" personally had anything to do with filling out loan applications or the number crunching. Which she probably didn't, would be my guess.

The guy launching these accusations is a known republican operative who has a history of making baseless legal accusations against political opponents. And he didn't care about this college land loan for years, until Bernie ran for president. Hum...

This is definitely a politically motivated personal attack on Bernie and Jane. It's sad to me that's it's working, even to the degree of "raising questions" and creating FUD about Bernie's political goals. And a really unfair dragging of Jane into the mud, collateral damage. I doubt it will go anywhere legally -- this guy's previous years-long persecution of his last target never did -- but that hardly matters since his goal was political damage. He's already got what he wanted. And the longer they drag out the investigation he demanded, without any resolution, the better. Ideally until at least the next presidential election.

@MrWebster

For all the talk about the Clintons, who was it that (practically overnight) got Perez installed as Democratic Party chair? Not the Clintons. Obama makes a couple of phone calls and the deed is done.

It's my opinion that Obama is still running the show. After all, it's not like he's run out of deposit slips...

Looks like Hillary and Obama are beginning their efforts to become the face of the democratic party. This witch hunt could have the effect of putting Bernie back into a media black hole while all the media attention (and donor monies) go to Hillary and Obama.

In terms of media. The billionaires who want to stop the leftward drift of the democratic party (ha.) got a shitload of major media press, while the Justice Democrats get zilch, nada, even though in terms of money, they ain't doing bad.

If Hillary and Obama become the face of the party in 2018, say farewell to the party.

@MrWebster @MrWebster

I must say that I have serious doubts about the timing being accidental; both wings of the Two-Faced US Corporate Party work for those in the pool of powerful self interests who seemingly cannot bear that the rest of the world can still have either any money/property or any rights, even though they themselves have already stolen the great bulk of both...

Edited to remove an extra letter.

Looks like Hillary and Obama are beginning their efforts to become the face of the democratic party. This witch hunt could have the effect of putting Bernie back into a media black hole while all the media attention (and donor monies) go to Hillary and Obama.

In terms of media. The billionaires who want to stop the leftward drift of the democratic party (ha.) got a shitload of major media press, while the Justice Democrats get zilch, nada, even though in terms of money, they ain't doing bad.

If Hillary and Obama become the face of the party in 2018, say farewell to the party.