One day back in Massachusetts I was walking along Humarock beach after a pretty good storm and absently kicked a pile of seaweed. Something was in it so I reached down and dug whatever it was out of the pile. It was a lamp. I looked it over carefully and saw it was inscribed with 'Santa Maria MCDXCII'. Wow! It was made in 1492!
Anyway, I shook the lamp and discovered there was still oil in it! I spied a dog walker and I knew the lamp was valuable. I stuffed it under my coat. After a short time the inside of my coat got rather warm so I looked inside it. The lamp was still lit!
Now, when RFKjr was getting grilled by Bernie and he was accusing Kennedy of possibly wanting to take money from Big Pharma, Kennedy threw it right back at him and pointed out to Bernie that he had accepted a pretty good amount of money from them himself.
Bernie went through the roof babbling that no CEOs had ever given him money. (Well, no $hit. The CEO tells the CFO (financial officer) to hand out the money. It's not like the CEO of a major corporation met Bernie in an alley somewhere and handed him a briefcase full of cash.
Bernie's excuse was 'The workers gave it to me'. That's kind of unlikely as I have a hard time believing that all the workers at a pharmaceutical plant passed the hat and came up with a million bucks. If anything, Bernie shook down one of the unions and claimed the money came from the workers.
Unions can't use dues for political purposes, however many of them have PACs and they sometimes try shake down their membership for donations. It happened to me a few times but I squirmed out by explaining I had no cash on me, just a credit card. This was before cell phone credit card readers.
After the third or fourth time the business agent asked me why I never had cash with me. With a nonchalant air I explained that my wife cleaned out my wallet the night before I left for work to keep me from buying whores with it. He blushed and my longtime shipmate quickly said to him I was married to a mean, mean woman and excused himself to go below where he laughed himself silly.
A nearby deckhand looked at me wide-eyed and agape and I knew that story would go through the fleet like wildfire.
Back to Bernie. My best guess is that he he says 'the workers gave him the money' that they were shaken down for it by the union. so here's what I'll offer Bernie.
If he admits he got money from what was most likely a union shakedown of the rank and file, I'll blow out my lamp.
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