Publisher’s Note: Thanks to VTDigger.org for continuing to ask important questions about 2016 presidential candidate and “Our Revolution” 501c4 founder Bernie Sanders.  Here is political columnist Jon Margolis’ article from today’s online news journal.

So Bernie and Jane Sanders have bought themselves a nice little vacation house on an island in Lake Champlain with 500 feet of lake frontage, four bedrooms and more than an acre of land.

For $575,000 cash on the barrelhead it seems, because no mortgage was recorded with the deed.

That’s a pretty good chunk of available currency for a family that owns two other homes (a house in Burlington and a small condominium on Washington’s Capitol Hill) and has but one earner right now. He makes $174,000 a year as a U.S. senator and collects Social Security. The couple’s total income for 2014 was $205,271.

Besides, there’s a reasonable explanation. Jane Sanders got a $200,000 buyout when she quit as Burlington College president in 2011. More recently, she sold her share of a family summer home in Maine for $150,000. She told The Associated Press they also used part of a retirement fund and some of an advance Bernie Sanders got for a book he is writing.

Bernie and Jane Sanders live comfortably, but not opulently. Considering their income, their assets (he reportedly owns a rental property in Burlington) and their frugality, it’s not hard to see how they could cobble together the money to buy that house.

And why shouldn’t they? Sanders is 74. His wife is about to turn 65. They have seven grandchildren. They have earned the right to frolic on the beach and enjoy cookouts with them.

And yet … and yet, especially considering how reluctant they were to explain how they financed the house, there is more to be said here. Not because of any personal wrongdoing or hypocrisy on their part, but because the whole conversation this year about personal wealth and public policy has been muddle-headed.

And because no one has muddled it more than Bernie Sanders.

Start with all the talk — some of it from him — about how Hillary Clinton could not possibly pursue policies to benefit poor and middle-income folks because she’s rich and because she takes campaign money from brokers and financiers on Wall Street, or “the billionaires,” as Sanders regularly called them.

A certain amount of historical amnesia (or just ignorance?) seems to have afflicted the political community, including political journalists, obliterating from their memories the example of Franklin D. Roosevelt, a member of one of New York’s richest families, and a candidate who took campaign money from Wall Street.

There were no campaign disclosure laws back then. But Roosevelt’s top fundraiser was stock exchange legend Bernard Baruch, who was surely hitting up his Wall Street buddies for contributions. That didn’t stop FDR from tightening regulations on high finance.

The wealthy, in fact, have been the most effective advocates for the nonwealthy. America’s first great egalitarian (for white people, but that’s a separate discussion) was Virginia aristocrat Thomas Jefferson. FDR’s cousin Teddy battled those he called the “malefactors of great wealth.” The rich Kennedy brothers fought for the poor and the middle class. The War on Poverty, which John F. Kennedy conceived, was executed by his successor, millionaire Lyndon Johnson, who did not inherit his wealth but earned it (or at least acquired it).

So the assertions by Bernie Sanders and others that Clinton’s wealth and her contributions somehow disqualify her as a progressive or render her a hypocrite prove only their ignorance of history and lack of common sense.

But Sanders was right to call on Clinton to release the transcripts of the speeches she gave to big-money Wall Street firms for six-figure fees. She had the right to make the speeches and collect the fees. The voters ought to know what she said. Sanders was on firm ground when he called for full disclosure.

That ground would have been firmer had he practiced full disclosure. He delayed making his tax returns public until April, then released only his return for 2014. Clinton released eight years of her returns last year. The Clintons’ tax returns dating back to 1977 are open to the public.

Then there’s the public financial disclosure report all presidential candidates were required to file by mid-May. The Sanders campaign asked the Federal Election Commission for a 45-day extension, which was granted. On June 30, the campaign asked for and was granted another 45-day extension. And by the time that one ran out — guess what? Sanders was no longer a candidate and did not have to file the report.

Was he hiding something?

Of course. Politicians resist making information public only when something in that information would cause them political trouble. Sanders had a well-financed campaign that employed enough competent staff to put together that report. For some reason, he didn’t want it done.

Now Sanders has formed a political organization to support “a new generation of progressive leaders” at all levels of government. But Our Revolution is not a political action committee. It is a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” organization (hah!), which can collect unlimited donations without revealing the names of the donors — precisely the “dark money” Sanders often assailed.

So if a left-leaning billionaire (there are a few, though many fewer than the right-leaning kind) wants to give Our Revolution a million bucks, without anyone knowing where the money came from, he or she may do that.

And in the process dictate much of what the organization does.

More money, of course, means a more potent organization. It also means a larger and better-paid staff. That staff has openings. Five of its crew just quit, in part because they objected to the “dark money” aspect of Our Revolution.

This is the revolution of a candidate who insisted on “complete transparency regarding the funding of campaigns” and assailed “huge piles of undisclosed cash” in politics.

The inconsistency here is not personal. It is public and political. Sanders and his family should enjoy many happy days at their new beachfront digs, which they bought with money legally earned.

The question is whether Our Revolution’s founder can still be taken seriously as a political reformer.

Jon Margolis is VTDigger’s columnist. He is the author of The Last Innocent Year: America in 1964, left the Chicago Tribune early in 1995 after 23 years as Washington correspondent, sports writer, correspondent-at-large and general columnist.