Obama stingy; Clinton not

Let's be fair. What % did Bush give before he became President?

So, how much did John McCain contribute to charity?

This news doesn't surprise me in the least. I was discussing the campaign with an in-law who is Republican and not a Clinton supporter or fan.

Her opinion of Bill and Hillary was that they both care deeply and genuinely about the country (and about things like giving to charity) but on a personal level they have serious character issues, are dishonest, etc. Which is one of the reasons I have been a Hillary supporter despite her personal failings.

I carry no water for Obama, but I have some issues with this sort of analysis:

1) Age difference; they are different stages in their life cycle. Compare them at the same age to be fair (also, one has one more kid than the other).

2) Just because something doesn't show up on his taxes doesn't mean he didn't give to charity. First, there is time given. Second, there is personal one-on-one cash given. For us, over 9/10 of our charity is "off the books" - heck, we consider any money given to organizations to be wasted money, pretty much (having worked in those charities and seen what happens to it). A rough guess is that Obama in Chicago has a lot of personal connections to poverty that won't show up on a tax return.

Hey, it wouldn't suprise me one bit if Obama kicked dogs and swiped kid's candy for fun when nobody was looking, but the mere fact he planned to run for Pres yet didn't pad his paper trail makes me like him more, not less.

Our income went up by about $10,000 last year (from around $40,000 to around $50,000), and for the very first time I became tempted not to tithe. It was really weird, because I've always loved to give, but now I started getting addicted to the pleasure of seeing our money grow. I stopped reading the World Relief newsletters and started thinking about whether we could become wealthy in thirty years by investing in GOOD GROWTH STOCK MUTUAL FUNDS! Yahoo! It seems like the better off you are, the more you have to keep the reins on that little greed monster in your head. He's pretty fierce. I think that the antidote is gratitude, and an ongoing sense that nothing you have really belongs to you, anyway. The best way to enjoy your moneyt is to share it.

I'm more shocked that the Clintons actually give 10%. Remember when he was running for President, and they released their tax returns where they had deducted something like $3/pair for giving old boxer shorts to charity? Didn't Gore or Kerry also get exposed as having given something like $6.59/year to charity?

I agree--stages of life matter a lot when it comes to how much extra time and money you have,"

They do, but that's not the issue here, because the Obamas are giving far less, now that they have more to spare. As my dad said once, if you're making $30,000 a year, and you get a $5,000 raise, the entire $5K is extra money. If you were giving $2K to charity before, you could give $7K now and be just as well off. The Obamas could give 20% and still be far wealthier than they were a few years ago. They could at least give a large chunk of the huge raise Mrs. Obama coincidentally got when Mr. Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate.

Does 1% make them bad people? Well, not necessarily. They're Democrats: they believe government should take care of everyone, so private charitable giving only muddies the waters. As someone said, the feds (and Springfield) are taking a heck of a lot more than 10% from them in forcible charity. It's a little short-sighted politically, though. Much like being surprised by the Wright revelations, it makes them look like they don't think ahead about practical issues very much--or maybe they just aren't used to anyone questioning them about anything at all.

Do you remember this:

archive.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/4/15/02358.shtml?s=ic

Saturday, April 15, 2006 12:20 a.m. EDT

Dick Cheney Donates Millions to Charity

In one of the largest sums ever donated to charity by a U.S. public official, Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife Lynne gave away nearly $7 million last year to help the poor and to medical research.

According to income tax information released by the White House on Friday, the Cheneys' adjusted gross income in 2005 was $8,819,006.

The sum was largely the result of Mr. Cheney's stock options from Halliburton and royalties from three books written by Mrs. Cheney.

The Cheneys gave more than three-quarters of their income - $6,869,655 - to several charities, including George Washington University's Cardiothoracic Institute and a charity for low-income high school students in the Washington, D.C. area, Capital Partners for Education.

The Cheneys' charitable generosity stands in marked contrast to that of their predecessors, whose sometimes stingy donations became a national embarrassment.

In 1997 for instance, Al and Tipper Gore contributed just $353 to charity, a sum that raised eyebrows even in friendly media circles.

The Los Angeles Times noted, for instance, that the Gores' slender donation "caused some bewilderment in philanthropic circles because of the vice president's 'good guy' image as an advocate for public service and social causes."

The same year the Gores gave $353 to charity, they reported $197,729 in adjusted gross income.

I don't follow you. If I made a million dollars per annum providing hemp condoms to transgender baby Sandinista seals, would I be thereby excused from donating a meaningful percentage of my income to charity on account of I gave at the office? Is charitable giving to be seen as a kind of moral offset (cf. carbon offsets) based on the kind of work you do?

Remember, the reason people are saying that the Obamas are charity skinflints is not because of the absolute dollar amount they gave, but because they gave a miserly percentage of their overall income. It's hard to understand why the working poor can find the resources to give 4 percent of their income to charity, but the Obama's -- who, recall, had an income putting them in the top 2 percent of all earners during their skinflint years -- could only manage a tiny fraction of that.

If I made a million dollars per annum providing hemp condoms to transgender baby Sandinista seals, would I be thereby excused from donating a meaningful percentage of my income to charity on account of I gave at the office?

Since you've never worked full-time performing public service or involved in social justice or for a non-profit, I can understand your confusion since you don't have a frame of reference regarding that kind of financial and personal sacrifice.

I could have made four or five times my salary at a social services non-profit if I performed similar work in the private, for-profit sector. Therefore, I gave less money--as a percentage of total income--to charity than I do now because my work was literally a form of charity and sacrifice that effected my ability to provide for my family. My time and loss of income was my charitable contribution (and, of course, it was also not something I could deduct from taxes). During that time, I was not selling my skills to the highest bidder, but instead taking a much lower salary in order to perform a public good.

I think there are three charitable "rules" for three categories of people.

The first category, Christians/Jews (and everybody right and left who identifies their religions as such) are fairly well instructed in the virtue of generosity through ample scriptural examples.

The second category, Pagans, can make up their own rules as they go as they make no claims to biblical standards.

The third category, The Wealthy, must, no matter what their religious affiliation or lack thereof, give generously for the sake of public relations. Bad press awaits the greedy.

I too, was put off a little at first by Daniel's comment, but on further thought he has a point. There is a certain virtue in working for a charity at below market rates, that is, if the pursuit of virtue was indeed his goal.

I'm content to let God sort that one out.

Betty Carter writes: "Tithing is like giving Christmas gifts to people you love; paying taxes is like being held up by a gang of Santas."

Betty, that's a great line!! Got a great chuckle out of it :-) Thanks!

Did the Clinton really give a tenth,or is this a mark up to out do Obama. Giving is an attitude of the heart. It seems that everything Obama does is under evil watchful eyes. If he sneeze it would be a problem. Tithing with an evil or an unsincere heart is not tithing at all. The Devil can tithe.

Tithing is over rated. It's the people who serve others that makes a difference in the world. How many politicians have you caught working in a soup kitchen on Christmas morning? The Clintons may of paid more in to the pot AND how much time has the Clintons spent doing legal work for the poor for free? I don't know anything about Obama except what I hear AND if Obama really listened to Pastor Wright, then he did do service work for his community.

What about John McCain?

i thought the bulk of the clintons' charitable giving went to their own foundation.

I just don't think that pursuing a career in politics counts as charity -- especially when that pursuit is as aggressive and as self-aggrandizing and as self-serving as Barack Obama's has been

I agree.

My point was that Michelle Obama--the primary breadwinner for a lot of the marriage--was doing non-profit work during the time their charitable deductions were the lowest. Until she took a job as an attorney with the U. of Chicago, both of them were primarily employed doing non-profit, community development work.

Maybe the Obamas should give more money to charity, or at least make sure that money is reflected in their income taxes in order to obtain a charitable deduction which serves as the jumping-off point for the public examination. The more money they made, the more money they gave in charitable deductions reflected in their tax forms.

Steve, that's a good point. I live in what is considered to be inner-city Dallas. The house price was cheap when we bought four years ago (though gentrification has caused its value to almost double), but there are a lot of hidden costs to raising children in this part of town, if you don't use the public school system. My salary goes a lot farther on paper than it does in reality, though we still give to charity out of religious obligation.

Caroline, I'd been thinking that it was crazy for anybody to say I shouldn't tithe if I pay taxes, but aren't you taking this to the other extreme? Have a little mercy! There's nothing wrong with a reward for doing something nice, unless you go to the First Church of Immanuel Kant.

Hey, send the kids to Girl Scout camp, Mr Obama. It's much cheaper even AT full price, and there's always a good mix of kids on scholarship, so your kids get some economic diversity. Hiking, astronomy, cooking over a fire, swimming, and there's usually a camp with horses too. What more could you ask of the true camp experience??

Or there's Christian camps for a decent price too, where I did rock climbing and whitewater rafting and archery and swam in a cold mountain river, as well as the usual campy stuff. YMCA camps are cheap too, though they are customarily more based around team sports and less on woodscraft.

Growing up, I was aware that the rich kid's camp down the road had better amenities. But I didn't care, I was having entirely too much fun. We had our own home-made photography dark room, pottery, poisonous and beneficial plants to learn, stars to identify and meals to cook for anyone to notice much what the other camp was up to. I became a camp counselor - that legendary being who can start a fire with two matches in a downpour and cook a full satisfying meal for numerous hungry children, who knows every trail on the property, who can soothe homesickness and fights, who can not only survive primitive living standards but make them seem like luxury, racked out in a hammock in her offtime like she was in Tahiti with martini.

Thanks for the trip down a slightly off-topic memory lane. And if any of you have kids, send them to camp.

I googled McCain charitable giving and it looks like he also has a Family Foundation that ends up giving the majority of it's money to the schools where his kids attend. So since those are swanky private schools to begin with, they've just become more swanky. However, it also seems that Cindy and John have a serious pre-nuptual agreement and all her money is still in her name, so his personal assets are his navy pension, his talking fees, and his Senator paycheck. Not that he's poor at all, but just that he's not as well off *personally* as you might assume.

I guess the lesson here is that the Obama's should quickly set up and Obama Family Foundation, so that they too can give 10%, but have it go to pay the girls' summer camp fees.

Anotherbeliever, I don't think you went to camp anytime recently. For one thing, YMCA camps are *not* cheap, especially if you want to do the hard stuff like rock-climbing, whitewater rafting/canoeing, etc. Camps usually run 1-2 weeks (NOT all summer, as they did in my day), and my guess is that the biggest cost increase over the past 20 years has been liability insurance.

Rod writes: Steve, that's a good point. I live in what is considered to be inner-city Dallas. The house price was cheap when we bought four years ago (though gentrification has caused its value to almost double), but there are a lot of hidden costs to raising children in this part of town, if you don't use the public school system. My salary goes a lot farther on paper than it does in reality, though we still give to charity out of religious obligation.

That is absolutely right. If you are living in a nice suburb, with nice suburban public schools, you pay very nice prices (even in this downturn - houses in my area are still expensive, and they're still selling.) If you feel that you would be remiss as a parent by sending your child to public school, then you have a big longstanding financial obligation that can go on for ten years or more (depending on how many children you have.) Nor is homeschooling an option for everyone.