When It Comes To Charity, It's Not Even Close. The Palins Are Almost 12X As Charitable As the Bidens
A recent CD post reported Joe Biden's miserly charitable contributions (averaging less than $300 per year from 1998 to 2006 on average annual income of $237,000). CD reader Kansas Bob provided the link to Sarah Palin's Tax Records, providing data for a comparison of the vice-presidental candidate's records of charitable giving. When it comes to giving money to charities, it's not even close: the Palins are almost 12 times as generous as the Bidens, when measured by charitable contributions as a percent of Adjusted Grosss Income (AGI) in 2006 and 2007: 2.79% average for the Palins in those two years, vs. 0.24% for the Bidens (see top chart above).
And even though the Palins ($294,000) earned only about half the income of the Bidens ($569,000) in 2006 and 2007 combined, the Palins gave almost 6 times as much to charity ($8,205) in those two years as the Bidens ($1,375), see bottom chart above.
48 Comments:
I am not sure what this actually proves and the real question would be to look at what was given, to whom, etc. If you are suggesting, because of tithing, that they are more charitable it is unclear since we do not know what they contributed to and what was done with those funds. For example, what if they gave the contributions to abstinence groups -- does that mean they were effective or useful contributions?
How unpatriotic.
Joe Biden is a cheap bastard and is un-patriotic !!!
Jill Biden is the president of the Biden Breast Health Initiative, a non-profit organization begun in 1993 that provides educational breast health awareness programs free of charge to schools and other groups in the state of Delaware.
But never, ever let facts get in the way, right?
Socialists are always better at giving away other people's money than their own money. This is no surprise then.
Biden believes in doing charity with other people's money... namely taxpayers. Not with his own.
"Jill Biden is the president of the Biden Breast Health Initiative, a non-profit organization begun in 1993 that provides educational breast health awareness programs free of charge to schools and other groups in the state of Delaware."
This fact makes Biden's paltry contributions even more revealing - it proves the Bidens are only interested using OTHER PEOPLES money to do charitable work - they are typical liberals....they just dont get it.
Biden is vain, miser who obviously spends more on Botox than he does on giving to others.
Do as he says - not as he does
"Biden is vain, miser who obviously spends more on Botox than he does on giving to others."
Don't forget the chia pet hairdo.
Jill Biden is the president of the Biden Breast Health Initiative, a non-profit organization begun in 1993 that provides educational breast health awareness programs free of charge to schools and other groups in the state of Delaware.
That's not charity, that's a job. If Joe sends earmarks the way of her employer, that's nepotism and corruption.
I don't think this proves too much. Both are PATHETIC! I will say though that I think it's EXTREMELY hypocritical to go around talking about how religious you are and claiming to be on the 'religious right' and choosing not to tithe. They gave VERY little to churches.
The Bible doesn't explicitly metion gay marriage or abortion (even though both likely occurred in Biblical times) but it certainly mentions tithing to the church. I'm not as mad at Biden b/c he doesn't do around preaching the standard conservative religious jargon that she does.
Idu: "They [Palins] gave VERY little to churches."
that's interesting. i looked and found no information about how much she gave to churches. please post a link to your source.
if, to the contrary, most of her contributions went to her church, i hardly consider that "charity".
It's a private matter and cannot be judged. For example, I lend a portion of my paycheck to Kiva, don't deduct taxes, and get my money back while at the same time bettering the lives of people.
Besides, I for one have had enough of 8 years of compassionate conservatism. THANKS BUT NO THANKS.
if, to the contrary, most of her contributions went to her church, i hardly consider that "charity".
Why not? Because only secular institutions can do good? I suggest you look into what "charity" really means, and especially that you try to understand the origin of the word, caritas.
Anon 5:10,
"Besides, I for one have had enough of 8 years of compassionate conservatism. THANKS BUT NO THANKS."
How does giving to charity have anything to do with that political ideology?
C.C. is big-government conservatism. Biden happens to be a big-government liberal who feels that, as a Catholic, it's his moral duty to help others.
...with other people's money.
It would be highly premature to make any conclusion about the generosity of the Palins vs. the Bidens based on the information given. We have no detail explaining what charitable contributions are made by either family. We only know how much they declare on their income tax form. This is unreliable information for two reasons.
1. Not all deductible contributions are declared. For example, I NEVER declare any contribution made to or at church. I always make my contributions in cash so they are anonymous and untraceable. Likewise, I never declare money or clothing I give to the homeless or beggars. Nor do I declare the value of canned goods given to food drives. I don't declare charity (i.e., the love of Christ) because I see seeking economic credit for reflecting Christ's Love as completely debasing His precious Grace.
On the other hand, I will declare contributions to museums and other worldly "charities". I don't expect others to abide by my idiosyncrasies and I don't presume to judge them by their tax declaration practices.
2. All "charities" are not equal. What you think is a generous and kind contribution, I might think is money spent to foist a destructive anti-social political agenda on others. Don't expect me to give great praise to your compassionate conservatism if you give your money to those "God Hates Fags" religious groups. Likewise, don't expect me to think your donations are anything less than destructive if you are giving money to "educational" groups that seek to dumb down education by replacing science with religion.
You see, as far as I know, Biden believes as I do and keeps his truly charitable contributions private whereas Palen seeks economic credit for contributions to wing-nut causes. On the face of it, I'd rather give both the benefit of the doubt and not make judgments based on such flimsy evidence.
While I agree that Senator Biden is a cheapskate of the first order, his charitable contributions are irrelevant in terms of whether or not he is capable of executing the office of the Vice President.
On that question, he is better qualified than Sarah Palin? Yes. Is the man who promoted partitioning Iraq a stellar candidate? No. Even the Democratic Party has not chosen this man...call it the aggregate wisdom.
qt:"Is the man who promoted partitioning Iraq a stellar candidate? "
pardon my ignorance, qt, but why is partitioning iraq a fatal error? i think it's a viable option.
I'm not an expert on the tax code, however as I understand it you can deduct most, if not all charitable contributions from your income (up to a point)
Given that one is not actually losing money (merely directing it to charities instead of the government) is donating to charities, really all that charitable?
It seems to me what matters in terms of being charitable is the difference between your total amount donated to charity, and the amount you deducted from your income tax due to said donations.
For example, if I make 100k, and donate 3000 to a charity, then deduct that 3k out of my income tax, I am not actually losing any money, so I do not see how people can consider that being charitable.
Or if I make 100k, donate 10k to charity, and deduct 5k, I really in effect was only being charitable by 5k, not 10k.
I am not an American - an European. But guys seriously: I am wondering what "important" things your media is bringing up to the surface.
IMHO the charity contribution is a completely personal thing and by looking at the numbers the difference between both is not that much. Both contributions are miserable. And X-times-difference-comparison does not make sense at all!
Imagine, if one site contributed 50 USD in total and other 300 USD, would you again state a "big" difference of 6 times?
Hey ken, what don't you understand about the posting?...
I'm thinking that in regards to charity anyone who pays federal income tax contributes to charity...
After all about 65 cents on the dollar collected goes towards Constitutionally questionable spending on the socialist safety net nonsense spawned by Congress...
Why is 'socialism' bad.... can someone explain that to me?
- Social Security...
- Fire
- Police
- Libraries
- Military
- Cheap Oil (well it once was)
- Public Education...
So .. tell me why socialism is bad.. I await your answers. Otherwise this thread is a bunch of real bullshit.
Socialism is a mythical system invented by Marx that is supposed to be pre-communism.
Marx was so good at his propaganda that almost everyone thinks that this mythical left wing socialism has something to do with extreme authoritarian (right wing) communism.
What you have listed is basic democratic socially responsible government, and of course has nothing to do with Marx or his mythical systems.
Palin's VASTLY greater PATRIOTISM over Joe Biden, as demonstrated by her charitable givings, regardless of what institutions they went to, is just more outstanding unquestionable evidence from Mark Perry that her judgment and leadership skills are equally superior to Biden's. The financial figures and bar graphs speak for themselves, but you libtards will spill communist red all over your keyboards trying to refute the facts. No matter what map you look at, Alaska is right there, next to Russia, and Palin is in charge, especially when they enter our airspace. The fact she would outflank Biden on something so simple as charitable giving is not surprising.
We need someone who is a Washington outsider, an original Mavrick, with a fresh perspective, a proven record of reaching across the aisle, with the experience and judgement to put Country First, and not blink when Putin rears his head, or raise taxes when people are losing their jobs, but with the recognition that the fundamentals of the economy are strong, and so is this nation, and so is Sara Palin!
Frankly I am aghast that this crap about charity is deemed worthy of repeating by Carpe Diem! What low down mud slinging about what! Like as has been said, this is evidence of nothing, especially as no details are given, and full details could never be ascertained. Shame shame shame!
Socialism is any form of taxation without consent. The ideal Carpe Diem World System is Uber-Anarcho-Capitalism, which involves zero taxation and all transactions are entirely voluntary, by which point the services to which you refer, fire, police, etc, become provided more efficiently and cheaper by the private market, to the small exclusion of those who lack the purchasing power and thus will be eliminated (eh, Darwinism..) but the vast majority of good decent paying working people, who shoulder the majority of the tax burden, will no longer have to carry the inferior on their backs once the market is put fully into action. Of course some people will be charitable and step in, those people will be of course ones who have been hero's of the market, probably like Sara Palin.
> Jill Biden is the president of the Biden Breast Health Initiative...
So Biden is "charitable" with other people's money, which he attaches HIS name to so it sounds like HE is a great person?
That's not charity.
It's nacissitic P.R.
Here, let me rephrase that:
"Look at me!!! I'm SOoooooo GOOD, aren't I!?!? Look how much MONEEY (that other people sacrificed) I'm giving away!! Aren't I Soooooooo ***WONDERFUL*** !?!?!?"
> if, to the contrary, most of her contributions went to her church, i hardly consider that "charity".
Yes, bobbie, all churches do with that money is to spend it on building great big buildings and gold chalices to line the walls with.
Churches don't really do any charity work at all.
They instead leave that icky, disgusting "charity" work to things named after people who run them.
You're a small, pitiful, and self-centered jackass, bobbie. If you want to actually complain that the churches she GIVES to are like that, having actually investigated it (and I do ack that *some* churches like that exist), then by all means, present your findings with suitable linkage and documented sources. Short of that, you're projecting your own low-rent excuses for charity onto everyone else.
"Why is 'socialism' bad.... can someone explain that to me?
- Social Security...
- Fire
- Police
- Libraries
- Military
- Cheap Oil (well it once was)
- Public Education..."...
Hmmm, well fvontramp , I would've thought that the very visible and ongoing problems of Social Security and public education would've been self-explanatory...
Regarding the, 'cheap oil' situation, well you'd have to take it up with today's OIL HATING SOCIALISTS...
Fire, police, and libraries tend to be very much on the local level with much more local citizen involvement so there are usually less problems there...
Well as far as the military goes, that is a national priority mandated by the ...
Constitution (Art. 1 Sect 8)
Having a little 'socialist tantrum' there anon @ 6:32 AM?
"provided more efficiently and cheaper by the private market, to the small exclusion of those who lack the purchasing power and thus will be eliminated (eh, Darwinism..) but the vast majority of good decent paying working people, who shoulder the majority of the tax burden, will no longer have to carry the inferior on their backs once the market is put fully into action"...
Hmmm, so maybe you'll volunteer to take up the financial slack for those 'inferiors, right anon?
BTW anon, do you know: "who shoulder the majority of the tax burden"?
The top 5 percent pay well over half the income taxes
> Why is 'socialism' bad.... can someone explain that to me?
- Social Security...
- Fire
- Police
- Libraries
- Military
- Cheap Oil (well it once was)
- Public Education...
Well, in order:
1) "Social Security". A blatant Ponzi Scheme ready to collapse within about 8-9 years or so? One which, if ANY other entity than a government were running it, would be SHUT DOWN within days of it comming to the public's attention?
2) "Fire", "Police". Usually done at the public expense, but often handled by private and/or volunteer agencies in the past. But note that these are funded almost exclusively at the LOCAL level, not at the NATIONAL level... or used to be.
3) Lots of privately funded public-access libraries out there. But mostly they are locally funded, once again.
4) "Military" -- this IS one of the few legitimate jobs of government -- "to provide for the common defense", since we all have a vested interest in that activity.
5) "Cheap oil"? What the hell does THAT have to do with socialism?
6) "Public Education". You're using something that has led to massively declining basic skills, with vast swaths of so-called "graduates" unable to perform simple functions like making change or reading at the 10th-grade level out of reach for its victims to justify it as a "good result" of socialist-type policies? Clearly, you're a graduate of the same, if your reasoning skills are THAT lame.
Socialism is bad because, as Alexis A. Gilliland put it, "governments get money the same way that individuals do... Primary Production, Secondary Production,Forced Redistribution, and Voluntary Redistribution - make, trade, steal, and beg. There are no other ways. The difference is that Governments are inefficient at making, trading and begging(except from other governments), so they have to steal.
"Steal" == "Tax", in case that wasn't obvious.
All government expenditures are paid for by theft. Some of those thefts are justified by the fact that the victim receives suitable compensation in exchange. Most are not tied to any sort of halfway decent compensation -- because the people who already control things always rig it so that a large percentage of the theft goes to them, and not to those it was stolen from.
"Socialism isn't bad"? Go ask anyone who lived in the USSR if it was any good.
You want the answer to that? Go visit your local Price/Costco or Sam's Club. When you step inside the door, look around you at the vast array of things -- both essential to living and nonessential comforts -- available to ANY AMERICAN who wants them enough to give up a small piece of his life for them.
Then contemplate Soviet citizens standing in line for hours simply to buy a couple rolls of industrial grade toilet paper.
Socialism can't even provide for basic needs, and the history of socialism shows that it inevitably leads to poverty and dispair (Just check on suicide stats in socialist countries -- even the "benign" ones) as well as tending consistently towards dictatorships in at least 75% of all cases.
Q.E.D. "Socialism SUCKS". To think anything else would be either stupid or ignorant.
> Frankly I am aghast that this crap about charity is deemed worthy of repeating by Carpe Diem!
Frankly, Arman, most of us are aghast that you actually imagine yourself even vaguely capable of rational thought, given many of your other expressions in commentary, which demonstrate, repeatedly, how incapable of reasoning and effective logic (i.e., sorting out GIGO) you actually are.
Nay, not merely "aghast" -- Astonished. Amazed. Mind Boggled, even.
.
Here:
Socialism vs. Capitalism in a single picture
.
according to the McCain-Palin website, the actual figure was $825, NOT $8025, which is 1.5% of their income.
http://www.johnmccain.com/palinfinancial/
Hmmm, so maybe you'll volunteer to take up the financial slack for those 'inferiors, right anon?
Yes. Just like your article says, if we eliminated everyone who makes under $50.2k, the only people left would be 97% of the tax burden. So we completely agree: if you don't fall high enough on the Pareto distribution, you don't deserve any service that is paid for by taxes, which includes the right to live in this country. Anything else is socialism, plain and simple.
Anonymous: "According to the McCain-Palin website, the actual figure was $825, NOT $8025, which is 1.5% of their income."
MP: Charitable contributions for the Palins were $4,880 in 2006 and $3,325 in 2007, for a TOTAL OF $8,205 for the TWO YEARS COMBINED.
"which includes the right to live in this country"...
Hmmm, I'm sure that came from your in depth knowledge of the Constitution, right?
So anon @ 2:21 PM and 'class warfare commando' what Euro-Weasel country will be accepting your request for asylum?
so because he doesn't give to charity he will be REALLY bad at being the VP, right?! what possible difference does this make to his ability to be a good VP?
Why didn't you compare the presidential candidates' donations? Oh, that's right, because Cindy McCain refuses to reveal her hundreds of millions of dollars in special interests and how she will benefit financially from being in the White House.
It's true that charitable giving should be a personal matter & in my opinion should be kept confidential. However, I would like to ask the Obama supporters on this thread who down play this information out of hand if they would indeed do the same had the charts showed the exact opposite - i.e. Biden gave nX higher than Palin?
Like I said, it is low mud slinging about what! It lowers my estimation about anyone who repeats this kind of thing, and it doesn't matter what side of the tree the apple falls on.
A plague on both your houses! The Palins give a hell of a lot less than I do (4000/yr on almost 300K; I give about 8000/yr on 110K)
And by the way, what's your giving like, Perry? That's a redundant question. Frankly I think it a rude question, and answering that type of question as this post does is paying homage to rude behavior.
Q.E.D. "Socialism SUCKS". To think anything else would be either stupid or ignorant.
Wen Jiabao would disagree with you. What you described was a completely central-planned economy. Socialism is not binary; it can have elements of both explicit policy and market forces, as you see in the Chinese model where they use policy to try to influence macroeconomic factors. You of course will argue this is stupid, but for the Chinese it has been an outstanding path to prosperity for the world's biggest country as they bring orderly, gradual change.
Freedom and liberty haven't caught up with the chinese yet. It'll be interesting when the people start to demand it in a big way. It's a small world and they can't keep it out forever.
Communism is about the government running the entire economy. Doesn't work. Chinese are smart enough to learn, and so are chucking communism without chucking the authoritarianism. Governments frankly don't like democracy, because they don't like answering to the voters. What I don't like is the way right wingers label dems as authoritative big government while every right wing government swells the government payroll and the government debt. Every right wing propagandist paints the left as being undemocratic while their slick structure pulls the democratic rug from under you. You guys get led down the garden path and parrot rubbish without ever stopping to ask, "what do these words MEAN?"
Armen: So china is basically a capitalist dictatorship? Yes, I would agree with most of that, except they haven't thrown off all the remnants of communism yet. Many of the totalitarian programs that were in place before are still now. It will be an interesting experiment when enough Chinese get sick of the current system and ride up. Churchill said something about "Dictators ride to and fro on tigers which they dare not dismount". It could be bloodless, or not, but it will be interesting.
The EU's unelected and unaccountable bureaucracy means the EU is pretty much a capitalist dictatorship right now. National politicians know that they can pass laws their constituents don't like by getting Brussels to do their dirty work for them. Most laws these days originate in Brussels, not in the respective national governments. The Treaty of Lisbon (itself an exact copy of the failed EU constitution) was rejected, but the EU is going ahead with its implementation anyway. Other than Ireland, the various national legislatures voted to approve Lisbon without the promised vote of their citizens. Thoughtcrime is punished under the aegis of "hate crimes". The old USSR would be proud of them.
Jim
I don't like your term capitalist in describing a political system. Capitalism is how the market works, and has nothing to do with democracy, republicanism, or dictatorship.
Communism is about the attempted subversion of capitalism into the political spectrum. It doesn't work. Government cannot run business, and should be supported only by a single means of taxation.
When private capitalism is outlawed, business just goes underground, and profits upwardly spiral. This is well seen here in the illegal market of drugs since the prohibition. The more the government tries to stamp it out, the more profitable the business will be, and the worse off the general population will be.
China is basically a republican government, as it always has been. It is run by authoritative committee. The only difference now is that they are abandoning their stupid notion that the government should be running all business, and enjoying the fruits of a more normal marketplace.
Post a Comment
<< Home