Obama The Great only gave 14% of income to charity in 2010

akdcnf wrote:

And that 14% in one year is more than you or your family will ever give in your life.

By the way, how are things going at Applebees?

One year doesn't make a lifetime...

I've been giving about $400 a month to charitable causes for the last 20 years. I have nowhere near the expendable income that our Tightwad in Chief has. My income is less than $70,000.

How do I compare to the greedy Obama and his greedy VP Biden, both of whom have all of their expenses paid for?

Applebees Manager

68500 4800 7.0%

Obama

2000 240505 2350 1.0%

2001 272759 1470 0.5%

2002 259394 1050 0.4%

2003 238327 3400 1.4%

2004 207647 2500 1.2%

2005 1655106 77315 4.7%

2006 983826 60307 6.1%

2007 4139965 240370 5.8%

2008 2656902 172050 6.5%

2009 5505409 329000 6.0%

2010 1728096 245075 14.2%

Biden

2000 219953 360 0.2%

2001 220712 360 0.2%

2002 227811 260 0.1%

2003 231375 260 0.1%

2004 234271 380 0.2%

2005 321379 380 0.1%

2006 248859 380 0.2%

2007 319853 995 0.3%

2008 269256 1885 0.7%

2009 333000 4820 1.4%

2010 379178 5350 1.4%

Interestingly, after looking through some of this I see that the Obama's actually donated an extra $1.4 million in 2009 income that came in from the Nobel Committee. They never accepted the prize money but instead had it transferred directly from the Committee to the recipients, therefore it wasn't reported as income or a charitable deduction.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/04/15/president-obama-and-vice-president-biden-s-tax-returns

Applebees Manager wrote:

I've been giving about $400 a month to charitable causes for the last 20 years. I have nowhere near the expendable income that our Tightwad in Chief has. My income is less than $70,000.

Can you tell us the "charitable cause" that you give to? Or at least narrow it down? International relief? Local religious charity?

Congratulations on your own generosity (still interested in those details), but 14% of salary to charity is far more than the average American gives, and we all know it.

On another topic, why are anti-charity, anti-tax Republicans trumpeting how much charity their candidates give these days?

I think it's a testament to the job Obama's done in office that the criticisms of him always center around personal issues. His faith, his place of birth, his personal finances, his appearances at social events, etc. That means two things: (A) he hasn't made that many mistakes, and (B) the ones he has made are on matters far too complex for his detractors to be able to make coherent comments about them.

Personally I think he has disappointed by caving in to the sabotage of the GOP far too much instead of simply overriding them by playing the executive privilege card that Cheney's lawyers so graciously carved out for him. I hope he'll do better on that in his second term.

I gave 0% to charity out of $135K but donated to Goodwill significant amounts of clothes and took care of my children. Does that count for anything? Supposedly the races I entered donated portions to charity.

monkeyblossom wrote:

I think it's a testament to the job Obama's done in office that the criticisms of him always center around personal issues. His faith, his place of birth, his personal finances, his appearances at social events, etc. That means two things: (A) he hasn't made that many mistakes, and (B) the ones he has made are on matters far too complex for his detractors to be able to make coherent comments about them.

Personally I think he has disappointed by caving in to the sabotage of the GOP far too much instead of simply overriding them by playing the executive privilege card that Cheney's lawyers so graciously carved out for him. I hope he'll do better on that in his second term.

Far too complex? Here's some big numbers, but they're really not that hard to understand.

Current Budget

Federal Budget......$3,820,000,000,000

US Tax Revenue......$2,170,000,000,000

New Debt............$1,650,000,000,000

National Debt.......$14,271,000,000,000

Recent Budget Cuts..$38,500,000,000

Still too complex?

Say you're a distance runner just out of college working in a shoe store. That would explain why you have so much time to post on LetsRun during the day. Take away 8 zeroes and pretend this is your personal household budget.

Money you're spending....................$38,200

Annual income............................$21,700

New debt on the credit card..............$16,500

Outstanding balance on the credit card...$142,710

Total Budget Cuts........................$385

Here's an explanation of those complex numbers. When a budget has nearly as much new debt every year as income, and the INTEREST on your debt becomes a huge chunk of your income, that is a case of inevitable financial suicide.

He also deducted it on his taxes, then goes on about how the rich (he is one) don't pay enough. DEDUCTIONS ARE VOLUNTARY.