Liberals never tire of discussing their own generosity, particularly when demanding that the government take your money by force to fund shiftless government employees overseeing counterproductive government programs.
They seem to have replaced “God” with “Government” in scriptural phrases such as “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” (Matthew 22:37)
This week, we’ll take a peek at the charitable giving of these champions of the poor.
In 2009, the Obamas gave 5.9 percent of their income to charity, about the same as they gave in 2006 and 2007. In the eight years before he became president, Obama gave an average of 3.5 percent of his income to charity, upping that to 6.5 percent in 2008.
The Obamas’ charitable giving is equally divided between “hope” and “change.”
George W. Bush gave away more than 10 percent of his income each year he was president, as he did before becoming president.
Thus, in 2005, Obama gave about the same dollar amount to charity as President George Bush did, on an income of $1.7 million—more than twice as much as President Bush’s $735,180. Again in 2006, Bush gave more to charity than Obama on an income one-third smaller than Obama’s.
In the decade before Joe Biden became vice president, the Bidens gave a total—all 10 years combined—of $3,690 to charity, or 0.2 percent of their income. They gave in a decade what most Americans in their tax bracket give in an average year, or about one row of hair plugs.
Of course, even in Biden’s stingiest years, he gave more to charity than Sen. John Kerry did in 1995, which was a big fat goose egg. Kerry did, however, spend half a million dollars on a 17th-century Dutch seascape painting that year, as Peter Schweizer reports in his 2008 book, “Makers and Takers.”
To be fair, 1995 was an off-year for Kerry’s charitable giving. The year before, he gave $2,039 to charity, and the year before that a staggering $175.
He also dropped a $5 bill in the Salvation Army pail and almost didn’t ask for change.
In 1998, Al Gore gave $353 to charity—about a day’s take for a lemonade stand in his neighborhood. That was 10 percent of the national average for charitable giving by people in the $100,000-$200,000 income bracket. Gore was at the very top of that bracket, with an income of $197,729.
When Sen. Ted Kennedy released his tax returns to run for president in the ‘70s, they showed that Kennedy gave a bare 1 percent of his income to charity—or, as Schweizer says, “about as much as Kennedy claimed as a write-off on his 50-foot sailing sloop Curragh.” (Cash tips to bartenders and cocktail waitresses are not considered charitable donations.)
The Democratic base gives to charity as their betters do. At the same income, a single mother on welfare is seven times less likely to give to charity than a working poor family that attends religious services.
In 2006 and 2007, John McCain, who files separately from his rich wife, gave 27.3 percent and 28.6 percent of his income to charity.
In 2005, Vice President Cheney gave 77 percent of his income to charity. He also shot a lawyer in the face, which I think should count for something.
In a single year, Schweizer reports, Rush Limbaugh “gave $109,716 to ‘various individuals in need of assistance mainly due to family illnesses,’ $52,898 to ‘children’s case management organizations,’ including ‘various programs to benefit families in need,’ $35,100 for ‘Alzheimer’s community care—day care for families in need,’ and $40,951 for air conditioning units and heaters delivered to troops in Iraq.”
(Rush also once gave $50 to Maxine Waters after mistaking her for a homeless person.)
The only way to pry a liberal from his money is to hold tickertape parades for him, allowing him to boast about his charity in magazines and on TV.
Isn’t that what Jesus instructed in the Sermon on the Mount?
“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do … But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” (Matthew 6:2-4)
In my Bible, that passage is illustrated with a photo of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.
At least the hypocrites in the Bible, Redmond, Wash., and Omaha, Neb., who incessantly brag about their charity actually do pony up the money.
Elected Democrats crow about how much they love the poor by demanding overburdened taxpayers fund government redistribution schemes, but can never seem to open their own wallets.
The only evidence we have that Democrats love the poor is that they consistently back policies that will create more of them.
• High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton (1998)
• Slander:Liberal Lies About the American Right (2002)
• Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism (2003)
• HowTo Talk To Liberals (If You Must) (2004)
• Godless: The Church of Liberalism (2006)
• If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans (2007)
• Guilty: Liberal "Victims" and Their Assault on America (2009)
• Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America (2011)
•Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama (2012)
•Never Trust a Liberal Over Three-Especially a Republican (2013)
•Adios, America: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole (2015)
•In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome! (2016)
•Resistance Is Futile!: How the Trump-Hating Left Lost Its Collective Mind (2018)
She also writes a popular syndicated column every week published at Breitbart, DailyCaller, Townhall, FrontPage, Yahoo, Takimag, VDare, and dozens of newspapers. (As well as the eponymous, AnnCoulter.com!)
Coulter has been a major media personality for more than 20 years, after starting on MSNBC their first day on air in July 1996.
She has appeared on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, PBS’s Frontline, The Today Show, Good Morning America, The Early Show, The Tonight Show, Good Morning Britain, Yahoo News, and a slew of other U.S. and international TV shows. She was the cover story of Time magazine on April 25, 2005, and has been profiled in scores of other publications, including TV Guide, The Guardian (UK), the New York Observer, National Journal, Harper’s Bazaar, The Washington Post, The New York Times and Elle magazine. In 2001, Coulter was named one of the top 100 Public Intellectuals by federal judge Richard Posner.
A Connecticut native, Coulter graduated with honors from Cornell University School of Arts & Sciences and received her J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School, where she was an editor of The Michigan Law Review.
After practicing law for a few, very long years in New York City, Coulter moved to Washington to work for the Senate Judiciary Committee, where she handled crime and immigration issues for Senator Spencer Abraham of Michigan. From there, she became a litigator with the Center For Individual Rights in Washington, DC, focusing on free speech, congressional power, and race discrimination cases.
Within a year, Coulter took a short leave of absence from her law firm to write her first New York Times bestseller, High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton.
- Investigate This! - Wednesday January 5, 2011 at 4:42 pm
- Liberals Give ‘Til It Hurts (You) - Thursday December 30, 2010 at 10:17 am
- Scrooge Was A Liberal - Thursday December 23, 2010 at 7:41 am
