Dartblog

In Hillary’s defense—oh gosh am I really going to do this?—O.K., here goes.

Following up on Jenn’s post about the Clinton tax returns, I would just like to point out a few things. First, it is (quite obviously) misleading to look at ‘the Clintons’ income for the last 7 years, so of course the $109 million figure will look staggering. Even considering the two individuals together, almost 90% of this income comes from “Living History,” “Giving,” and “My Life,” best-selling books written by the two, and speech income. Of course a former president is going to be paid a lot to speak!

For fairnesses sake I should also note that Obama had an income of about $1 million in 2006. McCain reported a total just over his Senate salary and modest Navy pension.

Over the past 7 years the Clintons have donated at least $10.25 million, that is ten and a quarter million dollars, to charity. That is in addition to $34 million paid in taxes. Even if this last figure is an ungodly amount that they have been forced to pay, the fact of the matter is that even with their income (to say nothing of how they obtained this income) the Clinton’s are helping people.

The most important point is that making money does not make you a bad person. In the absence of any wrongdoing or unethical behavior, making money is a sign that you are helping people, providing a service that someone else wants or needs. That the Clintons have made such valuable use of their time, as evidenced by their high income, makes me more likely to vote for Hillary, not less.

While I think that Jenn is quite right that government (and the Democratic Party in particular) is dominated by ‘elites,’ I think this has less to do with money and far more to do with attitudes and policies. To make this post even more roundly pro-Clinton, to the extent that wealth is a problem in government, this is at least partly due to campaign finance laws sponsored by people like John McCain.

JENN ADDS: I’d just like to point out that during this post-presidency period, the only charity to which the Clinton’s donated was the Clinton Foundation. Most of the donated money was not even spent until Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy for the nomination. Helping people? I think not. Self-serving people? Most definitely.