So information about Mit Romney’s tax return came out a couple of days ago and not surprisingly, the dude is freakin’ loaded. He made over $20,000,000 a year in 2010 and 2011. Most news stories I read seemed to only care about one thing, his effective tax rate of 15%.
Although I don’t like to identify myself with any political party (I think they’re both muy estupido), I don’t think you’ll be surprised to hear I am conservative by nature. I never drank before I turned 21, I didn’t move in with Girl Ninja until I married her, and I definitely didn’t jump on board with the Occupy Wallstreet movement.
Even though I’m relatively old-school, I understand and appreciate that you might not be. You wont see me on the street corners preaching “repent or go to hell” and it’s not very often I talk about anything even remotely political on this blog.
If I said, “I love Mit Romney”, half of you would have a hay-day in the comments section, tearing him and me apart. Likewise, if I professed allegiance to the Obama Campaign, I would expect similar reactions from the other half of you. The problem with politics today is no one is willing to have a conversation, and no one is willing to say, “You might be right.” Instead we call each other stupid, ridiculous, ignorant, and any other insult we can think of to make ourselves feel better.
Oh man, I’m on my fifth paragraph and I haven’t even gotten to what I want to talk about (sorry today’s post is going to be quite a bit longer than average). Okay here goes…..
I noticed on Mit Romney’s tax return he gave $3MM, of the $21MM he made in 2010, to his church and other charities. That means Romney gave 14% of his wealth away. I’d be willing to bet if you looked at Romney’s tax returns for the last ten years, they would all tell a similar story; He made a ton of money, and probably gave between 10%-20% of it away.
Obama’s tax returns tell a different story. In 2009 and 2010, the Obamas donated about 14% of their income to charity. Not too shabby. But if you look at his tax returns prior to becoming El Presidente (2000 to 2008) he never gave more than 6.5% to charity, and two of those years he gave less than 1% of his earnings away. Makes you wonder if he is giving more now because he knows he will get hell if he doesn’t. The Biden’s have never even pretended to be charitable givers, only donating around 1% of their income each year.
I side with the democrats in that I DO believe the wealthy have an obligation to help the less fortunate, and that they should redistribute some of their wealth to those in need, but I find it hard to take Obama (or Biden) serious when their personal actions don’t necessarily reflect the message they preach.
If they really, truly believed the wealthy have this moral obligation, why don’t they act on their own beliefs? Why wasn’t Obama donating 14% of his income to charity between 2000 and 2008? Why hasn’t Biden ever given more than 1% of his income away? Why must the government force them to do this when they are completely capable of doing it on their own?
Does anyone else at least find this a little odd? I guess the big take away from this whole situation is that the only REAL way for America to prosper is for people to THINK like Obama, but ACT like Romney. Why are politicians (both democrats and republicans) incapable or practicing what they preach?
p.s. Just to be clear, I think Romney is kind of a tool and this post is not in any way, shape, or form an endorsement for his candidacy for president. Although I do admire the dude’s commitment to giving.
p.p.s. I realize by talking about politics today, I’m opening up a can of worms. My only request is that we do our best to keep the comments related to this topic and avoid saying things like “Obama is a Muslim that wants to murder babies” or “Romney is a Mormon whackjob who only cares about his bank account”. Comments like that provide no value and only make you (and the party you represent) look bad.
p.p.p.s. If you want to know why I said I’d bet Romney has given at least 10% to charity for the last decade, see this comment I posted below.
p.p.p.p.s. I just wanted to p.p.p.p.s. this because I don’t think I have ever PS’ed something this much 
). Since I only made $38,000/year and hadn’t done much in the way of managing my money, everything was pretty straightforward. I filed through a website called Tax Act in about 30 minutes. It didn’t cost me a dime and I was stoked to get a $400 refund back from the IRS.
