Sarah Palin: A True Champion of the Middle Class

Governor Palin released her financials today. Last year, her AGI reported as a married couple was $166,000. Included in this was $46,600 that her husband made from working at BP and $15,500 he made from his commercial fishing business. In the prior year they made $128,000 AGI. I know for the many struggling out there this sounds like a lot of money, but she is probably the most impoverished person to be on a presidential ticket since Lincoln. In addition it should be noted that she has 5 children to provide for. This was reported in the Wall St. Journal.

By way of comparison, the Obamas made over $4 Million dollars of AGI last year. The article also cites that John McCain paid his household help more in total salary than what the Palin's earned last year.

The article lists Palin's largest asset as her home, very aligned with the middle class.

The Palins gave 1.5% of their income to charity last year. This is a truly authentic number because she could not have imagined that she would have to release her income specifics due to the fact that she would be named a vice-president candidate. Obama's charitable contributions went way up this year because he knew he was running for President.

By way of comparison, Dem VP Joe Biden made over $320,000 in AGI and gave less than $1,000 to charity last year. Blue-collar Joe has average $369 a year to charity over the past 10 years.

This VP charitable contribution comparison aligns with major studies than have been done that states Liberal compassion doesn't always make it to their check books.

Arthur C. Brooks, a professor at Syracuse University, published "Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism" saw the following truth when running the data on how the different political ideologies give to charity:

"Although liberal families' incomes average 6 percent higher than those of conservative families, conservative-headed households give, on average, 30 percent more to charity than the average liberal-headed household ($1,600 per year vs. $1,227)."

Back in December of 2006, John Stossel on 20/20 did a test that gauged similar patterns of giving. He put Salvation Army buckets in two different towns. One was very liberal and affluent San Francisco, the other was modest and church going Sioux Falls, SD. His findings:

"Well, even though people in Sioux Falls make, on average, half as much money as people in San Francisco, and even though the San Francisco location was much busier -- three times as many people were within reach of the bucket -- by the end of the second day, the Sioux Falls bucket held twice as much money."

This is why I usually give very little credence to Liberal-activist celebrities whom speak out as to how we should donate to charities.