Michele Obama,
on the road in NC Tuesday:
The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more.
From the
Obamas' tax returns, released a few weeks ago.
In two of the years, the Obamas gave far less than 1% of their income to charity; in three of the years, they gave around 1% of their income to charity. Only in the last two years have they given substantially more as their income skyrocketed -- 4.7% in 2005 and 6.1% in 2006.
So we know who isn't going to be giving up a piece of pie voluntarily. At the time of the release,
the blogosphere commented on the hypocrisy --rather like the eyebrows
Al Gore once raised for being chintzy with charities. Seems utterly consistent to me, actually: if you think government is the source of charity, you leave it to government to be charitable. But why anyone should think that policy will create civic unity rather than a society of Scrooges is unclear. Anything the government takes care of is going to be off my mind.
