Awkward indeed...

The New York Times reports that "Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and former President Bill Clinton released tax data Friday showing they earned $109 million over the last eight years." The Times adds this comment:

Mrs. Clinton’s campaign released the eight years of income tax information late Friday, following a rising clamor on the campaign trail for her to follow the lead of her opponent, Senator Barack Obama, who had previously disclosed his tax returns for the same period. In what proved to be an awkward juxtaposition, the disclosure of the records — which revealed the Clintons to be in the top one-hundredth of 1 percent, or roughly 14,500, of all taxpayers — came on the day that Mrs. Clinton called for the creation of a cabinet-level post to tackle poverty.

Comments

[Jess @ Making Home]

In another interesting twist on this information, Crunchy Con wrote about how the Clintons have donated around 10% of their income to charity since 2000, while the Obamas have only given about 1% of their income to charity.

Another interesting juxtaposition.

Here's the link:
http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2008/04/obama-stingier-than-clinton.html

[David Talcott]

Most of that cash was in speaking fees and book sales. $50+ Million in 7 years of speaking fees for the former president--that's pretty incredible. His presidential pension was quite low, though, I thought--less than 200K a year...

[Todd]

It's all politics. We shouldn't get upset when politicians act politically.

Flashback to junior high: "Free soda in the lunchroom if you vote for me!"

[Jack's Pipe]

Back during his administration, I predicted that Clinton, given his unsavory ways and adeptness at raising money, would be laying the groundwork to become filthy rich after leaving office. Perhaps someone will explore (or has explored) where all these speaking fees came from.

[Bike Bubba]

Regarding the charity; most of it is to the "Clinton Family Foundation." Nice tax dodge, but I don't know that it's really that "charitable."

I'll be waiting for them to write a check to the IRS, by the way, as Mrs. Clinton has been campaigning on the idea that she didn't want Bush's tax cuts.

Oh, she didn't reject them? Really?