Back during my good ol’ FrumForum days, I wrote a semi-regular piece called “The Jo Moore Award.”
The award—named for the infamous British press officer who felt that the attacks on the World Trade Center provided a perfect opportunity to release some unpleasant stories—highlighted whatever piece of news the White House threw out with the Friday “trash" in hopes that you would go out Friday night, have too much to drink, and skip the Saturday paper containing the unpleasant stories while sleeping off your hangover.
For nostalgia’s sake, I thought we would bring it back this week and highlight the President’s tax returns, which the White House attempted to bury on Friday. It turns out the Obama family is doing quite well for itself, although the big man is not bringing in what he used to…
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The Obamas reported $608,611 in 2012, on which they paid $112,214 in federal income taxes.
For those of you keeping score at home, that means that the Obama family paid an effective rate of 18.4% on the year. 18.4% is way better than the 30% that Obama wants those making over a million bucks annually, but, in fairness, the President is going to make what might be aptly described as Mitt Romney money (or “f-you money”) when he leaves office.
Hell, between 2000-2008, President Clinton made a clean $82 million ($51.85 million for giving the same few speeches over and over again and about $29.6 million for his mehish memoir). So that tax bump Obama wants to install is going to hit him pretty hard in a few years if he succeeds in passing the so-called Buffet Rule.
But these are rough days for the Obamas. The President made $5.5 million in 2009, but his books (the first one is way better) are not selling like they were in 2009, when the Obama's brought home a clean $5.5 million. Apparently, word got out Audacity of Hope is not any good. That, or everyone already bought it once.
For more information, you can Google “Obama tax returns” or simply head to the Wall Street Journal.
Jeb Golinkin is a law student at the University of Texas and a columnist for "The Week" magazine. Follow him on Twitter.
