From the Weekly Standard:
The release of Mitt Romney’s 2011 tax returns shows that he freely gave away more than $4 million to charity last year (about 30 percent of his income). In comparison, when Joe Biden was first running for vice president, his tax returns showed that he had given away just $3,690 to charity over the previous ten years (about 0.2 percent of his income). In other words, Romney gave away a thousand times as much to charity in one year as Biden gave in a decade.
That’s despite the fact that the Bidens earned well over $2 million over that decade. In fact, their income was $320,000 in 2008, thereby putting them comfortably over the $250,000-a-year line that marks the entry point for “millionaires and billionaires” in Obama-speak.
Last year, Romney freely gave away more than $10,000 a day to charity — an impressive sum by nearly any standard. Of course, it’s not too hard to beat Biden’s tally. Over the span of that decade, or 3,650 days, he gave away $3,690 — an average of $1.01 a day.
Should we be surprised by this lack of charity from leftists? Well, Democrats are typically non-religious, as you might expect of people who support killing unborn children. In fact, Obama leads Romney 69% to 23% among non-religious people. So do people of no religion typically give a lot to charity, like the religious Romney, or are they mostly opposed to giving charity, like the pro-abortion secularist Joe Biden?
Consider this article from the Boston Globe.
Excerpt:
States with the least religious residents are also the stingiest about giving money to charity, a new study on the generosity of Americans suggests.
The study, released Monday by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, found that residents in states where religious participation is higher than the rest of the nation, particularly in the South, gave the greatest percentage of their discretionary income to charity.
The Northeast, with lower religious participation, was the least generous to charities, with the six New England states filling the last six slots among the 50 states.
[…]The most generous state was Utah, where residents gave 10.6 percent of their discretionary income to charity. Next were Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and South Carolina. The least generous was New Hampshire, at 2.5 percent, followed by Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
[…]The study found that in the Northeast region, including New England, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York, people gave 4.1 percent of their discretionary income to charity. The percentage was 5.2 percent in the Southern states, a region from Texas east to Delaware and Florida, and including most of the so-called Bible Belt.
[…]The study was based on Internal Revenue Service records of people who itemized deductions in 2008, the most recent year statistics were available. The data allowed researchers to detail charitable giving down to the ZIP code.
To ensure that states with differing costs of living were judged by the same standard, researchers calculated each state’s median discretionary income — the money remaining per household after variable but essential costs such as housing, child care and food are paid for. They then looked at the percentage of discretionary income that the typical household in each state gave to charity.
[…]Of the 10 least generous states, nine voted for Democrat Barack Obama for president in the last election. By contrast, of the 10 most generous states, eight voted for Republican John McCain.
If you think that this is the only life you have, and there is no one out there to hold you accountable, then it’s easy to be self-centered. Unless charity makes you feel good, there is no reason to do it on atheism. And when you don’t have a reason to be moral, then you often won’t be.
WINTERY KNIGHT 