Apr. 05

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News from the Votemaster

Hillary Clinton kept her promise to release her tax returns. They are now available for inspection here. Last year the Clintons made about $22 million. Here are some of the highlights of their returns from 2000 to 2007. All amounts are in thousands of dollars.

Barack Obama posted his tax returns earlier. One of the (many) great things about the Internet is that in the old days politicians would make a handful of copies of their tax returns and give them to friendly reporters who would then cherry pick them and publish only the good stuff (like the charitable deductions) and omit the bad stuff (like money made lobbying for foreign governments). Now everyone can put on a green eyeshade and audit all the returns themselves. If you want to let someone else do your auditing, there are stories in the Washington Post, NY Times, LA Times, USA Today, and probably every other newspaper in the country (and in many foreign countries as well). The $109 million the Clintons have made after leaving the White House is in great contrast to the Harry Truman story, where after leaving the White House, Truman went back to live in his modest house in Missouri for the rest of his life.

If you do your own data mining, you can discover all manner of interesting things. For example, what is Hillary's last name? If you said "Clinton" you are wrong. She lists it as "Rodham Clinton." Many married women use their maiden name as a middle name, not a last name and those who do use it as a last name (in the U.S.) generally hyphenate it, as in Rodham-Clinton. Thus all the newspapers and Websites (including this one) that talk about Obama and Clinton are really wrong :-( . In alphabetical lists by last name, she should be filed under "R" yet the official Senate list of members puts her under "C". Here is the evidence.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported yesterday that 80,000 jobs were lost in March, bringing the total number of lost jobs for the year to 230,000. The politicians are busy scrambling for answers to people who are demanding they do something. Most likely the Republicans will say we need tax cuts to stimulate the economy and Democrats will say the government should create the jobs directly, for example, by rebuilding the nation's crumbling infrastructure. This debate is going to go on all year and will be front and center in the presidential and congressional election races. Between a mortgage crisis, houses being foreclosed right and left, big-time job losses and almost assuredly a recession this year, it is not a good time to be an incumbent.

Here are today's new primary polls. (Rodham) Clinton is leading in Pennsylvania and Indiana, probably in the 5-10% range, as we have seen a fair amount of spread in these states in recent days.

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