Liberals: Charitable With Your Money Only

About a year ago Arthur C. Brooks, a professor at Syracuse University, published "Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism". The conclusion: liberals are markedly less charitable than conservatives.
Some of his conclusions:

-- Although liberal families' incomes average 6 percent higher than those of conservative families, conservative-headed households give, on average, 30 percent more to charity than the average liberal-headed household ($1,600 per year vs. $1,227).
-- Conservatives also donate more time and give more blood.

With this in mind, this news comes as no surprise:

When it comes to giving money to charities, it's not even close: the Palins are almost 12 times as generous as the Bidens, when measured by charitable contributions as a percent of Adjusted Grosss Income in 2006 and 2007: 2.79% average for the Palins in those two years, vs. 0.24% for the Bidens (see top chart above).
And even though the Palins ($294,000) earned only about half the income of the Bidens ($569,000) in 2006 and 2007 combined, the Palins gave almost 6 times as much to charity ($8,205) in those two years as the Bidens ($1,375), see bottom chart above.

Obama is no different. Law Professor Paul Caron writes in TaxProf blog:

What is surprising, given the recent controversy over Obama's membership in the Trinity United Church of Christ, is how little the Obamas apparently gave to charity -- well short of the biblical 10% tithe for all seven years. 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.

The last two years being the years where he is under public scrutiny.
In contrast, John McCain has given:

Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, has released his tax returns for the past two years, including details about the money he donated to charitable causes, The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports. In 2007, he contributed 26 percent of his total income to charity.

Even the "evil" George Bush is markedly more charitable:

President and Mrs. George W. Bush certainly did their part. According to their 2005 tax return, the Bushes had taxable income of $618,694 and contributed $75,560 to charitable organizations...

In other words, liberals are generous with other peoples money, certainly not their own.
For more on this see here, here, here, here, here, here and here.


Update:  Ted Kennedy was no different.