With unemployment at 5.1 percent, somebody's gotta pay for the war

I'm sure you people have seen this elsewhere, but just in case...

The Clintons made $109.2 million over the last seven years.

Most of that came through Bill Clinton's speeches and book earnings. He also got $1.2 million in presidential pension. I guess we can't have ex-presidents mooching for change on the street corners.

In any case the way this tax return thing has unfolded has been strange. In fact, it's really unusual for a candidate to release the returns during the primary, but I don't think a lot of people realize that because Obama made such a big deal out of the fact that he released his returns and Clinton didn't. I'm not sure why the Clinton camp decided to do it now after putting this off for so long -- I guess it's because Jay Carson wanted the opportunity to say things like this (via the Clinton Web site):

The Clintons have now made public thirty years of tax returns, a record matched by few people in public service. None of Hillary Clinton's presidential opponents have revealed anything close to this amount of personal financial information.

In a nutshell, the Clintons paid $33.78 million (31 percent of their adjusted gross income) in taxes and gave $10.26 million (9.5 percent of their adjusted gross income) to charity. That's almost exactly like me. *I* made a little more than $30K last year and gave $25 a month to charity, so that's, like, the same thing, percentage-wise, right? Maybe I'll run for prez -- I could definitely use that presidential pension.

Anyway, here's the breakdown (appropriated from the Huffington Post, which pulled from Clinton's Web site):

Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign has released her 2000-2006 joint tax returns, showing nearly $109.2 million in income over the last seven years.

The key details from Clinton's website:

TAXES PAID: $33,783,507

The Clintons paid $33,783,507 in federal taxes - 31% of their adjusted gross income. According to the most recent data available from the IRS, in 2005 taxpayers earning $10,000,000 or more paid on average 20.8% of their adjusted gross income in taxes.

CHARITABLE CONTRIBUTIONS: $10,256,741

The Clintons donated $10,256,741 to charity - 9.5% of their adjusted gross income. According to the most recent data available from the IRS, in 2005 taxpayers earning $10,000,000 or more contributed 3.1% of their adjusted gross income in cash contributions to charity. Information about the Clinton Family Foundation, including a list of charities to which the Clintons contributed through the Foundation, is available online in the Foundation's publicly available tax returns (www.foundationcenter.org).

AFTER TAX EARNINGS: $57,157,297

CUMULATIVE TOTAL(GROSS) INCOME: $109,175,175

Including, among other items:

* Senator Clinton's Senate Salary: $1,051,606
* President Clinton's Presidential Pension: $1,217,250
* Senator Clinton's Book Income: $10,457,083
* President Clinton's Book Income: $29,580,525
* President Clinton's Speech Income: $51,855,599