A Brief History
On April 19, 2016, the 2016 New York Republican presidential primary is scheduled to be held in the U.S. state of New York as one of the Republican Party’s primaries ahead of the 2016 presidential election. As the 2016 Presidential election primary season drags on to delegate rich New York State, Republican front-runner Donald Trump visited the 9/11 memorial (The National September 11 Memorial Museum), an incident he has frequently mentioned as testament to the character of New Yorkers. With no appearance of fake emotion, The Donald contributed $100,000 to the memorial fund on the spot after touring the memorial with his wife, Melania. Obviously moved by the experience, Trump cancelled plans to take reporters’ questions as he did not want this particular act of generosity tainted by politics. Trump and many New Yorkers have been upset by disparaging remarks made about “New York values” by candidate Rafael Eduardo “Ted” Cruz.
Digging Deeper
John Kasich jumped on the Cruz bashing bandwagon over the ill considered slurs about New Yorkers, but seriously, Kasich has won only 1 primary and is highly unlikely to win another, although he is campaigning to create a brokered convention at which he hopes he will get the nomination in defiance of the overwhelming will of Republican voters who voted for other candidates during the primaries.
Bernie Sanders, a native born New Yorker (Brooklyn), of course has good things to say about the city and state of his birth, and has participated in a lifetime of causes for the masses and the downtrodden, as well as establishing his own charity. He has donated book royalties to charitable causes and raised money for Korean orphans to go to college. Sanders has had the good taste to refuse a large contribution by the pharmaceutical firm that viciously raised the price of an anti-AIDS medicine (also used by cancer victims).
Like Trump and Sanders, Hillary Clinton is a well known charitable person involved with the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, an organization formed by the former President and his wife in 2001 to direct their family charitable efforts, and quite an effort it has been, with well over $2 Billion raised for charity through 2014. The foundation seeks to improve health and opportunities for (especially) younger people throughout the world. Despite sniping from the enemies of the Clintons, the Foundation has an “A” rating from the American Institute of Philanthropy with at least 89% of donations going directly to end users. (Many other such foundations instead give grants to other charities, which has an inherent inefficiency of percentage of money that gets to the affected people.) The Foundation receives over $200 Million in contributions per year and is supported by Republicans, Democrats, Corporations and individuals. Hillary loves New York enough to have made the city her adopted home.
Meanwhile, “Lyin Ted” Cruz earns that nickname by falsely claiming to tithe (pay 10% of his gross income before taxes) to charity, when in fact he apparently only gives less than 1%! Does he think people will not find out about this lie? It seems he does.
So, it seems that the big loser in the field of candidates when it comes to charitable work /donations is Ted Cruz, a ringing indictment of his character compared to the other main candidates.
Question for students (and subscribers): Would your rather have Cruz or Trump as president? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Clinton, Bill. Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World. Knopf, 2007.