If one presidential candidate releases tax returns and one doesn't, the one releasing the returns will always look magnanimous compared with the one who doesn't.
Such is the case this year with Hillary Clinton, who recently released her 2015 returns showing income of $10.6 million. Meanwhile, Republican Donald Trump says he's been advised not to release his until an Internal Revenue Service audit is complete.
The Democratic candidate, of course, has the added knowledge that the traditional media will never hold her returns up for scrutiny - no matter what they may contain.
What they contain, of course, is more of the same. More of the same money raked in for speaking fees, of trading on a failed term as secretary of state, of being the wife of a former president. More of the same "charity" going to a foundation she and her family control. More of the same inability - with earnings in the top 0.1 percent of Americans - to relate to the average citizen.
Trump, a billionaire, has the same inability to relate. The difference is she talks Main Street and lives Wall Street. He lives Wall Street and would like to lift those on Main Street to Wall Street.
Clinton's tax returns show the family gave $1,042,000 to charity in 2015. That's 9.83 percent of their income. Of that amount $42,000 went to the Desert Classic Charities golf tournament, and $1 million went to the Clinton Family Foundation, which is different from the Clinton Foundation that is said to be under multiple investigations by the FBI for the "porous ethical wall" - as termed by The Washington Post - that existed between it and the Department of State when she was there.
And what did the former president and first lady get for their $42,000 donation to Desert Classic Charities? Why, a $700,000 donation to the Clinton Foundation (the nefarious one), more than twice as much as was given to any other charity, according to the nonprofit's income tax return.
The Clinton Family Foundation, meanwhile, is a much smaller unit, which was set up to give money to more traditional charitable causes. However, while 2015 details aren't available for the Clinton Family Foundation, it legally gifted $1.865 million to the Clinton Foundation (the one under scrutiny) in 2014.
The couple's 2014 returns show charitable contributions of $3,022,700, including $20,000 to First United Methodist Church, $2,500 to St. Stephen's Armenian Apostolic Church, $200 to the Hot Springs High School Class of '64 and $3 million to the Clinton Family Foundation.
It's quite the cozy arrangement, all legal and so very Clintonian. The would-be president and her husband, the former president, who fretted about being near broke when they left the White House in 2001, deposit money from their checking account into their family foundation account for a tax break. The family foundation account then deposits money into the Clinton Foundation account, which allows the family carte blanche to travel, dine and otherwise curry favor with other nations and organizations that might assist them as long as they can make a vague connection to a foundation beneficiary.
Whatever Trump's returns may one day reveal, the Clintons' returns show a couple only too glad to feather their nest.