A reader provides some numbers:
Jonah,
The math is easy, it just depends on what pay scale Mary McCarthy was paid on.
If it was a GS employee rate, then allowing for the DC locality pay puts her at $120-$150K a year. If it’s Senior Executive Service, that figure on about $140 – $180K. If the CIA has a special scale all their own (checks written with disapearing ink?), then maybe $160-200K. The upper limit is the President’s salary.
Going from, perhaps, a maxium of $200K to a minimum of $140K, her policial contributions would work out to 3.5 to 5% of her GROSS salary. Taking out the top tax brack (Fed), MD tax extortion rates (PR of Mongomery County), school taxes, make a best guess that she would pay about 40% of her gross in taxes. Now we’re down to about $120 – 84K. This is 5.9 to 8.4% of NET salary.
The percentage is an extraordinary for a single citizen in one of the highest cost-of-living regions in the nation. This implies a certain degree of party loyalty which borders on the fanatic. I find it highly disturbing for a Federal employee who is supposed to be bound to the precepts of the Civil Service oath and who should be paying much closer attention to the specifics of the Hatch Act. Her actions present a high degree of impropriety to the public.
Update: Another reader makes an important point:
The comment from a reader you posted irritated me in one respect. Hatch Act places NO RESTRICTIONS WHATSOEVER on federal employee contributions to political parties or candidates. Where did he get that? He/she obviously has his other facts straight.
I suspect McC’s husband is a key part of the analysis. They are a 2-income household. He contributed also.
My wife & I are both attys employed long-term by DOJ. In 2004, we contributed a combined total of about $4000.00, to RNC & candidates such as Thune. We each make a litttle less than McC’s low-end, as calculated by your reader. We believed 2004 was an exceptionally important election & tried to donate accordingly. I don’t think we can be fairly characterized as “fanatics” on this evidence.