Via Patterico:
Obama’s inauguration set to be the most expensive in US history
President Barack Obama’s inauguration next week is set to be the most expensive ever, predicted to reach over $150m (£102m). This dwarfs the $42.3m spent on George Bush’s inauguration in 2005 and the $33m spent on Bill Clinton’s in 1993.
Part of the spending includes emergency funding announced by the White House on Tuesday to help with the soaring costs. Most of this new federal funding will be to deal with the huge influx of people, estimated 1.5 million to 2 million.
And if there’s snow, there goes more money.
Where would we be without Congressional spokespeople?
Carole Florman, spokeswoman for the joint congressional committee on inaugural ceremonies, told the New York Daily News, which estimated the cost at $160m: “We’re always very budget conscious. But we’re sending a message to the entire world about our peaceful transition of power, and you don’t want it to look like a schlock affair. It needs to be appropriate to the magnitude of events that it is.”
Just make sure you go before you go: there’s going to be 1 toilet for every 6,849 people.
UPDATE
Our permanent state of routine emergency
UPDATE, Sunday 18 January
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It’s not just the Inauguration but the New, Super-Dooper Improved Inauguration. And it’s still an Edsel with marching bands and horse poop.
Right after the election, a German friend told me how impressed she was by McCain’s concession speech. I think that is what we should want to project to the world. We could even remind people that George Washington left office after two terms and that his behavior set a nonlegal standard that lasted until 1940. After Roosevelt, the two-term tradition was made a part of our constitution.
It was our respect for the character of Washington that set a standard for our our peaceful transitions of power, not an overpriced TV spectacle and certainly not ObamaCola. Perhaps one of the clerics paricipating in the inauguration should talk about the virtue of humility. BO and crew must not have heard about humility at Wright’s church.
I just realized that if Pres. Obama rolls out barrels of beer on the White House lawn then that would truly be something. But then it will mostly be other politicians so maybe envelopes full of bailout money and keys to the doors of mollusk museums.
The story about the toilets is misleading, since it’s the number of units available on the Metro, via which an estimated 1m people will travel on Tuesday. The actual ratio, based on http://www.wtop.com/?nid=780&sid=1544907 for a mall crowd of 2m, is 400 to 1. Still, it’s worth contemplating the effect of cold weather plus food from questionable mobile providers. Do we, for example, plan to impress visitors with local Chesapeake seafood?
Sierra, it is safe to assume that the vast majority of those traveling on the metro will be headed to the Mall on Tuesday. Also, many metro stops don’t have restrooms, and if they do, they will be closed, for security reasons.