Inaugural Costs

I got to thinking about those costs so I had to do some investigating.

Yup, a total of $150,000,000 for Obama's inaugural. Cost to the government: $49 million. Yup, that's a lot of money. But notice that that is only 1/3 of the total cost. The rest is supplied by donors.The other thing you'll hear on Faux (Fox) news is that Bush's inaugural only cost $47 million. Wrong! That did not include the cost to the government. Total cost of Bush's inauguration? $150 million.This seems to be the amount spent on inaugurations. The good part, as I stated, that much of this cost goes to people in the form of wages. Security, catering, flowers, all the other partying stuff.

The vast majority of it (in either inauguration) goes to paying wages to tax payers. Money well spent on boosting the economy.Your $8 million figure was a tad low. However, it's like the space program to me. People bitch and moan that the space program costs so much money. They seem to think they load up money from the Mint and blast it into space. No. They buy lots of manufactured goods and services and pay a lot of people decent salaries. Yeah, they leave a bit of junk in orbit, but that's miniscule compared to the good done right here on earth.

People get confused and addlepated by these huge (to them) numbers. Supposedly, Everett Dirkson said, "a billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon it adds up to real money." That's not the exact quote, since the Dirkson archives claim it didn't happen.

The concept, however, is something that your average wage slave (all of us) find hard to comprehend. In the Greatest Nation on Earth (the one and only thing I agree with Hannity the Nutcase about), we are perfectly capable of affording a grand party for a new president. In Bush's case, it was a waste of money, time, and energy. With Obama, this is more than just another inaugural. It's a turning point in US history.

Some people don't like it one bit. To them, I say: I didn't like your guy being proclaimed president by a bought-and-sold Supreme Court, so shut your face up about my guy.