(no subject)

[windelina]

The Washington Post reports that the Bush administration, which is raising $40 million in private funds for the most expensive inauguration in history next week, wants the District of Columbia, for the first time in history, to pay all of its own expenses -- estimated at more than $17 million. In order to do so, the district will be required to divert $11.9 million from federal homeland security funding earmarked for hospitals, firefighting equipment and transit command centers.

The city's costs include $8.8 million in overtime pay for police officers, $2.7 million to pay officers being sent from around the nation to help with the event, $3 million to construct reviewing stands and $2.5 million to place the entire city infrastructure on emergency status. More than 100 square blocks of the city will be closed to vehicular traffic for this first post-9/11 inauguration.

For all previous inaugurations, Congress has made a direct appropriation to the perennially cash-strapped city to cover most or all of its costs. Boston and New York also each got $50 million from the federal government to cover costs associated with last year's party conventions, although those are private events while the inauguration is an official celebration.

Critics from many quarters have asked whether it is even appropriate to have an extravagant, boisterous inauguration, given that soldiers are dying daily in Iraq and hundreds of thousands are still suffering the catastrophic effects of the South Asia tsunami.

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I am so not surprised.

Remember: Bush originally offered 15 million to tsunami aid - less than HALF of what his inauguration will cost. I think we know where his priorities are.

Comments

[petsnakereggie.livejournal.com]

I'm doing the "I hate my President" dance right now.

It isn't all that hard. It mostly involves one finger.