Let Them Eat Cake

17 January 2005



DC Gets Stuck with Inauguration Bill

Tomorrow, George W. Bush will be sworn in as President of the United States for the second time. And for the first time in the nation’s history, Washington, DC is going to get stuck with a good chunk of the bill. Perhaps that will teach them not to vote Democratic.

Inaugurations are as close as America the Republic gets to acknowledging that it has become America the Empire. Coronations are out, but the lavish and conspicuous consumption of both Presidents Clinton and Bush the Lesser in their celebrations are a long way away from the more sensible parties of the past. Much of the costs for tomorrow’s events are security related. While it is highly doubtful al-Qaeda can attack the continental US, tomorrow is the one day to pay extra attention.

Private donors pay for most of the actual partying. There will be nine official balls after Mr. Bush says, “So help me God.” Only one of them is free – for members of the military, and it would be churlish to begrudge them that. Everyone else pays $150. Even a seat on the parade bleachers will cost -- anywhere from $15 to $125. And many of Mr. Bush’s cronies have coughed up six figure checks to help with ice and paper cups.

But as with any good party, there will need to be some security, and Mayor Anthony “I’ll Do Anything for Major League Baseball” Williams is laying on 6,000 cops to make sure the champagne and caviar crowd down suffer attack. The cost to the city is $17.3 million, and he will take $5.4 million from a special fund for capital events. The other $11.9 million will have to be diverted from the City’s homeland security funds. Every other inauguration has had the federal government pick up the tab.

The District of Columbia is not a state, and has no voting representative in Congress. For that matter, neither do the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico (conquered in the Spanish American War), Guam (also taken from Spain), American Samoa (split with Germany by treaty in 1899), and the American Virgin Islands (bought from Denmark in 1917). But thanks to the 23rd Amendment to the Constitution ratified in the early 1960s, DC gets three electors in every presidential election. The nation’s capital has always selected Democrats as its electors. Sometimes in politics, it really is just coincidence.

© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.

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