Party-on Garth! Bono, Stevie Wonder, Beyonce, Bruce Springsteen, Barrack Obama and more. Is this going to be a show or what? Obamapalooza! The news media can’t wait. January 20th we are going to spend $150 million dollars of taxpayer money to swear in our new President, Barrack Hussein Obama. And, it comes at a time when the economy, according to the guy we are inaugurating and most others, is in its worst shape since the Great Depression. The Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies printed some 240,000 tickets for official events to be distributed for free through Senate and House offices to constituents, and through the Presidential Inaugural Committee. So that’s it. No appropriations Bill, No voting, just send us (the taxpayer) the tab.
Why the Big Deal? Boomers like to Party
Why the big Party? What is the purpose? Seriously, it could be as simple as the President Elect, Barrack Obama placing his hand on the bible (or some other more “politically correct” book or object) and swearing that he will do everything he is supposed to do to uphold the office of the President of the United States. As a matter of practicality and formality, it could all be done in the Senate or House chambers, or even the White House. Now that would be real change in Washington! The News media could witness it, bless our new Messiah and play it on all the News Channels whenever they ran out of real news! Cost… just another normal day in DC!
Isn’t that what our forefathers did it? You remember those guys that wrote the simple little document called the U.S. Constitution. Well sort of, but not exactly. Click here for the history of it.
How about Super Bowl Style? Boomers love the Bowl!
Better yet, it could be handled like the Super Bowl. The television network with the highest bid could sell television advertising slots for Bud Light commercials at a cost of millions of dollars for just thirty seconds. (It would sure as hell be more interesting … I love Bud Light commercials.) With the income we could, 1) Pay off a few bad mortgages or a public official; or 2) bail out a few small businesses or maybe the porn industry; or 3) just buy a US Senate seat (Sorry, I couldn’t resist including Illinois in such a spectacular political blunder).
Double Standards
Why three times the cost of any prior inauguration? … the news Media doesn’t care. Is it because we elected someone besides a male Caucasian? … the news media does care! Once again we see the double standard applied when it comes to our new President Elect, Barrack Obama. Barrack Obama spends $150 million on one party and the news media has no complaints, rather they seem ecstatic. President Bush was heavily criticised by the news media for throwing away just 1/3 of that amount of money on his big bash. I recall being critical of that myself. It is not like we don’t all know exactly who it is going to be … but, in fact, is it because we do all know exactly who it is going to be? I think we need to remember what we elected in November was a new President of the United States. It shouldn’t make any difference whether he is black or not … but it seems to. Everyone likes to say we should leave race out of it. But, what we are about to experience seems to be exactly what we a trying to deny!
$$$ Cost Effective?
Remember a few weeks ago when the Big Three auto makers were criticised so heavily by the House and Senate for flying on private aircraft to Washington DC to ask for bail out money (isn’t that the way our government officials, and Chief Executives travel most of the time … including Nancy Pelosi). More double standards? I recall the words “cost effective” being used more than once during that time!
Well, according to the US Census Bureau there are 305,620,4448 people living in the United States. Of them, only 240,000 get tickets to this extravaganza. (Sorry, its really less than that because many of them go to foreign dignitaries). Anyway, that means that less than 8/100 of one percent of the US population get the opportunity to attend this event. That doesn’t seem all that cost effective to me. Maybe we should consider a better use of this ”spread the wealth” plan. I wonder if “Joe the Plumber got a ticket? Maybe instead of using the stimulus packages to get us a check, we can just use those for the big party.
DC Homeless Forced to Move
And , the Washington D.C. homeless are being forced to move until this is all over. Where does a homeless person move to? Where do they move from? If they are homeless how can they be forced to move from somewhere they don’t live? For $150 million we could buy 3000 of them a $50,000 home, but then they wouldn’t be homeless and we couldn’t make them move.
Too many questions … not enough answers! How about some more opinions on this! That’s mine. Party On! Papa B.