With all the misleading comparisons and inflated numbers in the press these days, what’s another few hundred million dollars? Internet and television news outlets, from MSNBC and Fox to the Daily Mail and The Guardian in Britain, have been criticizing Obama for having a $150 million inauguration and comparing it with Bush’s $42.3 million ceremony in 2005.  All this fuss over Obama’s extravagance relative to previous presidents would be warranted if these were the costs of each ceremony.  Too bad they aren’t.

Assuming that the estimate of $150 million, $160 million, or even $170 million depending on which misleading news source you look at, is valid, the comparison between Obama’s inauguration cost and Bush’s inauguration cost still isn’t.  The $150 million estimate includes security, whereas the figure of $42.3 million does not.  Security makes up the bulk of overall cost.  If we were to include security costs into the Bush figure, the number is actually slightly more than $157 million.  Interesting isn’t it?  That’s more than the estimate of $150 million for Obama’s inauguration.  If we were to believe some news claims that Obama is spending four times more than Bush did, Obama would have to spend over $600 million, something that is obviously not going to happen even by the most outrageous estimates.

Now, we don’t know what the exact cost of Obama’s inauguration will be.  It might indeed be the most expensive in American history.  However, even if it were, it wouldn’t be by the degree the media is marketing it to be.  And that’s a problem.  It’s fine for the media to question whether Obama’s inauguration is too extravagant, but it is not fine for reporters to use false comparisons to sell their point.  We need responsible reporting, not bandwagon sensationalism.

For more on the media’s portrayal of Obama’s inauguration costs, go to
Media Matters

The American porn industry wants you to give it a $5 billion bailout. A few days ago, Hustler publisher Larry Flynt and Girls Gone Wild CEO Joe Francis said that they were going to ask Congress to “rejuvenate the sexual appetite of America” by supporting the porn industry even though it is not in financial danger.

Now, regardless of whether this would technically be considered a bailout (it probably isn’t even though CNN and others have called it one) and whether the industry gets the money (it probably won’t since it’s the porn industry), this publicity stunt raises two important issues the government has to deal with: how do you decide which companies or industries deserve bailouts and how do you deal with the costs? Bailing out every industry that is in trouble simply because we’re in a recession and we need to maintain jobs creates moral hazard, encouraging riskier behavior in the future, and leads to a slippery slope as more and more industries look to the government for help, while also undermining our nation’s future by increasing the national debt.

As Obama’s inauguration approaches, legislators are busy figuring out how to use the remaining $350 billion from the first financial industry bailout, whether to pass a $1 trillion public works program that would bail out the steel industry, and the contents of the new $775 billion economic stimulus package that would bail out America.  Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office has projected a $1.2 trillion budget deficit for this year.  On top of this, there has been little progress in Social Security and Medicare reform.

Stimulus to counteract the recession is necessary.  However, as various politicians have already stated, we need to ensure that these bailouts and stimulus packages are used to stimulate our economy, not executives’ pocketbooks.  Simply bailing out every industry is not an effective method of protection against future problems.  With these large dollar amounts being thrown around, it is even more important that Congress be responsible with our nation’s money.