Tainted love

Politics | Is Wall Street money for the presidential inauguration a gift or an investment? | Timothy Lamer

You might call it an emergency when between 1.5 million and 3 million people are expected to descend upon a city. President Bush did last week when he took the unusual step of declaring Washington, D.C., an emergency area before the Jan. 20 inauguration of new president Barack Obama, allowing the city to access federal funds to deal with the influx of visitors. Police from as far away as Los Angeles were expected to arrive and help with security.

But the cost to taxpayers isn't what's causing critics to sound the loudest alarm bells. Their larger concern: the sources of the tens of millions of private dollars that the Obama inaugural committee raised for the event.

Private funding for lavish presidential inaugurations isn't new; President Bush raised about $40 million for his 2005 event, and 90 percent of that came from corporations. But in the era of multi-billion-dollar corporate bailouts, questions about who is giving, why they are giving, and what they may expect in return have become more serious.