What's All This Cash Buying?

Money, money, everywhere!

Recently, there have been revelations of money sent to a commentator and a blogger by the US Department of Education and Howard Dean's presidential campaign, respectively.

The President's official Inaugural activities, paid for by private donations, will cost at least $40-million. Apart from the unseamliness of a major blowout happening at the same time that Americans are fighting and dying in Iraq, the amount of money being spent and the glitziness of the overabundant celebrating is disturbing.

But that's just the tip of the financial iceberg. This week will also see numerous other "celebrations" for various other political figures, many of them paid for by corporations and interest groups.

It's all very dangrous, it seems to me. Royalism appears to be alive in America and it's a bipartisan phenomenon.

No matter what the state of our union, there always seems to be enough cash around to grease the gears of our political machinery.