ShareThisIt's becoming the incredible shrinking inauguration.
In the aftermath of Barack Obama's historic victory, overheated Washington officials and others predicted the city would draw 4 million or more to the inaugural festivities, a crowd that would be four times larger than any other ever seen here. Now, the leaders are whittling back that prediction to 1.5 million to 3 million, max.
But even that may be too generous. Ever since the National Park Service got out of the politically charged crowd-counting business -- after it found itself mired in controversy for estimating just 400,000 people attended the 1995 Million Man March -- one of the best ways to approximate the true size of an expected crowd is by the porta-potty calculation. In this case, officials have ordered 5,000 of the portable johns, which translates into attendance of 500,000 to 1.5 million folks.
The final number is likely to depend on the turnout by the 4-million plus residents of the D.C. metropolitan area. If it snows on Jan. 20, or is otherwise a bitterly cold day, the crowd might not even reach the 1.2 million record set in 1965 by Lyndon Johnson's inauguration.
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D.C. bars are staying open until 4 a.m. during the inauguration festivities, but Washington's Metro transit system will be shutting down a couple of hours earlier. Cabs or designated Democrats will have to take up the slack for those who celebrate change too enthusiastically.
But riding the subway blotto may not be such a good idea, anyway. In a review of 13 years of subway-related fatals in the Big Apple, Columbia University researchers found that just over half the 668 deaths were suicides. But 315 were accidental. And 46 percent of those subway accident victims tested positive for alcohol in their blood.
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Those hunting for what happened to the $50 billion that allegedly vanished from Bernie Madoff's investment house of cards might want to look to Capitol Hill and environs.
Good-government group Opensecrets.org analyzed Madoff and company's spending on lobbying and campaign contributions and found the once-revered New York money manager shelled out nearly $1 million to influence Washington since 1991. His firm spent nearly $600,000 on lobbying, and about $370,000 in campaign donations.
Of the political cash, 89 percent went to Democrats, including $102,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and $12,000 to Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and a member of the Senate banking committee. Once the scandal broke, Schumer said he gave that $12,000 to charity.
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No matter how the tedious Minnesota recount goes between Sen. Norm Coleman and challenger Al Franken, the U.S. Senate will have its biggest freshman class in more than a decade.
Once Sens. Barack Obama and Joe Biden ascend in January to the two highest-offices in the land, they will have to be replaced, although it's unclear how long this might take. Two more Senate seats must be filled when current occupants Sens. Hillary Clinton and Ken Salazar take Obama administration Cabinet posts.
In all, the Senate will have 14 freshmen in the 111th Congress class. The last time there were so many newbies was in 1997, when 15 were seated for the first time.
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Call it state quarters, the sequel. The U.S. Mint, flush with $3.5 billion in profits from its wildly popular and recently ended commemorative state-quarter promotion, has come up with a new way to entice us to squirrel away the 25-cent pieces.
In 2010, the Mint will kick off another decade-long program of issuing special new quarters for each of the 50 states, as well as for the District of Columbia and all five U.S. territories. Each of the coins will depict a national park or "other national site" found in the state or other entity.
A national site is defined as a battlefield, monument, scenic river, recreation area or other place, as long as it is under federal control. Although governors will be consulted, the secretary of the U.S. Treasury Department will have the last word on the design.
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The gift that kept on giving: The Internal Revenue Service says its collections from taxpayer audits and other reviews fell about 5 percent this year -- the first drop in a decade. The reason: The IRS shuffled so many workers -- including auditors -- to process the 117 million economic stimulus checks last spring that it lacked the manpower to perform as many audits as it normally would.
Scripps Howard News Service correspondent Lee Bowman contributed to this column. E-mail Lisa Hoffman at hoffmanl(at)shns.com and Lee Bowman at bowmanl(at)shns.com.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)
Washington Calling
