I heard that the Bush's were paying for that hina themselves.
I remember thinking that made for a nice contrast between the Bush's and the Clintons. The Clintons stole White House china when they left, the Bush's bought nice expensive new stuff before they left.
GAO says that rumor was mostly false.
Link There was some minor vandalism (some people removed the W key from their keyboards) and some stuff went missing during the entire length of the Clinton administration. Nothing in the report says they stole the WH China and the report is fairly detailed.
Anyways. Re Obama inauguration, can't say I'm surprised. I'm endlessly fascinated by folks' hypocrisy. So long as it's covered by private funds, to each their own. You'd think Obama would want to send a message about service by having an austere party and donating the rest to something mildly useful.
If you ever want to truly "get" the language used by politicians, management fad types, et al, I recommend a good book called "Feast of Bones" by Daniel Bolger. There's a part in the book where a desantnik officer is going before a board of officers and he has to do the whole communist-is-wonderful spiel so they don't ground him for political unreliability. I won't ruin it, but it was the best tutorial on political doublespeak I've ever read.