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Arlington’s Confederate memorial removed in a few hours

Published on 25 Comments on Arlington’s Confederate memorial removed in a few hours

Hold on a second:

As dawn broke at a frigid Arlington National Cemetery on Wednesday morning, workers using a crane and harnesses began to take down a controversial statue that had stood there for more than a century.

Hours earlier, a federal judge had ruled an effort to halt the removal of the towering Confederate Memorial had no merit, and the contractors hired by the cemetery moved quickly to get the statue down and into custom-built wooden crates.

Last week the Post reported that taking down the statue would cost $3 million. But once they started, it was down and into its packing crates in a few hours. So what's the other $2.95 million for?

25 thoughts on “Arlington’s Confederate memorial removed in a few hours”

    1. emh1969

      Nah. The answer was in the original Post article that Kevin linked to.

      "The Army, which operates Arlington Cemetery, informed lawmakers Friday that it would proceed with the monument’s removal...".

      So basically half a million to remove it. The rest of the money will be lost by the Army, never to be found...

  3. iamr4man

    All kidding aside, I suppose the really expensive part was the “custom-built wooden crates”. If they could have just taken it down, put it on a truck, and taken it for recycling, I suppose it might have been much cheaper. Acting like it was some kind of artistic treasure probably made it a more daunting/expensive endeavor.

  4. cld

    To replace it with a solid gold dichtyp, I mean diptych, of true American heroes Rush Limbaugh and Father Coughlin, who represent freedom free and unfettered of any consequence, perfectly expressed in the placement in Arlington as neither of them had any military association.

    They're what our boys died for.

  5. bad Jim

    Maybe Team Henry makes the big bucks BECAUSE they can do the job in just a few hours (days, really, including prep and clean up). They have the tools and the expertise; they're definitely the experts in removing Confederate monuments in Virginia.

  9. Anandakos

    Preparation-H.... $2.95 millions worth of Preparation-H for the extreme and widely felt butt-hurt that Conservatives will experience now that their Role Models are gone from that prominent place.

  10. Martin Stett

    So what's the other $2.95 million for?

    Mats to absorb the tears of the neo-confederates.

    Maybe they can replace it with a monument to these guys. You won't see one in Alabama.
    "How did a regiment of 2,066 fighters and spies from the mountain South, chosen by Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman as his personal escort on the March to the Sea, get erased?"

    https://wapo.st/3NBV7vA

  11. Austin

    Perhaps the $3M includes some costs related to finding it a new home, eg building a new pedestal for it, installing security cameras around it, cuddling it when it feels down for being unloved, etc.

    1. KJK

      Absolutely! They can also house all the other torn down civil war monuments, and call it the Heroes Hall of the Confederacy. Place it next to the Noah's Ark Encounter in Kentucky. Should draw a good crowd there. The dinosaur pen on the ark is a must see!

  12. onemerlin

    You already mentioned a lot: custom built wooden crates; rush rental of cranes, harnesses, and contractors; delay costs associated with keeping the cranes, crates, and contractors on call on short notice. Also add in storage for everything before the removal, storage until re-installation (which will be as expensive as possible to allow the governor's chosen contractor to get max money), security for the intervening time (some horrible folk could damage it!), and probably added costs for some initial period of security and maintenance, which will be assumed into the budget in a year or so.

    The labor for the visible moment of action is almost never the main part of the budget for any entire project. And you in particular, as a former manager in a tech company, should really know this deep in your bones.

  14. D_Ohrk_E1

    I suppose the question is, which contractor is willing to do it for less?

    When you take on a job like this, you stand to lose business from Confederate lovers and Confederate-loving subs are going to ignore your calls.

  16. Gary Goldberg

    If you're serious about removing it, budgeting for more than you need seems better than promising it for less and failing, plus then afterwards you can brag on how much you saved. Maybe the Excel spreadsheet had room for 9 digits and they didn't want to waste the bits.

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