Americans are so used to the links between money and power, it barely registers anymore when corporations and lobbyists dig deep for friendly politicians and their inaugurations.

The business of America is business, after all. What's good for General Motors is good for the USA.

Accustomed as we are to the nexus of money and power, it was only a short leap to the Bush administration's post-9/11 linkage of spending and patriotism. With the nation still reeling from the attacks on the World Trade Center, the president asked us to show our unity and defiance by shopping.

This was not a totally preposterous plea. Nobody wanted the collapsed twin towers to equal a collapsed economy. Spending money, which Americans love to do anyway, without urging, whether we can afford it or not, was one way that average folks could help the country right away, without special training.

Soon it was a "buy lots of Wal-Mart merchandise assembled by low-wage workers in China who are stealing our jobs or the terrorists will have won" kind of world, and we're all living in it.

Loyal Americans wore and flew the red-white-and-blue, but they also burned lots of green for their country.

That was three years, one Iraq invasion and trillions of dollars ago.

Now we stand on the eve of the Bush Inauguration Part Deux. Many citizens who felt moved to support the president in a time of crisis regardless of their political views now feel moved to oppose him, believing his policies have only made the crisis worse.

And so there are the inevitable counter-inaugural events. Included in the group is an attempt to turn the shop-for-America theme on its head.

The "Not One Damn Dime Day" campaign has been making the e-mail rounds for several weeks. Its aim is to encourage people to protest the war and other Bush policies by imposing on themselves a complete spending blackout on Inauguration Day -- no purchasing of gasoline, necessities, impulse buying in person or online for 24 hours.

"It doesn't really matter that everyone will be out spending what they didn't the next day," the Web page says. "A point or two will have been made."

Um, well, hmm -- I'm trying to imagine how big a one-day drop in sales would have to be to register any kind of point in this manner, especially if the difference is made up the next day.

Nope, sorry, it's lost on me. If it turns out to be the beginning of an organized, sustained effort with a specific target, that could be another story.

Meanwhile, some other protest events are listed at www.counter-inaugural.org.

They include visiting the Eyes Wide Open exhibit at the National Cathedral, which displays more than 2,000 boots and shoes symbolizing U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians killed in the war in Iraq; a Buddhist Peace Center vigil and meditation; a Critical Mass bike tour; and a Women's March and Funeral Procession, complete with a New Orleans-style jazz band, to "mourn the multiple blows to the American people dealt by the Bush administration."

The tongue-in-cheek organization Billionaires for Bush will hold a mock auction to unload Social Security and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to the highest bidder at 10:30 a.m. tomorrow at the FDR Memorial.

"Turn Your Back on Bush" is organizing several hundred protesters to position themselves along the Pennsylvania Avenue parade route. Participants will stand ready to turn a silent 180-degree pivot as Bush travels past.

Then there's an event scheduled for Friday at 11:30 a.m., called "Deliver a Spine to DNC Headquarters," which is pretty much self-explanatory.

The list of counter-inaugural events includes many free or low-cost parties and musical events, and it's a safe bet none of them is underwritten by Halliburton, Diebold or Raytheon.

That makes the protests intrinsically more tasteful than a $40 million blowout at a time when so many U.S. soldiers are fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. The business of America may be business, but the Washington power brokers have no business doing that.