Thank God this rally is at 5PM, after business hours, so people can attend without taking off work.
This is not a "liberal" or "conservative" issue.
This is a matter of the more financially informed citizens of a community having had it up to their necks with wasteful public spending at the expense of essential services, while the city lurches towards bankruptcy.
Whats up with these people, we all know if we get the Olympics, one of the conditions will be a better CTA system - and if we get them obama will through tons of cash at Chicago for preparation. I dont get this groups point.
I don't understand why anyone would protest the olnpic bid- this would generate an immediate cash flow into our city- it is estimated that there would be a 7 billion dollar boom leading up to and after the olympics have left. This would be great for our country and our city
I don't understand why anyone would protest the olnpic bid- this would generate an immediate cash flow into our city-
Can you guarantee this? Didn't think so. Neither can the city, hence the $250 million of YOUR dollars they have committeed to give to the IOC if the games don't produce the revenue they hope it will. Which, given the post-Olympic fate of some of the past hosts is a very distinct possibility.
Rally is Thursday at 5:00 pm, Federal Plaza, 50 W. Adams. (click on the poster to enlarge it)
Get the facts at www.nogameschicago.com. No city, except Los Angeles, has made money from the Olympics. Cost overruns in Vancouver (2010) and London (2012) have been huge. Taxpayers will have to pay -- Daley lies. Chicago's bid book contains no funding to improve the CTA.
I sincerely doubt the many many fans of the Cubs, Sox, Wolves, Hawks, Bears, and Bulls would even consider attending this rally.
What does being a pro sports fan have to do with this? You think fans of Chicago pro sports teams don't care about one of the biggest gambles this city is going to take, that could send us down the financial craphole for years to come, that giving all of those lucrative construction contracts to someone like Daley and his cronies is like giving the fox not only a key to the henhouse but a map and full set of dinnerware. Look, I love my Chicago sports teams, but that has shit to do with wanting the city to take care of some of the bigger problems first.
Tell you what, if the city can cut the murder rate in HALF, I'll go onboard. I'm not going to ask them to fill every pothole or stop corruption totally or even stop selling off public assets like parking meters. Just cut the city murder rate in half. That's it. If they can do that, I'll carry the fucking banner all the way down State Street.
"Venues that were built to meet the requirements of sports federations (most of which get one chance every four years to market their events to a global audience) have proved useless to Athenians. Poor urban areas have been left in the shadow of the white elephants, with no sign of the "urban renewal" that Olympic organisers, including London's planners, are so quick to promise."
OFF TOPIC: Did anyone else notice that "super journalist" Tom Mannis "broke" the story that Joe Moore will resign this month with the promise of an "update later today!"?
That supposed $7 Billion in economic "boons" to the city will come at the cost of at least $20Billion.
London leaders have publicly stated that they wish they had not bid the 2012 Games. Why? Because the costs have already mounted to over TWENTY BILLION DOLLARS.
The Bejing Games cost $44Billion.
As for the supposed economic benefits... who will be the beneficiaries, exactly? Not us, the citizens. The beneficiaries will be crony "entrepreneurs who will reap the benefit of the taxpayer's investments.
And why oh WHY do we need this one-time, 8 week event to justify upgrading and expanding the transit system that was once one of the finest in the country? The area needs vastly improved and expanded rail and other transit in order to remain competitive in a age of escalating fuel costs. Why do we have to justify providing the citizenry (that's us) with basic services but bend over backwards to roll out the carpet for tourists?
Chicago did not become rich off tourism. Tourism is the straw cities clutch at when they are beginning to fail. Chicago become wealthy by its position as a center of manufacturing and general commerce. That is the only road to vast and permanent wealth. It's sick and sad that we are overextending ourselves financially to attract a one-time, short-term event while the city becomes, in general, very hostile to business, burdened as it is with the highest sales tax in the country, death duty merchants & manufacturers taxes, payroll taxes, and an obstructionist bureaucracy and regulatory strangulation.
All you have to do is look at the cost overruns for Millennium Park to know that Daley is lowballing the costs for 2016 (just as he did for the Park) and that we will be left holding the bag (of crap!). The Park exceeded its originally proposed budget of $150 million with a final cost of $475 million. That's more than THREE TIMES the original budget. Does anyone honestly believe the same thing or worse won't happen with the Games?
Before a city chooses to campaign to host the Olympics, it should make a business plan for every new structure and every new venue and then tie these plans into a comprehensive infrastructure and urban planning impact study that takes into account all the big changes that are bound to take place. Only then can we, as a city – and, yes, I do think it probably should come to a vote, make any kind of realistic and fully accountable decision.
Of course, this costs a lot, takes a lot of time and definitely is not in keeping with our Mayor’s tear-up-Meigs Field-in-the-dead-of-night-regardless-of-what-the-public-wants-way of doing things but I do believe it would be in keeping with what is best for the city, Hiz’oner’s ego be damned. I believe holding the Olympics in Chicago is more an opportunity to stroke his massive ego than to do what is best for our city. Of course, personally I'd be happy to get on board IF he proves me wrong by stepping down from office before the next mayoral election but obviously, that's not going to happen.
No, I just can't fathom why we should incur the monumental debt that cities like Athens and Vancouver had to deal with after their games. Atlanta broke even but only because of the enormous corporate sponsorship they got from Coca-Cola, a local industry with very deep pockets. Who is going to sponsor the Olympics in Chicago? According to what I’m reading, it will be the local and state taxpayers!
For details on the aftermath of sponsoring the Olympics as well as insights into lessons learned from the experiences, go to http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/after-the-party-what-happens-when-the-olympics-leave-town-901629.html
- PEACE -
P.S. By the way, how do we hope to provide the added security needed in this post 9/11 world without a contract with our first responders? Twenty-one months without a contract? Is Daley insane???
Sorry master plan, but the IOC has already said they would arrange for other transportation for the athletes, officials & spectators to the various locations.
That means buses brought in from other places & a demand to close off lanes on streets & expressways for the exclusive use of the Olympics.
In other words, traffic hell for the rest of us!
So there wouldn't be any benefit for the CTA!
Plus there would be a massive lockdown of huge areas of the city, with the Washington Park area, Olympic Village, Lincoln, Grant & Burnham Parks & parts of the West Side closed off to all but participants & those with tickets.
Plus of course being on the hook for the billions for the next 50 years! Montreal took 30 years to pay off the 1976 games.
I'm a 35-year Sox fan, and I oppose this project. The alleged benefits of hosting the Olympics did not materialize for any of the host cities in the last 20 years, as far as I know.
Every Olympics has cost substantially more than estimated, and in most cases the citizens of the country and community were stuck with the bill.
Hosting the Olympics would cost Chicagoans about $4,000 each.
Having said that: I went to the "No Games" rally, and left almost immediately. While there seemed to be some sincere people there, the rally was massively infested with hyper-leftists radicals peddling their Communist causes. (When their flyer carries a picture of Che Guevara, they're Commies!)
It looks to me like some of the usual suspects trying to exploit anti-games sentiment to raise money and recruit followers.
Todd - right - I would love to see where you got those numbers - cities lose money on the Olympics, not make it. The only people that make money are the bigwigs, the real estate investors selling property for location,etc. The burden is placed on the back of the city. Read some articles about what is going on right now in Vancouver, they can't figure out how they are going to pay for the Olympics coming up and the people are being taxed to death! Until now, I have always voted for Daley, thinking he wanted what was best for the people and the city. I think that's about to change (of course, the alternatives they put up for election will probably be worse).
Did you see the IOC twit (a former member I think, he had a foreign accent) comment on hosting the Olympic games? He said it was an "everyone pulling together" experience for the host city and that "if it's done right, you might even be able to turn a profit." And former US IOC Chiar Mitt Romney was quoted in the Tribune at http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/clout_st/2009/03/romney-says-obama-will-help-bring-olympics-to-chicago.html:
Still, Romney said the value of hosting the Olympics is in demonstrating a city before a world audience, not in whether it makes a profit.
“I don’t see the games as a moneymaker. If that’s what you’re looking for, I don’t think that’s going to be the result, typically. It is however about the best service opportunity for the world that you’ve ever experienced. It will bring Chicagoans together in a way like nothing else can. It is a marvelous experience,” he said.
See, there's no profit in hosting the olympics, it's just a fun experience for the cool kids, like building a fraternity float.
Thanks to Romney for laying it on the line- and he's a proponent of the Games, obviously.
How typically American to max out your cards to Have Fun and mount a Disneyland-type spectacle, even if you have to spend the next 10 years paying for it, while lacking the money for basics.
The mentality that seconds busting the city treasury, disrupting the lives of tens of thousands of people, and putting the city on the hook for possibly $40 Billion (the cost of the Bejing and Vancouver games), just to Unite the City and Have Fun, is the same mentality that gets a 2nd mortgage for his daughter's $100K wedding but doesn't want to front a dime to put the rest of the kids through a two-year trade school, and has a BMW sitting in front of a house with a broken furnace and sagging roof.
Everything we do with public money needs to be about providing for our inadequate and underfunded lifeline services, and essential infrastructure, and paying down the bills we have already. Everything we do for recreation should be available to all city residents on equal terms and should be to maintain and improve our existing parks and facilities. Train lines should go where they will haul the most commuters, not to provide an express between the airport and downtown that will benefit mostly tourists.
The fact that, according to the polls, 77% of Chicago's residents favor the games says nothing for them except that, like most Americans, most Chicagoans are childish, self-indulgent people who don't count the costs of the grand spectacles they so love, and who don't realize that, in order to maintain this city at the level that makes it a desirable place to live, tradeoffs have to be made.
Cab drivers, concierge, catering, restaurants, hotels, servers, bartenders, museums, advertisers, public relation firms, concession and service crews, tour guides, destination mgt companies, and this is not just a 3 week cash flow- there will be years of lead up and break down for this- this is not just a rich mans game- it will be GREAT for this city. We do this because we ARE a world class city. NOT beacause we want to be one.
Todd: Stop drinking Patrick Ryan's Kool-Aid! There won't be years of money to be made before the games, instead, there will be years of money spent in the runup to the games & decades of paying them off, if ever!
And North Coast, it's doubtful if anyone will ever know the true cost of the Beijing games, but $44 billion is way under the cost. It was probably double that & now Beijing is full of empty buildings that nobody wants.
Odds are that the hotel fire there of a few weeks ago was arson by the owners.
And since most of what was built was probably done to those wonderful standards of Chinese quality we here have gotten to see first hand, most of what was built will probably start to fall down soon!
Yes, Sock, you are correct- the $44 Billion for the Bejing games is only the counted public costs.
That number obviously does not include the cost of borrowing all that money, or the costs to all the farmers of water-deprived provinces who lost their crops because of the massive diversion of water to the games. Or the costs to insurers, reinsurers, and investors of the torched hotel and others structures built for the games but useless now.
Just like we didn't count the costs of the Credit Bubble but those costs are hitting us now, with a vengeance.
The American credo is to pull out the credit cards and have a good time, forget about the deferred costs and how they have this nasty way of compounding on you.
The pessimistic number crunches will predict gloom and jumble the numbers. The ones who watched Atlanta rise after 1996 will be optimistic. Ultimately, anything that will attract investment to Chicago should be encouraged.
CNN is in Atlanta now; they don't have to stay there. Although many of us wonder about the brain trusts that gave us Parkingmeter-Gate,others appreciate the advantages of an olympics.
Hopefully, Daley will not sell off all of Chicago's assets before 2016.
Atlanta was on the rise a long time before 1996, and had already become a major high-tech center and draw for financial businesses.
The Olympics there had NOTHING whatever to do with the economic success the Atlanta region has enjoyed since the 70s. It's ridiculous to link an athletic event of a few week's duration to the success of the region as a whole. However, it's a good bet that the Olympic committee would not have chosen the city if it were not a top-tier city area to begin with.
Atlanta realized no long-term gain from the Games, and during the event, many businesses saw their revenues drop. Hotels and restaurants located outside the area close to the games actually lost business.
It was definitely not a "win" for the area, which continues to have problems with water supply and crime. Atlanta will continue to succeed or not, for reasons that have nothing to do with this event.
Americans attach way too much importance to events like this and don't pay enough attention to the things that really build an economy and a country. This country was built by heavy industry and diverse, intricate commerce, and it is failing now because we have trashed our manufacturing sector and our economy has become too heavily concentrated in one industry (financial).
Daley ought to be trying to make the business climate here friendly enough to attract manufacturing and commercial without having to hand out subsidies to businesses to locate here. Notice that Princeton, IN, did not need the Olympics to entice Toyota to build their plant there. We here in Chicago and other old Midwestern burgs should be asking why Toyota would not consider building in Chicago. Instead, we're casting about for more Bread & Circuses for the politicians and their crony "entrepreneurs" who will be the only people to benefit, while we pay in higher taxes and reduced services.
30 comments:
Thank God this rally is at 5PM, after business hours, so people can attend without taking off work.
This is not a "liberal" or "conservative" issue.
This is a matter of the more financially informed citizens of a community having had it up to their necks with wasteful public spending at the expense of essential services, while the city lurches towards bankruptcy.
Whats up with these people, we all know if we get the Olympics, one of the conditions will be a better CTA system - and if we get them obama will through tons of cash at Chicago for preparation. I dont get this groups point.
Sorry - I can't see it - when is the rally and what time?
I don't understand why anyone would protest the olnpic bid- this would generate an immediate cash flow into our city- it is estimated that there would be a 7 billion dollar boom leading up to and after the olympics have left. This would be great for our country and our city
This protest is a pretty lame proposition, considering Chicago is a "sports" mecca.
I sincerely doubt the many many fans of the Cubs, Sox, Wolves, Hawks, Bears, and Bulls would even consider attending this rally.
What, prevent sports from being played and watched in our city? What jagoff came up with that idea?
I'm not fully informed, but have been told the plan includes precious little funding for improving the CTA.
Anyone know for certain?
===it is estimated that there would be a 7 billion dollar boom leading up to and after the olympics have left.===
Got any actual documentation on this? Or are you talking out of your paper asshole?
I don't understand why anyone would protest the olnpic bid- this would generate an immediate cash flow into our city-
Can you guarantee this? Didn't think so. Neither can the city, hence the $250 million of YOUR dollars they have committeed to give to the IOC if the games don't produce the revenue they hope it will. Which, given the post-Olympic fate of some of the past hosts is a very distinct possibility.
Rally is Thursday at 5:00 pm, Federal Plaza, 50 W. Adams. (click on the poster to enlarge it)
Get the facts at www.nogameschicago.com.
No city, except Los Angeles, has made money from the Olympics. Cost overruns in Vancouver (2010) and London (2012) have been huge. Taxpayers will have to pay -- Daley lies. Chicago's bid book contains no funding to improve the CTA.
I sincerely doubt the many many fans of the Cubs, Sox, Wolves, Hawks, Bears, and Bulls would even consider attending this rally.
What does being a pro sports fan have to do with this? You think fans of Chicago pro sports teams don't care about one of the biggest gambles this city is going to take, that could send us down the financial craphole for years to come, that giving all of those lucrative construction contracts to someone like Daley and his cronies is like giving the fox not only a key to the henhouse but a map and full set of dinnerware. Look, I love my Chicago sports teams, but that has shit to do with wanting the city to take care of some of the bigger problems first.
Tell you what, if the city can cut the murder rate in HALF, I'll go onboard. I'm not going to ask them to fill every pothole or stop corruption totally or even stop selling off public assets like parking meters. Just cut the city murder rate in half. That's it. If they can do that, I'll carry the fucking banner all the way down State Street.
After The Party: What happens when the Olympics leave town
"Venues that were built to meet the requirements of sports federations (most of which get one chance every four years to market their events to a global audience) have proved useless to Athenians. Poor urban areas have been left in the shadow of the white elephants, with no sign of the "urban renewal" that Olympic organisers, including London's planners, are so quick to promise."
OFF TOPIC: Did anyone else notice that "super journalist" Tom Mannis "broke" the story that Joe Moore will resign this month with the promise of an "update later today!"?
Yeah. Seems that breaking story has been removed.
Man, that guys cracks me up.
You do know that yesterday was April 1, right?
That supposed $7 Billion in economic "boons" to the city will come at the cost of at least $20Billion.
London leaders have publicly stated that they wish they had not bid the 2012 Games. Why? Because the costs have already mounted to over TWENTY BILLION DOLLARS.
The Bejing Games cost $44Billion.
As for the supposed economic benefits... who will be the beneficiaries, exactly? Not us, the citizens. The beneficiaries will be crony "entrepreneurs who will reap the benefit of the taxpayer's investments.
And why oh WHY do we need this one-time, 8 week event to justify upgrading and expanding the transit system that was once one of the finest in the country? The area needs vastly improved and expanded rail and other transit in order to remain competitive in a age of escalating fuel costs. Why do we have to justify providing the citizenry (that's us) with basic services but bend over backwards to roll out the carpet for tourists?
Chicago did not become rich off tourism. Tourism is the straw cities clutch at when they are beginning to fail. Chicago become wealthy by its position as a center of manufacturing and general commerce. That is the only road to vast and permanent wealth. It's sick and sad that we are overextending ourselves financially to attract a one-time, short-term event while the city becomes, in general, very hostile to business, burdened as it is with the highest sales tax in the country, death duty merchants & manufacturers taxes, payroll taxes, and an obstructionist bureaucracy and regulatory strangulation.
All you have to do is look at the cost overruns for Millennium Park to know that Daley is lowballing the costs for 2016 (just as he did for the Park) and that we will be left holding the bag (of crap!). The Park exceeded its originally proposed budget of $150 million with a final cost of $475 million. That's more than THREE TIMES the original budget. Does anyone honestly believe the same thing or worse won't happen with the Games?
Before a city chooses to campaign to host the Olympics, it should make a business plan for every new structure and every new venue and then tie these plans into a comprehensive infrastructure and urban planning impact study that takes into account all the big changes that are bound to take place. Only then can we, as a city – and, yes, I do think it probably should come to a vote, make any kind of realistic and fully accountable decision.
Of course, this costs a lot, takes a lot of time and definitely is not in keeping with our Mayor’s tear-up-Meigs Field-in-the-dead-of-night-regardless-of-what-the-public-wants-way of doing things but I do believe it would be in keeping with what is best for the city, Hiz’oner’s ego be damned. I believe holding the Olympics in Chicago is more an opportunity to stroke his massive ego than to do what is best for our city. Of course, personally I'd be happy to get on board IF he proves me wrong by stepping down from office before the next mayoral election but obviously, that's not going to happen.
No, I just can't fathom why we should incur the monumental debt that cities like Athens and Vancouver had to deal with after their games. Atlanta broke even but only because of the enormous corporate sponsorship they got from Coca-Cola, a local industry with very deep pockets. Who is going to sponsor the Olympics in Chicago? According to what I’m reading, it will be the local and state taxpayers!
For details on the aftermath of sponsoring the Olympics as well as insights into lessons learned from the experiences, go to http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/after-the-party-what-happens-when-the-olympics-leave-town-901629.html
- PEACE -
P.S. By the way, how do we hope to provide the added security needed in this post 9/11 world without a contract with our first responders? Twenty-one months without a contract? Is Daley insane???
Jeepers, Northcoast, if I wasn't married, I'd ask you out on a date. I like the way your brain works.
That's just my way of saying, I agree with you.
- PEACE -
By the by, I listed Vancouver when it should have been Montreal. The residents of Montreal only finished paying off the debt from hosting the 1976 Olympics in 2006. That's after their mayor declared (in true Daley fasion)during the campaign to host the Olympics, "The Montréal Olympics can no more have a deficit than a man can have a baby."
-PEACE-
Sorry master plan, but the IOC has already said they would arrange for other transportation for the athletes, officials & spectators to the various locations.
That means buses brought in from other places & a demand to close off lanes on streets & expressways for the exclusive use of the Olympics.
In other words, traffic hell for the rest of us!
So there wouldn't be any benefit for the CTA!
Plus there would be a massive lockdown of huge areas of the city, with the Washington Park area, Olympic Village, Lincoln, Grant & Burnham Parks & parts of the West Side closed off to all but participants & those with tickets.
Plus of course being on the hook for the billions for the next 50 years!
Montreal took 30 years to pay off the 1976 games.
The Olympics are an investment. The city might profit, the city might loose.
Would you trust Richard Daley with your 401k money?
See nogameschicago.com for other anti Olympic bid events this week. Next up, critical mass bike ride Friday, 5:30 pm Daley Plaza.
I'm a 35-year Sox fan, and I oppose this project. The alleged benefits of hosting the Olympics did not materialize for any of the host cities in the last 20 years, as far as I know.
Every Olympics has cost substantially more than estimated, and in most cases the citizens of the country and community were stuck with the bill.
Hosting the Olympics would cost Chicagoans about $4,000 each.
Having said that: I went to the "No Games" rally, and left almost immediately. While there seemed to be some sincere people there, the rally was massively infested with hyper-leftists radicals peddling their Communist causes. (When their flyer carries a picture of Che Guevara, they're Commies!)
It looks to me like some of the usual suspects trying to exploit anti-games sentiment to raise money and recruit followers.
Unfortunate. I did buy one of their buttons.
Todd - right - I would love to see where you got those numbers - cities lose money on the Olympics, not make it. The only people that make money are the bigwigs, the real estate investors selling property for location,etc. The burden is placed on the back of the city. Read some articles about what is going on right now in Vancouver, they can't figure out how they are going to pay for the Olympics coming up and the people are being taxed to death! Until now, I have always voted for Daley, thinking he wanted what was best for the people and the city. I think that's about to change (of course, the alternatives they put up for election will probably be worse).
Did you see the IOC twit (a former member I think, he had a foreign accent) comment on hosting the Olympic games? He said it was an "everyone pulling together" experience for the host city and that "if it's done right, you might even be able to turn a profit." And former US IOC Chiar Mitt Romney was quoted in the Tribune at http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/clout_st/2009/03/romney-says-obama-will-help-bring-olympics-to-chicago.html:
Still, Romney said the value of hosting the Olympics is in demonstrating a city before a world audience, not in whether it makes a profit.
“I don’t see the games as a moneymaker. If that’s what you’re looking for, I don’t think that’s going to be the result, typically. It is however about the best service opportunity for the world that you’ve ever experienced. It will bring Chicagoans together in a way like nothing else can. It is a marvelous experience,” he said.
See, there's no profit in hosting the olympics, it's just a fun experience for the cool kids, like building a fraternity float.
Thanks to Romney for laying it on the line- and he's a proponent of the Games, obviously.
How typically American to max out your cards to Have Fun and mount a Disneyland-type spectacle, even if you have to spend the next 10 years paying for it, while lacking the money for basics.
The mentality that seconds busting the city treasury, disrupting the lives of tens of thousands of people, and putting the city on the hook for possibly $40 Billion (the cost of the Bejing and Vancouver games), just to Unite the City and Have Fun, is the same mentality that gets a 2nd mortgage for his daughter's $100K wedding but doesn't want to front a dime to put the rest of the kids through a two-year trade school, and has a BMW sitting in front of a house with a broken furnace and sagging roof.
Everything we do with public money needs to be about providing for our inadequate and underfunded lifeline services, and essential infrastructure, and paying down the bills we have already. Everything we do for recreation should be available to all city residents on equal terms and should be to maintain and improve our existing parks and facilities. Train lines should go where they will haul the most commuters, not to provide an express between the airport and downtown that will benefit mostly tourists.
The fact that, according to the polls, 77% of Chicago's residents favor the games says nothing for them except that, like most Americans, most Chicagoans are childish, self-indulgent people who don't count the costs of the grand spectacles they so love, and who don't realize that, in order to maintain this city at the level that makes it a desirable place to live, tradeoffs have to be made.
Who will make money?
Cab drivers, concierge, catering, restaurants, hotels, servers, bartenders, museums, advertisers, public relation firms, concession and service crews, tour guides, destination mgt companies, and this is not just a 3 week cash flow- there will be years of lead up and break down for this- this is not just a rich mans game- it will be GREAT for this city. We do this because we ARE a world class city. NOT beacause we want to be one.
Todd: Stop drinking Patrick Ryan's Kool-Aid!
There won't be years of money to be made before the games, instead, there will be years of money spent in the runup to the games & decades of paying them off, if ever!
And North Coast, it's doubtful if anyone will ever know the true cost of the Beijing games, but $44 billion is way under the cost. It was probably double that & now Beijing is full of empty buildings that nobody wants.
Odds are that the hotel fire there of a few weeks ago was arson by the owners.
And since most of what was built was probably done to those wonderful standards of Chinese quality we here have gotten to see first hand, most of what was built will probably start to fall down soon!
Yes, Sock, you are correct- the $44 Billion for the Bejing games is only the counted public costs.
That number obviously does not include the cost of borrowing all that money, or the costs to all the farmers of water-deprived provinces who lost their crops because of the massive diversion of water to the games. Or the costs to insurers, reinsurers, and investors of the torched hotel and others structures built for the games but useless now.
Just like we didn't count the costs of the Credit Bubble but those costs are hitting us now, with a vengeance.
The American credo is to pull out the credit cards and have a good time, forget about the deferred costs and how they have this nasty way of compounding on you.
Protest Monday -- meet at the Bean at 5 PM. March to the Art Institute where the IOC will be entertained by Chicago celebrities.
The pessimistic number crunches will predict gloom and jumble the numbers. The ones who watched Atlanta rise after 1996 will be optimistic. Ultimately, anything that will attract investment to Chicago should be encouraged.
CNN is in Atlanta now; they don't have to stay there. Although many of us wonder about the brain trusts that gave us Parkingmeter-Gate,others appreciate the advantages of an olympics.
Hopefully, Daley will not sell off all of Chicago's assets before 2016.
Atlanta was on the rise a long time before 1996, and had already become a major high-tech center and draw for financial businesses.
The Olympics there had NOTHING whatever to do with the economic success the Atlanta region has enjoyed since the 70s. It's ridiculous to link an athletic event of a few week's duration to the success of the region as a whole. However, it's a good bet that the Olympic committee would not have chosen the city if it were not a top-tier city area to begin with.
Atlanta realized no long-term gain from the Games, and during the event, many businesses saw their revenues drop. Hotels and restaurants located outside the area close to the games actually lost business.
It was definitely not a "win" for the area, which continues to have problems with water supply and crime. Atlanta will continue to succeed or not, for reasons that have nothing to do with this event.
Americans attach way too much importance to events like this and don't pay enough attention to the things that really build an economy and a country. This country was built by heavy industry and diverse, intricate commerce, and it is failing now because we have trashed our manufacturing sector and our economy has become too heavily concentrated in one industry (financial).
Daley ought to be trying to make the business climate here friendly enough to attract manufacturing and commercial without having to hand out subsidies to businesses to locate here. Notice that Princeton, IN, did not need the Olympics to entice Toyota to build their plant there. We here in Chicago and other old Midwestern burgs should be asking why Toyota would not consider building in Chicago. Instead, we're casting about for more Bread & Circuses for the politicians and their crony "entrepreneurs" who will be the only people to benefit, while we pay in higher taxes and reduced services.
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