In the post-mortem following the crashing and burning of Chicago's doomed Olympic bid, the question a lot of people are asking is, "What went wrong?"Members of the Pro-Life Action League and attorneys from the Thomas More Society will attend the Human Relations Committee meeting of the Chicago City Council TODAY at 9:00 AM Wednesday, Sept. 30. The Committee is considering an amendment to the Municipal Code to prohibit picketing within 50 feet of any medical clinic. These organizations strongly suspect this amendment is aimed at preventing pro-life people from praying and reaching out to clients of abortion facilities with information on alternatives to abortion.
Pro-life activists routinely stand on the public sidewalk at the entrances to abortion clinics in Chicago to offer information to anyone seeking services at the abortion clinics. The groups know of no incidents of intimidation, harassment or threats as referred to in the amendment introduced on Sept. 9 by Alderman Vi Daley (43rd Ward).
Both the Thomas More Society attorneys and the Pro-Life Action League contend that the amendment is unconstitutional.
The dampening effect the games have on host-city—and host-nation—tourism in the periods before and after the big event (not to mention the shut-down-city effect during) has been cited by numerous observers. Officials at Atlanta's Fernbank Museum of Natural History and the Atlanta Botanical Garden, for example, say they had significant declines in attendance for 1996, the year of the Atlanta games. The slump is usually presented as a bump in the road to the gloriously increased tourism that's sure to be the games' lasting legacy. But some of the folks who study this stuff, including Mark Rosentraub, a professor of sport management at the University of Michigan, call that a fantasy. Rosentraub says the Olympics is "a good thing to do" if you manage it properly and don't build a lot of infrastructure. But it's not going to have a long-term impact on the host city's economy, and "there's no evidence that it results in a sustained increase in tourism."
A fascinating read on this subject is the Olympic Report [PDF] by the European Tour Operators Association (2006, updated in 2008), which came to the conclusion that "there appears to be little evidence of any benefit to tourism of hosting an Olympic Games, and considerable evidence of damage."
Giving themselves a standing ovation, aldermen eagerly jumped onto Mayor Richard Daley's Olympics bandwagon Wednesday, unanimously approving a measure that places the responsibility for cost overruns on taxpayers if Chicago hosts the 2016 Summer Games.
LAUSANNE, Switzerland -- Faced with losing the 2016 Summer Games to competing cities offering full government guarantees, Mayor Richard Daley made an about-face Wednesday and said the City of Chicago would sign a contract agreeing to take full financial responsibility for the Games. ...
But Wednesday's decision ups the ante considerably. If something goes terribly wrong with the Olympic plans and the city exhausts its package of limited government guarantees and private insurance, "any shortcomings will fall on the shoulders of taxpayers, and that's the end of the story," said Olympic historian Kevin Wamsley, of the University of Western Ontario.
The Chicago 2016 bid team says this is unlikely to happen.
Chicago’s bid to host the 2016 Olympics moved to first place in a new online ranking of the four candidate cities released Monday. At the same time, a former top Olympic executive, who usually speaks cautiously about the city’s chances of landing the games, thinks Chicago now has the advantage in the race for the 2016 Olympics.
“You are the leader,” said Peter Ueberroth about Chicago’s bid in an exclusive interview with WBBM.
Plans for the proposed 2016 Olympic Village and lakefront sports venues would force cyclists, runners and walkers to divert from long stretches of the paths east of Lake Shore Drive during virtually all of July and August 2016. ...
Chicago 2016 bid officials conceded that closings—which they called "redirection"—for security reasons would dramatically alter recreational use during the weeks encompassing not only the Olympics (July 22-Aug. 7) and the Paralympics (Aug. 17-29), but a "lockdown" period beforehand.
Many of you sent variations of "Sprints to the Federal Building," "Pothole Vaulting" and "Hired Truck Demolition Derby." Most popular was "Olympic (Wrought Iron) Fencing," the gold going to the mayor's brother Cook County Commissioner Johnny Daley, who sold insurance to the politically connected fence contractors.
What other events?
"Synchronized Scheming" (Jeff S.); "Parking Dibs Derby" (Jerry P.), and an adaptation of a street game I played as a wee lad on South Peoria Street:
"Fed Rover, Fed Rover, Let the Feds Come Over" (Ryan L.) in which politicians and their cronies hold hands and federal prosecutors run toward them, to break the weakest link.
"Mayor Daley's X Games" (Roger W.) in which contestants carve giant X's into airport runways under cover of darkness because some politician said he was afraid of terrorists with tiny planes. "Strong Arm Wrestling" (Bob E.), the only event in which average taxpaying chumbolones have an advantage, after having "built up those forearms from carrying around all those quarters to feed the parking meters."
Thursday's surprise resignation of USOC Chief Executive Jim Scherr gives the rest of the world the old impression the USOC still can't get its act together.
Where Chicago's 2016 Olympic hopes are concerned, there could not be a worse time for the USOC to lose the man who has been its primary face since 2003.
The Tribune has commissioned a new poll asking taxpayers whether they support Mayor Richard Daley's 2016 Olympic dream.
But the pollsters didn't call me, so I conducted my own poll on the cheap, while shaving.
Just look at yourself in the mirror, while trying to shave that stubborn stubble from under your nose, and ponder whether it's smart to give the Daley gang billions of dollars to run the Olympics. There's only one question in the Kass poll. Just ask yourself:
"Does wanting the Olympics in Chicago make me a big chumbolone?"
"Chumbolone" is the immortal term uttered by corrupt Chicago cop Anthony Doyle, convicted of being a messenger boy for imprisoned Chicago mob bosses in the Family Secrets trial. In those prison visits, he insisted he didn't hear anything. All he did was nod when the boss was talking, over and over, nodding like some Chinatown-crew bobblehead doll.
"I didn't know what he was talking about," Doyle explained from the witness stand. "I don't wanna look like a chumbolone, an idiot, stupid."
And there you have it.
We want the glitzy Olympic party. But we think we won't have to pay for it. And when Mayor Fredo talks about his Olympic dream, we nod like chumbolones.
For almost two decades now, Daley has run the city and Cook County. His administration is an encyclopedia of corruption and insider deals for friends and family.
He'd drink with white guys with Outfit connections every Christmas Eve, guys who received $100 million in affirmative-action contracts from his administration, and he didn't know how it happened.
As of Sunday, it has been 1,615 days since the mayor promised he'd find out who promoted ex-gangbanger Angelo Torres to run his scandal-plagued Hired Truck program that cost taxpayers at least $40 million. We're still waiting.
There are so many such deals that counting them would be like trying to count the flies on a chunk of liver sausage in an alley in July. All this on his watch. Just imagine what he'll do with all that Olympic gold.
These days, corruption is important again, since the former governor, Mr. Dead Meat, got busted for trying to sell President Obama's Senate seat. But when will we realize that the governor of Illinois—no matter who sits in the chair—is just a measly nose hair compared to the boss of Chicago?
Financial risk for taxpayers jumps in 2016 Olympics bid
Worsening economy boosts chances of Chicago paying $500 million guarantee
