Mayor Daley + Olympics = Gasoline + Fire

From the Provocateur’s column online at the Chicago Sun-Times:

If the old adage is true that absolute power corrupts absolutely, then the last thing the all powerful mayor of Chicago needs is the Olympics to preside over. The ability to control every aspect of the Olympics is nothing more than sending a devious kid into a candy store with money for our mayor. The budget for the games, currently, is roughly $4.8 billion. It includes the building of 16 new venues. A new 70,000 person stadium will be built in Washington Park for the opening and closing ceremonies. (and then summarily torn down after the Olympics though not before creating irreversible damage to the park)Michael Reese hospital has already been sold and planned to be torn down to build the Olympic Village. It will consist of redesigning nearly all parts of the city…

The 2016 Olympics will guarantee billions, if not, tens of billions in contracts that the city will have to dole out for construction, security, street cleaning, etc. There is already a standard operating procedure for how these sorts of contracts get doled out now. They go to Daley’s friends, admirers, and allies. Only now the budget is infinitesimal compared to what it will be if the Olympics comes here.

Bringing the Olympics to Chicago will allow a corrupt mayor to run the city in the same corrupt manner only with an exponential new sets of resources, responsibilities, and powers. Is that really what the city wants? That seems to me to be pouring gasoline on top of a fire.

Call 911! Do you smell fire? The 2016 games will bring a blaze of cost overruns, debt, park destruction and civil rights abuses.