I'm interested in derailing NYC's bid for the 2012 Olympics [View All]

[KurtNYC]

If there is already an on-going effort I would like to join it. Here is why:

1. The recent games in Greece were a disaster. The Greeks spent a fortune to build all of the venues, provide security and schmooze and booze the IOC. Attendance was embarrassing and the TV ratings were only fair.

2. Every city that has hosted the Olympics recently has saddled their taxpayers with a huge debt for decades. The 1976 Montreal games are the poster child for this since they bankrupted the city.
The debt from other games:
MONTREAL, 1976: Debt: $1 billion (globe and mail; abcnews.com)
CALGARY, 1988: Debt: $910 million
BARCELONA, 1992: Debt: US$1.4 billion
SYDNEY, 2000: Games billed as self-financing by politicians were a
$2.3-billion loss (Auditor General New South Wales Report on Sydney (2000 Olympics)
Utah tax revenues post-Olympics have fallen so far short
of predictions that the state is facing a US$155 million shortfall, has slashed
spending, dipped into emergency funding, and may have to order more employee
layoffs.

http://nolimpiadi.8m.com/moneyloser.html

So this is fiscal masochism. No socially responsible politician would ever offer his taxpayers' money to the IOC.

3. The Olympics are now the embodiment of corruption. Utah scandalously used prostitutes, free condos and other bribes to sway the IOC. And when they got caught said in effect that these bribes are part of any serious bid to host the games. Kickbacks, construction contracts, a buffet of taxpayer ripoffs which will only enrich the criminals embedded in our public agencies.

And the games themselves are corrupt. As we saw clearly in the vote exchange that Russian and French Olympic judges engineered during the skating competitions in Utah to defraud the Canadian skating pair of Gold. The solution was not to arrest these judges for fraud and blackmail but to gloss things over by awarding a second gold.

http://deseretnews.com/oly/view/0,3949,70000792,00.html

4. The Olympics are plagued by and therefore encourage the use of dangerous illegal drugs. So many steroid and blood doping incidents have become public knowledge that the message to our youth is that you better be prepared to destroy your endocrine system to have any shot at a medal (and even if you do you may get ripped off if you are in a judged event, see #3 above).

The flip side is that the IOC has actually tried to pressure companies like Amgen to pollute their medicines like Neupogen with elements they can test for. In other words the IOC wants millions of cancer patients to suffer additional burden on their livers and immune systems because there is currently no way to test for Neupogen blood doping. This is clearly a messed up set of priorities.

5. Security would be an enormous problem. Just as we saw in Athens, we could expect frozen zones, machine guns and dogs, planes that are equipped to elude heat seeking shoulder fired rockets, etc.

6. New York City has other things that need to be a higher priority. Housing, schools, a sub-standard subway system, lagging tourism, runaway jobs and businesses.

In short, in a world without am-news-ia (the media's ignoring of past results and cause and effect relationships), Bloomberg wouldn't go near an Olympic bid with a 50-foot pole. The stench of corruption and public debt from the Olympics would deter honorable people from even discussing hosting the games.

Half a dozen cities are bidding for the 2012 Games and the loser will host them.