Chicago can blame it's own arrogance and corruption for 2016 Olympics bid failure

Mayor Daley and AON's Patrick Ryan are trying to dodge their failed bid in Copenhagen. Aids are spinning the excuse that Chicago lost embarassingly during the first round of voting (with only 18 votes) because the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the US Olympic Committee (USOC) have been feuding over a broadcast contract.

If that were true, Chicago never would have made it to the finals.

But it sure sounds better than the reality that the Chicago 2016 bid lost the public confidence and without ghost voters, voter corruption, vote fraud, sweetheart deals, clout and cronyism, it's impossible for the Machine to win anything other than a Rubber Stamped City Council vote or a citywide election run by its Machine precinct captains.

Why did Chicago lose? Because the Chicago 2016 Olympic Committee failed to win over the hearts and minds of the public. Despite the powerful appearance of President Barack Obama, the Chicago 2016 Committee presentation was "lackluster" -- that's How FOX Chicago News  anchor Jeff Goldblatt described it during an appearance this morning on my Radio Chicagoland program (www.RadioChicagoland.com).

Chicagoans and the public in general were lied to. Everyone knew the city would have to promise to put taxpayers on the line for cost overruns and revenue shortfalls that could have reached into the hundreds of millions of dollars. But they thought they could be coy and deny it until the very end when they finally shoved it down the throats of the sheep, I mean, Aldermen, in the Rubber Stamp, I mean City Council.

Worse, the Chicago 2016 pitch was focused on making over the inner-city neighborhoods that have deteriorated over the years because of City hall neglect. Hey, cover them up with some expensive flags, banners and throw in a couple of celebrities like Oprah, Obama and some Hollywood types and people might forget how terrible some neighborhoods have become because of city neglect.

The city's transportation system is a disaster. I would never ride on the CTA unless I had a body guard and body odor. And, if I didn't have to worry about getting to work on time. Everyone knows that Chicago's public transportation system is no better than it's city services. The fact is the CTA is so bad most Chicago aldermen wouldn't be caught dead, or alive, on a CTA bus or train, unless it is the week before their re-election and they want to provide a TV sound bite pretending like they care about the public.

Worse was the public relations disaster, the fiasco, of the Chicago 2016 Olympic Committee. The fact is the city wasted millions on PR that went into the pockets of their pals, cronies and relatives. This wasn't about empowerment of the public or the city, but rather fattening the political buddies and contractors and lobbyists like foie gras.

And, even worse was the absence of any Olympic plans for the suburban areas of Cook County which pay the bulk of the taxes in this pathetic system called Crook County Politics. A bike path. A soccer game. That was it.

With four contenders among the 101 or more votes, you had to get at least 20 to win. You can read my column on how the Arab World abandoned Chicago, and questions about the boast about how much Chicago has done for "its" Arabs. Yet the facts show otherwise that the city has ignored the American Arab community as it has done many other ethnic minority groups. (Click to read the column?)

Instead impressing the world, we made a mockery of ourselves. A shameful plunder of public funds that could have been better used to shore up Chicago's ailing school system. Did we need foreign commentators to tell us the city's CTA was a disaster and could not handle the influx of anticipated tourists, let alone being unable to service Chicago's over-taxed residents.

Plagued by scandal, corruption and battles over taxation, Chicago lost not because of some fluffed up IOC-USOC feud but because Chicago put more emphasis on clout, cronyism and contract sweetheart deals rather than on substance.

Isn't that the Chicago way?

-- Ray Hanania
www.RadioChicagoland.com

Group accuses 2016 Olympics Committee, Daley and Chicago Park District of discrimination, files suit

Chicago, IL - October 1, 2009

The Chicago Park District, The Chicago 2016 Olympic Committee, and Chicago Mayor Daley have demonstrated a pattern of racial discrimination in the development and design of their Olympic Bid," said Valencia Rias, who is a South Side community activist. 

As a result, Rias and eight other Chicagoans filed a civil rights Racial Discrimination complaint today with the U.S. Department of Justice, charging that:

Chicago's strategy for carrying out the Olympics (as stated in Chicago's Olympic bid) relies heavily on the "donation" of major Chicago parks for the clear majority of Olympic ceremonies and competitions, even though the Chicago version of the Games has been advertised as  "privately funded").

• Most important, three major public parks with the heaviest burden for the Games (especially Washington Park, but also including Douglas Park and Jackson Park) serve communities that are nearly 100% African-American and among the poorest in the city. These communities will be substantially deprived of the use of a significant poart of their parks for periods of two years or more, while major venues (such as the temporary 80,000-seat Olympic Stadium at Jackson Park) are constructed and then torn down after the Olympics.  

• These three parks are almost the only resource that many young people and adults have available in their communities for recreation (especially organized and informal sports that keep young people out of trouble, but also including jogging, and picnicking).  

• For example, Washington Park is a 98% African American 65% low-income community on Chicago's South Side. Washington Park will become the site not only of an 80,000-seat stadium, but also five swimming pools.  

• After being denied access to Washington Park for two years, residents will watch Olympic spectators arrive on shuttle buses, enter the stadium and pool sites through fences surrounding them, and then return to their hotels-once again by shuttle bus.

• Washington Park has virtually no full-service stores. They have no major restaurants or other businesses that are to attract people who come to watch the Olympics. The Chicago Olympic bid itself does not include concrete and substantial funds to help Washington Park and other venues with their the major economic development commitment needed to turn them around.

• The Rio bid makes the long-term development of the communities where the Olympics will be held central to their bid.  With no similar funds as part of Chicago's bid several Chicago foundations are establishing a fund to aid the communities where the Games would be held in Chicago.

• The three African American communities in which these parks are located had no say in whether or how their parks would be used for Olympic events.  The decision to "donate" their use to the Chicago Olympic Committee was made by the Chicago Park Board, which is appointed and totally controlled by Chicago's Mayor Richard Daley.  (The Mayor's former Chief of Staff, Gery Chico) is now the Park Board's President.)

• Of the more than 50 public parks larger than 100 acres in Chicago, only one park in a predominantly white community is being required by the Park District and the Mayor to bear a somewhat similar burden, by serving as the site for tennis, with some new courts to be built.

"I think the Chicago 2016 Olympic Committee has stolen parks in low-income African-American neighborhoods because they think we will just be quiet and take it- while white and more affluent neighborhoods wouldn't tolerate it," says Michael Johnson, an active parent who coaches a youth football team in Washington Park. 

A map of where the city's parks are located clearly indicates the Committee could have had set these different competitions up in a wide variety of communities that are still close to the Olympic Village," said Rias. 

"The Olympic Committee has talked about using parks that have breath-taking lakefront views, but only one of the three parks in the African American community is actually on the Lake Michigan.  Chicago has a real lakefront park that extends along nearly the entire lakefront on Chicago's North Side, but this park is in the wealthiest part of the city and would never tolerate extensive shutdowns and construction," said Toni Stith, another signer of the Department of Justice complaint.

Parents also question why a city that faces a record $500 million deficit for the coming fiscal year can shell out millions for the Olympics.  Due to both city and state budget deficits this year, many social service and health care workers were laid off.  "I would rather have a good teacher in my son's classroom than watch the Olympics through a fence," said Crystal Crokett, another parent who signed the federal complaint.

Michael Scott, Mayor Daley's appointed head of the Chicago Board of Education and a member of the committee seeking to bring the Olympics to Chicago, bet that real estate prices would go up around the Douglas Park Olympic venue on the West Side, when he bought run-down real estate near the park, where the Olympic bicycle-racing track will be built. When a journalist exposed Scott's activities, Scott dropped his ties to this land purchase.

Chicago's precarious financial position and the sense that insiders will be the primary beneficiaries, if the Olympics come to the Windy City, have helped contribute to a sharp drop in public support for the Chicago 2016 bid.  Last February, 67% of Chicagoans supported holding the Games here, according to the Chicago Tribune.  This percentage dropped to 47% in September, with 84% Chicagoans saying that no public money should be used to support the Games. The level of public support for the Olympics is one stated standard that the International Olympic Committee uses to judge competitors' bids.

"This percentage could sink even lower after lengthy Olympic construction forces families to curtail the use of parks in low-income African American communities, after these communities have been required to "donate" their parks for Olympic competitions in 2016." said Rias.

# # # #

Designs for Change

814 South Western Avenue
Chicago, IL 60612
www.designsforchange.org

What will Daley's 2016 Olympics bring to the suburbs?

Nearly half of Cook County’s residents are suburbanites who are treated like Cinderella by the mean old step-mother Mayor, Richard m. Daley.

In fact, if you actually correctly counted the population of Chicago, you would probably find that the census numbers are exaggerated. There are not 3 million citizens in Chicago. There are, maybe, 2.7 million.

The flight from Chicago started long ago and continues as people abandon Chicago fearing the rising crime, corruption and unstoppable taxation there.

A garbage can lid from one of the Democratic Machine Precinct Captains isn’t worth as much today as it was worth many years ago when it actually was the city’s symbol for real service delivery.

Chicago doesn’t deliver services any more. It delivers a bunch of exaggerated lies.

If the Census numbers in Chicago are stacked, as I suspect, in order to cover up the population hegira from corruption and taxation and crime, that means the population of the Cook County suburbs surrounding Kingdom Daley are actually higher than the 2.7 million and are probably over 3 million.

Yes. In fact, the population divide of Chicago and suburban Cook County is probably reversed with the suburbs burgeoning and the city fast wilting.

That means the suburbanites actually have the real clout. It’s Daley and his henchmen at City Hall, fueled by the millions in contract donations, corrupt favoritism, special airline flights, and wasteful government spending on their family, friends and cronies, who are the real minority in this region.

Daley doesn’t want the world to know that he has done a poor job when it comes to managing the city. Every day it’s a new corruption scandal. But the “buck” doesn’t stop at Daley’s desk. By the time it gets there, it’s only worth about 15 cents. Maybe.

Daley isn’t a great mayor, like his father, but he does know how to duck and dodge. He has the suburbanites convinced that they are worthless. And we just accept it.

So, when Daley brow beats the Illinois General Assembly into taking money meant to help the people and give it to his corruption government, they do it. They don’t know any better, either, because their boss is a Chicago Machine Captain, too.

Daley wants the region to pony up billions to back the 2016 Olympic Bid so that his name will reign forever, and so that his son, Patrick, will be crowned the next mayor.

And he doesn’t care that people in the suburbs will get NOTHING from the 2016 Olympics. Nothing except more taxation. More debt. More siphoning of suburban dollars through so-called lottery taxation for schools, casino taxation and more. Money for the crime-ridden CTA and the crime-ridden Chicago Loop.

They treat you like a second-class citizen when you try to visit the museums, which are funded by monies taken from the suburbs through the legislature, and a special non-resident tax and heaped upon our heads. And for what? The museums are falling apart and have more broken displays than Daley has scandals at City Hall.

Chicago is like a vampire sucking from the suburbs its money and will to survive.

But we have to stand up. And one way to do that is to break from Chicago’s control and divide Cook County into two counties, one to the East, Cook County that is drawn on the city’s borders. And a new county to the west called “Liberty County” or “Lincoln County.”

There is no Lincoln County in the state of Lincoln?

If ever we needed someone to lead us to emancipation from the oppression of Daley slavery, it is Lincoln County.

All we have to do in the suburbs of Cook County is stand up and take it.

--Ray Hanania
www.RadioChicagoland.com

Chinese Olympic strategies inspires Mayor Daley

Click comic strip to view larger image
Ray Hanania's World Comic Strip
August 2, 2008
Mayor Daley finds inspiration in Chinese Olympics visit
Go to http://professivecomicstrips.blogspot.com/ to view more comics