Out-Bribed

There never was an actual investigation (or audit) into how many suitcases of unmarked cash Shortshanks dished to the International Olympic Committee in Copenhagen, but it obviously wasn't enough:

• A jailed former governor of Rio de Janeiro state told a judge on Thursday that he paid about $2 million for the votes of International Olympic Committee members to award the Brazilian city the 2016 Summer Games.
  
  Sergio Cabral said he paid $1.5 million in bribes through intermediaries to the former president of the International Association of Athletics Federations, Lamine Diack, originally in exchange for up to six votes in the meeting that awarded Rio the Olympic and Paralympic Games. The former governor added that another $500,000 was paid later to Diack’s son with the aim of securing three more votes of IOC members for Rio.
  
  The former governor said he bought the votes for Rio to get to "the second stage of the vote" and that "no votes were bought after that."

Still one of the most entertaining moments we can ever remember.

No-lympics Again

Someone must have perfected the brain transplant procedure:

• She led Chicago’s failed 2016 Olympic bid, but Lori Healey has zero regrets.
  
  That doesn’t mean she thinks Chicago should do it again, noting it is too expensive for an American city to mount a bid.

Our readers told everyone it was too expensive from day one. We pointed out dozens of articles that showed how Olympics lose money on a constant basis, bankrupting cities, states and saddling future taxpayers with unmanageable debt. The information was all there for the taking, and yet, no one seemed to notice when Shortshanks blew millions on a doomed effort to out-bribe entire countries.

Amazingly, he managed to lose the Olympics with it's crushing debt, and still stuck taxpayers with the Michael Reese debacle and a politically connected suicide.

Out-Bribed?

Everyone knows it takes suitcases full of money to land the Olympics. Every games of the modern era has been tainted by allegations (and proven accusations) of massive bribery. If it isn't outright money, it's "gifts" and paid vacations and "honorariums" and maybe a little hanky-panky. Brazil was just better about it than Chicago:

• The president of the Brazilian Olympic Committee was suspended Friday amid an investigation into a vote-buying scheme to bring the Olympics to Rio de Janeiro in 2009 when Chicago was in the running to host the games.
  
  Carlos Nuzman was suspended by International Olympic Committee a day after he was arrested and accused of storing gold bars in Switzerland. The decision came hours after Brazilian authorities asked for help from prosecutors in Switzerland.
  
  The IOC also suspended the Brazilian Olympic Committee and cut ties with the Nuzman-led Rio Games organizing committee, which still has unpaid debts.

You mean Brazil lost money on the Olympics?

Guess who else lost money - and didn't even get to host the Olympics?

• Mounting Chicago's bid was an expensive but privately funded endeavor. Nearly $76 million was raised from donors, who also kicked in $16 million worth of goods and services.
  
  But it left a pricey legacy for taxpayers. Last year, the Tribune reported that the city was on the hook for about $140 million in principal and interest on the purchase of property for an Olympic Village to house athletes.
  
  And it was saddled with costly, 10-year union contracts that were hammered out to ensure labor peace during the Games.

Thanks again for that Shortshanks.

Just Another Reminder....

What a f#$%ing bullet Chicago dodged in 2016:

• The Rio Olympics continue to be an example of why more and more cities are wary of hosting the games.
  
  Rio 2016 has essentially become a financial disaster, with the games costing $13 billion in a mix of private and public money, according to a June Associated Press report.
  
  Much of the Olympic infrastructure is abandoned or underused, including the $700 million athletes village that was supposed to be turned into luxury condos once the games were over.
  
  Stephen Wade of the Associated Press recently reported via Twitter that the athletes village was "shuttered" and that only 7% of the condos had been sold.

Tokyo, the 2020 site, has seen theirs costs balloon from $6 billion to over $12 billion - 100% above budget and nearly 3 years to go.

Chicago Dodged a Bullet

Figuratively speaking of course:

• There were 27 world records set at the Rio Olympics last year – from swimming to weightlifting, archery to cycling. These were as thrilling as they were expected. “Citius, Altius, Fortius,” is the Olympic model after all – Latin for “Faster, Higher, Stronger.”
  
  Now comes perhaps the most enduring world record of the Games: Just seven months after the torch was doused, the host country is already acknowledging the entire operation was a terrible, perhaps criminal idea. It has left them debt-ridden and without a clue what to do with already decaying facilities.
  
  Never faster has been the condemnation for hosting. Never higher has been the local outrage. And, maybe, never stronger is the lesson for the rest of the world to avoid ever getting into business with the International Olympic Committee.
  
  “There was no planning,” Leandro Mitidieri, a federal prosecutor in Brazil, said this week at a public hearing about the Olympic disaster, according to the Associated Press. “There was no planning when they put out the bid to host the Games. No planning.”
  
  And what of the majority of the facilities the country built to appease the IOC, a major part of the $12 billion cost of hosting the Games?
  
  “They are white elephants today,” Mitidieri said.

$12 Billion? Wasn't Shortshanks spouting off about $4 billion? Even with the existing infrastructure (a couple stadiums), there was no way that Chicago would have survived an Olympics with all the attendant bribery, thievery and corruption.

Olympians Robbed

Golly, who'd have thunk it?

• U.S. Olympic gold medalist Ryan Lochte and three other members of the U.S. Olympic swimming team were robbed at gunpoint in Rio by armed gunmen posing as police officers early Sunday morning, he said.
  
  Lochte told NBC [...] one of the men aimed a gun at his forehead during the robbery.
  
  "I was with a couple swimmers, we got pulled over in our taxi and these guys came out with a badge, a police badge," Lochte said. "No lights, no nothing, just a police badge. They pulled us over. They pulled out their guns."

Thank goodness this didn't happen in Chicago! They probably would have been shot.

No Kidding?

Anyone with half-a-brain figured this out almost 8 years ago:

• One of the most demonstrative reactions to defeat I ever witnessed in Chicago occurred when we learned the city lost its bid to host the 2016 Olympics.
  
  It was Oct. 2, 2009, and thousands of us gathered at Daley Plaza to await the big announcement from the International Olympic Committee's vote in Copenhagen. Satellite trucks from 15 news organizations parked on Clark Street. October optimism — the rarest of things in Chicago — reigned. Anticipation filled the autumn air. One mother pulled her son out of elementary school to experience what she expected to be historic event. And it was.
  
  It was the day the IOC saved Chicago from itself.

And it also (in our opinion) pushed Shortshanks out the door, leading to a lot of unpleasant "discoveries" regarding the financial mismanagement so prevalent during his reign. No one, not even Rahm, will blame him by name (Rahm always says "previous administrations" rather than name Daley), but without the No-lympic failure around his neck, Shanks might have tried to stick around for one final looting of the corpse.

Hey Look - It's the No-lympics

One of Shortshanks' parting gifts to Chicago:

• In two weeks Chicago would be hosting the world if it had won its bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics. Instead, the city lost to Rio de Janeiro, which some are saying is a victory in and of itself.
  
  Rio's governor has declared a "state of calamity," a financial emergency, ahead of the games. A promised subway line isn't complete. There are major concerns about crime and health.
  
  It could have been Chicago. In 2008 there was enthusiasm in the city, as even the newly-elected President Obama campaigned on behalf of the bid.
  
  [...] That energy and enthusiasm would be snuffed out in a stunning first-round defeat just months later. The bulk of Chicago's Olympic bid was paid for with private money and Mayor Daley promised no taxpayer money. But there was one glaring exception that remains an eyesore to this day: the Michael Reese Hospital campus.
  
  The campus would have become an athletes' village if Chicago had won the bid. The city hasn't been able to sell it in the past eight years. Mayor Daley put taxpayers on the hook for $91 million and it won't be paid in full until 2024.

Daley's buddies still made a bunch of money, even as pension funds and other non-connected types took a bath. You can re-live the moment Chicago dodged most of the damage here:

That was a particularly amusing day seeing Daley realize he got played by people he considered amateurs. Those yokels took his gifts, political capital and dignity, and then pants-ed him on international television. Poor Richie thought that when people got bought, they stayed bought. He forgot that there were three other kleptocracies with far fewer scruples competing for the same corrupt pie.

No-lympics for Boston

This sounds so.....so.....familiar:

• It sounds impossible, but it's true. The Democrat mayor of Boston has ended his application for the Olympics because...of concerns that taxpayers would have to foot too high a bill for it.
  
  The mayor of Boston, Martin J. Walsh ... distanced himself from the bid completely. At a dramatic, hastily arranged news conference, he announced that if the U.S.O.C. demanded that he sign a host city contract by the end of the day Monday, he would not do so, acknowledging that this would kill Boston’s bid for the Games. He said he had wanted more time to conduct his due diligence on the guarantees required and a full review of a risk and mitigation package proposed last week.
  
  “I cannot commit to putting the taxpayers at risk,” the mayor declared. “If committing to signing a guarantee today is what’s required to move forward, then Boston is no longer pursuing the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.”

If only we had had a mayor who thought like this a few years ago, Chicago would only be 25 years from complete bankruptcy instead of 15.

Olympic Disaster

At least it's all on Rio now, and not here:

• Amid growing concerns that Brazil might not be ready to host the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games, Olympic officials have launched a series of emergency measures to jump-start the much-delayed preparations.
  
  This latest effort follows months of sluggish construction, labor strife and governmental chaos in the host country.
  
  “We believe that Rio can and will deliver an excellent Games if the appropriate actions are being taken now,” Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee, said at a Thursday news conference.

As corrupt as Rio is, we imagine Shortshanks wouldn't have given them a run for the money if he managed to land this quadrennial financial disaster.

Olympics

We aren't covering the Sochi Games. They're something like 12 hours ahead of us, so everything is over by the time we wake up. And the horror stories coming out of Russia make Chicago's connected building contracts look almost legit.

No, we just thought we'd remember this:

Ah, happy memories. Maybe that's why 'Shanks went to the hospital? He was remembering that fateful day.

UPDATE: Correction for the rotation of the earth - we long for the days that the earth was flat.

No Olympics?

Chicago isn't interested in 2024?

• The U.S. Olympic Committee is sending a letter to the mayors of the 25 largest cities/metropolitan areas in the United States to gauge interest in a potential U.S. bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics.
  The last two U.S. bidders, Chicago (2016) and New York (2012), both rejected out-of-hand by International Olympic Committee voters, are on the list.
  But Sarah Hamilton, a spokeswoman for Mayor Rahm Emanuel, said Chicago is not interested.

Damn, we had a whole year worth of material all stored up, ready to go, starting with this guy:

Oh well.

Guess Who's Back in Town?

Just when you thought he was out, they pull him back in:

• The conversation about Chicago hosting a summer Olympics is rising from the ashes after one of the biggest hurdles to another U.S.-based games was overcome this week.
  
  The International Olympic Committee and the U.S. Olympic Committee agreed on Thursday to a revised deal for sharing television and marketing revenue -- ending an often testy seven-year standoff that played a role in Chicago's last-place finish in the competition for the 2016 Summer Games.
  
  The resolution re-opened the door for a possible U.S. games bid, for the winter of 2022 or the summer of 2024.

Rahm has said he isn't interested in a re-bid opportunity, but Shortshanks was professing his disinterest for years before making his last shot at a legacy-type event the Olympic Games.

Of course, 12 years from now, we'll be retired. But in the meantime, Rahm should be made to account for the supposed $150 million in economic windfalls that accompanied NATO before even thinking about the Games which have nearly bankrupted a dozen cities in the not so distant past. We'll even dust off this pic from Buckley TypoGraphics:

Wait, the Mayor Lied?

Oh, the humanity!

• More than a year after he took his own life, new details are emerging that show former Chicago School Board President Michael W. Scott had been under growing financial pressure.

  Scott — a developer, close friend of Mayor Daley and onetime Chicago 2016 Olympic organizing committee member — was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on Nov. 16, 2009, in the Chicago River west of the Apparel Center. He was 60.

  About two weeks before Scott’s suicide, a development company that had been paying him $10,000 a month “for consultation in regards to future projects involving the possible Olympic Games in Chicago” canceled his contract, according to new details from the Chicago Police Department that officials previously had refused to release. Scott lost that lucrative part-time job because the city failed to land the 2016 Games, according to an unredacted police report on his suicide obtained by the Better Government Association.

• The new information about Scott’s consulting contract appears to contradict statements that had been made by Scott and Mayor Daley that Scott wasn’t planning to cash in on his dual roles as an Olympic organizer and a real estate developer.

Let's get real here - everyone and their brother was set to cash in on Shortshank's No-lympic dream. There are only two things that are surprising here:

• that no one has been indicted yet for all the money thrown around in an effort to win the crookedest sporting event known to mankind and
• that there haven't been a dozen other suicides related to this debacle

Daley's legacy of bankrupting the city will be felt for decades yet to come.

One Year Ago Today

No-lympic Glory!

Ah, memories.

Oh God, Not Again

It's like CAPS, but international in stature:

• The United States Olympic Committee has not ruled out a bid for the 2020 Summer Olympics and the timing of the process makes it likely 2016 loser Chicago would be its most viable candidate.
  
  "I think it would be challenging for any other city to organize a bid in that time frame but not impossible," U.S. Olympic Committee chairman Larry Probst told the Tribune after delivering his state of the USOC address to the organization's general assembly Friday.
  
  The International Olympic Committee will choose the 2020 Olympic host in 2013. Based on past timetables, the USOC would have to present a bid in early autumn 2011.

Let's put this out there right now:

No, No and Hell, No.

Olympic Gift Keeps on Giving

First, you have aldercreatures accepting trips to China:

• Six Chicago aldermen who traveled to Beijing last summer on a weeklong Olympics fact-finding trip paid for by a Chinatown business group didn't report it on their annual ethics disclosures.

  They didn't have to, according to the city's Ethics Board.

  And that illustrates the vagueness of standards for elected officials to report such activities with business leaders, one watchdog group says.

But a cop gets a free soft drink or cup of coffee and everyone is screaming for their head.

And then we have this money making machine:

• Chicago's first-round flame-out in the 2016 Olympic sweepstakes was still a boon to 13 six-figure executives -- with one compensation package worth $483,713-a-year plus a housing allowance and monthly cleaning service.

  A federal tax filing released Monday shows that Chicago 2016 spent $5.9 million on salaries and benefits in 2009, including $28-a-month health club subsidies for roughly 100 employees.

  The parade of six-figure executives was led by Chief Operating Officer David Bolger, with a $483,713-a-year package that includes salary, "retention" bonus and benefits and $7,871 in other compensation.

As stated here and elsewhere, someone, or actually 13 "someones," made out like bandits over the No-lympic fiasco.

A bunch of other people got taken for an Olympian ride. Failure pays pretty well in Chicago.

How Much Again?

The Olympic gift that keeps on giving:

• Recently rebuffed in its attempt to hold the 2016 Summer Games in Chicago, the U.S. Olympic Committee does not plan to enter a U.S. city in the race for the 2020 Summer Games and remains uncertain about when it will next attempt to bring a Games to U.S. soil, USOC Chief Executive Scott Blackmun said Saturday morning.
  
  "The cold and hard reality is Chicago spent approximately $80 million on its bid," Blackmun said. "It's going to be difficult to get U.S. cities to continue to invest to that level unless they think they have a realistic chance of winning. The [International Olympic Committee] sent us a message, loud and clear, that they don't want the Games to be in the United States."

$80 million? Weren't the previous totals like $70 million? $75 million? It just keeps getting bigger and bigger. Or are the totals finally including the unmarked suitcases full of cash?

Daley's Olympic Rant

At the Chicago 2016 volunteers final luncheon:

• Daley started his remarks by calling on the federal government to financially back all future U.S. Olympic bids. It was too difficult for U.S. cities to raise the necessary funds in such short amounts of time, while their competitors often received financial assistance from their national governments, he said.
  
  "He started by saying we spent $75 million, and the next city was going to have to spend $100 million, and we didn't even have a chance," said one attendee, paraphrasing the mayor, who was the driving force behind the bid. "It was all politics and all money. All politics and all money. (The International Olympic Committee) didn't care about the athletes, and they didn't care about the quality of the bid."
  
  Another attendee said she came away from the 15-minute speech believing the city never understood the depth of its disadvantage. And Daley reportedly told the group that had the city known from the start that the International Olympic Committee was intent on taking the games to new regions of the globe, they never would have spent the time or the money on the effort.

$75 million? And how much of that was "corporate donations" that was actually "quid pro quo" money? Does that include the $38 million spent on Reese Hospital land? The mayor constantly harped on "no public funds" but no one believed it.

We think that Shortshanks is more upset at being beaten at his own game of "all politics and all money" by people he considered beneath him. He thinks he was upstaged by a bunch of rank amateurs and hicks when in reality, he got schooled. And he was naive enough to think that these people would stay bought once he thought they were bought and he can't very well go asking they return the suitcases the same way they were delivered.

Daley Sabotages Brazil

Shortshanks moves in mysterious ways:

• Brazil's president denied on Wednesday that underinvestment was to blame for the worst power outage in a decade, which left a huge swath of the country in the dark for more than five hours and raised doubts about the reliability of its energy infrastructure.

  The blackout on Tuesday night left tens of millions of people without power across most of the country's wealthy southeastern region, halting subways and snarling traffic in major cities like Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

So far, Shortshanks has had a police helicopter shot down in the Rio slums and now he's cut power to 60 million people, just to show that he can. We can't decide if he's hoping for a "do-over" or what. In an effort to stay ahead of things, we're throwing our full support behind Rio's continued preparations for the 2016 Games:


Hey?!? Who turned out the lights?