Olympics, Please Not in Chicago

Chicago is in the running for the 2016 Summer Olympic games. The final decision from the International Olympic Committee will be arriving next month, with Chicago fighting bids against Tokyo, Madrid, and Rio de Janeiro. Emperor Daley has gone about his bid like a used car salesman. He has somehow tricked the IOC that bringing the Summer Olympics to a city in debt as much as Chicago is a good idea.

In a way, Chicago and the Olympics coming together makes perfect sense. Both of them are bloated, corrupt, and faceless institutions. Both enact very strict and ridiculous laws. (One of the things that clued me in to just how bad the Olympics could be was that the IOC rejected Chicago’s admittedly beautiful and inspiring torch design. The reason was because cities are not allowed to use the torch in the logo.) Both will do anything and everything within their power to have another grab at your hard-earned money. Both are historically ridden with scandal. Both try to give the impression that they care about underdogs. As I wrote in an article a couple of years ago, that Chicago and the Olympics would someday join forces seems almost inevitable. They mesh like peanut butter and jelly.

You would think Emperor Daley would have learned a thing or two about dealing with debt after the recent parking meter fiasco. I KNOW my readers in Chicago remember this; this is when Desperate Daley and his 35 percent approval rating sold off the parking meters to a private developer. The prices shot into the stratosphere. The people of Chicago rebelled, gluing meters shut and slapping tape over them. The city was forced to buy back the parking meters.

This isn’t even the beginning of everything wrong with Daley’s attempts to bring the Olympics to Chicago. The city recently killed a bill which would have kept any financial burden off the taxpayers. If the private developers involved with supporting a Chicago Olympics run out of money – which they will – the city’s debt will swell even more and the burden will fall onto the shoulders of Chicago’s already overtaxed populace.

As a libertarian, I view all taxation as a form of stealing. But Chicago’s Olympic bid is terrible beyond simple libertarian principle. It is bad because the city has an unreliable public transit system. It is bad because Emperor Daley has shown a willingness to thoroughly bulldoze Washington park. It is bad because Chicago already has one of the highest tax rates in the country for just about everything, and despite that, it can’t get the public transit running on time, schools are dilapidated, roads are a wreck, sidewalks are also a wreck, the CTA has been bailed out by the state government three times since 2006 and STILL raised fares twice, and most of the bicycle paths are dangerously in the way of car doors. The libertarian and the Democrat alike can both wonder where all our taxes are going. Yet, in spite of everything, the Emperor still somehow expects the Chicago citizenry to foot a bill almost certainly in the billions for two weeks of international fun and games.

Atlanta turned its massive Olympic shells into absolutely nothing. London is hosting the 2012 Games and is implying quite bluntly it wished it wasn’t. The jobs the Emperor is touting will include two-week-long stints as hot dog and souvenir vendors. Think of massive traffic jams for construction. Think chunks of the city closed off for Olympic-only traffic. Think of the nasty budget overruns and the fact that none of these projects will be finished on time. For god’s sake, the city couldn’t build its face of public art – The Bean in Millennium Park – without a budget overrun.

Dream big, Chicago. Dream of double-sized poverty. Dream of a massive and useless shell right in the middle of the spot which used to be Washington Park. Dream of house sales and foreclosures. And dream up a good answer to the question of why Chicago needs to host an event which makes all of these ridiculous demands. Last I heard, Chicago already hosted the largest sporting event in the world. It hosted the World Cup. It is the only city in the United States to have done that.

My original anti-Olympic article, written on Epinions.com in 2007.