Posted on 12/16/2016 7:17:44 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Graft, greed, theft and enrichment by the Olympic organizers and those city/state officials who are complicit to the scam. Oldest reason in the book. There is much money to be made in the chaos.
Mittens did save the Winter Olympics. Trump is going to run government like he ran his businesses.
Building a venue for the Olympics is as ridiculous as it is expensive. The only money made is by corrupt politicians who work with the construction companies to produce garbage product.
Best to have two venues, one for winter one for summer. Countries contribute to maintain the facilities and the profits are distributed based on contribution. Use Athens for summer as it is the ancestral home of the Olympics and for winter either Oslo or Lake Placid.I would even venture to say Salt Lake City.
Same reason Pittsburgh shut the town down to host the G-20.
It gives schmuck local politicians the chance to suck-up to the major globalist movers and shakers, and thus feel far, far more important than they are.
Hey, yours is not a bad idea.
I worked retail in Raleigh, NC, during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. We got foreign travelers even up there buying up all kinds of stuff while they were in the U.S.
I think it’s a chance for the local politicians to steal some easy money. Their cronies, too.
Bottom line:
City goes into hock for billions, local well placed politicians and businessmen make serious money, many times with bribes playing a key marketing role.
And then, two weeks of furious activity followed by SOS.
I hope Houston doesn’t try to host an Olympics. I would oppose it as it has become ridiculously expensive.
Yup, exactly why.
Back when first-world cities hosted the Olympics, it really did result in economic boosts, because the city was already pretty nice, and the Olympics served to highlight that pre-existing quality. As time went on, people started confusing cause and effect, much like how college degrees are viewed (people with college degrees tend to be more successful, but it’s not the degree itself that makes them so). “Developing” cities/countries clamored to get in on the act, with the assumption that the Olympics would create the conditions they hoped for. In some cases, it sort of worked, but most of the time, the host city/country ended up worse off. The Olympics only papered over shortcomings, while imposing ever-greater financial obligations.
Particularly backwards cities felt the need to create overly-grand spectacles to “prove” that they were capable of standing among the “big boys”, and this was encouraged by the ever-more-leftist Olympic committee, which began treating the games like a form of welfare. This only worsened the problem, since most of the developing hosts were barely capable of sustaining ordinary large cities, much less handling the infrastructure needed to absorb the huge influx of spectators for the games plus the now all-but-required grand spectacle.
As others have suggested, I too support the idea of designating some location as a permanent site for the games, to be supported financially by the IOC. This solves the problem of finding willing host cities, and will eliminate the Olympic Hangover problem that most hosts suffer once the games are over. This also makes it possible to create tailored venues for the various major events that don’t take place inside a stadium, such as the long-distance running and cycling events, sailing, and so on. It also makes it possible to formalize the competitive standards, so the conditions are the same for every games e.g. the marathon course becomes the “official Olympic Marathon” and is therefore a benchmark. The stadium track-and-field events likewise, so you can compare the performance of “so-and-so from Germany” at one Games with “so-and-so from Brazil” at another games.
“Why do Cities Host the Olympics?”
I don’t care as long as my tax dollars aren’t spent on these affairs.
I totally agree with the two permanent location solution. All that infrastructure could be optimized for the purpose, and enough use gotten out of it to justify its expense, and make it an actual profitable endeavor. So glad we beat it back here in Boston—it would have been a catastrophe.
The only problem with having it in a permanent location is that this location has to be somewhere stable, not to mention that it will need to be maintained for 4 years and 50 weeks as a dormant facility. Also, the Olympics sort of loses the “local flavor” that makes up a huge part of the identity of each one.
But then again, it’s a money suck that looks like it is running out of suckers....um, cities to host it, so it will just come to that eventually.
I saw a great youtube video about a year ago showing a bunch of olympics ex-sites in various cities. What a joke. It was actually pretty funny. And yeah, they were either overgrown, in serious disrepair or utter collapse.
Abandoned sites:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7qPjVfQSv4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11qwnmUm2bA
Build two Olympic venues (Winter and Summer) on each of the three continents in the northern Hemisphere, and rotate the Olympics among the three. Some possibilities:
North America: Los Angeles (summer) and Calgary (winter)
Europe: Athens (summer) and Innsbruck (winter)
Asia: Beijing (summer) and Nagano (winter)
This should also be done in conjunction with a move to eliminate at least 50% of the events. The 1896 Athens Olympics had about 45 medal events, and the first Winter Olympics in 1924 only had 16. There shouldn't be any more than 50 gold medals handed out in either the Summer or Winter Olympics.
Lake Placid has been a training center for the U.S. Olympic team for decades. Every venue that is still there from the 1980 Winter Olympics -- and some even from 1932 -- is used extensively.
Two words :
Greed.
Stupidity.
Fatal combination.
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