WHEN government of ficials play the Olympic lottery, tax payers lose. That has been the disastrous experience of host cities around the world. So, why are President Obama and his White House entourage headed to Copenhagen, Denmark, this week to push a fiscally doomed Chicago 2016 bid? Political payback.
Bringing the games to the Windy City is Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley’s “vision.” The entrenched Democratic powerbroker — in office since 1989 — would like to cap off his tenure with a glorious $4 billion bread-and-circuses production. The influential Daley machine backed Barack Obama in the presidential primaries. Obama lavished praise on Daley’s stewardship of the city. Longtime Daley cronies helped pave Obama’s path to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Now, they’re returning the favor for their hometown boss.
Senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett, a Daley loyalist, served as vice chair of Chicago’s 2016 Summer Olympics bid committee before moving to the White House, where she has helmed a new “White House Office on Olympic, Paralympic and Youth Sport” with an undisclosed budget and staff.
It’s not just Chicago taxpayers who should be worried about this field of schemes. Crain’s Chicago Business reports that Jarrett and Chicago 2016 committee member Lori Healey met this month with federal officials at the Department of Housing and Urban Development “to discuss financing options” for the estimated $1 billion Olympic Village.
The door is open, and the administration is “willing to meet and listen” to any federal subsidy proposals, Jarrett said. Hey, what happened to Obama’s tough rules on interest-conflicted lobbying by his administration officials?
A majority of Chicagoans who live in pay-for-play-plagued Cook County oppose public funding for the Olympics. The city has more than a half-billion-dollar deficit — and just received word that its Olympic insurance policy will cover only about $1.1 billion of the $3.8 billion operating budget drawn up by Daley. Cost overruns, fraud and union-inflated contracts are inevitable.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs defended Obama’s all-out campaign for Chicago’s 2016 Olympics bid by claiming America will see a “tangible economic benefit.” But, as is always the case with corporate welfare disguised as “economic development,” an elite few will benefit far more than others.
Senior White House adviser David Axelrod has been a Daley loyalist since 1989, when he signed up as a political consultant for the mayor’s first run. Axelrod’s public relations firm, Chicago-based AKPD Message and Media, has pitched in work for the Chicago 2016 committee. It is unknown how much AKPD has received for its services — or how much it will make in future income if the bid is successful.
The head of the Chicago 2016 bid committee is Patrick Ryan, chairman of the Aon Corp. and a co-chair of Obama’s presidential inaugural committee. Also on both of those committees: Obama confidante Penny Pritzker, who, in addition, chairs the Olympic Village subcommittee and is president of Pritzker Realty Group — a mega-developer in Illinois that could reap untold millions in project work if the Daley machine/White House campaign succeeds. Former Pritzker executive and Obama campaign treasurer Martin Nesbitt is also on the bid committee — and serves as Daley’s chairman of the Chicago Housing Authority.
Another bid committee member, Michael Scott Jr., is “trying to develop a for-profit real-estate project that would sit within feet of the cycling venue if Chicago wins the 2016 Summer Games,” according to the Chicago Tribune.
It takes a crony-filled White House to raise a Chicago Olympic village. Daley and Obama will get the glory. America will get stuck with the bill.
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