WBUR reports news today that should surprise no one: support for Boston 2024 continues to decline while, perhaps even more significantly, opposition rises:
A new WBUR poll shows meager support across Massachusetts for the idea of hosting the 2024 Summer Olympic Games within the Boston region.
This is the first statewide Olympics survey conducted by WBUR, and it shows the lowest support level of any statewide poll published thus far. …
In the poll, 49 percent of those surveyed oppose the notion of hosting the Olympics in the Boston region, with 39 percent in favor.
The radio station gamely attempted to find a bright spot — “However, support in the WBUR survey rises substantially under the scenario of Olympic venues spread across Massachusetts, rather than clustered around Boston … Opposition to hosting the Olympics falls to 37 percent if venues were spread across the state, with 51 percent in support of hosting the games” — but that seems thin gruel since a central element of the initial proposal that distinguished it from rival US bids was that these would be the “walking Games” clustered in Boston.
What went wrong? In principle, the Games could be great for Boston: infrastructure improvements, advantageous global publicity, and a celebration of youthful athletic excellence, among other benefits. In practice, a combination of arrogance and incompetence by Boston 2024 and, more generally, income inequality and all that goes with it produced these pathetic poll results. As just two examples: it was arrogant to plan Olympic events on private land without the consent of landowners, and it was incompetent to plan for public financing in secret bit documents while claiming in public that the Games would be privately funded.
Income inequality is a key element of this political debacle. As wealth is increasingly unequally distributed, and it becomes evident that the economic and political systems are rigged in important ways — the implementation of the 2008 Wall Street bailout, and Elizabeth Warren’s eloquent explanations are cases in point — voter distrust of proposals by the rich has increased. John Fish and Steve Pagliuca, wealthy but politically unknown businessmen — Pagliuca’s 2009 Senate campaign notwithstanding “Sixty-six percent of respondents have never heard of him,” according to WBUR — are exactly the wrong public faces for the Games, by this argument (the International Olympic Committee’s FIFA-like history of corruption hasn’t helped).
A pity, given Boston’s position as the Hub of the Universe and all the Games could do for us.
Lowell and I thought other communities were slated to host some events, which I do think makes more sense.
as site of the sailing competition as if it had won a competition when it was no more than a suggestion for a plan in the hope that they would be given the Olympics. Think using the Boston Common for beach volleyball as a comparison, just a suggestion, one that bombed, big time. I think they’re throwing out stuff in the hope that it will generate support for the project. Still, I have to laugh at the image of the mayor of New Bedford holding an outdoor presser, announcing they have been named the “site for the sailing events”.
…since ” target=”_blank”>the area with the greatest support for holding an expanded-footprint Olympics is Southeastern Massachusetts, per the WBUR/MassInc Poll.
here.
as the elite that promote them. It’s always the elite. That’s more apparent in developing countries, but it’s apparent here as well.
Brazil’s World Cup was disasterous for the country, displacing people from their homes and leaving a number of white elephant stadiums. Brazil failed to complete some buildings on time for the Cup. Although tourism increased, many tourists came from surrounding countries and slept on the beach, skipping the overpriced hotels. Brazil, which is in desperate need of transportation infrastructure, incurred some huge debt and failed to deliver on it.
The Olympics are shaping up to be worse. There’s a water shortage, and Olympic sailing teams might notice something fishy in the water when they compete in next summer’s games in Rio de Janeiro — that is, potentially thousands of dead fish, along with piles of trash and raw sewage.
I think in some ways 2024 are victims of the times.
We are no longer a society that takes care of the essentials, to the point where many people are questioning bread and circuses they might have favored otherwise.
it does not help that the Olympics have evolved into a corporate pigfest.
At the same time we are not yet authoritarian enough that what people think does not matter.
Before any more resources are wasted. Boston is a great city, but this is just not a good fit for us.
…is it they could have done anything right? Poll numbers don’t reflect what is, poll numbers reflect what people perceive… When these things are different, then we have departed from ‘reality based’ and why is that the problem or the fault of the Bid Committee?
Say what…?
From this very article:
“Relations between the food market and Boston 2024 have improved since December, when the co-op’s leaders went public with their frustration at being excluded from Olympic planning meetings, despite owning a key piece of land. Michael Vaughan, an adviser to the food market and president of Nauset Strategies, said his clients recently met with Boston 2024 officials, cleared the air, and “agreed to have an open conversation and not have any surprises.”
“Relations… have improved since December”. Only Nauset Strategies has been working with the Co-op since well before December and, in fact, Vaughan publicly stated that they met with the organizers in the Fall of 2014.
It’s very simple. If the land wasn’t for sale, Michael Vaughan wouldn’t be involved. That’s what he does. Nauset Strategies is a lobbying firm for dealing specifically with the interstices of construction and government. The Bid Committee never once did anything without the consent and/or knowledge of the owner. Never. Saying it did is false. The Globe story is a flat out lie.
The bid organizers met with Nauset Strategies and with the Food Co-op in the fall of 2014. Somebody, contrary to all this, claimed that they didn’t meet. But they did. The Globe ran with the false story.
Oh, and Michael Vaughn is married to an executive at Suffolk Construction.
This too, is false. The public documents says generally what the ‘secret bid documents‘ says in particular. There is no doublespeak here. The bid committee has been, across the board, a thousand times more consistent and truthful than the reportage that has accompanied it. Where is that the fault of Boston 2024?
So, why do we have to ask “where did Boston2024 go wrong?” From where I sit they’ve been attacked, vilified and lied about since day one.
Maybe they went wrong thinking Boston was going to be fair and straight about the whole business…
Must be tough to be rich and powerful and live in Boston.
I thought that part didn’t sound quite right, but I’ve given up repeatedly finding the citations.
Boston 2024 is the one trying to sell something here. Most if not all of the opponents have little to gain from deflecting the Olympic bid. None of us are going to make any money off of this. That cannot be truthfully said about the rich and powerful boosters of the Olympic bid.
If they want to sell a bill of goods, they had better have been prepared for opposition. Blaming the opposition on Boston 2024’s failure to sell their product isn’t much different than blaming consumers for failing to buy some companies ill-conceived product. Boston 2024 are the ones with millions of dollars to spend, a large paid staff, and supposed political and marketing expertise.
Either Boston 2024 is inept at selling their idea, or their idea is genuinely bad, or some combination of the two. Trying to claim that a small number of malcontents are capable of killing a fundamentally good idea just doesn’t seem like a very plausible claim whatever you think of the actual merits of the proposal.
to the backers of 2024. That they just think it will be great, and fun, and it’s on their bucket list.
Not that it’s a get-rich-quick scheme, though of course there may be some money to be earned, some glory to be won, and maybe even some vanity tokens to be minted.
Behold the innocent, well-intentioned dreams of the 1%.
These folks live in the same bubble from which Mitt Romney ran for President.
You write (emphasis mine):
Some of us strongly dispute your emphasized words. Some of us instead assert that any reasonable reading of both the public statements and the leaked and unredacted bid documents leads to just the opposite conclusion. Some of us read the unredacted bid documents as committing to public funding, even while their public statements were saying just the opposite.
… a general apriorist fallacy is no substitute for actually thinking.
responsorial repertoire).
But I don’t think I understand your point. Wouldn’t that same criticism apply to your own writing?
… you don’t understand it, but you know where it applies.
My point exactly.