I’ve accepted that people here are more worried about Boston 2024 than Baker 2015. Depending on rumors instead of facts isn’t too impressive, though. I don’t claim to have worked for a bid, just having done some university level work on Olympic politics and finances (logically enough when one is studying in Montreal). So here are some facts that would be helpful to consider when commenting on 2024:
Public and political support are required. Three pages in the 2020 candidate questionnaire concerned this. Berlin’s and Oslo’s bids for the 2022 winter games died at the hand of negative polls. If the people are truly against a bid, it won’t go forward. I will repeat this — no Olympics will be rewarded to Boston against public support.
A plan must be fleshed out by September 2015, not next week — with two additional years to tweak it before the 2024 games are awarded. And even at that point a decently detailed plan isn’t required, and changes are expected. Consider that Boston 2024 is probably more organized at this point than Athens was two years before the Opening Ceremonies. It’s not like there’s much reason to have this done next week, and throwing tantrums just because there isn’t fine-grain detail on an event a decade in the future looks silly. (Throwing tantrums because of the file format of a video recording of a hearing is pathetic). Yes, which city will stand as the American bid and will have the inside track to ultimate selection, will be chosen in “early 2015” from DC, SF, LA, and Boston by the USOC. But that is an entirely moveable date. Furthermore, while the IOC is not a nice group of people, pretending that it’s still 1995 is wrong. In fact, the selection process was just changed so thoroughly not too many people are quite sure what comes next.
I get that many people don’t want a bid. Personally, the Olympics are a great motivator to make changes that need to be made, and have proven more powerful than hoping really hard people will do what you want. With 2022 becoming an embarrassment, the IOC is fairly begging for a democracy to bid for 2024. If Boston does the bid its way, perhaps it would make sense to shelve the paranoia and actually consider the facts.
I don’t particularly think it advances your argument to call anyone opposed to, or even dubious about, the Olympics “paranoid” or “throwing tantrums.” Let’s try to leave language like that over at RMG. I’m pretty sure I haven’t talked like that, and I don’t recall other skeptics doing so either.
Any substantive comment on what I said, or just want to talk about how I said it? I could link to a recent comment calling the bid a secret project of a cabal of 1% players, but why bother. Don’t worry about me — just ol’ sabutai going off the BMG reservation as he sometimes does.
Please review the BMG Style Guide, where calling people schmucks, losers, insane, and cute are all encouraged, at least when used by certain entertaining commenters. Perhaps if you work on your entertainment factor, paranoid and throwing tantrums will enter the canon.
.1 or even .001% is far, far more accurate, at least when it comes to capital in its traditional or political forms.
Calling it a secret cabal isn’t a tantrum or paranoia, it’s calling a spade a spade.. It’s an accurate term for an organization in which only a very, very select few have any idea what the frack is going on.
Were any neighborhood groups or local activists invited into the bid process, then there would be far fewer concerns. Hell, they don’t even have a Boston City Councilor invited to take part in the process.
The salient fact is that hosting the Olympics has a devastating effect on housing, particularly rental housing. Any bid would have to include rent-control both before and during the games. The alternative is a level of tenant displacement and suffering that is simply unacceptable.
So where are the representatives of tenant groups on tis committee? In fact where are the community groups in general? These are the people who will be affected the most by an Olympics.
I’m sorry, but there is nothing “proprietary” about an Olympics bid, and nothing to hide from the other cities.
I would appreciate some hard links to back that up, I am fairly certain it left them with a massively underutilized stadium:
One professional football and professional baseball failed in.
It took 30 years to pay off, and left a decidedly mixed legacy
Especially in the host city itself
Chicago got stuck with this expensive hole in the ground from a bid we lost
Since you’re skeptical of my own perspective in this process, here is a nice summary from Ben Joravsky-the David Bernstein of Chicago.
Here is a report from what some economists think
Feel free to back up your assertions with links and evidence, and we can have a debate, I don’t think we can have a debate if you call us paranoid conspiracy theorists-particularly if most historical examples are on our side.
… because, in placement, you’re off the mark.
In substance, you’re also well shy of the mark, tho’ (obliquely) you underline his point. Sabutai is neither defending Montreal in particular nor the Olympics in general: merely pointing out some procedural hurdles that have been elided here in a rather hasty effort to cut the purported Olympic stampede off at the pass. “Chicago has a white elephant” is a nonsensical reply to “The process isn’t what you think it is.”
I don’t like opponents being accused of throwing tantrums, especially when we have been delivering facts and statistics to back up our arguments while all you have is Burkean arguments in favor of strict virtual representation, Christopher’s wish full thinking, and sabutai saying he wrote a paper on the Montreal games. He brought them up as a success-something I’ve rarely heard in the past-particularly from people that live there.
And nobody also seems to care that this bid is way behind the DC and SF bids. So if we are starting behind with the bidding process and have significantly worse structural capability to host the games than this cities, why are we wasting time and money on this again? We can’t even keep our bridges open or our trains operative, and we really have the arrogance to presume we are the best choice for the USOC or IOC? What about the fact that nobody associated with the bid has worked on a successful bid in the past?
I see a bunch of small time, and let’s be frank-small town amateurs taking on something bigger and more modern American cities have failed to achieve in the recent past.
I disagree with sabutai. Any bid process for hosting the Olympic Games that prevents the exploration of whether or not a contending city has public support, until after it has exterminated the aspirations of other contending cities who may have more of it, is not only anti-democratic, it is harmful to the national interest of the United States. -Dan Currie, Dorchester
Nobody is arguing we have to hold a referendum tomorrow, I agree with him that this bid is in it’s infancy. But the report in September 2015 should be open to the public, the public should have significant input, and it should have a vote-especially since public money always inevitably ends up funding aspects of these games or mitigating their after affects.
-The report will be publicly available through the IOC if nobody else.
-The public input hasn’t been great, and I don’t know if it has been great for any bid process.
-I wold agree with a vote (as I said elsewhere) though remain curious about its aegis and who votes.
And as we hash these issues out I look forward to your contributions, I am interested to hear your take on Montreal and other games that you thought were beneficial. To me, this shouldn’t be ideological. If a party for the 1% was the best way to get sound long term infrastructure investments while bringing new business and interest in Boston as a global city, I’d be all for it. The evidence overwhelmingly seems to indicate that with rare exceptions, Olympics are expensive boondoggles that fleece the public without impacting the economy greatly.
It does seem that Brazil seems to have warmed to the World Cup after the fact, and it will be interesting to see how they handle their Olympics. Their bid was quite impressive, and I went into it thinking they were our toughest competitor. I had was just as shocked as Mayor Daley and the folks on his dad’s plaza when we just got 4th place.
I’m sorry, was there some public input that occurred that I missed?
I stopped reading right there.
Boston 2024 has refused, at every point, to inform citizens of any and all details. They have refused, at every point, to include community members, neighborhood organizations and regular folk to be a part of the bid process — so it has become a secret cabal of millionairesses and billionaires, peppered in with a scant few pols from Beacon Hill and other extremely well connecteds.
All people have are rumors.
Meanwhile, the process for becoming the US nominee to host the Olympics is happening much, much sooner than 2024. Very soon, in fact.
Were Boston to be “awarded” the bid, we would be stuck with it, as corporation sponsors worth hundreds of billions and big whig US Olympic Committee members take over the whole process and remove any and all ability for ordinary citizens to have any kind of substantial say in the process, including whether or not we want to have the fracking games to begin with.
So, Sab, pardon us for “acting on rumors.” Or not properly bowing down low enough to the .1% in power or prestige who have been leading this all the way.
We don’t have time for that BS, because the US selection process is happening soon.
I think even contemplating an Olympic bid is utter and complete lunacy while we can’t keep our public transportation running during even modest snowstorms, our bridges are falling down, and well over 50% of Massachusetts residents are one paycheck away from poverty.
In my view, there is a VERY LONG list of desperately needed programs that need substantive proposals, planning, and community buy in that are FAR more urgently required than yet another party for the rich and famous ten years from now.
I view ANY effort made by ANY public official on behalf of this insanity as a betrayal of the public trust. I expected, as a father, that I needed to frequently remind my teenagers to stop farting around, sit down, and get their homework done. I should NOT have to do the same for my elected officials.