Deep skepticism here about whether taxpayers would be stuck footing the bill for the Olympics has doomed Boston’s bid to host the 2024 Summer Games and raised questions about whether any other major American city might be willing to take on the risk.Here is the sticking point:
The United States Olympic Committee said Monday that it was withdrawing Boston as its proposed bid city because resistance among residents was too great to overcome in the short time that remained before the committee had to formally propose a bid city by Sept. 15.
“We have not been able to get a majority of the citizens of Boston to support hosting the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games,” Scott Blackmun, the chief executive of the U.S.O.C., said in a statement as he raised the white flag. “Therefore, the U.S.O.C. does not think that the level of support enjoyed by Boston’s bid would allow it to prevail over great bids from Paris, Rome, Hamburg, Budapest or Toronto.”
Voters told pollsters that they were most concerned about having to pay for cost overruns. But they were also dismayed by what they considered as Boston 2024’s lack of transparency and the sense that a small cabal of business leaders who stood to profit seemed to be running the show in secrecy. And they questioned whether much-need improvements in transportation, housing and education would get done if the city were so focused on the Olympics.So, they lied to the people of Boston, and the USOC wanted Boston to guarantee to cover the costs of any f%$#-ups that the
Mr. Wallechinsky, the historian, said that the U.S.O.C. should “take a good hard look at themselves” and conduct an investigation into “how they could have picked Boston in the first place.” He said one of the worst moments came when the U.S.O.C. watched as Boston 2024 said that its bid, which was not initially disclosed to the public, called for no public financing; the U.S.O.C. knew that was not true, he said, as the public found out later after news outlets obtained the bid.
They are now looking at LA, but the last time that LA hosted, they ignored the bling, and reused existing facilities, and that eliminates the possibilities for graft that drive the International Olympic Committee since Juan Antonio Samaranch (An actual card-carrying fascist, he served in the Franco regime in Spain) took over the presidency of the organization in 1980.
The 2024 Olympics will not be in the US. Most likely, it will be in a totalitarian state, since the financially ruinous exercises in narcissistic self-aggrandizement seems to built into the DNA of that form of government.
My guess is that the 2024 Olympics will be held in Pyongyang. (Just kidding, but my last joke in this vein was Arisia)
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