The "Do Something!" Approach To Problem-Solving: Bringing The Olympics To Los Angeles...Because Trump
A street-cleaning ticket in Los Angeles -- if you, say, sleep in and forget to move your car on street cleaning day -- used to be about $25 back in the 90s, if my recollection is correct. Now it's $68 -- which is almost as much as some low-wage workers make in a day.
Why are these tickets now so expensive? Because our City Council Turds keep voting in all this stuff we can't afford and need to keep socking it to the citizenry to get paid for.
Oh, and if you get one that's wrong and contest it, the company processing them -- Xerox -- seems to just ignore the evidence. That's my experience personally and that of many others.
Now these elected mathematically- and ethically-bankrupt idiots on the LA City Council are talking about bringing The Olympics here. It will turn traffic here into a bigger nightmare than it already is -- and it will likely leave the city with a huge deficit:
David Wharton writes in the LA Times:
"I've been seen as kind of a fly in the ointment," Councilman Paul Krekorian said. "I really am at a point now where I have zero concern about impacts on the taxpayers of Los Angeles."Money was only part of the debate.
In competition against Paris and Budapest, the private LA 2024 bid committee must craft a narrative -- a compelling story for why the Games should come to Southern California.
And that's where Trump and partisan politics come in.
L.A.'s narrative needs to address dual questions: What can Los Angeles do for the Olympic movement? What can the Olympic movement do for Los Angeles, if not the entire U.S.?
In recent months, bid leaders and city officials have repeatedly suggested the Olympics might help unite a polarized nation.
What a crapload.
Krapkorian again:
"I keep looking up at the clock and realizing where our nation is right now as we are sitting here, what's happening in Washington right now," Krekorian said Friday.
I'm horrified that Trump is president, but the solution to that isn't costing Los Angeles residents a fuckton of money.
Here's fivethirtyeight's Clay Dillow:
When Rio de Janeiro won its bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics back in 2009, the Brazilian government estimated that costs directly related to hosting the games would run just shy of $3 billion. But by the time Vanderlei de Lima lit the Olympic torch at last week's opening ceremonies, the country had already spent some $4.6 billion on venues, administration, transportation and the like, putting the games roughly 50 percent over budget. By the time the games close on Aug. 21, the tally for the games will likely be higher still.But it could be much worse. The 2014 Winter Games in Sochi blew their budget by 289 percent. The 1980 Winter Games in Lake Placid overtopped projections by 324 percent. And the 1976 Games in Montreal ran a staggering 720 percent over projections; the city spent three decades paying down the bill. While outliers such as these distort the average cost overruns somewhat (176 percent for Summer Games, 142 percent for Winter Games), the median cost overrun for all games for which we have data is 90 percent, making Rio's cost overrun somewhat lower than the historical norm, at least so far.
The modern Olympic Games, in other words, are wildly expensive -- and wildly more so than host cities expect when they make their bids.
...The numbers above come from a new study led by Bent Flyvbjerg at the University of Oxford's Saïd Business School, who looked at six decades of Olympic budgets.
"For a city and nation to decide to stage the Olympics Games is to decide to take on one of the most costly and financially most risky type of megaproject[s] that exists," Flyvbjerg and company wrote, "something that many cities and nations have learned to their peril."
I'm sorry, but I really have no clue how you are possibly connecting this to Trump. Seems a really big stretch. Would you care to explain it to me as if I were five years old?
Matt at January 20, 2017 10:48 PM
Yes the overruns would be as vast. To think otherwise is to fundamentally misunderstand why cities and nations pursue the right to host the Olympics.
Here's how it works. The primary backers of bids for the games are the business interests and labor unions which will directly benefit from the contracts for construction, security, transportation, administration, food service, and so on.
For them, the overruns are a goal -- a feature, not a bug. Overrun dollars do not vanish into thin air - they go into the pockets of the contractors. The bigger the overruns, the more money they make. So, overruns are contrived and premeditated, not accidental. A way will be found to make them happen, no matter what the original estimate shown to the public.
One clearcut example is the stadium in Montreal. It cost many times the original estimate because labor unions were deliberately, repeatedly allowed to sabotage and redo the work. The unions used the largess to pay off the politicians. To understand this, it helps to know that the Province of Quebec is a banana republic, shot through with graft from the highest to the lowest levels. Corruption is a way of life there, and has been for many decades. So, the stadium was merely a vehicle for a vast slush to funnel money into the pockets of the people who run Montreal and Quebec. There is nothing accidental about this. It was not the result of errors, poor accounting, bad estimating, or unforeseen events.
Nor was the Montreal stadium an aberration. It's best viewed as a paradigm for every games, everywhere. The benefits are particularized, the costs are generalized - the latter being paid off by the taxpayers, usually over decades.
Lastango at January 20, 2017 10:48 PM
Matt, dunno if you're questioning the absurdity of it or not seeing the bit in the story, so here:
Friday in Washington: That inauguration thingie. If you click on the link, it might become clearer that Krekorian is making that entirely bullshit connection.
Lastango is entirely correct in all of this stuff.
Amy Alkon at January 21, 2017 5:19 AM
But.. Is the city of Los Angeles capable of outbribing against other nations all over the globe?
Sixclaws at January 21, 2017 6:59 AM
After the disaster in Rio, the IOC is going to have trouble hoisting the Olympics off onto any country/city other than third world shit holes that cant do the math.
Tokyo is already furiously backpedaling on their agreement with the IOC, and is going to try and update and use as many of the old facilities from 1964 as they can, and has scaled back some of the new facilties.
I think the day is coming and shortly where it wont be a competition for the honor of having the Olympics at all, it will be a full scale beg a thon by the Olympic fat cat bureaucrats to get anyone to take them.
Little known historical fact. Denver Colorado was awarded the winter Olympics for 1976, but a tax payer revolt caused them to give up the games when the voters overwhelmingly rejected a bond issue to help fund the games.
Isab at January 21, 2017 7:22 AM
"Matt, dunno if you're questioning the absurdity of it or not seeing the bit in the story, so here:"
Ah, now I get it - part of the absurdity is that Trump really has nothing to do with this and should not be used as a reason to do this really stupid thing. Sorry, I misinterpreted your title.
matt at January 21, 2017 7:25 AM
It seems like just yesterday I turned to an attractive female companion and said:
"Let's pay a pile of dough and go to Rio so we can watch synchronized basket weaving performed by steroid-addled government-paid athletainers in gigantic facilities that will have to be destroyed at great cost to the taxpayers. If we're lucky the locals won't rob us, or worse."
Later, drinking alone on date night, I realized that wasn't a particularly compelling suggestion.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at January 21, 2017 9:33 AM
Still horrified, I see. Gee, that must be fun.
Otherwise, you'd quit doing it so you could actually watch what's happening, as you now have a President of whom millions actually expect something, who didn't get a Nobel and whatever else as a participation trophy, and who YOU can criticize without being called a racist.
He's actually impeachable without worthless people burning America as a result.
And, since it apparently doesn't horrify you that the side you chose habitually attacks people and destroys personal property when they don't get their way, maybe you could turn your attention to those "blue" areas run by similar "adults" - y'know, with crime and SJWs and crying people because UNFAIR!
-----
And, since you have mentioned Mitt Romney in a positive light, maybe you could get him to do the Olympics.
But two weeks of sweating by foreigners won't fix this at all. The Olympics involves fewer people and fewer fans than the NFL. Let's watch the Super Bowl and see what effect it has on the manufactured outrage generated by mass media - which apparently has you in thrall, too.
Radwaste at January 21, 2017 10:06 AM
One of the hidden blessings from Rio is that cities don't feel the pressure to make an even more lavish event than the previous one anymore.
Now, the goal is to not screw it up like Rio.
Sixclaws at January 21, 2017 10:16 AM
Hmm. Tough call. On the one hand IOC won't want to reward a country that just elected D J Trump. On the other hand California went 2 to 1 for the Clintons. Awarding L A the contract could be seen as an act of solidarity.
I think it will come down to the bribes.
Canvasback at January 21, 2017 11:13 AM
The Olympics in L.A. in 1984 were profitable, and are projected to be profitable again due to all of our existing infrastructure. We don't need to build new stadiums, athletes' villages, etc.
Comparisons to Rio or Sochi are absurd.
Jay R at January 22, 2017 12:49 PM
The Olympics in L.A. in 1984 were profitable, and are projected to be profitable again due to all of our existing infrastructure. We don't need to build new stadiums, athletes' villages, etc.
Comparisons to Rio or Sochi are absurd.
Jay R at January 22, 2017 12:49 PM
I think what is absurd is comparing 1984 to 2024. A large part of the revenue was the sale of telvision rights.
Even then they cooked the books because so much of what makes the Olympics profitable is the tax payer supported infrastructure and transportation systems.
Telvison ad revenues have been failing, as the networks and other speciality channels hemorrhage viewers.
Reusing and upgrading existing facilties isnt going to be enough to make the 2024 Olympics profitable. Most of Olympic sports are niche sports, with tiny viewership potential.
No one is going to pay big bucks to show syncronized swimming or bicycle racing on TV in 2024.
Tokyo in 2020 will be a harbinger of more bad things to come.
Isab at January 22, 2017 1:23 PM
"polarized nation"?
BS! It is getting tiresome to hear crybabies whine every time their side doesn't win an election that the nation is "polarized."
And, yep, they try to then spend more money instead of working with those now in power to make things better.
THIS time they can all go suck an ostrich egg!
charles at January 22, 2017 1:39 PM
"One clearcut example is the stadium in Montreal."
This. What a cluster that place is. It's a perfect example of everything that can go wrong with a government project. Secret, no-bid contracts won by cronies. Shoddy construction. Poor management resulting in unnecessary delays. The stadium wasn't actually finished in time for the 1976 Olympics.
The retractable roof that it was supposed to have languished for years in a warehouse. They finally installed it in 1987, and it immediately begin having problems with rips and tears every time the wind blew. The retraction mechanism broke down after a year, and was never fixed. Eventually they had to remove it, and the stadium was open-air again for a while. They finally installed another, non-retractable room. Most of the HVAC then had to be replaced because it had not been properly preserved while the stadium was open to the elements.
The roof isn't rated for Montreal snow loads, so the arena is basically unusable from November to March. At least twice, multi-ton chunks of concrete have fallen from the roof (fortunately never hitting anyone), and the stadium had to be closed for a while for repairs. Deferred maintenance is legendary.
The major tenants, the Expos baseball team and the Alouettes CFL football team, both moved out. It looks like the only use for the arena today are some trade shows and the occasional soccer match. Despite that, the city spent money to install a new big-screen video scoreboard last year.
Cousin Dave at January 23, 2017 8:03 AM
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