A Stitch in Haste

As the clock ticks down on the conjoined Bloomberg boondoggles known as the West Side Stadium and the 2012 Olympics, some new and unwelcome data on the fiction that the Olympic Games "help" a host city's economy: (WSJ -$)

For a few giddy weeks last summer, the whitewashed houses at the foot of [Athens'] Mount Parnitha, and the 10,500 athletes who lived there, were the center of the world.

Today the Olympic village is a ghost town, and most of the jobs it generated have vanished. Soldiers guard the site while the government tries to find another use for it. "Please move on," one tells a visitor. "There's nothing to see here."
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Meanwhile, Greece is still waiting for an Olympic boost to materialize for its $8.86 billion-a-year tourism industry. In 2003, the number of annual visitors to Greece declined almost 7% to 13.9 million and dropped again in 2004 to 13.1 million.
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To a degree, Greece's woes are no different than the headaches past Olympic cities have experienced. In the history of the Games, only two cities — Los Angeles in 1984 and Atlanta in 1996 — have earned a profit. Montreal, which hosted the 1976 Summer Games, won't finish paying off its debt until next year: Its Olympic Stadium has been a financial sinkhole, with a malfunctioning domed roof that collapsed in 1999 under a load of snow, injuring five people setting up for an auto show.

Now of course New York City isn't Athens and the U.S. isn't Greece. But the chronic lies (or, to be generous, myopia) of those who amazingly chant "more jobs, more housing, more tourism" from the Olympics are simply ignoring reality. In the case of New York, the illogic is even more bizarre due to Bloomberg's "Mobius strip" reasoning: We need the stadium for the Olympics, and we need the Olympics for the stadium.

Huh?

The entire Bloomberg campaign for the stadium has been nothing but a series of red herrings and bait-and-switch tactics: Why do the Jets need to play in Manhattan rather than the outer boroughs, as the Yankees and Mets do? Blank out. Why are we so concerned with the Jets playing in New York City proper, but not the Giants? Blank out. Why should the Jets receive $600 million in taxpayer subsidies, especially when, unlike baseball, basketball or hockey, the average New Yorker will never even get to see a live game? Blank out (or worse, call it a "rooting tax"). Why should the Jets be given a sweetheart deal for the (government-owned) land rather than putting it up for a bona fide competitive bidding process? Blank out. How exactly do you operate a football stadium in Manhattan with exactly zero parking spaces? Blank out. If the Olympics are such a sure thing, then why does the IOC require host cities to provide taxpayer subsidies for the games as a precondition for consideration? Blank out. What does the Javits Convention Center have to do with any of this? Blank out.

Meanwhile, supporters of the taxpayer-subsidized projects are busy deflecting recent criticism over the stadium by asserting that — get this — Bloomberg's public fetish advocacy for the Olympics is responsible for rising real estate prices in the City.

Are you kidding me?

Add on to that the Freedom Tower debacle, to which the apologists respond by "reminding" us that Mayor Bloomberg "gave" authority over the site to fellow RINO, Governor Pataki, in exchange for staying out of Bloomberg's way regarding the West Side Stadium.

Gee, and I thought that the Mayor of New York should actually, um, lead New York and have at least some responsibility and input over what goes on in his own city. Silly me. I didn't realize that New York City and New York State politics was really nothing more than a giant game of Monopoly, with the politicians swapping Marvin Gardens for Water Works and Ground Zero for the West Side train yards.

Oh, and just in case, a new motto already seems to murmuring among Bloomberg's Olympics cheerleaders: "There's always 2016."

Give me a break.