Obama General Discussion... (Part 2)

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Basic economics, that reminds of the guy who asked the kebab diner owner to be open one more hour just for him since, you know, income. Well, such a basic understanding of economics as you described is not entirely innocent in leading to the situation we are now facing.
Estimating the Cost and Benefit of Hosting Olympic Games: What Can Beijing Expect from Its 2008 Games? | Industrial Geographer, The | Find Articles at BNET This article, by a Professor of Economics from Indiana State, and apparently somene who is specialised in sports economics, rather debunks such findings. How many more people are now coming to Atlanta? And considering that Chicago already is one of the most prominent and most visited cities in the US, how great would the advertising effect of the Olympic Games likely be?
It's not entirely foreign that cities, or entire countries even, are paying huge sums of money for only a fraction in return, hoping that the building up etc. would pay itself off.

Correct me if I'm wrong(for the article was long I did not read it all), but the article still never said that it "indebted" cities, just that the returns are exagerrated.
 
Despite the stigma that the Olympics required going into significant debt, Los Angeles successfully hosted the 1984 Olympics without any debt.
In fact, its Olympic committee ended up with a profit that was in part used to establish and endow the Amateur Athletic Foundation to promote youth sports in Southern California and maintain a Sports Library.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong(for the article was long I did not read it all), but the article still never said that it "indebted" cities, just that the returns are exagerrated.

Flying FuManchu said it would indebt Chicago. That's rather specific. Cannot comment on that as I don't know about the financial situation of Chicago, or how much they were planning on spending. But you said earlier that it would clearly boost the local economy and have overall benefits. Well, that cannot be said, either. All in all, the likelihood that Chicago profits tremendously from the games is probably rather small. And I guess the article gives some arguments in favor of that claim. E.g., it's already a well-established city, so the impact of growth is hardly to be great, and opportunity costs are not included in the estimate. As well as what I said earlier, Chicago already has a great reputation and certainly attracts a lot of visitors. It will hardly generate such a significant influx of tourists to justify the costs.
That doesn't mean that I deny Chicago the possibility, or probability, of turning the games into a profit. But neither could I claim the opposite.

LA apparently seems to be a positive example. However, it would be very interesting to examine the development of the scale of investments from the first steps of planning until the ending ceremony of the games. I wouldn't be surprised if price inflation for hosting the Olympic Games was in the high single-digits.

And well, the article is a bit longer as basic economics isn't that simple. ;)
 
Despite the stigma that the Olympics required going into significant debt, Los Angeles successfully hosted the 1984 Olympics without any debt.
In fact, its Olympic committee ended up with a profit that was in part used to establish and endow the Amateur Athletic Foundation to promote youth sports in Southern California and maintain a Sports Library.

They divided the Games into three categories: low impact (minimal infrastructure investment, such as Mexico in 1968 and Los Angeles in 1984), Games focusing mainly on additional sports facilities (such as Atlanta in 1996), and Games stimulating transformations of the built environment (such as Tokyo in 1964 and Montreal in 1976).
From the same article.

Could partly explain the profit of the 1984 games and the losses of the 1976 games. LA didn't have high constructing costs, thus broke even way earlier, while Montreal needed to greatly invest.
 
From Forbes

IOC only pays lip service to fiscal prudence
September 25th, 2009
The International Olympic Committee has preached fiscal prudence in recent years, but only with a nudge and a wink. A recent IOC assessment lambasted Chicago for not having a federal guarantee to cover cost overruns in their bid for the 2016 Summer Games. Chicago wants to finance nearly their entire $4.8 billion budget privately and already has assurances from the city and state in case construction costs grow. But the IOC wants a safety net from Washington because of what they perceive to be Illinois’ precarious fiscal state. Still, the Chicago bid should stick to its guns ahead of next week’s final vote in Copenhagen.

Privately financed games tend to come in on budget and turn a profit. Just ask Peter Ueberroth or Mitt Romney, who made the 1984 Los Angeles Games and 2002 Salt Lake City Games the most profitable Olympics ever. Chicago’s bid largely follows L.A.’s model, with plans to use more existing venues than its competitors: Soldier Field (soccer), United Center (basketball) and, potentially, Wrigley Field (rugby), to name a few.

With a blank check from federal taxpayers, the meter may run for decades. It took Montreal 30 years to pay off the debt from the 1976 Games and it looks like Athens, which staged the 2004 Olympics, will be in hock for just as long. Costs have spiraled out of control for the next two Olympic hosts, Vancouver (2010) and London (2012). Last summer Beijing staged the most expensive Olympics ever, with an estimated budget at more than $40 billion. IOC president Jacques Rogge gushed over its “dazzling venues” during the closing ceremony in a $450 million stadium that hasn’t been used since.

There hasn’t been a shakedown like this in the Windy City since the days of Al Capone. -- Peter J. Schwartz

Tags: Chicago, IOC, Olympics
 
I think the Olympic Games have become increasingly occupied with being "the greatest Olympic Games evah!!!!111eleven!", and thus every city is only trying to make it the show. Oh, there is sports, too?
At least the plan included the buildings already existing.
 
:tsk: All you see is color.



let's all read this "column" by Michelle Malkin, and tell me if you can spot the racial stereotypes she's dredging up.

The noble “sacrifice” of Michelle Obama
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2009

It’s hard out there for a First Lady of the United States. Take it from travel-weary Michelle Obama. On Tuesday night, she boarded a luxury 757 for Copenhagen. Think of the stairs she had to climb. Oh, the agony of the feet!
Upon arrival, Mrs. O, her “chit-chat buddy,” Chicago-based talk show queen Oprah Winfrey, and Chicago power-broker/interest-conflicted real estate mogul/senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett immediately embarked on a grueling, grip-and-grin campaign to secure the Olympics for their hometown. Our smile muscles ache in sympathy.

You will be comforted to know that gracious FLOTUS feels your pain for her pain. “As much of a sacrifice as people say this is for me or Oprah or the president to come for these few days,” the First Lady told a group of fellow Chicago 2016 boosters, “so many of you in this room have been working for years to bring this bid home.” Translation: Thank me, thank you, for all we do.

Never has self-congratulatory gratitude been raised to such an art form, but there was no time for loyal subjects to dwell. The selflessly indefatigable Michelle Obama had to rush off for an 800-meter wine-and-cheese dash with International Olympic Committee members, followed by a rigorous aerobic Heads of State luncheon hosted by Queen Margrethe II of Denmark and another high-heeled trek to the IOC Opening Ceremony at the Copenhagen Opera House.

Of course, it’s not entirely clear which “people” out there are saying that the Obamas’ jaunt to Denmark is a “sacrifice.”

Certainly not the families of 43 American soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who have died in Afghanistan since General Stanley McChrystal called for more reinforcements.

Certainly not the families of nearly 40 children and teens in Chicago who lost their lives on the out-of-control streets of the Windy City so far this year.

The First Lady’s slip of self-absorption reminds me of a useful passage in Washington Post writer Liza Mundy’s biography of Mrs. Obama. After graduating from Princeton University and Harvard Law School, the bitterly oppressed Michelle Obama headed back to her native Chicago to join the high-powered law firm of Sidley Austin—the fifth-largest in the world. There, Mundy’s book reported, the future first Lady griped about having to do the duties of a second-year associate while she was a second-year associate—demonstrating the trademark attitude of entitlement and inflated ego that led the law partner who recruited her to later describe her as “perennially dissatisfied.”

Doing her first job was a burden then. Enjoying the perks of her current job are “sacrifice” now.

Mrs. Obama has a gift for selling special-interest business as usual as public-interest charity. Thus, the insatiable appetite of the Chicago polite elite for a massive Olympics windfall to crony developers is redefined as a do-good campaign For the Children. Said Mrs. Obama:

“We need all of our children to be exposed to the Olympic ideals that athletes from around the world represent, particularly this time in our nation’s history, where athletics is becoming more of a fleeting opportunity…When we’re seeing rates of childhood obesity increase, it is so important for us to raise up the platform of fitness and competition and fair play; to teach kids to cheer on the victors and empathize with those in defeat, but most importantly, to recognize that all the hard work that is required to do something special.”

“Hard work,” you know, like jetting off with your gal pals to schmooze other world leaders, famous athletes, and celebrities for a few days on taxpayers’ dime.

In the Olympics of the aggrieved, Mrs. Obama gets a gold medal.

Michelle Malkin
 
There are countless articles regarding host cities and the supposed overrated value of hosting the Olympics (indirect benefits not actually overcoming the trouble and debt involved). It's not to say there hasn't been a city like Los Angeles which was considered successful in terms of profitabilty. Peter Uberroth gets all the credit. Is there a Peter Uberroth in Chicago? Unfortunately, you're talking about the city of Chicago (known for it's government corruption) taking care of the financing and running the show in a time when Chicago is suffering with over a half billion budget deficit and shrinking of services. They are also guaranteeing that they won't go over a 4.8 billion budget for preparing for and hosting the Olympics. No city has really been able to stay on budget for the Olympics, that I know of, and people expect the city of Chicago to run an undertaking such as the games?

I think, I remember a graphic saying Olympics on average have costed the host city close to $11 billion.

Daley promised to not use taxpayer money, but private funding which is a joke IMO, especially with the IOC pushing for full financial responsibility for the cost. If I was a Chicagoan, i would be pissed if they raised taxes considering the amount of money the city takes from them through fees and taxes.
 
I think it was pretty unlikely to go to Chicago. The next winter games are in Vancouver, which on a greater scale is "around the corner" and the next summer games are in London. Then there is a city in the race which happens to be in a country that happens to be on a continent that has never hosted the Olympic Games before. And that country is one of the emerging countries said to have a great future in the big league (still a long way apparently with lots of obstacles) of economies.

I wasn't paying attention to those games in Atlanta, either. So the only things that stuck with me were the bombing and the accident of the TWA jumbo.
 
let's all read this "column" by Michelle Malkin, and tell me if you can spot the racial stereotypes she's dredging up.

There's no way she would say anything close to this about the Bush's, in fact she would praise them. I wonder how many times she brought up dying soldiers before Jan 20. ZERO.

I know of at least two people who won't be able to spot them.
 
There are definitely undertones of the "it's hard out there for a brotha/pimp/ho" etc, but I don't know if I'd go so far as to say that it was definitely Malkin's intent in writing that sentence.
 
There are definitely undertones of the "it's hard out there for a brotha/pimp/ho" etc, but I don't know if I'd go so far as to say that it was definitely Malkin's intent in writing that sentence.




the themes of "i'm owed" and "everything's hard on me 'cause i'm black" echo throughout the piece, as well as the assumption that every dissatisfaction expressed by a black person is due to race. also the sense that "she doesn't really work hard, she just thinks she does, because she expects the world on a silver platter" combined with the fact that Michelle apparently didn't want to do the work of a second-year associate all tie into racialized resentment, connected to Affirmative-Action.

it's the same schizophrenic attitude that plagues her husband. on one hand, she's a clearly undeserving affirmative-action baby who was helped into Princeton and then Harvard and then one of the best law firms in the world (i can only guess that she had special private tutoring to pass the bar) simply because she was black, you know, not because she was qualified, and then on the other hand she's too successful, too ambitious, too aloof, too egotistical, too intellectual, too intellgentsia, too apart from the common people -- amazingly, Palin's white huntin' and fishin' background are somehow more real and more American than Michelle's south side of Chicago and father with a debilitating disease.
 
Hint: What respectable writer would start off an "article" with such a poor sentence unless there was a reason?

We have Glenn Beck's statements and many of Hannitys that are pretty easy to hear 'race' thrown around.

I am not much of a fan of Michelle Malkin. Of course there is a 'mocking' tone.

Much of the criticism of Bush and other political types is done in a 'mocking' tone.

I think there are enough times when Michelle Malkin or Ann Coulter make a bigoted statements, that we should not have to label everything bigoted.


And because Michelle Malkin comes down hard on Polanski, it does not give me qualms to 100% condemn a 43 year old man anally raping a 13 year old give aginst her will.
 
I didn't actually say "bigotry". I think this is another case of subconscious thought rather than conscious.

The opening line was very intentful though.

And that coupled with the "I'm owed" and "I should be praised for what I'm supposed to do" implications seemed pretty obvious to me.

If the roles were reversed do you think the article would make any "sense" if it was written about Mrs Bush? Of course not.
 
I didn't actually say "bigotry". I think this is another case of subconscious thought rather than conscious.

The opening line was very intentful though.

And that coupled with the "I'm owed" and "I should be praised for what I'm supposed to do" implications seemed pretty obvious to me.

If the roles were reversed do you think the article would make any "sense" if it was written about Mrs Bush? Of course not.

I always substitute when I analyze.

Mrs Bush is not a good switch. Would Oprah have gone with a Bush?
Hillary perhaps. But she is more accomplished than Michelle, there were much worse things written about her.

W got savaged worse. The trip to Denmark with Oprah in tow does lend itself to this type of treatment.

I don't really fault Obama for going. The P M from Japan went, too.


The Olympic Committee blew it, They could have made Michelle say “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my planet."
 
I think the US media's coverage (horribly politicized 24h news channels) of any political issue is way too much occupied with the boulevard. This trip being the greatest idea since the telephone or not, come on, you don't have to dedicate two days to it.
People like Malkin or Coulter seriously should just be drained through ignorance.
But well, guess it's already too late seeing as considerable portions already cling to the figureheads of those news channels and take their words as ultimate truth.
 
I did the assignment.

Please show me what I missed.

It's a negative article on the Obamas.

So by definition...it's racial and schizophrenic. :shocked:

The Olympic Committee blew it, They could have made Michelle say “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my planet."

:lmao:
 
It's a negative article on the Obamas.

So by definition...it's racial and schizophrenic. :shocked:




it hardly qualifies as an "article" -- it's a diatribe published by a hack on her popular website.

and the website is popular because it gives voice and sound to the racism and racialized resentment i outlined above.

Michelle Malkin, and all these people, know what they are doing. they're using fear to take money, which has happened ever since this country started.
 
I always substitute when I analyze.

Mrs Bush is not a good switch. Would Oprah have gone with a Bush?
Hillary perhaps. But she is more accomplished than Michelle, there were much worse things written about her.

No, I think it's fair to subsitute a first lady with a first lady. And as inactive as Mrs Bush was I think it's even more suitable that she could be subsituted for it would have been real easy to make fun of her is she had actually stepped out of the house and did something(but I honestly can't remember her taking any real active role like I did Clinton or Reagan), regardless no matter who wrote it it never would have started out with "it's hard out there for a first lady" and would have never had such undertones, period.
 
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