Mayor Daley Rants At Final 2016 Olympics Meeting

chicagotribune.com:

When Mayor Richard Daley spoke at the private and final meeting of Chicago 2016 volunteers, he was, according to one attendee, "in rare form." Another described him as "on a rant. It was straight off the cuff. ... He looked angry, and he was angry."

Read the whole story: chicagotribune.com

Comments

[thundermummy]

11:20 PM on 12/16/2009

Is he as angry as I am about the parking meters?

[BVictor1]

08:10 PM on 12/14/2009

I know we finished last. We was watching when the vote came in. Again it was all political and the tensions between the USOC and IOC damages our chances.

[Matt Hotz]

11:25 AM on 12/14/2009

If Chicago actually wanted to give it a best shot. There would've been plans and designs from its best and brightest to improve the infrastructure of the city and to realize the goals in a way that wouldn't have decimated neighborhoods for paltry short term gain on the table and in the publics mind throughout the entire campaign. The entire project only had one goal in mind, and that was cementing his legacy by having more expensive but cheaply made objects with his name all around them.

[BVictor1]

08:22 PM on 12/14/2009

I agree with you that there should should have been nore planning regarding public transportation, but that's also one reason why the games were compact, the current system would have been able to handel the load. Yes, some improvements would have been made, and again the Cenytral Area 2020 plan calls for a red line spur downtown, and there are plans to extend the orange line and red line as well as the yellow line.

Again, the reason why venues would have been held in the parks, was to keep neighborhoods from being demolished. It's not like a mega-developer couldn't come around and by swaths of land for rebuilding.

Your coments show you really don't know much about the bid.

[Ben Cohn]

11:00 PM on 12/13/2009

Everyone clammering, "I DON"T WANT MY TAX DOLLARS"...blah blah blah, learn that sometimes things are better for the total good then for you. The Olympics would have been amazing in Chicago and for the city just like it was in Atlanta, though something tells me all you saying how stupid it was for Chicago to after the bid likely did not go to Atlanta.

Also, reports even from Tokyo and Madrid found that many people who voted for those cities (especially Tokyo) in the first round did so because they thought there was NO WAY Chicago could get knocked out. Further reports showed that large majorities of those delegations would have gone to Chicago in the finals. In other words people close to the voting have significant doubts whether Rio would have won in a heads up battle.

[47th]

08:09 PM on 12/14/2009

Three thousand families were displaced by the Atlanta Olympics. I doubt they felt their sacrifice was for "The common good"! Chicago finished fourth out of four. You can spin it any way you want, the IOC wasn't buying this bid.

[mergina]

03:32 PM on 12/10/2009

Goodbye and good riddance come next election.

[BVictor1]

03:06 PM on 12/11/2009

He'll be re-elected if he runs

[naschkatze]

10:19 AM on 12/10/2009

Oh sure, taxpayers all across the US should pay for the Olympics in Chicago and the obscene profit of a few like Valerie Jarrett.

[BVictor1]

03:08 PM on 12/11/2009

Was it any different when Atlanta held the games in 1996 or when L.A held the games in 1984?

[47th]

11:01 PM on 12/11/2009

Ya, it was different. Chicago taxpayers would have been on the hook for this mess! Fortunately, it was Daley who took a beatdown, not the already stressed taxpayers.

[zombywulf]

11:44 PM on 12/09/2009

Maybe he should look at himself as why they didn't get it.

[BVictor1]

03:08 PM on 12/11/2009

We didn't get it because of the USOC and other colusion.

[47th]

11:09 PM on 12/11/2009

Don't forget an unrealistic bid by two con men, Shortshanks and Ryan!

[47th]

09:43 PM on 12/09/2009

Daley claiming the bid process is "All politics" is irony at it's best! As a taxpayer in this city, I am thrilled that we didn't get stuck with the bill for this mess. I wish there was a film of his rant. It must have been hilarious!

[BVictor1]

03:11 PM on 12/11/2009

Yup,

No addition jobs, no addioional revenue for transit or schools or the parks.

You should certainly be thrilled that your ignorance triumphed.

Congratulations...

You can Google other Daley rants by going to Youtube. That should be uplifting for you.

[47th]

11:04 PM on 12/11/2009

Hey thanks for the suggestion Victor, I will go to youtube. By the way, you can whine all you want, but the Olympics are still going to Rio! Man, ten weeks later that still sounds good!

[shocktreatment]

01:55 PM on 12/09/2009

The Mayor has been protected more than a bit by tradition. "In rare form" is code for what really ails him. The Mayor's "form" is anything but rare, and becoming less so as the extent of Maggie's illness becomes apparent to him, and her influence on his choices inevitably lessens.

No happy endings here--

[sciphy]

05:22 PM on 12/09/2009

Agreed. When Maggie was diagnosed, Meigs Field got the bulldozers. Comparatively, he's calmer now but it's still very tough for him.

[Aldyth]

12:44 PM on 12/09/2009

The Federal government should not get involved in this. Chicago should never have gotten involved in a bid for the Olympics. The selection system is corrupt and that 75 million could have been spent in better ways.

Bad call, Mr. Mayor.

[Joe001]

07:45 AM on 12/10/2009

That $75 million was privately donated money, in part from companies that hoped to profit from a U.S. olympics and so might not have "better spent" the money absent Chicago's bid. And the bid, while a gamble, would have created thousands of new jobs here that don't otherwise exist--at a time of very high unemployment. I applaud Daley for taking the risk. Even if the odds were against him, the potential benefits were huge.

[Aldyth]

09:05 AM on 12/10/2009

How about raising 75 million dollars to repair Chicago schools? That would have created jobs and produced useful results. The money spent on the Olympics bid was a waste.

[ejhickey]

09:36 AM on 12/10/2009

Was the $75 million Private money? during this speech the Mayor hinted that it was public money. ""He started by saying we spent $75 million, and the next city was going to have to spend $100 million, and we didn't even have a chance," said one attendee, paraphrasing the mayor, who was the driving force behind the bid. "

Plus he is calling for public funding of the Olympic bids in the future because according to him , don't have a chance against foreign cities.

Like you , I thought the $75 million was private , but now I am not so sure. I would not be the first time the Mayor has lied. By the way , you do know that Mayor Daley is a close friend and admirer of George W. Bush.

[BVictor1]

03:13 PM on 12/11/2009

That 75 million was private, not public money and they can pretty much do what they want with it. Chicago got a $75 million worldwide tourism campaign that didn't cost any of us anything.

[47th]

11:06 PM on 12/11/2009

And a LAST place finish on the world stage! There has gotta be a film of this Daley crybaby act somewhere.