Greetings…

A few weeks ago, Chicago was eliminated in the first round to host the
2016 Olympics, which was awarded to Rio de Janeiro. Mayor Daley had
been actively pushing for his city and President Obama made a trip to
Copenhagen, Denmark to do what he could to persuade the Olympic committee
to award Chicago the games…

Like many others, I, for one am glad Rio was chosen over Chicago for a
few reasons…

The recent crime wave in Chicago has made national news and although
I follow what is going on in my home state of Illinois, you couldn’t
turn on the news without hearing about the mob action killing of a
young honor student for no apparent reason. This isn’t an isolated
case as the amount of young kids getting killed for no reasons other
than being in the wrong place at the wrong time because of bands of
thugs shooting, beating, stabbing and any other violent way to kill
you can think of…

Why isn’t Mayor Daley doing something about this instead of trying to
get the Olympics and possibly endangering visitors to his city? Although
I lived in the suburbs, far away from the city of Chicago, I grew up
hearing about the shady politics of Chicago and Richard Daley’s father,
who was well known for deals and pushing the envelope on getting what
he wanted…

People living within the city limits where the different venues were not
happy about the Olympics because they knew how disruptive this would be
to their every day lives. From traffic problems, crowds, and of course,
crime, just trying to go to work on a daily basis would be a nightmare
for most of the residents of downtown Chicago…

There were plans to buy up areas of housing to make room for the Olympic
buildings and given how Chicago politics work, it makes me wonder how
“voluntary” the selling of the properties would have been if you get
my drift…

You can research all of the cities that have held the Olympics and get
the figures on the profitability of the games. You will see empty
buildings that housed athletes and venues. Most cities never made
enough money to cover what was spent…

I realize there are plenty of people who were and are disappointed that
Chicago lost the bid for the 2016 Olympics, but I’ll bet the general
feeling was/is “Thank God”…

So, if you live in the Chicago vicinity, what are your thoughts about
Chicago’s losing bid for the Olympics and secondly, how about those of
you who live in a city, or near a city that has hosted an Olympics…

Was it a good thing or bad thing?