A new commercial paid
for by Restore Our Future snubs the fact that roughly 1,342,000,000 (that’s
right 1 billion) of the taxpayer’s dollars funded the Olympic Games and Salt
Lake City area infrastructure improvements needed for the Games to be a success. The ad contains former Olympians snubbing the taxpayer's contribution and heralding Mitt Romney for allowing athletes to "realize" their "dreams" and for
bringing a "huge sense of hope". The
following are quotes from athletes Kristi Yamaguchi and Derek Parra:
”Mitt allowed athletes
like myself to realize our dreams” –Derek Parra
“Mitt Romney brought a huge sense of hope”-Kristi
Yamaguchi
The Mitt
Romney business experience at the Olympics consists of “How to Get the Government to Bail You
Out”. The American taxpayers should be thanked not just Mitt Romney. While he rails
against “Big Government” “Handouts” “bailouts for General Motors” he himself
did not refuse the 342 million dollars it took to save the Olympic Games under
his direction nor did he speak out against the $1 billion in infrastructure
improvements in the Salt Lake City Area needed for the games. Apparently Mitt Romney wanted Detroit to go
bankrupt but not Utah.
Mitt Romney promised
“complete transparency” when he took charge of the scandal-plagued Salt Lake City
Olympics, a pledge that included access to his own correspondence and plans for
an extensive public archive of documents related to the Games.
“All of the documents inside our organization are available to the
public,” Romney said in a speech to the National Press Club in 2000. “Simply
submit a form saying which documents you want. For instance: ‘I want to see all
the letters written by Mr. Romney to [then-IOC President Juan Antonio]
Samaranch.’ You’ll get ’em all.”
But some who worked with Romney describe a close-to-the-vest chief
executive unwilling to share so much as a budget with a state board responsible
for spending oversight.
“Transparency? There was none with [the Salt Lake Organizing
Committee] when he was there,” said Kenneth Bullock, a committee member who
represented the Utah League of Cities and Towns. “Their transparency became a
black hole. It was nonexistent.”
The committee charged news outlets $25 per hour to research
records requests, even if the requests were eventually denied.
Even within the organizing committee, access to information was
sometimes restricted, according to Bullock, the committee member.
“Everything should have been accessible to the board, but it
wasn’t because that’s not what Mitt wanted,” he said.
Letters between journalists and the organizing committee obtained by the
Globe show reporters were sometimes denied access to records they believed were
covered by the committee’s open documents policy. Only a week after Romney
spoke to the National Press Club, the Utah chapter of the Society of Professional
Journalists wrote a complaint to the committee.
Technically Romney and the Salt Lake Organizing Committee had no
legal obligation to preserve their records or make them public, even though the
state paid $59 million, and the federal government spent $342 million on the
Games and contributed roughly $1 billion more in indirect aid for
transportation projects and other capital improvements in the Salt Lake region.
“I led an Olympics out of the
shadows of scandal” Mitt Romney states in a Washington speech but he does not
acknowledge the fact that the government bailed him out.
The Government Accountability Office issued a report regarding Romney’s
handling of the money as wasteful spending.
The 2002 Winter Olympics went down as the most expensive games in US history and Senator John McCain cited the games as “an incredible pork-barrel project for Salt Lake City and its environs”. It was not the custom of the US government to invest so heavily in a US hosted Olympic game, the money is supposed to come from sponsors, local cities and the US Olympic Committee.
The 2002 Winter Olympics went down as the most expensive games in US history and Senator John McCain cited the games as “an incredible pork-barrel project for Salt Lake City and its environs”. It was not the custom of the US government to invest so heavily in a US hosted Olympic game, the money is supposed to come from sponsors, local cities and the US Olympic Committee.
Sources:
http://www.shorenewstoday.com/snt/news/index.php/regional/opinion/21967-romney-would-have-let-gm-and-chrysler-fail.html
http://articles.courant.com/2002-04-25/sports/0204250385_1_utah-athletic-foundation-surplus-salt-lake-city-olympics
http://www.politicolnews.com/mitt-romney-olympic-bailout-business-experience/
http://www.opposingviews.com/i/politics/2012-election/video-mitt-romney-makes-bizarre-claims-latest-campaign-ads
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/54542587-90/romney-olympic-records-lake.html.csp
http://articles.courant.com/2002-04-25/sports/0204250385_1_utah-athletic-foundation-surplus-salt-lake-city-olympics
http://www.politicolnews.com/mitt-romney-olympic-bailout-business-experience/
http://www.opposingviews.com/i/politics/2012-election/video-mitt-romney-makes-bizarre-claims-latest-campaign-ads
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/54542587-90/romney-olympic-records-lake.html.csp
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/articles/2012/07/24/after_romney_pledged_transparent_olympics_key_documents_were_destroyed/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdWyxXBQvyM
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2012/02/19/romney-2002-winter-olumpics/
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/25/us-oly-usa-tickets-romney-idUSBRE86O00A20120725
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdWyxXBQvyM
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2012/02/19/romney-2002-winter-olumpics/
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/25/us-oly-usa-tickets-romney-idUSBRE86O00A20120725
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