Telander Spanks Daley Again

Geez, Daley has to be feeling some of these body blows:

• The most dangerous four words in the world are these: Trust me this time.

  That's what you hear from Mayor Daley and his 2016 Olympic-bid cronies. Those four words.

  Forget the incessant city scandals that Daley knows ''nuttin' about.'' Forget the Daley relatives and pals lined up ass-to-elbow, snorting at the money trough. Forget the lakefront airport torn up in the middle of the night, the neighborhoods where school kids have as good a chance of getting shot as going to a four-year college, the police department that has had its morale ripped up and beaten to a pulp.

  Forget -- dear God -- the parking-meter fiasco that will saddle our progeny with debt for so many years to come that you don't even want to mention street parking to any optimistic citizen under the age of 40.

We don't know how much it will actually affect the outcome. We're sure the bribes have all been paid (from the "rainy day fund" and whoever collected the premiums on the "insurance policies" Daley has up his sleeve for "overages) and the deals have been struck. Hopefully an enterprising reporter will be exposing the background of the upcoming Olympic scandals for years to come.

As Telander notes, the Chicago Olympic bid is $4.8 billion. By comparison, the entire City of Chicago budget is just a shade under $6 billion. Daley is committing almost 80% of an entire year's worth of budget to a sporting event that was never even offered to the voters for an opinion. That's no money for jobs, social programs, building, clean-up, pensions, schools, whatever, for one entire year out of the next seven. Spent on a one-time blow out sporting event that will strain resources and put heretofore unknown pressures on an infrastructure that is already crumbling.

Oh, and the London games of 2012? The bid was about $4 billion (2.4 billion pounds). The latest estimate? About $32 billion (almost 20 billion pounds), a cost overrun TEN TIMES the bid amount. And that's in London, not Chicago, with its storied history of crooked construction contracting, fake minority front companies and connected subcontracting where everyone and their uncle gets a piece.

We are so screwed.