The site of the 2016 Olympics will be announced on Friday, and Chicago is considered to be a close contender along with Rio de Janeiro. Speaking on behalf of my three million fellow citizens, I’d say that Chicagoans are torn. The Olympics would be fun, and Chicagoans would love for the world to realize that we have indoor plumbing here, something that folks on America’s coasts don’t seem to know. But despite the inferiority complex, Chicagoans don’t have the puppy-like need to be loved that Atlanta or Salt Lake City seem to have. If you think our only claim to fame is Da Bears, then you are the idiot.

The problem is that Chicagoans are keenly aware of the costs of corruption. We have one former governor in prison and another who is likely to join him soon. We have a federal prosecutor issuing subpoenas and indictments left and right. Students have been admitted and received scholarships to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign based on who they knew; a current grand jury investigation is looking into clout admissions at the city’s elite public high schools. Who knows how many businesses have put off expanding or relocating to Illinois because of the tax from the take? Graft has been accepted here because politicians used to be careful to deliver goodies to the neighborhoods, but that’s not happening. Consider that two city high school students were murdered this past weekend. One, who attended a magnet school, was shot by an unknown assailant; the other, who attended a regular neighborhood high school, was beaten to death after school by a mob of his fellow classmates.

But sadly, the legacy of corruption makes Chicago a good fit for the International Olympic Committee, which has its own history of taking theirs. The IOC does things the same way Chicago politicians do; Mike Royko used to say that the definition of an honest politician in Chicago is that when he is bought, he stays bought. Many people in town assume that the fix is already in. (more…)