It's not enough that major cities force taxpayers to contribute billions of dollars to build big convention centers to host conventions and trade shows. To compete with one another, convention authorities are constantly building newer and bigger facilities just like the great stadium heist happening in every city competing to host and maintain a professional sports team. But that's not enough. They must offer deep discounts to lure the bigger and better trade shows and conventions to fill their ever-growing, more costly facilities.
In the two newspaper town of Chicago, we keep finding news stories discussing just how much the convention center racket is costing taxpayers. The Chicago Sun-Times, which has fought to pry open records of its convention authority, reveals today that the Metropolitan Pier & Exposition Authority gave away $13 million in discounts to lure 48 events to McCormick Place's convention center facilities last year. Five shows paid nothing to use the convention facilities, while three paid just $1. This year, the authority has agreed to give away at least $11.1 million to host 31 events so far. Under a law passed by the Illinois legislature, the state reimburses Choose Chicago for the money it gives away in discounts to lure conventions and trade shows. Indianapolis' former Visit Indy CEO, Donald Welsh, now runs Chicago's Choose Chicago, the taxpayer-financed nonprofit that performs the same role for Chicago's convention business that Visit Indy performs here in Indianapolis.
I've previously discussed the outrageous salaries which are being paid to Visit Indy's executives, which our useless local media refuses to report. Visit Indy also uses the tens of millions in taxpayer dollars it receives annually to bribe convention and trade show decision-makers to come to Indianapolis. The Indianapolis news media is in bed with this criminal racket and refuses to report on how your taxpayer dollars are being pilfered to pay these bribes. Instead, we get nothing but puff stories lauding the Visit Indy officials for a job well done. Give me $15 million a year to pay bribes to people, and I can probably get some results as well. What do you want to bet that the NRA convention is coming back to Indianapolis because they're paying next to nothing to use the Indiana Convention Center? If lobbyists at the State House and the City-County Building were doing the same (some are), you would expect the lobbyists and lawmakers benefiting from the bribes to be prosecuted and sent to prison. When it's taxpayer dollars being used to pay the bribes, it's all kosher.
3 comments:
I'm going to end being the broken record, like the person that use to post about the Democrat machine being corrupt. Absent a real currency, which limits debt financing of all these schemes, these programs that benefit those willing and able to sell their souls by being close to government money printing will continue to mushroom.
The Democrat machine with its self-assigned moral superiority and self-imputed concern for "the poor" IS corrupt, Eric Morris, just as the Republican machine is corrupt. Republicans today are indistinguishable from Democrats. What is wrong with repeatedly shouting the truth?
How are "broken record's" statements any different from being a broken record about the truth that "Absent a real currency, which limits debt financing of all these schemes, these programs that benefit those willing and able to sell their souls by being close to government money printing will continue to mushroom."???
Those discounts aren't enough to overcome the objections of even some fortuned-5 who still have a bitter union taste in their mouths from years of Chicago shakedown "shows."
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