I’ve been following New York City’s bid for the 2012 Olympics for some time. (I thought I had even written about it here before, but Google doesn’t seem to think so, and I don’t have time to search more exhaustively.) Well, it looks like the idiots in Albany pretty much killed the NYC Olympic bid yesterday. I don’t completely understand all of the objections to the stadium, and it sounds like the Olympic boosters had been warned by many people that their chances for success would be improved by building the stadium elsewhere. But a sensible compromise would have been to provisionally approve the stadium in the event that the Olympic bid was won; instead they completely killed the measure.

It makes me sad: I think that a NYC Olympic Games would be great for the city, the international image of the U.S.A., and the reputation of the Olympics.

Anyone who has ever lived in New York State knows that the tensions between the State and the City usually lurk just below the surface of almost any political conflict in the state. And Albany is rarely a model of good governance, with a state legislature that is extremely dysfunctional. Alas.

Update: An editorial opinion supporting the stadium’s defeat.