Commemorative pins from the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics
After controversy arose over Ralph Lauren’s
2012 U.S. Olympic uniforms’ Chinese origins, Mitt Romney told ABC’s Jonathan Karl that the issue is “extraneous” to the focus of the games.
“The Olympic games are about the athletes and we’re going to watch
the athlete perform and these other matters are extraneous I think to
the heart of the matter, which is how well will our athletes do?” Romney
said. “I’m not going to get into the uniform issue.”
Like the uniforms in 2012
and in 2002,
when Mitt Romney ran the Salt Lake Olympics much of its official
memorabilia was manufactured overseas, including a 9/11 commemorative
pin and another fashioned in the shape of Romney’s head.
Salt Lake 2002 Olympics paraphernalia obtained by ABC bears “Made in China” and “Made in Bangladesh” stamps.
Two hats, made by Illinois-based American Needle, were manufactured
in Bangladesh. A collectible tin and several pins, including a
cartoonish Romney likeness and a 9/11 pin bearing the words “United We
Stand,” were manufactured in China by Aminco, the U.S. Olympic
Committee’s sole licensee for lapel pins, according to the company’s
website. A stuffed animal was made in China by Fischer Price, and a Salt
Lake 2002 tote bag was made in Taiwan.
While Aminco, the pin-maker, produced licensed memorabilia for the
U.S. Olympic Committee, Romney did not work for that organization. He
served as president of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, which planned
the games.
We’ve found no mention of the memorabilia by Romney, a businessman
brought in to save the Olympics from scandal and fiscal peril, but he
did address the notion of cutting costs by buying from China in another
area of Olympic organizing.
Get more pure politics at ABC News.com/Politics and a lighter take on the news at OTUSNews.com
When Romney’s Salt Lake Organizing Committee developed the Gateway
plaza in Salt Lake City, offering patrons and residents the chance to
buy bricks for $100 and have their names inscribed, the committee used
granite bricks from China, despite an abundance of granite in the nearby
Wasatch mountains, the Salt Lake Tribune reported at the time.
“It’s extraordinary,” Romney told the paper, “but it’s cheaper to get it from China.”
Labels on Salt Lake 2002 memorabilia
When the Olympics come to America, it’s rightfully a source of pride
for all Americans. And Mitt Romney certainly likes to tout his
experience running the 2002 Winter Olympics. He was so proud of the job
he did, he became the first ever Olympic leader to personally
commission his own Olympic pin. In fact, he had
an entire line of pins made in his likeness. And like many things at Romney’s Olympics, they were made in China.
Let’s take a closer at how Mitt Romney ran the Olympics, including a few things Romney doesn’t tout out on the stump.
Outsourcing
It’s no surprise that an outsourcing pioneer like Mitt Romney would
outsource Olympic gear to foreign countries like China instead of making
it here in America, but the extent of Romney’s outsourcing is truly
shocking. Items
he outsourced to foreign countries include:
- Commemorative 9/11 pins — Made in China
- Uniforms for Olympic torchbearers — Made in Burma
- Stuffed animals — Made in China
- Hats — Made in Bangladesh
- Tote bags — Made in Taiwan
And, in an outsourcing feat worthy of a gold medal, he even
outsourced commemorative granite bricks at the Olympic plaza – yes,
bricks — to China. There’s
a suburb of Salt Lake City named Granite
because there’s so much of it there, but Romney got his shipped all the
way from China. “It’s extraordinary, but it’s cheaper to get it from
China,”
Romney explained.
Romney’s Olympics? Taxpayer Money Built That
Romney and his campaign have been relentlessly attacking the
president for making the obvious point that government has a role in
facilitating the success of individuals and businesses large and small.
It turns out that the government — and American taxpayers — had a very
large role in helping Romney’s Olympics succeed. Taxpayers spent a
whopping $1.5 BILLION on the games, funding which
Romney claimed was necessary to pull them off:
“No matter how well we did cutting costs and
raising revenue, we couldn’t have Games without the support of the
federal government.”
The Salt Lake games
cost taxpayers 1.5 times
the amount spent on the previous seven Olympics held in the U.S. —
combined. While some money went to security, much of it was spent on
infrastructure and
“questionable projects of marginal value to the Salt Lake games.” Mother Jones reports that the taxpayer money was something of a slush fund for wealthy donors:
Wealthy Utahns used the games as an excuse to
receive exemptions for projects that would otherwise never meet
environmental standards, or to receive generous subsidies for
improvements of questionable value to the games—but with serious value
to future real estate developments. In one example, a wealthy
developer received $3 million to build a three-mile stretch of road
through his resort. Where’d he get the money? Federal funds that had
been deposited in the Utah Permanent Community Impact Fund.
Indeed, Mitt Romney was so eager to get
“free stuff” and other things from the government that
he even became a registered lobbyist. It appears that Romney may have been lobbying some of the same legislators to whom
he was giving thousands in campaign cash.
Snubbing 9/11 Widows & Orphans
The Salt Lake games came just months after 9/11. A representative of
widows and orphans whose husbands and fathers were firefighters killed
in the terrorist attack inquired about free or discounted tickets to
games. Romney’s executive assistant twice denied the request, saying
that there was a policy in place against giving away tickets. That
policy apparently went out the window “six weeks later when [Romney]
offered a hundred surplus tickets, valued at $ 885 each, free to Utah
legislators,” according to the book
The Real Romney. The former Salt Lake firefighter working with the 9/11 widows and orphans had this to say:
“I was outraged at the hypocrisy. In less than
two months, he went from saying, ‘We’re going to run a tight ship’ to
throwing out free tickets to a group of people who could help him
politically.”
America was proud to host the Olympics in 2002, but the way Mitt
Romney ran the games raises questions about how he’d run the country.
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