New York State Assemblyman Sheldon Silver, playing the role of <i>deus ex machina</i> in the political play known as the West Side Stadium project, descended from the heavens earlier this week to stop the incredibly ill-conceived stadium from being built. Thank goodness.

Let's backtrack for a moment. Mayor Bloomberg has always had the 2012 Olympics on the agenda–and it should be no surprise that Dan Doctoroff, the deputy mayor, is also the head of the Olympic committee. Bloomberg didn't get into the mayor's office because he needed the money, he went there to accomplish great things, as he sees them. (I must say that he's a much more efficient mayor than New York has seen in a long time). And part of the vision is 2012.

The problem is, the Olympics would be disastrous for New York City. To begin with, we don't need it. Everybody has already heard of New York, it's not like we don't have enough publicity or tourists milling about.

We would have to reconfigure our carefully crafted public transit system, housing market, and who-knows-what-else all to service a single event less than a month long, seven years away. We would have to build, at tremendous public expense, even more sports facilities in a city which has more professional sports teams to itself than any other city on the continent.

As I've detailed earlier when talking about Ratner's Nets stadium here in Prospect Heights, there are very few cities who have made money on a stadium, and certainly none in recent memory who have made money on the Olympics. It's a tremendous money drain on a city which is chronically underfunded at state and federal levels while it has the highest tax rate in the country. Security alone for the Olympics will probably cost a billion dollars.

The theory behind getting the Olympics is that it will give the tourist economy a shot in the arm, but our tourist facilities are already bustling near capacity, so it's doubtful the city's revenue base will increase enough to offset our costs. Instead we'll get a bunch of really-specific athletic facilities and the cost of a train ride will be five dollars.

Rich people like Mayor Bloomberg seldom even pay New York City taxes, much less use the subway, so it's hard to see how this is a loser for them. Everybody else should bust out the champagne when the Olympic committee chooses another city to take the fall in 2012.