The CanaDoper Café, 2013 edition.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1221

As much as I think Rob Ford’s a clown, the fact that his brother sold some pot twenty years ago really doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not Ford smoked crack. This is logically equivalent to me saying that soandso is probably a smack fiend because his sister used to be an underaged drinker. It’s a ridiculous non-connection.

When a young teenaged kid was shot to death in Regent Park a few months ago the media managed to avoid mentioning the fact - and I know this because I know people who knew him and loved him and sure as shit would not lie about this - that he was selling a little weed. Lots of kids are willing to move some weed to bring money home to their families, and quite honestly, I couldn’t care less myself if he did. In all likelihood that had nothing to with his murder, but we don’t know for sure that it didn’t, and frankly the connection’s a LOT stronger than the “Ford crack video” and Doug selling pot in the 80s.

As to the only thing that matters here,

  1. While Rob Ford may have smoked crack (or something else you’d smoke out of a crack pipe) there is absolutely no chance whatsoever he’s a crack addict. You cannot be a crack addict and weigh that much.

  2. The total evidence we have that Rob Ford smoked crack is three people who say they saw him smoke what appeared to be crack by watching a video on a 4-inch screen shown to them by someone they won’t name, who seems to have disappeared.

Ford’s a liar and a fool. Of that there is no doubt whatsoever. But I think the Star may have fucked up here, because if this video doesn’t turn up - or if it does, and it turns out he’s smoking a Marlboro or something - it’s going to win him the 2014 election. If he turns out to have been smoking crack he’s in trouble, but if this isn’t verified, it’s going to inoculate him against every attack mounted by any media outlet or opposing politician:

“Rob Ford screwed up the waterfront deal…”
"Oh really? Like the time he was supposedly smoking crack?
“Rob Ford is a dolt who messe dup Toronto’s revenue stream.”
“Yeah, sure, aren’t you the same paper that said he was smoking crack?”
“Rob Ford was just seen by 250 eyewitnesses dismembering a homeless man in High Park.”
“Suuuuure he was, tell me about the time he was smoking crack.”

That’s the danger of an attack that turns out to be wrong. We’re seeing it now in the Tory attack ads on Justin Trudeau; they are making people dislike the Tories, because their dishonesty was almost immediately revealed. We saw it in the Liberal “Soldiers In the Streets” ad, which didn’t even run on TV in English Canada but became a widely mocked Internet sensation and had the effect of making all Liberal attack ads look dishonest.

Gawker is very close to the $200,000 price now…

Seriously, the Toronto Star is all in here, vis a vis their preferred resident of City Hall. If we get a video of Rob Ford smoking crack, he’s done for. If this turns out to be untrue, though, he’s getting a second term. You’ll see.

1222

This article, from May 13, 2013 indicates a number of hypothetical scenarios for the next municipal election in Toronto. Either John Tory or Olivia Chow would defeat Rob Ford except in extraordinary circumstances.

The city can’t afford this clown for another minute, let alone another term.

1223

Afford? I thought that fiscally he was doing a good job.

Is this not the case?

1224

No. The first thing he did was to remove two revenue streams - the land transfer tax and the vehicle registration tax. Then he went to start cutting services. His big election promise was that there was too much gravy in the city budget, and that he could balance it by cutting gravy without cutting services. We squeaked by in 2011/2012 because we didn’t get a snowfall, therefore the snow removal budget could be spent elsewhere.

He has totally shit the bed on the transit issue and has no idea of how to pay for his vision of ‘subways, subways, subways’. We no longer have a transit plan. He made up a bunch of jobs and revenue numbers for the threatened casino, numbers that no one else would back up.

Oh, yeah - the bike lanes on Jarvis. They cost $60,000.00 to put in. During the last election, the mayoron constantly claimed they had cost $6,000,000.00, even after he was corrected publicly in the debates. We paid $120,000.00 to remove them this year. When we get someone intelligent back in, it’ll cost $60,000.00 plus inflation to put them back. Yeah, he’s cutting gravy, alright…

So while I primarily mean ‘afford’ in the sense of ‘he’s ruining the city’, he’s costing us money. If we had to have a right-wing mayor, we could have had John Tory, but for the fact that Ford’s campaign showed Tory’s people a poll (that turned out to be a fake) showing that the two of them would split the right-wing vote and we’d get, well, I don’t know who…

Worst mayor we’ve ever had - even worse than Mel Lastman.

1225

I don’t know what the budget for the city of Toronto is, but if your biggest concern is $60,000 for bike lanes then, well I assume everything else is in order.

Doug Ford gave a speech the other day with some impressive fiscal numbers.

Hey, I’m not defending the mayor by any means over the crack cocaine allegations, and I could be completely mistaken here, but fiscally, what do the numbers show? How is he fairing?

Show me the money!

1226

It’s easy to cut services and let the city degrade. It’s quite another thing to develop a livable city. Show me the money? No. Show me the value, both monetary and non-monetary, that the people receive.

1227

My suggestion for a theme song for Rob Ford.

1228

My, what an eloquent and loquacious fellow. He is almost but not quite as comprehensible as my cat.

Of course that is only because the National Post is such a subversive leftist rag.

1229

I thought this was interesting. I don’t follow enough municipal city politics in Ottawa, much less Toronto, but I do know that Toronto is the only place in Ontario (maybe Canada?) that has a municipal land transfer tax. I think it’s the same with the vehicle registration tax.

A vehicle registration tax is inherently regressive and disproportionately punishes the working poor. I’m surprised a right-winger would cancel such a tax, but I guess that’s part of the “middle class” sabre-rattling and what not.

A land transfer tax at the city level is just…weird. It follows that having double the tax would simply lower the sticker price, which in effect means the city is skimming from the provincial coffers. What am I missing here?

Sorry, I’m just in tax wonk mode these days. I read about your friend and mine, Mr. Tyrone Benskin, skipping out on his taxes, and since I interviewed him for a tax law paper, well, I’m having a bit of a chortle. :stuck_out_tongue:

1230

Well then show me. Show me some numbers. How is the city now compared to the last administration. What is the fiscal landscape? Show me using empirical data that this is a bad mayor. Show me people are worse off.

Again, I’m not supporting or cheering on anyone, but if Rob Ford is going to be vilified for his job performance then show me how this is justified.

It’s the Straight Dope thing to do.

1231

What numbers did he give?

If it’s 180 cranes in the air, that’s true. Unfortunately, those deals were cemented under Miller; developers are (allegedly, according to urbantoronto.ca) not doing new deals for land now. This is probably over-supply, rather than the train-wreck at city hall, to be fair to Mayor Ford.

If it’s “saved the tax payers a billion dollars”, that one has everyone scratching their heads. Arguably, 8 million a year by outsourcing garbage collection (maybe. Maybe 4. It’s hard to get a straight answer).

If it’s job creation, yes, job numbers are up; however, you might have heard about the world-wide financial crisis? It’s gotten a bit better.

He caved to the TTC and TPS, but we’ve got a couple years before we have to deal with the ramifications of that (TPS costs increased; the TTC is now an essential service, and traditionally, people get paid more for being an essential service). His operating budget is in line with the previous two mayors (the ones since amalgamation). His two incredibly costly mistakes (extending the Sheppard line, and completely burying the Eglinton line) were undone by council; those would have added hundreds of millions a year to the operational budget of the City of Toronto.

“He” above, is about Rob Ford, the Mayor of Toronto. You probably heard DOUG Ford, the rookie councillor from Etobicoke. It’s hard to tell what, if anything, he has done. He derailed a few things in the waterfront, about 20km from his ward, but, after considerable expense, those things have been re-railed.

But if you could perhaps discuss what you think Doug or Rob Ford have done, rather than asserting that they had “impressive fiscal numbers”, one could see how they are doing.

1232

Thanks. I’m just looking for a factual discussion. I don’t have any agenda myself, but if people are going to state that Rob Ford is the worst (Toronto) mayor ever then there should be some rational discussion points.

I don’t live in Toronto. None of this directly affects me. But I have this feeling that the Toronto media has a left-wing bias and will not, can not, report any positive aspects from the Ford administration. I can’t seem to find the Doug Ford speech text on line anywhere but it sure painted a pretty picture.

Again, I’m just looking for a factual discussion. Can someone point to Doug Ford’s comments and maybe we can kick the facts around a bit?

Thanks.

1233

Here’s the full text of Doug Ford’s statement at Torontoist.

And here is a recent Financial Post article stating that Ford’s antics haven’t hurt the city’s credit ratings. It goes on to speak favourably about the mayor’s financial record, contradicting what I said upthread.

I’ll do some more digging…

1234

What are you talking about? Rob Ford has a brilliant plan to pay for the subway without raising taxes: get the provincial government to pay for everything. Because, as you know, the provincial government gets its money from rainbows and unicorn farts.

1235

No, Mayor Ford has repeatedly stated “there’s only one taxpayer”.

He was going to pay for it with the $400 million a year hosting fee from the casino

1236

What gives you the impression the land transfer tax was removed by anyone?

[QUOTE=Leaffan]
Well then show me. Show me some numbers. How is the city now compared to the last administration. What is the fiscal landscape? Show me using empirical data that this is a bad mayor. Show me people are worse off.
[/QUOTE]

They’re not. Toronto runs pretty much as well as it did five years ago. By any measure of policy Ford is as good or better a mayor than David Miller. We’ve already seen, as noted above, Le Ministre blame Ford for something that didn’t happen - this is a common thing in Toronto - or people blame him for the closing of the Jarvis bike lane, which frankly has been blown up into something 1500 times more important than it actually was. Some of the comments here are unintentionally hilarious, like “his plan for transit is for the province to pay for everything!” which, of course, is exactly the same policy as the last mayor. And the mayor before him.

But Ford is still an awful mayor. Worst ever.

Here’s the thing nobody really likes to talk about; the mayor of Toronto is mostly a figurehead. the manner in which the City of Toronto is governed grants almost no real power to the Mayor; 95% of his real power is casting one of the 45 votes on council. He doesn’t have the power of executive veto. He can appoint committee chairs, but cannot control them, as he has found out a few times. The Mayor’s job is largely one of persuasion; she or he must their their political capital, leadership skills, and influence to direct the city. The obvious comparison to Ford is Hazel McCallion, who under a not-dissimilar system has been effectively running the City of Mississauga, a very large city indeed, since the days of the War of 1812, but does so not because the law grants her wide powers but because of her ability to convert her public popularity into political capital, intelligent leadership, and sheer force of will. In a technical sense, however, Toronto would run in essentially the same fashion if there was no mayor at all.

So in fact the Mayor’s job in Toronto is basically

  1. Leading the city through influence,
  2. Conducting ceremonial duties, and
  3. Representing Toronto in public events.

Ford sucks at all of these things. Yes, the city’s still well-run, but that’s not really because of Rob Ford. The city, however, has no practical vision for the future, especially when it comes to transit, and that IS his fault - it runs okay now but expansion plans are, as always, hopelessly mired in argument and an unwillingness to admit that Toronto will have to ask its citizens to pony up for transit and will have to cooperate with the 905 cities for a real transit system. That makes him no worse than David Miller, who spent his entire two terms bitching to the media that the province and feds wouldn’t give him free money, but it doesn’t make him any better, either.

But on points 2 and 3, Ford is a disaster. He’s mean, stupid, divisive, intolerant and risible. He routinely insults people or entire groups of people and he’s an embarrassing clown. He lost his moral authority and political capital before the crack smoking allegations; the council and committees were already routinely ignoring him and just doing their jobs, and he’s failed, in the most epic fashion, to sway council in the direction of his preferred vision, like the casino thing. He’s no longer able to do anything, really, and he humiliated the city on a weekly basis. None of the things he is really supposed to do are things he’s capable of doing.

1237

Not really, no. Ford has been, time after time, at the losing end of votes. And not “sort of” at the losing end; he winds up the odd man out on 40-some to 4 votes. The policy coming out isn’t the result of Ford; it’s the result of council. He doesn’t have enough policy to be a better policy Mayor than anyone else.

Miller did get money from the province for Transit City (yes, I would have preferred the DRL to TC, but given that Miller’s agenda was to help the inner suburbs, TC is the right way to go). The Tower Renewal program, which again helps the inner suburbs, was also a very nice piece of policy. The slight reform of TPS was well done.

What policy does Ford have that’s clearly better by any measure than Miller’s?

Transit City is a one third split between the City, the Feds, and the Province. It always was. Yes, Miller has asked that the Feds kick in more money (the province, too).

Also, you are factually incorrect as well. Ford’s plan has been to get the “private sector” to pay for it (no words on who, exactly), or to use casino revenues (which, in case you were unclear, is actually closer to 60 million a year, not the 400 million he trumpeted on the radio week after week).

Consider the Sheppard subway. The city contributes about 8 bucks a ride to every rider of that subway. Extending it as LRT would lower that subsidy (more people arriving from something with a lower operating cost). Instead, Ford wishes to extend it (he’s blocked, because the rest of council doesn’t share your belief that he is some great policy maker) as a subway.

His “Scarbourough deserves SUBWAYS! Which will be free!”. He has done two things: argue, hard, for a system that would cost the city a lot of money, and two, derail the debate about how much we ought to pay (because you are correct, the citizens of Toronto need to pony up some money), and stoke the feelings of alienation in Scarborough to the point where they refuse to pay, unless they get a subway that will cost a lot to operate.

1238

You don’t think it’s the least bit ironic that Rob Ford ran for office on a wave of anti-David Miller backlash and yet his first idea after being elected is to do the same thing as Miller?

That might have been his most recent grasping at straws, but in 2011 he was talking about “efficiencies”, the province and parking taxes, etc.

1239

Privitization of garbage collection has worked out very well. The city’s handling of labour contracts has, rather surprisingly, gone better.

I don’t understand what I said that this disproves. Okay, I literally said Ford’s policy was exactly the same as “beg for money” and should have phrased that better, but it’s really the same thing; both Ford and Miller are attempting to sell Torontonians on the notion that they will accomplish transit wonders by getting someone else to pony up the money. It is, either way, “we’ll get better transit because, magic.” Miller spent eight years attempting to prove Toronto was owed free money because he was some sort of moral authority, going so far as to screw up Toronto’s application for infrastructure funding; Ford just sort of pretends that things will work out in the future by dint of whatever crosses his mind at the moment (unlike Miller I don’t think he’s smart enough to at least hold together a coherent strategy for four years.) Neither had the guts to actually commit Toronto to a strategy with an ounce of courage or foresight, like saying “you know, maybe we should toll the DVP and the Gardiner.” Well, actually, Miller did mention it, but wouldn’t stick to the idea once people disagreed.

I find it absolutely hilarious that you read my post and came to the conclusion I think Ford is a great policy maker. You must be joking. “As good or better than David Miller” doesn’t mean “great.” Miller was an extremely mediocre mayor, policy-wise, whose term in office is noteworthy for its total lack of substantive achievements aside from making sure people have to take a stupid, horribly pollution-spewing ferry to the island airport. (Ford managed to partially privatize garbage collection, which alone is more than Miller and still not enough to make him a a halfway decent mayor.

But Miller did get rid of Julian Fantino, I’d forgotten that… Hmm, okay, that’s a pretty good one. That may tip the scales back to him.

Honestly, I get the distinct sense you read my post and didn’t get a single thing out of it except “RickJay does not think Ford is worse than cholera, therefore he is a Rob Ford supporter.”

1240

As much as I think Ford’s a clown, this is very silly. His brother sold pot when he was a teen, according to some unnamed sources? That’s hardly a “stop the presses” moment.

I myself am hardly a rebel against society, in fact I’d say I was as square as they come - but I’m a similar age to these guys and I personally knew many, many people who sold pot in the 80s. Most of them moved on to other things, often to thinks with much greater social utility than selling pot. The notion that being related to someone who sold pot 25+ years ago is some kind of modern day mark of Cain is just stupid.