The Righteous Indignation of the Sanctimonious Small Mind

May 13, 2013

If after two and a half years you’re still trying to get a handle on what drives Ford Nation, to pop open the hood and see the grinding of the gears, to catch a glimpse into its beating black heart, allow me to introduce Exhibit A.onthecouch

I’ll set the table for you first.

It’s during Tuesday’s city council debate. The item is a request for a report from the City Manager on an exemption to the commercial jet ban at the island airport for Porter Airlines. Like everything else about the island airport, the issue is heated and contentious.

Up stands Councillor Mike Del Grande to wade in with his thoughts. Remember the topic. A report. From the City Manager. Exploring the merits (or not) of lifting the current ban on jets flying in and out of the island airport. Porter Airlines. Jets. Island Airport. Staff Report.

Take it away, Councillor Del Grande…

Umm… What?

A quick reminder. A report. From the City Manager. Exploring the merits (or not) of lifting the current ban on jets flying in and out of the island airport. Porter Airlines. Jets. Island Airport. Staff Report.

I guess somewhere in there is an attempt at a logical through line that with jets, whatdidhejustsayPorter would experience an overall expansion of operations and, with that, more jobs although given the company’s labour dealings right now with its striking fuel handlers it’s tough to say that would necessarily be a good thing for the overall economy.

But frankly, I’m stretching to give those five minutes any kind of coherent narrative. It’s really nothing more than impenetrable resentment and anger directed at those who, what did the councillor say, come to City Hall, impolitely bullying councillors and “… sit there smug because you got it good and other people don’t have it good.”

Now, it always bears pointing out that, back a little while ago when this very councillor was the city’s budget chief, he derided the widows and orphans for wanting cupcakes. And somehow he now views himself as a class warrior, looking out for the have-nots? And standing up in defense of re-opening an agreement that would allow one company to buy a fleet of jets it’s already pre-ordered with delivery contingent on the city now allowing it to fly jets in and out of the airport will somehow bring prosperity to the land and spread the wealth around?

Trying to piece together such rantings is entirely beside the point.angrywhiteguy

Like the mayor and the mayor’s brother, Councillor Del Grande’s outbursts are never about making a particular point. It’s always about the anger. The entirely misplaced feeling of alienation. These guys don’t give a shit about the existence of the very real underclass in this city. If they did, they would be entirely different kinds of politicians.

They rail and fulminate against those who don’t see the world exactly like they do, don’t live their lives exactly like they do. There’s no rational sense behind it. It’s just a vituperative antagonism to anyone or anything they see as different or holding dissimilar views.

Looking out for the little guy? Hardly. It’s basic chest-beating tribalism. A noxious mix of rigid ideology and angry opposition that makes for potent noise-making but ineffectual and divisive governance.

angrywhiteguy1

– lividly submitted by Cityslikr

11 Comments | City Building, City Council, Municipal Politics, Newspapers, Press coverage | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
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Somebody Really, Really Wants An Election

May 6, 2013

I won’t be the first to say this but perhaps what we’re witnessing right now with Mayor Ford’s shout out to NDP leader Andrea Horwath helpfulhintto withhold her party’s support of the proposed provincial budget and trigger an election is something more of a family psychodrama than it is any sort of political strategy.

Granted, outside of the campaign trail, no one’s ever suggested that the mayor and his crack team of operatives conduct business with any sort of long view in mind. No, that’s not true. All of Team Ford’s focus is on one long view: 2014. Everything they do stems from the desire to get the mayor through to the start of the 2014 campaign not impossibly unre-electable in the belief that they are wizards of campaigning and that all the elements of 2010 will once more coalesce in their favour.

Outside of that, it’s pretty much m’eh to any sort of tactical manoeuvring that exceeds a 10 hour news cycle. It’s little more than drive-by slightings and feigned indignation. hailmary1Translate “Here’s What Gets My Goat Today” into Latin and you’d have the Ford administration’s official motto.

Under normal circumstances, a mayor’s urging of an opposition party to defeat the government at Queen’s Park would be something of an eye-popper. Such partisan involvement can turn counter-productive in future relationships between a municipality and their ultimate bosses at the province. Circumspection might be a better hand to play.

We are hardly living in normal circumstances, however. This is another Hail Mary pass flung up by the Ford camp in the hopes that an Ontario election in the next couple months or so will see the election of Tim Hudak’s Progressive Conservatives to power. With a winning roll of the dice (mixing of my sports metaphors duly noted), strutsandfretsall of Mayor Ford’s dreams will come true, and there will be a magical appearance of subways, subways, subways in time to bolster his own re-election chances next year.

And what if the PC’s don’t win? Previous administrations might’ve worried that there’d be some retribution handed out by any other party that formed the government. As long as a mayor who openly pulled for the losing side remained in power, cooperation from the province would be at a minimum.

But maybe Team Ford realizes what we all pretty much know at this point. That aside from Hudak’s PCs, no one really sees this mayoralty as relevant to the actual running of this city. A minor nuisance perhaps; a raging megaphone of no, no, no, can’t that produces little more than noise and increasingly easily surmountable obstacles. So if not Hudak now, when?

Just another impetuous outburst in a long list of growing list of mental belches.

gotyourback

Of course, it’s no coincidence that Mayor Ford’s closest confidant is the one person in the province who wants an election like nobody’s six sigma business, councillor-brother Doug. Having quickly grown bored with the daily trifling matters of local politics, the mayor’s older brother wants to take his non-politician act up the road to Queen’s Park where, presumably, he’s told his little brother once installed there, they’ll rule this city like kings. No more will they have to bend to contend with the plebes on city council. Mayor Rob. MPP Doug. The Dynamic Duo.

Maybe the mayor actually believes his brother. That the PCs are a cinch to win the next election if it happens soon. toomanychefsThat Doug will have no problem unseating a well established incumbent who has had little trouble winning and defending the riding for three straight elections. That once elected, Doug will automatically ascend to the levers of power at Queen’s Park and call the shots of what happens in Toronto.

It’s possible the mayor actually believes all that. After all, he remains adamant that the private sector will happily build public transit and it won’t cost taxpayers a dime. Wishful thinking constitutes much of his approach to governance.

Or maybe, Mayor Ford would happily see the end of his brother’s time at City Hall. For all the initial hope that Doug would be a moderating influence on his brother, that maybe he was the smart one, it’s kind of proven to be the exact opposite. If anything, Councillor Ford has provided an even more extreme element to this mayoralty, an unhealthy nudge away from consensus and collaboration with council colleagues. The deal-breaker not the deal maker.

A successful run for a seat at Queen’s Park by Doug could provide a beneficial distance between the brothers, a more productive work environment. Too much right wing ideology in one room can make it impossible for anyone to breath. whatsgoingonEven those comfortable with the smell of sulphur.

But maybe I’m putting altogether too much thought into this.

The mayor pops off as regularly as he shows up for work after noon. Exhorting the NDP to defeat the Liberal government and trigger an election was just something he said. No more thought put into than it took to string the words together. Analyzing it or sifting through it for a deeper meaning is a fruitless exercise.

And there’s about 850 words and a few hours I’ll never be getting back.

– should-know-betterly submitted by Cityslikr

2 Comments | City Building, City Council, Municipal Politics, Newspapers, Press coverage, Provincial Politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
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The Emptiness of Empty Protests

April 26, 2013

Those must have been heady political days in the late-60s, early-70s, here in Toronto. stopthespadinaA citizens group forms to stop the move to pave neighbourhoods and put up an expressway. It coalesces into a bunch of reform-minded politicians who take control of City Hall and run it for the next decade or so.

The dream of grassroots activists everywhere!

Faint echoes of such a movement occurred in 2003, with David Miller’s broom representative of sweeping out the cronyism and incompetence that had consumed the Mel Lastman administration. But truthfully, that really only resonated at the mayoral level. The make up of council did not change that much. Thirty incumbents were re-elected. Only four defeated. And of the two new faces entering City Hall, Mike Del Grande and Karen Stintz, would hardly be considered Millerites.

No. The real descendant of the David Crombie-John Sewell municipal populist movement would have to be – gulp! – fordnationRob Ford. Yes, Rob Ford, dammit. In 2010, not only did he handily win the office of mayor, thumping the outgoing Deputy Mayor in the process, but five incumbents are tossed including the speaker, Sandra Bussin, a couple more are scared into submission with squeaker victories in their respective wards and a majority of the nine other rookie councillors initially falling in line to support the new mayor’s mandate.

Ford Nation, folks. Brimming full of respect for the taxpayers and come to stop the gravy train at City Hall. It’s what a grassroots insurgency looks like in the 21st-century.

But it seems in the intervening 40 years or so between the Crombie-Ford eras the protest portion of populism’s DNA has subsumed the reformist urge. noWhile David Crombie’s CivicAction Party began as a protest against the proposal to bring the Spadina Expressway downtown, it grew into something that actually governed the city.

Now into its third year in power, the Ford Administration shows no similar ability or inclination even. Governing is what professional politicians do. One-note outraged howls of protest are for the self-proclaimed amateurs.

Take a gander at Councillor Doug (Imma Businessman Not A Politician Folks) Ford’s op-ed on proposed transit funding today here and here and here. Or just read one. It’s the same thing spread over three of the city’s four dailies. Go figure.

Or let me summarize for you if you’re pressed for time.

No. No, no, no. No, no, no, no. NoNoNoNoNoNoNoNoNoNo. No. Uh-uh. Nope. No, no, no. Not on my watch. Over my dead body. NoNoNoNoNoNoNoNoNo.

Not a word about alternatives. No other options offered up. johnnystrablerYou’d think with all that free press at his disposal, the councillor might use the opportunity to lay out a transit plan that has been lacking for the three years since his brother announced his intentions to run for mayor. A plan?! We don’t need no stinkin’ plan!!

We just say no.

Name an initiative Team Ford has put forth that hasn’t been about cutting or dismantling.

It’s never about building. Theirs is a protest of destruction not construction. The anti-tax foundation on which Ford Nation is built extends to anti-everything. They took the ‘pro’ out of protest. Let’s call it the antitest.

I thought about labelling this movement the Johnny Strablers after Marlon Brando’s character in The Wild One. “Hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against?” Mildred asks. “Whaddya got?” Johnny answers.

But there’s too much retro-cool in that. stubbornThe Ford brothers might take it as a compliment.

So I’ll go further back, into the 19th-century, and the nativist Know-Nothing political party. Ford Nation shares quite a bit in common with them but it’s not a perfect fit. So let’s dub them the No-Nothing party. You want new transit? No. Need to open additional shelter beds? No. Hey, Mayor Ford. You going to march in this year’s Pride Parade? No.

Don’t get me wrong. They’re all for brand new shiny stuff if you convince them it won’t cost the city a dime. A casino? You betcha. Jets flying into the island airport? Okey-dokey. But any talk of reaching into our pockets and contributing to the broader public commons? No.

This is the inevitable outcome of protest built on pure negativity. We voted for someone with a long list of what’s wrong but an empty column of how to fix it. Opposition with no solutions is just opposition. Nothing gets done. Everything grinds to a halt.

strutsandfretsIt’s a situation any parent will immediately recognize. We are living through a two year old’s temper tantrum.

– feet stampingly submitted by Cityslikr

5 Comments | City Building, City Council, Metrolinx, Municipal Politics, Newspapers, Press coverage, Provincial Politics, The Big Move, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Sun | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
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Sink Or Ride

April 18, 2013

If we were only permitted to travel around this city on modes of transport paid in full, upfront by each of us on a fee-for-service basis, we’d all be walking everywhere we went. hackingthroughthejungleThere’s probably an argument to be made about bicycle use as well. Its impact on infrastructure a fraction of its costs.

For every other way we get from point A to point B? Subsidized to the hilt. Roads for vehicular traffic are not fully paid for through gas taxes and registration fees. While transit users in Toronto pay an unusually high percentage of the system’s annual operating costs, a good chunk of it comes from other revenue sources. And we haven’t even got to the matter of capital costs.

So if our car, bus, streetcar, subway travel all is subsidized to varying degrees, why do we expect the public bike sharing system, Bixi, to pay its own way?

In normal circumstances that would be purely a rhetorical question. You’d think mobility was mobility regardless of the number of wheels under your ass. This, however, is Toronto 2014. subsidizeCycling is nothing more than a sport or a jaunty ride about town, to and fro places of latte-sipping.

Reports of Bixi’s financial duress emerged on Tuesday. The Montreal based company is looking to sell off its franchises including the one in Toronto. A couple years back, the city signed on as a loan guarantor to help get the operation up and going. Now it’s on the hook for about $3.9 million.

Unsurprisingly, Mayor Ford is uninterested in helping out. The chair of the city’s Public Works and Infrastructure Committee, Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, is not any more enthusiastic about the idea. He’d prefer to off-load it onto the private sector.

“Government, fundamentally, isn’t the first place where you look to run a business,” the councillor said. “The private sector is better at making a dollar because it is their dollar. tossoverboardI’m a firm believer that if it can be in the Yellow Pages, it shouldn’t be in the Blue Pages.”

*sigh*

On Tuesday, I wanted to hug Councillor Minnan-Wong to my bosom for having the courage of his convictions in speaking out and voting against a casino. I’d always questioned his courage and believed his only conviction was reducing local government to a heaping rubble. But by later that day, he’d returned to form.

Only the firmest set of anti-cycling minds saw the bike sharing program as some blue chip business venture. bixiAccording to the National Post’s Megan O’Toole, in a report going to the Executive Committee next week, Toronto’s GM of Transportation Services suggests BIXI has become “’an important part of the transportation mix’ in the city and a key component of the Pan Am Games transportation plan.” ‘An important part of the transportation mix’, you say? Well, let’s just hand that over to the private sector to maximize profits why don’t we.

BIXI was never intended to individually cover great distances. It’s all about short hauls. Think timed transfers we’d like to have on the TTC – hop on-hop off privileges – but on a bike.

Set up to actually succeed, BIXI could immediately begin paying back any investment in it from the city by helping to alleviate the stress along certain transit routes. Right now, I’m thinking the downtown streetcar lines, especially King Street. fieldofdreamsReduce the ridership there in order to re-allocate TTC resources in other parts of the city.

Of course, it’s not as easy as simply putting up more stands filled with more bikes. Biking infrastructure also has to be improved to further entice reticent but interested would-be riders to casually start using the system as part of their transit routine. All part of the concept of induced demand. Build it (and maintain it properly) and they will come.

As part of the city’s overall transportation outlay, coming to the rescue of BIXI would be a modest outlay. For a fraction of the amount we’re looking to shell out keeping the Gardiner in the pink, we could triple the number of BIXI bikes and broaden its reach from High Park to Broadview and Dupont Street to the lake. Hardly the ‘drain on the city’s finances’ the Public Works chair pretends to fret about. eraseA concern particularly rich coming from the man who cost the city a couple hundred thousand dollars reverting the Jarvis bike lanes back to a 5th lane for cars and another $19.4 million trying to bury the Gardiner Expressway Environmental Assessment without council consent.

But we all know this isn’t about sound policy or good governance. It never is with this administration. BIXI’s financial problems offer up yet another golden opportunity to kill off a David Miller initiative. That’s really the only kind of agenda they have left.

– sharingly submitted by Cityslikr

10 Comments | Bike lanes, Biking, Budget, City Building, City Council, Municipal Politics, Newspapers, Press coverage, The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
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Cornfed Cornpone

April 13, 2013

There does not seem to be an exaggeration too big for Councillor Doug Ford to make, an invention too outlandish, a claim too bogus. fishtaleHe seems entirely comfortable wearing any of those suits. There’s heightened rhetoric and then there’s Councillor Doug Ford.

As the island airport issue once more pushed its way to the front of the municipal discussion this week, the councillor stood head-and-shoulders above anyone else when it came to outright mendacity. No small feat, given there are masters of that particular trait at play in the debate. But Councillor Ford took it to an entirely different level.

“If we didn’t have Bob Deluce [president of Porter],” the councillor claimed, “there’d be a cornfield out at the airport right now.”

Yes, before Porter Airlines, the islands were little more than an empty wasteland of agriculture. As if that would be a bad thing if it was true. cornfieldsHowever, it isn’t. Unless of course we go back to a pre-European settlement era when First Nations people grew their maize. But I’m not even sure that’s true.

There was a-plenty going on over at the spot the airport now occupies on the island. Scan through the photos from the City of Toronto Archives that Jude MacDonald pointed me in the direction of. Ballparks. General stores. Summer cottages. Diving horses. This particular batch of pictures ranging in dates from the late 19th-century to 1944.

It’s not the overwhelming degree of ignorance that has become so grating, it’s the boastful, barker manner in which Councillor Ford so confidently displays it. There’s a shocking degree of pathology at work. It would be funny in its cartoonish quality if it wasn’t so disruptive to the political discourse.

We are headed for yet another knock `em down-drag `em out tussle over the fate of Porter Airlines and, perhaps, the airport itself. foghornleghorn1The rhetoric white hot. Councillor Ford has already taken it to another level. His Forghorn Leghorn act skewing the debate into ridiculous territory. Any councillor and other decision maker siding with him needs to do so carefully, in case the dirt of pure hucksterism rubs off onto them.

– I sayly submitted by Cityslikr

9 Comments | City Building, City Council, CommunityAIR, Municipal Politics, Newspapers, Porter Air, Press coverage, Toronto Port Authority | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
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