All Fried Up In The Big Smoke

Less political. More fictional.

Our Provincial Endorsement — 2014 Edition

Posted on June 12, 2014 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

(We pull this up from our archives, October 5th 2011, because, really, not a whole lot has changed since then. The Liberal candidate in Trinity-Spadina isn’t Sarah Thomson but has not been any more impressive. The government itself, now led by Kathleen Wynne rather than Dalton McGuinty, has not become any more trustworthy — see the Scarborough subway file. The Progressive Conservatives have moved a whole lot further to the right, promising a whole lot more pain which they’ve called ‘hope’ and a lot less constructive governance. The NDP has continued to drift further away from my values in a bid to… win, I guess. The Greens remain the only party that is speaking to the issues that matter to me. So once more, in 2014 as we did in 2011, we here at All Fired Up in the Big Smoke endorse Tim Grant of the Green Party as the candidate of choice for Member of Provincial Parliament from Trinity-Spadina.)

* * *

With the importance provincial governments play in municipal life, I’m somewhat bewildered by my lack of engagement with the 2011 election. I should be on top of this, combing through party platforms, tracking down candidate debates or otherwise just staying on top of things. But no. I dithered. I procrastinated. I couldn’t beat back this feeling of caring less.

In trying to avoid the burden of responsibility, I lay the blame squarely on the respective campaigns’ shoulders. It all seemed to be about what we don’t need. We don’t need another 4 years of Dalton McGuinty. We don’t need another neo-conservative at the levers of power, desperately trying to steer the ship of state away from the future. No time for change. Exactly the time for change.

Well, if that’s the case, do I really need to be paying attention?

Snap out of it. Of course you do. Must muster interest. Do your duty as a citizen. Engage! Engage!

So I sat through Rogers’ Trinity-Spadina candidates’ debate minus the incumbent MPP. I went through campaign literature. I scoured party websites. And here’s what I came up with.

Surprise! I won’t be voting Conservative. The last thing we need is another anti-urban leader ignoring the interests of municipalities. Ignoring would be generous to Tim Hudak. It’s more like looking at cities as dumping grounds for the disastrous results of their backward policies. Remember Mike Harris?

As for the government of Dalton McGuinty? Ambivalence is mostly what wells up within me. For every strong initiative it’s made in areas like education or the environment, there’s been two steps back in the face of strong, largely misguided opposition. You don’t like wind turbines in toss-up ridings? They’re gone. Catholic school boards got problems with progressive approaches to sex education in the classrooms? Ignore it and carry on with your discriminatory, pre-Second Vatican Council ways.

Oh yeah. And let’s not forget the trampling of our civil rights, police state approving fiasco that was the G20.

The Liberal Government’s dealing with cities has been wishy-washy. Yes, it’s undone a lot of the damage inflicted by the Harris gang. Uploading many of the services dropped into our laps in the late-90s. They passed the City of Toronto Act which gave more powers and flexibility to the city to deal with its particular issues. There’s been the more than half-hearted Big Move and nod to the importance of public transit in the GTA. We got some of the gas tax. Promises have been made since 2003 of restarting provincial contribution to the annual operating budget of the TTC. Transit City was a signature piece of the transit puzzle here in Toronto. Until it wasn’t.

One might hope that, if given a 3^rd majority, McGuinty would become more resolute and less afraid of his own shadow. He has stood firm in the formidable face of opposition to the HST. If Ford Nation fails to dislodge him, the premier might start standing up to the more ridiculous whims of our mayor. Moreover, Premier McGuinty might gracefully approach retirement and the Liberal party could entertain the notion of reclaiming its more liberal leanings.

But what about the Liberal candidate in our riding? One Sarah Thomson. We got a healthy dose of her when she ran for mayor of the city last year before she ran out of gas late in the proceedings. Underwhelming initially, she never really caught fire but she did evolve over the course of the race, the first of the candidates to begin backing away from the city’s-going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket narrative and did seem to be listening to the actual problems we were facing. She adapted an extensive bike lane plan and was the first one to float the idea of road tolls, getting laughed out of the place by her opponents.

Yet, she still has a tendency to talk in sound bites. There’s the air of the high school valedictorian about her. I get the feeling she’s running here because there was no riding closer to home. She may be an ideal McGuinty Liberal which I hold against her. On the other hand, she’s not Rocco Rossi.

Normally, I don’t have to go through such a process of elimination about where I’ll be placing my X on the ballot. Trinity-Spadina is an NDP stronghold. I tend to lean that way most of the time. It should be a no-brainer.

However, maybe it’s the fallout of the lacklustre campaign but I’m just not feeling Andrea Horwath’s vibe. Rather than pick up where the federal NDP left off and run unabashedly with a left of centre platform, I’m feeling nickel and dimed by all the talk of capping gas prices, removing the HST from home heating fuels. On the other hand, they have promised to restart contributing to the TTC operating budget and other transit initiatives. But that feels almost ad hoc, not part of a bigger plan for cities.

Where’s the tapping into the Occupy Wall Street movement? It’s a shitstorm out there, people! Governments should not be retreating in the face scary economic news. We need to be talking Keynesian not deficit reduction. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair.

And then there’s our incumbent, Rosario Marchese. He may be a very nice man and a crackerjack constituent MPP. But how would I know? I never hear much from or about him until election time. Maybe it’s living in the shadow of MP Olivia Chow who keeps me apprised of everything she’s doing. (What’s that you say, Olivia? A private member’s bill calling for a national transit strategy?) Marchese pales in comparion. But when he missed most of the Rogers’ candidates’ debate, it just struck me that he’s merely doing time.

Leaving me with the Green Party. Now, truth be told, I’ve never really known what to make of the Green Party. I get the environmental thrust but there’s also been the fiscal conservatism they’ve often touted. Some of the pledges in their platform come with the ‘when the budget’s balanced’ caveat. I’m sorry but with all the grim predictions making the rounds out there about an almost certain double-dip recession, budget balancing should be the last thing we’re talking about now.

That said, the Green Party candidate in Trinity-Spadina, Tim Grant, has caught my fancy. A former teacher who has been involved in the environmental movement since the days when most of us were asking, what’s that? He was a member of the Harbord Village Residents Association. His platform stresses biking and walking as much as public transit. Mr. Grant advocates a Junk Food Tax and a carbon tax. During both the Rogers’ candidates debate and on The Agenda’s Confronting Poverty, he came across as not only knowledgeable but collegial with his opponents.

On top of all that, he’s pictured riding a bicycle on his campaign signs!

I realize that in voting for Tim Grant, I’m doing little more than lodging a protest. There’s no hope in hell he’ll be elected. But I’m alright with that. Let it be known that I’m protesting the Liberal government and it’s too tentative embrace of a green economy in general and a strong, unapologetic public transit strategy. I’m sending out a protest to the provincial NDP. Don’t take my vote for granted.

— angrily (re)submitted by Cityslikr

Corruption

Posted on June 11, 2014 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

Where does the corruption start?

We have had a provincial election campaign full of corruption talk – some may be legit, some of it shorthand for “We disagree with a decision that was made”. It is a word tossed around easily. Nothing hangs heavier on a public figure than the accusation of corruption.

An all-encompassing smear, corruption is. It doesn’t necessarily have to mean cash-stuffed envelopes exchanging hands in some hotel room although that’s kind of the image it evokes. No. Corruption can and often does simply mean putting politics, personal or party, before principle.

So the Liberal government at Queen’s Park faces the voters in tomorrow’s election, trying to run from the shadows of eHealth, Ornge, the gas plants. Rightfully so, too. I’ve heard very few, if any, defenders. At the only leaders’ debate of this campaign, the Liberal premier, Kathleen Wynne, spent the first 15 minutes apologizing for her involvement in the billion dollar gas plant boondoggle, to use the parlance of our corrupt times.

Clearly, it is time for the Liberals to go. Clean house. Renew and regenerate.

“We endorse Tim Hudak, for Onatrio,” states the Toronto Sun. “A Conservative government for Ontario,” declares the National Post. “The Globe’s editorial board endorses Tim Hudak’s Progressive Conservatives,” proclaims the Globe and Mail.

There you have it. Three out of the four Toronto daily newspapers offer up their choice of alternatives to the Liberal government. Tim Hudak and the Progressive Conservatives. Hardly surprising, for the most part, given that all three sit on the right side of the political spectrum. It takes some doing for a conservative politician or party not to secure their endorsement. Remember Rob Ford back in 2010?

It makes perfect sense. Except for just one small, niggling thing. The Progressive Conservative platform is built on a foundation of lies. Its signature set piece, the Million Jobs Plan, is total fabrication, debunked by everyone and anyone regardless of political stripe. Even the endorsements acknowledge it.

“We disagree with Hudak’s declaration he can guarantee one million jobs,” confesses the Sun. “Governments don’t create jobs.”

“But Mr. Hudak is also running on a platform of simplistic slogans,” admits the Globe and Mail. “The Million Jobs Plan has been rightly mocked for failures of basic arithmetic.”

“Notwithstanding some of the glitches in Mr. Hudak’s campaign materials,” shrugs the National Post. ‘Glitches’ in his campaign materials? Are you fucking kidding me?

Essentially, what these newspapers are suggesting to us is, get rid of this lying, corrupt, incompetent government and replace it with a lying, mathematically suspect party. Why? looktheotherway Well, because politics.

Is that not the very definition of, if not corruption, corrupt thinking? We abhor that kind of double-dealing and chicanery. This kind of double-dealing and chicanery though.. ?

I might even be able to forgive them their partisanship if Tim Hudak had stepped up and admitted to the accounting errors at the heart of his campaign centrepiece. But he didn’t. He brushed them aside with an easy, breezy ‘everybody’s got a theory’ nonchalance. All the glitchy campaign materials had been printed up. The TV ads shot.

What kind of government does the Toronto Sun, the Globe and Mail, the National Post expect Tim Hudak to form if he gets elected on the basis of deceit and a dodging of responsibility? Isn’t this exactly what we’re angry at the Liberals about? That’s not what you might consider cleaning house. It’s more like changing tenants while ignoring the red flags in their letters of reference.

How can we demand that our politicians stop lying to us, stop putting politics before good governance, cease and desist with their corrupt practices when our very own opinion-makers so blatantly skirt around open and honest debate? At the heart of each of these editorial endorsements sits the uncomfortable truth. Some lies are preferable to other lies. When our side does it, that’s just playing the game, yo. When they do it? Scandalous and corrupt.

We can hardly expect ethics from our politicians when it’s a practice we don’t adhere to ourselves.

— rottingly submitted by Cityslikr

Well NOW

Posted on June 5, 2014 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

This morning, a week before the provincial election, Editor/Publisher Michael Hollett of NOW magazine – the downtown leftist elitists’ weekly of choice – issued a broadside against the looming menace facing Ontario voters. Downtown NDP elitists.

I’m sorry. What?

In a gung-ho, rooting’ tootin’, down and dirty, rough and tumble burst of Toronto Sun-like prose, Hollett screamed and hollered at the nerve of the “Gang of 34” who had the temerity during this election campaign to question the direction the NDP was taking. “Preachy and patronizing.” “Party poobahs.” “Brita-filtered progressive purity.” “Curmudgeonly critics.” All having a champagne soaked hissy fit [that one’s mine] and stamping their Fluevog clad feet [mine too] about the “Steeltown Scrapper who “doesn’t want moral victories” but “a win that is moral.”

“Don’t be hustled into believing a little scruff and a little tough from a Steeltown tornado can’t take it all,” Hollett concludes, summoning his best H.L. Mencken stylings.

Yeah, yeah. We get it, Michael. You and Andrea love and are part of the rabble hoi polloi we downtown elitists have lost touch with. We don’t understand the value of a buck. “Pocketbook issues”? The only issue I have with my pocket is does it fit my fob watch.

You know what, Michael? Fuck you.

Given 3 opportunities to vote for the Dalton McGuinty-Kathleen Wynne Liberals, I never have. In 2003 and again in 2007, I voted NDP. Last time out, I was already feeling something of a disconnect with the party and eventually ended up voting Green. I’m leaning that way again.

Truth be told, I held out some hope that when Kathleen Wynne became premier and slipped out from under the yoke of the rightist McGuinty crowd, the party would come back to a comfortable spot on the left-centre side of the spectrum. That may still hold true. I could also be woefully misguided. It doesn’t matter to me now because when John Lorinc and Spacing detailed this Liberal government’s full-on politicization of the transit file, my brief flirtation with the Liberals ended.

Since the Common Sense Revolution yanked Ontario to the far right beginning in 1995, there have been wide open spaces on the left. The Liberals’ incremental nudges back to the centre didn’t really close the gap significantly. It was too attached to the prevailing neoliberal economic principles to do much else.

During much of that time, the NDP was exiled into the wilderness, the bad taste of the Rae government lingering for many Ontarians. Inexplicably, it seems in hindsight, given the destruction wrought on the province subsequently. Still, for more than a decade, politics in this province was little more than being slightly less conservative than the Progressive Conservatives.

Then came the economic meltdown of 2008 brought about by the unrestrained pursuit of wealth in an unchecked free market. Combined with the hollowing of Ontario’s manufacturing base as a result of another neoliberal concept, free trade, it seemed the time was ripe for a political comeback of left wing politics. The worst downturn since the Great Depression. Let’s get all Keynesian, baby. A new New Deal anybody?

I’m not hearing too much FDR from the NDP these days. This afternoon on Ontario Today, Andrea Horwath tossed out props to Tommy Douglas. I’m just not getting that vibe from her.

Yes, yes, yes. I know those olde tyme lefties were meticulous with their budgets. That good ol’ prairie populism was equal parts generosity, fairness and bottom line-y. And yes, we have witnessed a shockingly deplorable profligacy of public money by the ruling Liberals. Of course, it’s time for a change.

But the NDP have tapped into a vein of black magic on this with their re-purposing of the populist rhetoric of Rob Ford. Their ‘respect’. Their ‘common sense’. It feeds into the sense of the problems we face in this province are all somebody else’s fault. Rather than use the opportunity to revive the idea of a common good and smash the concept of taxes being evil, the NDP, like Rob Ford and every other right wing populist out there, have taken to assuring everyone that putting the pieces back together will be a cinch. Put an end to scandals and private-public partnerships. Raise taxes on a few people (not you). Reduce bloat in the ranks of government and the cost of energy consumption.

Bing, bang, boom. All is right. And you didn’t feel a thing, did you.

It’s complete fiction. There’s no easy way out of this mess we’re in currently. Our economy remains anemic. Our infrastructure is wobbly. The price of an education is sky high. The state of social housing in this province is shameful.

This has happened because too many of us, not just the well-to-do and corporations, have operated under the premise that investment in the public realm comes cheap and/or somebody else does it for us. By taking on the mantle of looking out for the little guy and respecting tax dollars, Andrea Horwath and the NDP continue to fuel that illusion. At least Tim Hudak is being honest when he tells us there are tough choices to be made. His are monstrous, for sure, but he’s not lying about that. The NDP have simply swept tough choices under the rug.

I don’t know about Michael Hollett but that doesn’t strike me as any sort of moral victory.

— snobbily submitted by Cityslikr