All Fried Up In The Big Smoke

Less political. More fictional.

Put Up Or Shut Up

Posted on February 7, 2013 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

Read through Edward Keenan’s article in The Grid yesterday, Troubled by the mayor’s apparent rule bending?, and tell me something there doesn’t ‘stink to high heaven’. I don’t care if you are an ardent supporter of Mayor Ford or not. Something’s just not right with that picture.

…in June 2011, half a year after the election, while Ford was the sitting mayor, he attended a party in the home of Robert DeGasperis, who is president of a development company called Metrus Properties. Doug Ford, the chair of Build Toronto, the city agency that sells public real estate to developers, also attended. We do not know who else was there or what was discussed. The result of that meeting was that an envelope containing $25,000 in cheques from 10 donors was passed from DeGasperis to former premier Mike Harris, and on to Ford’s campaign to help settle his outstanding election debt.

The same week, Paul Golini, an executive with developer Empire Communities, had a Ford fundraiser in his home that was attended by the mayor and about 40 members of BILD, the Toronto developers’ association. The $2,450 catering bill was picked up by a former CEO of BILD. Those at the party gave the mayor’s campaign $19,500.

Earlier that month, yet another private party was held for the mayor at Harbour 60 restaurant. We don’t know who attended, and we don’t know what they discussed. The tab for the 28 people in attendance came to just over $9,000, and was picked up by the owners of the restaurant. After meeting with the mayor, guests at the event saw fit to donate $27,000 to his long-finished campaign.

So in June 2011, as outlined in the audit report, a bunch of unknown people, many of whom appear to be developers, gave a total of $71,500 to retire Rob Ford’s outstanding campaign debt after private meetings with him. That was the same month that Ford proposed a massive selloff of TCHC properties and killed the Jarvis bike lanes. It was during the period when Doug Ford was shaping his proposal to radically change and speed up the plan to develop the Port Lands. It was the same period when Ford was studying how to get the private sector involved in building subways.

As Mr. Keenan points out, no one’s laid a glove on the mayor about this so far, the audit report only suggests ‘apparent violations of rules’. These will be hashed out in further detail at the February 25^th Compliance Audit Committee meeting. The optics, though, scream a Rob Ford scream of outrage.

Trace the pattern.

A candidate mulling over a run for the mayor’s office takes a flyer, goes into debt to finance their campaign with the hope that, once victorious, the hole can be filled by supporters wanting to be helpful. I imagine nothing opens hearts and wallets like access to a newly installed mayor. I would’ve loved to chip in earlier but, you know, I was hedging my bets.

But please. Envelopes stuffed with cheques? $9000 restaurant tabs picked up by the owner? Fundraisers at the home of the executive of a development company?

And before you get all m’eh on me, shrug your shoulders and insist it happens all the time, everybody plays the game, don’t. Just don’t. It’s a fucking cop out.

I am so sick of the response coming from the mayor’s defenders to any accusation made about his seeming nonchalance toward adhering to laws, rules, regulations, guidelines that it’s nothing new. Municipal politicians before him did it. Municipal politicians coming after him will do it. It’s no big deal. It’s the way the world works. Move along, nothing to see here.

David Miller did [fill in alleged wrongdoing here] too.

Well firstly, prove it. You can’t just brush everything off with a wink and a knowing nod of the head signifying that there are lots of bodies buried if you know where to look for them. Casting baseless assertions that sully everyone who’s ever run for office. It’s lazy and it’s cynical. If all politicians are corrupt in one way or the other, why bother trying to change anything, why bother getting involved? A pox on all their houses. I’m going to watch the How I Met Your Mother marathon. (Do we not know the answer to that yet?)

It’s a convenient embrace of apathy that makes no demands on those in public office and even less on citizens.

Regardless of whether or not Mayor Ford violated any campaign financing rules, there has to be a better way for politicians to run for office that precludes accepting envelopes stuffed with legal currency and depending on moneyed special interests to turn your bottom line red to black. How could that not be a corrupting influence? It’s the very definition of backroom deals politicians like the mayor rail about. We should all be irate, and not just at Rob Ford but the whole system that could allow him (and any others who play like that) to operate on such a shady level. It makes every one of their political motives and actions suspect.

And if you don’t find that at all troublesome, you just don’t give a flying fuck about democracy.

— indignantly submitted by Cityslikr

A Lousy 3%

Posted on February 2, 2013 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

Come on, folks.

It’s just 3%. That’s only 1% more than the kind of milk downtown elites use in their lattes.

Just 3%, folks.

It’s not like anyone, I don’t know, on the mayor’s campaign team gave the thumbs-up for a break-in of a rival candidate’s psychiatrist’s office, then taped and erased conversations about it and lied to congress. Or ordered the illegal bombing of Cambodia.

A little perspective here, folks.

It’s just 3%.

Nobody’s talking about envelopes stuffed with money being shadily handed over in hotel rooms. So there was one slightly under-priced Winnebago involved. It’s not like anybody got run over with it.

3%, folks.

What’s the big deal about a measly six figure loan between a brother and his brother’s corporate company? Tell me all families don’t do that kind of thing when one of them is running for political office. It’s not like there was any lobbyists involved or anything. I don’t think. Let me check that before you run with it. It might take a while. The report’s like, what, 52 pages?

We’re talking 3%, folks. Some 40 grand. It’s not as if we were actually counting every single dime during the campaign, am I right? That’s what happens after you’re elected. When you’re respecting the taxpayers. Tell me that fucking weasel Vaughan hasn’t bought like 200 coffee machines for his office in the past couple years.

3%.

If they didn’t want us going over a spending limit, why set one in the first place? That’s just a dare. Should we be punished for being that kind of risk taker, folks?

3%.

Are you trying to tell me that not one leftie councillor went over their spending limit in 2010? Not one of the loser candidates for mayor? Seriously. Are you trying to tell me that? I’m asking. Seriously. I don’t know. I could get an investigation started but it’s just so much easier to cast aspersions and innuendo.

We’ve saved the Taxpayers of Toronto ONE BILLION DOLLARS, folks. Now you’re unwilling to overlook a lousy 40 Gs, 3% of a billion dollars?

Look, folks. Our forefathers didn’t chase the English off the shores of the Great Lakes in 1492 only to see democracy overturned by sore losers who can’t even get elected to the school board. I mean, if Del Grande’s kid can get elected trustee… You see what I’m saying here? The meek shouldn’t be inheriting the earth because that’s how communism works. Who’d you put money on in a kick-boxing fight? Me or Jim Stalin?

3%, folks.

This is a witch hunt, pure and simple.

And while I’m sure a few of those witches they burned at the stake back in the 60s knew a little hocus-pocus, I’m willing to bet none of them were witchy all the way through. You see what I’m saying? Like that Bewitched! She was a witch but not a bad one. Should they’ve burned her at the stake?

Witch hunts are only as bad as the witches involved. It’s all about perspective, folks. Not all witches should be hunted. So if a witch is only 3% bad, is it really worth the effort?

Be careful what witch you hunt, is what I’m saying.

And 3%, well, that’s just petty and vindictive. That’s just a rounding error. Let He Who Has Never Carried The Two Incorrectly Cast The First Stone. If you want rock solid numbers, the private sector’s should run campaigns, folks. Governments are always all over the place with their numbers. Remember the St. Clair Disaster!

3%, folks.

A little perspective.

As Thomas Johnson once said, ‘Democracy’s determined at the ballot box not an accounting ledger’. Amen to that. And 2014 can’t come soon enough.

— imaginedly submitted by Cityslikr

A Little Opaque Is Not A Little Transparent

Posted on June 17, 2011 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

How’s that old saying go? You can’t be half-pregnant? Same principle applies, I think, to being half-transparent. To be half-transparent really means you’re opaque.

So it is with our Mayor of Transparency, Rob Ford. As he awaits word of his court challenge to an audit of his campaign finances word comes of questions about his office expenses for his first four months in office. As John Lorinc writes today in the Globe and Mail, there are huge gaps in how the mayor financed the running off his office. Apparently, “…receipts for basic expenses such as office supplies and cellphone subscriptions…are missing…” God knows we hear about how much time the mayor spends on his phone, listening to the public’s views, complaints and grievances. And how does the office of the mayor running the 6^th largest government in the country function without office supplies?

Ahh, we’re told. Out of respect for the taxpayers, Mayor Ford dips into his own pocket for such trifling matters. Rather than treat that habit as suspicious or running contrary to established council protocol, we should look upon it as nothing more than a beneficent gesture on the part of a dedicated public servant, selflessly devoted to the city he leads. None other than our deputy mayor Doug Holyday – a noted skinflint himself when it comes to councillor expenses – assures us that there’s nothing to see here. He told the Globe that ‘…Toronto residents aren’t bothered by the fact that Mr. Ford appears to self-finance his political duties. “I’ve not had any complaints come my way about Ford’s expenses at all,” Deputy Mayor blithely said.

What kind of self-imposed bubble do these people live in? Because no one’s called them up personally to complain of irregular or missing expenses, everything is fine and dandy? Never mind that the Globe and Mail is expressing some concerns about the mayor’s spending practices. Or the city’s Compliance Audit Committee wants to do its job and make sure that then councillor Rob Ford played by the rules in financing his run for the mayor’s job. Or that Rob Ford has consistently been challenged over his office expense claims during much of his time at City Hall even by those who have now become his closest allies.

The hypocrisy at work here is nose bleed inducing. While fighting (admirably we will admit noting that the adverb and Mayor Ford seldom go together in our writings) for complete transparency over how members of city council spend the good citizens’ money, the mayor doesn’t seem to see any inconsistency in his not fully reporting how he spends his. If he forks over his own cash to run his office or uses the photocopier at Deco Label and Tags for official city business, that’s nobody’s business but his own. The important point is that he’s not wasting taxpayers’ money. End of story.

Except that it’s not. At least, it shouldn’t be.

There are rules in place so that the public can see exactly how their municipal representatives are spending the money they are given. Rules that the mayor helped spearhead (again, admirably) and ones he’s spent just as much time trying to skirt. It would be one thing if he seemed to be aware of the unhealthy double standard he’s operating under but the truly disturbing aspect is he doesn’t. Mayor Ford appears to honestly believe that he’s doing a good and noble thing using his own finances as a public servant.

I can no longer engage in a debate with those who think that wealthy individuals financing their own campaign or their time in office is no big thing. It seems so self-evidently wrong to me that it is hardly worth the discussion. Just turn and face south and the shocking state of democracy in the United States to see what can happen when you encourage the well-to-do to buy their way into public office. Unsurprisingly, you get government that is by the rich, for the rich. Unregulated campaign financing and spending tends to attract the more undesirable elements of society.

The view Mayor Ford (along with his councillor brother, Doug) espouses about open and transparent expenses and spending for others while getting all hot and bothered when questions arise over theirs strikes me as equally indefensible. At the very least, let’s stop pretending this is an administration that can boast about transparency. An unwillingness to fully disclose either who or how the piper is being paid amounts to a full on attack of the fundamental principles of our democratic process. Even notorious fence-sitting councillors like Josh Matlow should be able to admit that.As a matter of fact, Councillor Matlow, there can be no more important reason why you came to City Hall.

— full disclosurely submitted by Cityslikr