All Fried Up In The Big Smoke

Less political. More fictional.

Mayor Menace

Posted on November 25, 2011 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

There was a time back last fall, either right before the municipal election when the possibility of Rob Ford becoming our mayor solidified into reality or just after the fact when he indeed did just that, a collective exhalation of breath among those who hadn’t voted for him could be heard. Maybe it won’t be that bad. Maybe the office of the mayor will soften him, draw out his inner statesman. Surely there won’t be 22 councillors willing to risk their political future pandering and aiding his worst instincts.

Well, mark your calendars, folks. November 24^th, 2011. If it wasn’t obvious to everyone before then, it has become crystal clear now. Mayor Rob Ford is as bad as our worst fears. He is truly a destructive force, laying waste to Toronto either because he doesn’t understand what makes a 21^st-century big city work or he just doesn’t give a fuck. At this point, it doesn’t matter the reason. He has simply become Mayor Menace.

How else to explain yesterday’s announced cuts to 56 TTC routes? And yes, they were cuts. Call them ‘efficiencies’, reductions or whatever euphemism you need to rationalize your continued support for the mayor’s War on the City… actually, it’s more than that…War on Modernity, the simple fact of the matter is, once more, Mayor Ford has broken his campaign promise of ‘No cuts to services. Guaranteed.’

You want to shrug it off with a ‘m’eh, all politicians do it’ or ‘we all knew he couldn’t keep that promise and anyone who did was just playing dumb’ and any other intellectually lazy and morally bankrupt games you want to play, ask yourself this. If then candidate for mayor Rob Ford had said out loud that he would be instituting a 10% reduction to the TTC budget and possibly raising fares if elected, would he be mayor right now? I hate hypothesizing but given his precipitous drop in favourable poll numbers even before this frontal assault on public transit, can you honestly respond ‘yes’ to that question? Yeah well, who’s playing dumb now?

Even by the mayor’s own bird-brained rubric of government being run like a business, this move makes zero sense. What business, seeing demand for their services at an all time high, would cut back on those services? Charge higher prices, maybe, but cut back? Only if you’re looking to put your business out of business.

Of course, for a city of 2.5 million people or so, in 2011 public transit should not be regarded as some sort of for-profit enterprise. Mayor Ford spearheaded the drive to have the TTC declared an essential service earlier this year but is treating it as anything but. In an already congested city, diminishing TTC service will inevitably put more cars on the road, only making a bad situation worse, socially and economically.

It comes as no surprise that this idea is lost on the mayor and a handful of his more ardent, antediluvian council supporters. But what’s up with TTC chair Karen Stintz? If she has any thoughts about running for higher office, how is overseeing rollbacks in TTC service going to help her cause? “Hi. I’m Karen Stintz. I’m running for mayor. You might remember me as the TTC chair who helped kneecap public transit in Toronto. Can I count on your support?”

Aside from Councillor Maria Augimeri, none of the other councillors sitting on the TTC board have spoken out against the cuts as far as I know. Perhaps we should ask them to clarify their positions.

Peter Milczyn, TTC vice-chair, Ward 5.

Vincent Crisanti, Ward 1.

Frank Di Giorgio, Ward 12.

Norm Kelly, Ward 40.

Denzil Minnan-Wong, Ward 34.

Cesar Palacio, Ward 17.

John Parker, Ward 26.

When tossing around blame for these TTC cuts, it would be unfair not to mention the role of our provincial legislature in all of this. After 8 years in office, the Dalton McGuinty government has not made good on its promise to re-assume its obligation to pay half of the TTC’s annual operating budget. It never seemed like the right time, as they continued to deflect criticism by (rightly) pointing out big investment in other parts of transit, both in Toronto and the wider region. But it stood back and allowed the public transit system in its largest city to severely struggle and indulged the mayor in his phantasmagorical scheme to kill Transit City and try to build an ill-thought out subway in its place. Now hunkered down in austerity mode, there appears to be little help coming from our provincial overlords. So here’s a couple other names you might want to have a chat with.

Premier Dalton McGuinty.

Bob Chiarelli, Minster of Transport

Kathleen Wynne, Minister of Municipal Affairs.

Courtesy of Laurence Lui

But the ultimate responsibility falls on Mayor Ford and the council that continues to allow him to rampage over this city. We can sit and talk ourselves blue about partisanship, petty grievances, the urban-suburban divide and tit-fot-tat politics. These cuts to the TTC, however, should transcend all that. This is a serious setback to public transit in this city. Combined with all the other measures the mayor and council has pursued like tearing up bike lanes, burying the Eglinton LRT, they are making a grave situation much, much worse. A situation that’s not only going to affect citizens dependant on the TTC. Roads will fill up. Everyone’s commute times will increase. Toronto’s competitiveness will continue to come under threat from other jurisdictions that place a higher premium on public transit and liveability.

Cutting and slashing your way to prosperity is an illusion like all of the mayor’s other views on governance. We knew it last year but too many of us closed our eyes, crossed our fingers and hoped it wasn’t true. Time to wake up to the reality, admit our mistake and go about defending Toronto from anymore of Mayor Ford’s deluded impulses.

— exhortingly submitted by Cityslikr

Redrawing Toronto

Posted on May 30, 2011 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

I chuckled a little bit, reading Patrick White’s Globe article from Friday about Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday’s next task of ‘redrawing Toronto’s dated electoral boundaries.’ “Now that he’s [Holyday] approaching the home stretch of a months-long effort to slash egregious councillor expenses…”, the piece began. Images bounced around my noggin. Rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship. Reducing the number of fiddlers as the city burned. Etc., etc.

Even giving inflated figures, say $30 K cuts in ‘egregious’ councillor spending, that amounts to about $1, 320, 000 million, let’s call it $1.5 million in savings to city coffers. But a small fraction of the lost revenue in eliminating the VRT and freezing property taxes that the Deputy Mayor helped push through. The net effect of adding to Toronto’s ever increasing operating budge hole. Well done, fiscal conservatives. Sound management of the city’s finances.

We here at All Fired Up in the Big Smoke have often been chided, by friends included, of sniffing at Team Ford’s multi-fronted attacks on the Gravy Train. It’s the reason he was elected, we’re told. Cutting taxes and wasteful spending. It’s all about optics, reality be damned.

So, fine. I give the Deputy Mayor and all those slaving away to maintain the mayor’s optics a tip of the hat. Well done, folks. Reality can wait until the fall when the 2012 budget debates begin and you have to struggle to keep up the appearance of Mayor Ford’s other campaign platform of No Major Service Cuts. Guaranteed.

That said if, as the Globe piece also notes, Deputy Mayor Holyday is serious about tackling the thorny issue of ward redistribution, our kudos will be much less facetious. It is a non-partisan concern that cuts to the heart of democracy. Citizens deserve as close to equal representation as is feasible, especially at the municipal level which is so day-to-day service oriented. Wide variations between wards will invariably result in wide variations in how councillors serve their constituents.

And as it stands right now, there are wide variations. Huge, gaping differences in populations between wards, in fact. It’s almost a 35,000 person disparity between the most populous ward (John Filion’s Willowdale 23 at 79,435) and the least (Maria Augimeri’s Ward 9 with just under 45,000 residents). How could Mr. Filion be anywhere near as attentive to the needs of his constituents as Ms. Augimeri is to hers? In fairness, we should really determine councillor’s office budgets on a per head basis.

In the Globe article, Councillor Adam Vaughan suggests that if redistribution were to happen properly, it would swing council to the left. We’d like to see his methodology behind that line of reasoning as many of the suburban ridings (including Ward 23) are the more populous ones. Scarborough especially has more than its share of hugely populated, 60K+ wards. Given that the former municipality is home to some of the current mayor’s most ardent supporters (Councillors Michael Thompson, Norm Kelly, Chin Lee), it’s hard to see how splitting those wards is going to enhance the left at council.

But that’s beside the point. Redrawing ward maps need to transcend political affiliation. Elected officials should have as little hand in the process as possible. If the Deputy Mayor can successfully pull such a feat off, it will be a shiny medal he can rightfully pin to his chest.

A bigger hurdle still will be navigating a new municipal political map with the mayor’s campaign pledge to cut councillor numbers in half. (More meaningless and possibly detrimental optics!) In the Globe article, the Deputy Mayor was already distancing himself from that promise. “That’s the mayor’s office that will have to come up with a plan for that,” Holyday said. “I don’t know that my plan is exactly the same as his.” With some wards already struggling under the weight of a 60, 70K+ population, it’s hard to see how having wards with 100,000 people will be of benefit to anyone.

Except for Mayor Ford’s optics. An ‘I said I would do it. I did it’ claim is an empty boast if the city is the worse for it. And it’s hard to see how it won’t be if we wind up further under-represented even if the pain is more equally shared.

— by the numbersly submitted by Cityslikr

The Toronto Sun’s Rally Cry

Posted on May 16, 2011 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

I tend to try and ignore the noise that emanates from the pages of the Toronto Sun. It’s not a newspaper so much as an organ of right wing dissemination. Sometimes the silliness tends to reach such stratospheric levels (I’m looking at you, Sue-Ann Levy) that I can’t help but comment.The org’s front page last Friday, however, did stop me up in my tracks. Rallying Cry. Call goes out to ‘Ford Nation’ to support mayor. The accompanying article was, if not innocuous, less propagandistic than the cover appeared to be. It seems the mayor’s office sent out an email to those on its campaign update list (aka ‘Ford Nation’), alerting them to the upcoming service review public meetings and urging them to sign up and attend. ‘Stacking’ the room as Councillor Janet Davis suggested.

Clearly, Mayor Ford has little interest in reaching out past his constituency. Instead, he’s choosing to firmly entrench it in an us-versus-them (them being the downtown pinko kooks) division that he can use to further his interests. His interests not the city’s. Thereby making the public consultation process for the service review less of an open forum and discussion to hear all views and more of a partisan pep rally.

But it was the timing of the Sun’s cover that really drew my attention to it. On the very day of its appearance on the newsstand and in curbside boxes, the mayor was attempting to quash requests going before the Compliance Audit Committee to have his campaign financing examined. His bid to proceed with the privatization of waste collection west of Yonge Street was headed to debate at City Council this week. The city had decided not to appeal a court ruling that ordered a by-election for Ward 9 that would take Ford foe Councillor Maria Augimeri off the council playing field until later in the summer and quite possibly install another rabidly pro-Ford member at council.

A rough and tumble patch is looming for Mayor Ford and it just struck me that the Sun might be trying to marshal the mayor’s supporters to his defense. Setting aside the most obvious argument about if this is something a so-called newspaper should be doing – the Sun is as relentless in its attack on politicians and institutions that don’t share its reactionary views as it is in supporting those that do – it is more disturbing for its promotion of a cult of personality. The mayor and his ‘nation’ aligning against the dark forces of opposition. You’re with us or you’re a’gin us.

Now, I hesitate to float the word ‘fascistic’. It comes loaded with all sorts of connotations of Nazis, brown-shirted thugs and the Holocaust. Even divorced of that imagery, to label a municipal politician as a fascist is all sorts of over-reaching and, very possibly, trite. But there is a tendency in this administration and the press that slavishly backs it to exhibit elements of fascism, none more so then this appeal to a ‘nation’ of followers. It end runs reasoned debate or discussion. It’s all about gut instincts and visceral emotion. To disagree or oppose is to reveal yourself as a foe, a pinko, a kook.

It’s interesting to go through a full definition of the meaning of fascism. Take Dr. Lawrence Britt’s 14 Characteristics of Fascism for example. Again, much of it is focused on national government with aspects concerning the military or religion that are beyond the control or oversight of municipal politicians so is not applicable. Yet, some of the points are disturbingly relevant to what we’re watching unfold here.

“Powerful and Continuing Nationalism”. Ford Nation. “Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause”. Bureaucratic fatcats. Pinko kooks. Union thugs. “Controlled Mass Media”. Obviously that’s beyond a mayor’s control but Dr. Britt talks about “sympathetic media spokespeople and executives”. Think about how Mayor Ford has frozen out the Toronto Star because of what he feels has been biased reporting against him. He referred to the Globe and Mail as a ‘socialist newspaper’ in the now infamous Fat Fuck video. “Corporate Power is Protected”. If not protected, it is certainly promoted through privatizing anything that’s not nailed down. “Labor Power is Suppressed”. Replace ‘suppressed’ with ‘criticized’ or ‘undercut’. “Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts”. Two words for you: downtown elites. “Obsession with Crime and Punishment” The mayor’s campaign promise for more police officers. The recent uncontested wage contract.This is not simply name-calling or shrill alarmism about our doomed democracy in the face of the jackboots. It’s about process. About having an open debate on issues and prevailing through persuasion not bullying or trying to gin the system by use of propaganda and cheap appeals to our tribal instincts. Governing by division can never lead to a healthy consensus or a greater good. I refuse to believe that anyone, no matter how misguided they may be, seeks public office for any reason other than that despite mounting evidence that points to the contrary.

— submitted by Cityslikr