Tag Archives: John Maynard Keynes

Meet A Mayoral Candidate — Part VII

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Good Friday. A good Friday for another installment of Meet A Mayoral Candidate!

In the spotlight this week… Wendell Brereton For Mayor!

With the 1st unofficial mayoral debate officially behind us and nothing much gleaned from it aside from the fact that none of the candidates who have been mysteriously tapped as “serious” contenders have given us any reason to vote for them (and plenty why we shouldn’t), it is timely that we present to you the Wendell Brereton candidacy. One of the 19 registered candidates uninvited to Monday’s Summit of Giants®™©, even a cursory glance at Mr. Brereton’s website reveals the omission to be a glaring gaffe on the part of debate organizer, Councillor Mike Del Grande. Candidate Brereton possesses a platform packed with details in such depth that puts the front running campaigns to shame.

A 12 year veteran of the OPP, Mr. Brereton calls himself an entrepreneur and activist. Many of his approaches reflect that dual sensibility, with a heavy emphasis on promoting public-private enterprises in areas ranging from transit to waste and energy management while showing a Keynesian predilection for government spending during a recession on things like child care. He is for road tolls albeit much more modest than the $5 proposed by Sarah Thomson. Brereton would also introduce fees for bike permits as part of a very interesting approach to dealing with cyclists and traffic that is worth further exploration. His thoughts on the matter underline just how empty the bike lane debate that’s been going on between the “serious” candidates has been. Nothing but pure puffery.

This is true of almost every aspect of Wendell Brereton’s candidacy. After reading through his platform and watching his announcement video, we asked for some further details of his campaign and were almost immediately presented with 7 pages! Unlike his higher profile rivals, Mr. Brereton is not merely sloganeering. He appears to be slowly putting together a… what you call that?…  A vision thing. A vision for the city. A vision for how a Mayor Brereton would lead.

What stops us up of a full fledged embrace of Wendell Brereton for Mayor is his overt and enthusiastic public embrace of his religious beliefs. A Pastor at the Glorious Church-Faith Temple, there is no doubting the importance religion plays in Mr. Brereton’s life. To a bunch of godless heathens like we here at All Fired Up in the Big Smoke, this makes us supremely uncomfortable especially when it manifests itself in an anti-gay pride position as it does in Mr. Brereton’s platform. He will have to explain himself much better than he did to us about the matter if he wants to speak to a wider audience.

On every other issue, however, Wendell Brereton deserves a fair hearing. Although excluded from Monday’s debate, he was in attendance and passed along a number of interesting points about what the candidates didn’t talk about. Waste and energy alternatives. Day care. Infrastructure. Serious plans about transit in the face of the provincial governments $4 billion renege delay. All important matters Mr. Brereton has views on and ideas for implementing.

How we ensure that he secures a place on stage at the next all candidates debate is in and of itself a matter for debate. Better civic minds than ours are at work devising a formula to allow serious candidates like Wendell Brereton in the door. Although at this still early stage in the campaign, there is little reason to exclude anyone from the fray and arbitrarily handicap the race. The time for winnowing comes later after we’ve had an opportunity to look at and assess all the candidates. Yes, that paves the way for the true fringe candidates, the cranks and crackpots (as if a few of those haven’t already slipped past the gatekeepers) to let loose. But we do live in a democracy last I heard. Everyone’s voice must be heard. It will be worth the effort for the exposure it would bring to viable and significant candidates like Wendell Brereton.

When asked our requisite question, If the present mayor would like his legacy to be that of the Transit Mayor, how would a Mayor Brereton like to see his legacy written?, he responded: Mayor Brereton, the Innovator.  That hardly does him justice in our opinion. A little too prosaic. So let us supply our own answer to the question: Mayor Brereton, bringing 22nd-century thinking to 21st-century problems.

— dutifully submitted by Cityslikr

Politics Straight Up

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In the political trenches, the battle of ideas is almost always won by those who are best able to explain their position(s) clearly, succinctly and without the slightest hint of subtlety. “Keeping it simple keeps it real, yo,” I am told by a local political strategist and overnight/weekend infomercial host who asked to be quoted anonymously pending the outcome of legal proceedings. “That way, voters don’t have to think too much about it.” He goes on to say that ideally politicians should try to get their point across in one breath. “So Joe Q. Public will remember it easily and regurgitate it without having to forgo a mouthful of nachos.”

It is a strategy that conservatives — both big and little ‘C’s – have mastered. Ever since Ronald Reagan’s ‘Morning in America’ back in 1980, the political left has been, well, left stammering, hopelessly yammering on with awkward, tongue-tying slogans that have seldom resonated with voters. For every one “It’s the Economy, Stupid!” or “Change We Can Believe In!” there’s been countless numbers of clunkers that ultimately fell on deaf ears. Who can remember the rallying cry “Climate Change Is A Complex Dynamic of Inter-related, Multilevel Systems Susceptible To Even The Slightest Variation But Overall The Science Is Solid.”? Or how about even this pithy but obscure proto-Keynesian economic challenge, “Countercyclical Fiscal Policies Now!!”? Me neither, which has been the progressives problems for decades now.

Yes, governing is not simple. It demands complicated and multifaceted approaches that don’t always operate on easy-to-understand, intuitive gut levels. But that doesn’t mean explaining how you’re going to do it has to get bogged down with detail heavy insights, thoughtful deliberations or big, multi-syllabic words. If you want a crack at power, it’s all about “The Axis of Evil”, being “The Decider” and “You’re Either With Us Or You’re Against Us”.

Here at the local level, we can see this discipline already at work in the early days of this year’s municipal election. Toronto Sun columnist and Hater-Of-Everything-To-Do-With-David-Miller, Sue-Ann Levy, came hard out of the gate last week after Councilor Joe Pantalone announced his intention to run for the mayor’s office. Not even waiting until the first sentence, Levy brings the pain right there in the title: Mayor Pantalooney? No Way!

Ha Ha! Joe Pantalone? Joe Pantalooney!! He can’t be mayor. He’s crazy! Crazy as a loon, that Joe Pantalooney!!!

How will the man ever dig himself out from the hole Levy’s tossed him in? His twenty-nine years of civic duty which Levy dismisses as merely a “career” only serves to prove that Pantalone is categorically unfit to be mayor because he’s crazy. Who’d dedicated nearly 30 years of his life to public service? You’d have to be crazy. Probably couldn’t get a “real” job, that Joe Pantalooney.

Since Sue-Ann Levy doesn’t agree with anything Joe Pantalone stands for, ipso facto, the councilor must be crazy because certainly Sue-Ann Levy isn’t crazy. Would such an august operation like the Toronto Sun hire crazy people to fill its pages?

It’s a hardball approach that Levy seems to relish and that must save her heaps of time to not do reporterly stuff like investigative researching. Why, just a few days ago, she turned her sights on those “whining airport wingnuts” who were stamping their little feet over the possible expansion of flight numbers by the good folks at Porter Air. How dare a gaggle of “self-centred, ridiculous bunch of whiners” (Sue-Ann does love her quotation marks) treat the waterfront as their very own “fiefdom on the lake”! Haven’t these people cottoned on to the fact that the “fiefdom on the lake” is the personal playground for the likes of federal political patronage appointees, Robert Deluca and downtown business bigwigs who have neither the time nor the inclination to make their way out to Pearson when duty calls? The airport is here to stay, dammit, and anybody who continues to fight the inevitable is simply crazy. And probably a hippie.

So, to all you left wingers out there and island airport opponents who see its continued presence and Porter’s possible expansion as the ongoing extension of a politically underhanded and democratically dubious land and money grab of the Toronto Harbor Commission by the federal Liberal party over a decade ago… you see, there you go again, talk, talk, talking, like you’re being heard by rational, relatively sentient beings. Just blurt it out. From the gut to the tongue, bypassing the brain entirely. It’s worked for the right wing for decades now. It might even get you a job writing for the Toronto Sun.

— insanely submitted by Urban Sophisticat