All Fried Up In The Big Smoke

Less political. More fictional.

The Explanation Gap

Posted on June 3, 2016 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

In amidst the most recent twist of the stomach turning, head spinning, logic defying debate over of the one-stop express (thank you David Rider for that) Scarborough subway extension – Chapter It’s Time To Talk About Expropriations – I was struck by how one local resident reacted. Scott Cole, who received a letter last week from the TTC telling him that his property could be subject to expropriation by the city if a proposed alignment of the extension ended up running along nearby McCowan Road, was, how would I put it, none too pleased. “I’m not going, they’re going to kill me to take me out of here,” Mr. Cole told the Toronto Star. A firm, first play negotiating stance, aggressive, leaving plenty of walk-back space.

But that wasn’t what really caught my attention.

“In my opinion, they’re just going to sell all of this to big developers and make tens of millions of dollars,” Mr. Cole stated.

Huh. Wow.

Of all the dark, dank angles and levels of subterfuge in this fetid debate over the Scarborough subway, this was one I hadn’t ever contemplated. Of course, with any big infrastructure project, the possibility of somebody being involved purely for the money makes sense. But as the prime motivator at the heart of it all? That takes some genuine cynicism to get there, even if it is your house sitting under the shadow of expropriation.

That’s just how some people roll, I guess. Easy answers to complicated matters. It spares the brain from doing much heavy lifting.

I will, in this case, cut Mr. Cole some slack, however, and not simply because he’s looking down the barrel of being ousted from his home, even at fair market value. In a debate that often transgresses the boundaries of reason and common sense, there’s lots of room for detecting sinister specters. When a supposedly cash-strapped city is determined to spend a couple billion dollars on a one-stop express (thanks again, David) subway station that will move only 7300 riders during the peak morning rush hour, any grasping at straws for the reasons why shouldn’t be considered too outrageous.

Mr. Cole isn’t alone in expressing his dim views of transit building in Toronto.

Nick Kouvalis, the man who helped elect the last two mayors of this city and, I don’t think gets enough credit for his integral role in debasing the debate about public transit here over the last 5 years, tweeted out similarly baleful thoughts about another subway project when its proposed alignment went public this week. “Investigate this DRL [downtown relief line] route & land holdings of TTC Pension Fund & understand real politics.” That’s Oliver Stone level stuff, right there. Follow the money. Always follow the money.

In under 140 characters, Mr. Kouvalis manages to impugn the character and motivation of city staff and everyone else involved in pushing forward a subway project that has been on the demand table for decades now. Relief line? Relieving all of us of our hard earned tax dollars for no discernible return, amirite? That’s the kind of besmirching that earns Nick Kouvalis the big bucks and makes Scott Cole look like a rank amateur in comparison.

While I can’t figure out Kouvalis’ motives for weighing in on this subject at this time and in that manner, aside from perhaps just some simple union bashing, it reveals what I’ll call an explanation gap. With pro-Scarborough subway proponents desperately scrambling to justify the clearly unjustifiable building of their pet project, throwing out rationale after rationale, none of which hold up to much scrutiny but, stitched together with a thread of divisively parochial city building to create a loose-fitting blanket of… because, that’s why, there’s plenty of room left over to be filled with equally questionable ruminations. Defending politically based decisions leaves too much to the public imagination, too much space between the lines to read into.

That is where, there, be dragons.

And it just takes the one, in this case, it’s a big, $2 billion one, to throw into question the whole process. If the Scarborough subway is about nothing more than political theatre trumping good planning practices, why not the relief line too? What’s up with that? Who stands to profit?

It’s a contagion of suspicion that can cast a pall over every proposed transit project. Such a degree of mistrust will lead ultimately to a system wide paralysis. A situation, one might argue, we’ve been enduring and are currently suffering the ill-effects of. If the Scarborough subway is being used as a politically expedient route to pop open the spigot of public willingness to accept the cost of more transit building (and I’m being very generous in that interpretation), then do us all a favour and couch it in those terms.

Sure, that might lead to a whole bunch of Me-Tooisms, copycat demands for nothing but subways which, as irony dictates in these cases, is one of the basis for building this subway. In the end, though, it’s probably preferable to the damaged credibility to actual, fact-based transit projects and the undercutting of legitimacy for the entire decision-making process that comes from pretending the Scarborough subway is anything but a political machination.

Don’t leave an explanation gap for people to fill because fill it they will. Once that happens, a competing narrative, regardless of how iffy and baseless, can take on an oversized life of its own. That, in fact, is how we ended up with this kind of debate on the Scarborough subway.

— explicably submitted by Cityslikr

No, You First

Posted on March 14, 2014 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

(A heads up: this one’s going to be particularly swear-y. Those with delicate sensibilities may want to take a pass.)

I’m trying to re-jig that old axiom.

We get the politicians the strategists, consultants and pollsters they pay give us.

Yesterday, Premier Kathleen Wynne bravely stood down in the face of opposition intransigence toward new taxes to fund regional transit in the GTA, waving the white flag of political opportunism. After two reports came back, one from the provincial transit body, Metolinx, and another from the premier’s own appointed Transit Investment Strategy Advisory Panel, recommending ways to pay for the ambitious (on paper) Big Move, Premier Wynne brushed aside two of the more substantive suggestions, the gas tax and HST.

“We are taking those potential revenue tools off the table,” she told the press. But “make no mistake”, she’s going to get this shit built. She’s just not going to tell anybody how yet.

Well, Premier Wynne, join the party. Behind every other fucking politician who cavalierly promises to tackle the pressing issue of transit in the region but deftly avoids the conversation about how exactly to pay for it. This is the line for the magic beans, right?

This is political brinksmanship at its most loathsome. Mutual assured do-nothingness. Both opposition parties at Queen’s Park have dug into their trenches and refused to so much as engage, really only popping their heads up to take the odd pot shot at the government.

The Tories have moved beyond the realm of reprehensible, promising the most expensive option of transit, the subway, with the least likely way to pay for it, finding efficiencies. They might as well just admit that they couldn’t give a flying fuck about public transit. The only reason they really addressed the issue was in order to look busy writing up white papers.

And the NDP? My political home? They’ve carved out some fucking bullshit form of populism that is trying to convince us that this can all be done through corporate taxes and a higher income tax on some miles wide interpretation of the middle class. It’s the flip side of the Conservative’s we can do all this and you won’t feel it a bit mantra.

This seems to be the avenue the government has left open to themselves. They haven’t ruled out more in corporate taxes or from high income earners. Don’t worry, people. Other people will pay for all this.

Now look, I have absolutely no problem with a renewed interest in harkening back to the olden days of using a truly progressive form of taxation via income to start addressing our social needs. It’s decades overdue. But why would I believe our politicians are prepared to have that discussion when merely saying the word ‘tax’ makes them blanch and wet themselves?

When one of these parties actually steps forward and stops referring to the middle-class as everybody who makes less than $500k/year, maybe I’ll start to think they’re serious. It’s been a long time since many of us, corporations, individuals, families, have being what we should be paying. It’s why we’re in the transit-infrastructure mess we find ourselves. We all believe somebody else should be paying for it.

But this is a game of who’s going to blink first. Nobody’s willing to take the lead on this for fear of everybody else screeching and pointing their fingers at them. Look! Tax-and-spenders!! Burn them!!!

The situation is so abysmally preposterous that also yesterday, the big name left wing, NDP flavoured candidate for mayor, Olivia Chow, would only commit to property tax increases at the rate of inflation. That’s great, Olivia. That’ll maintain services at the current level. What about all the other stuff you’re going to pledge to do?

When Chow didn’t enthusiastically jump on board the DRL express, the subway build everyone has acknowledged is a priority to relieve pressure from the current lines, citing cost concerns, she was immediately jumped all over by some of the other candidates, led by the John Tory team. Hey, tax-and-spender! Why aren’t you promising to tax-and-spend some?

Now, follow me on this.

On its staff, the John Tory campaign has one Nick Kouvalis. You may remember Mr. Kouvalis from other mayoral campaigns like 2010’s Rob Ford. If you recall, there’s was much talk then of stopping a gravy train and the city government having a spending problem not a revenue problem.

Even this iteration, Kouvalis 2.0, Tory has pledged to keep taxes low. Yet building an expensive subway is priority #1. How? Not to worry. Somebody else will pay for it. You won’t feel a thing.

“The only way you’re going to break this vicious cycle of waiting for public opinion that won’t come,” the Toronto Region Board of Trade’s Carol Wilding told Matt Galloway today on Metro Morning, “is to insert leadership.”

Setting aside for the time being the TRBoT’s own contribution to anti-tax fever back in 2010, Ms. Wilding isn’t off the mark. We’ve stopped demanding leadership from our politicians, letting them off the hook, content only to hear them tell us what we want to hear. Yes, things aren’t perfect. Yes, there are ways we can start fixing them. No, you don’t have to do a thing about, though. Carry on. Somebody else will sort it out.

The phrase for that is probably left as is, only slightly modified.

We get the politicians we deserve.

— spitting nailsly submitted by Cityslikr

Nick And John

Posted on February 17, 2014 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

John and Nick.

Nick Kouvalis and John Tory. A political match made in heaven.

Nick Kouvalis, the bare-knuckled political strategist who was part of the team that improbably brought Rob Ford to the mayor’s office in Toronto. Don’t hate Nick because of that, because he’s good at what he does. He only did what he was paid to do.

(We can talk about how he fared during his time as the newly elected mayor’s chief of staff. Or maybe over some drinks and red meat — I always imagine talking to Nick Kouvalis over a plate of red meat — he can dish the dirt about when exactly it was he realized just how big a turd he helped dump on this city, at what point of time he knew that the man he helped elect as mayor may have had something of a ruinous substance abuse problem.)

John Tory, a political lightweight, a candidate who seldom met an election campaign he could not lose. A guy with the DNA of a winning politician, money, influence, privilege, but lacking in the necessary acumen and wiliness to make much of a lasting impression. Oh right. John Tory. That guy I didn’t vote for last election.

Face it. Somebody like John Tory needs somebody like Nick Kouvalis in his corner. Somebody like John Tory is exactly the kind of challenge somebody like Nick Kouvalis must relish. An nth-time loser with increasingly longer odds of ever getting elected to anything again. Bring it on. If Nick Kouvalis can get Rob Ford elected mayor, who can’t he put in that office?

As someone disinclined to ever vote for someone like John Tory, nothing Nick Kouvalis does to help Tory’s cause will likely bring me to change my mind. In fact, while I understand if Tory taps Kouvalis to help with his campaign, it will only confirm for me my long held suspicions of the man.

Again, this is not a slam against Nick Kouvalis. If anything, I respect him. He’s pretty upfront with his beliefs and what drives him. He’s paid to get politicians, mostly conservative leaning politicians, elected. And he will stop at almost nothing to get that done. This ain’t a popularity contest, folks.

I’d say it’s almost the exact opposite of how I view John Tory. I don’t know what’s behind his ambition. There’s no discernible motivation about why he wants to be mayor. There’s this guy with all this opportunity to present himself as a serious, civic-minded, urban thinker and where does he ultimately settle? On AM talk radio, the beating heart of the city’s raging id that is Ford Nation.

As much as I recognize the fact somebody like John Tory needs somebody like Nick Kouvalis, I don’t understand how Tory, in good conscience, can bury the hatchet and go down that road.

Soon after the 2010 election Kouvalis talked publicly about his plan to keep Tory out of the race.

“Kouvalis..said he sensed in July [2010] that Tory was itching to reverse his surprise January decision not to run for mayor. Internal Ford polling suggested Tory would enter 9.5 points ahead of Ford and 11 points ahead of George Smitherman.

Kouvalis said he warned Ford and his brother/campaign manager Doug that a Tory campaign would poach their donations and volunteers, and devised a four-point plan aimed at letting Tory know his integrity would be attacked if he jumped in…”

Included in the plan was this cheesy Stop the Gravy Train video and a staged call in to Tory’s show, challenging his integrity. Kouvalis claimed later that keeping Tory from the race was the key to Ford’s victory. Tory shrugged off the tactics as non-factors in his decision not to run. “Water under the bridge,” he said, even considering taking some sort of position in the Ford administration after the election, one that I don’t think ever materialized.

I guess if Tory easily accepted such things as just being part of the game back in 2010, there’s no raising an eyebrow at the possibility of him now working with a guy who fought so hard to keep him from running back then. In it to win it, am I right? Bearing grudges doesn’t seem to be a productive approach in political life.

It’s safe to assume that if he decides to toss his hat back into the ring this is John Tory’s last kick at the can. He cannot lose and needs to pull out all the stops to make sure that doesn’t happen. Still, what does it say about the man’s judgement and character that he’s willing to try and do that with the person who is at least partially responsible for inflicting on this city the monstrosity that is the current administration, and who did his level best to knee cap anyone and everyone standing in the way of making that happen back in 2010?

— frankly submitted by Cityslikr