Tag Archives: Respect For Taxpayers

The Wrecking Crew

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My apologies for borrowing the title of this post from Thomas Frank’s book from a couple years ago, but I use it consciously as I think it bears repeating. Why? Because of the pathological danse macabre we insist on performing regularly with our neo-conservative partners and the corresponding amnesia that accompanies it which renders us oblivious to the resulting ugly outcome.

How’s the step go again, you ask forgetfully?

Decrying the state of affairs, politically, economically and/or socially, brought on by overweening and ineffectual (not to mention, elitist) liberal rule, conservatives roll into power on a magic carpet of faux-populism, complete with an easy to remember and entirely meaningless slogan or two. Once there, they proceed to trash the joint, politically, economically and/or socially before the citizens fully comprehend what’s happening and chase them from office. They then “retire” to the private sector (which in all likelihood they’ve helped to enrich) where they lick their wounds, change their outfits and, sooner or later, head back to the political ball for another twirl around the floor.

There was Reagan’s Morning in America where he enticed a weary populace to join him in a foxtrot. Twelve years later, victorious in the Cold War but already mired into increased conflict in the Middle East, the country was eye-deep in debt and much of the FDR New Deal/LBJ Great Society accomplishments, gutted and left for dead, and the political environment toxic. Enter centrist Democrat Bill Clinton who managed to wrestle the burgeoning deficit bomb into a more manageable shape (largely on the back of his most vulnerable base) while, if not fully restoring social programs directed at the most vulnerable of his base, got them back onto life support. A semblance of order restored, give way to George W. Bush, neocon sweetheart, and 8 years later, Iraq, Afghanistan, surpluses ballooned into huge deficits, tax cuts galore and everybody for themselves. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Up here, a very similar pattern. Early-90s, Conservative debts and deficits reign (although to some eyes, strangely, it’s all because of Pierre Trudeau despite 9 years of PC majority rule), the country faces a constitutional crisis. Liberals are elected in a landslide and over the course of the next decade+, they bring the fiscal unruliness to heel (largely on the back of their most vulnerable base) and establish a semblance of political and social order. Hello neocons and… you know where this is going, right? Unnecessary tax cuts, financial crisis hits, here we are again, back in the red and the public sector’s going to have to tighten its belt and prepared to make do with less. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Ditto in Ontario with a slight variation. Left of centre government hit with a nasty recession seeks to spread the pain around (some of it on the back of their base) and is summarily drummed from office, crushed under the pleasingly simply Common Sense Revolution. These fiscally prudent Conservatives (some key members who go on to lay waste to Ottawa) don’t really clean up the economic mess they claimed to have found. They just sort of move it around a little, cut taxes (natch) and eviscerate provincial and municipal infrastructure for good measure. As usual, they’re chased from office two terms later having inflicted maximum public damage. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Now comes Rob Ford to Toronto. A career politician who never saw a tax increase he couldn’t rail about or a government expenditure that didn’t taste like gravy, he bellowed for months on the campaign trail about waste and fiscal mismanagement at City Hall. (Sound familiar?) Citing big numbers with little context and oodles of anecdotal evidence of ‘corruption’, he got himself elected on a vow to Stop the Gravy Train and to usher in an era of Respect for Taxpayers. Meaning? Cutting and/or freezing taxes. ‘Trimming the fat’ and uncovering ‘inefficiencies’ in the system. No more nickel and diming taxpayers to death.

But an altogether predictable thing happened on his way to his first budget proposal. The supposed fiscal ineptitude of his predecessor left Mayor Ford with a shit load of money in which to fill the cavernous gaps left exposed by all the tax freezes and cuts riddling the budget document. So much money, in fact, that any major slashing and burning of services could wait a year. Only a year, mind you. There would be a serious reckoning. You’d be foolhardy to think otherwise.

We know how this story plays out, people. We’ve seen it enough. The ending’s never happy and expecting this time it’ll be different, well, you’ve just defined ‘crazy’. Neoconservative politicians are incapable of leaving a place looking better than when they found it. It’s not in their nature. In fact, they can’t help doing the exact opposite of good stewardship. They are terrible tenants. So let’s stop expecting them to be anything but.

It’s almost as if we’re trapped in some lurid abusive relationship with neo-conservatism. It constantly lies to us, takes our money and spends it on its rich girlfriends. Whenever we speak up and complain, it smacks us around some to keep us in our place and issues threats about how good we have it. You think you got it bad, huh? How’d you like to be living somewhere in Africa instead? Huh?

Even when we break free of its grip for awhile, we’re eventually lured back in with its sweet song of contrition and promises of better behaviour in the future. I’ve learned my lesson, baby. Trust me. I won’t ever hurt you again.

We really have to break free of such a self-defeating and sadistic cycle before the damage inflicted becomes irreparable.

—once more with feelingly submitted by Cityslikr

The Mayor Belts Out His Numbers

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After witnessing Mayor Ford’s budget launch of his Respect for The Taxpayer Tour, only one thing is certain. It all depends on what kind of taxpayer you are that’ll determine just how much respect’s coming to you over the next few years. The mayor assures us that we’re all in this austerity mode together but it certainly seems some will find the going more austere than others. While we got an inkling today of the lucky winners (and losers), all will be revealed at breakneck speed over the course of the next 7 weeks.

Some quick first impressions:

1) At this point what does seem clear is that the mayor and those helping him write the budget believe taxes are an entirely different beast than service fees. Paying to register your car with the city is a tax, so bad and now gone. Paying to ride the TTC is not, so it can be hiked although unhappily from the mayor’s perspective. (More on that shortly.) Property tax hikes have become an unbearable burden for homeowners but service fees to use some city services are less egregious. Taxes, bad. Service fees, ahhhh, what are you gonna do?

2) When the mayor, out on the campaign trail last year, assured voters and his opponents who accused him of having a hidden agenda of service cuts to accommodate his promise to lower or freeze taxes, he was, well, lying to everyone’s face. “No service cuts. Guaranteed.” is now “no major service cuts”, and just what exactly constitutes a “major” versus minor service cut is a fluid question whose answer all depends on who’s asking and when. It may be a library branch, but just a little, underused library branch or it could be a bus route, but an underused bus route. The mayor and his people are big on finding ‘efficiencies’ and ‘re-allocating’ resources in order to not be forced to say the word ‘cuts’.. unless it’s preceded with the word ‘tax’.

3) The profligacy of the David Miller administration which our current mayor railed on and on about while campaigning for the job is now going to help fund Mayor Ford’s 2011 operating budget with all its tax and service cuts. Yep, well over half of the proposed $700+ million of revenue is coming from the surpluses of the last two years. “A surprise surplus,” Miller foes screeched, “is just a sign of fiscal incompetence.” Burning through said surpluses to paste over tax and services cuts, though, is just the neo-conservative way and surest sign of being prudent fiscal managers.

4) The TTC is in a whole lot of fucking trouble and having such an avid anti-transit administration now in place overseeing it promises nothing but a continued downward spiral. Many capital projects remain unfunded including the mayor’s “Transportation City” subway plan. There’s a proposal already made to scale back many bus routes despite a recent uptick in the system’s ridership. The only thing the new administration seems to agree with its predecessor about is that our transit system needs substantially more funding help from senior levels of government like most other non-3rd World countries have. You know, the ones with much, much better transit than ours. What was kind of bitter joke during the campaign about Toronto having the best 1970s transit system in the 21st-century is now looking more and more like an entrenched reality.

All this as well as a 10 cent fare hike now on the table which both the mayor and TTC chair, Councillor Karen Stintz are none too happy about. But don’t worry, folks. I’ve got a good feeling that this is one being dimed to death we’re not going to face this year. The mayor and his faithful chair will beat it back over the course of the next 6 weeks or so and, conveniently, claim to have been looking out for the little guy just as other budget items are voted into place, full of fee increases and service decreases, many of which will have got lost in the rhetorical shuffle that always accompanies TTC fare increases.

5) This is the ‘easy’ budget. With all of its one-offs and ‘unsustainable sources’ of revenue (ie, the other guy’s surpluses), short of a miracle economic turnaround during the next year, it’s going to get a whole lot uglier. The mayor has left himself with very little wiggle room. On the plus side, with the new, expedited budget process, we’re going to find out about it much sooner and be able to warm up and get limber before we have to bend over, touch our toes and cough.

— by the numbersly submitted by Cityslikr

Political Genius Genus Evil

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In the afterglow of Rob Ford’s surprisingly convincing mayoral victory last week came the inevitable outpouring of ink and bytes about the whys and hows of his win, complete with a revelation of a “dirty tricks” controversy. Actually, let’s call it more of a contretemps or set-to, to lessen it slightly from such a harsh moniker but mostly to cement my downtowner elitist status. Kelly Grant’s exhaustive piece in the Globe and Mail revealed a campaign team that was highly disciplined, relentless in ferreting out where its support was, tireless in punching the divisive hot-button issues that set the agenda from Ford’s entry into the race.

While I hesitate to use the word ‘genius’, as its constant misapplication drains all meaning from it, for my purposes here, let’s do so. Political genius. Eliciting the question, why does so much political genius manifest itself as the evil variety? Squandered as it is, attempting to make silk purses from sows’ ears, foisting upon the voting public candidates clearly unfit for office and out of their depth. George W. Bush. Sarah Palin. And now, Rob Ford.

Imagine if the likes of Lee Atwater (may he be roaming swelteringly the halls of Hell still), Karl Rove and now the boys of the Rob Ford brain trust applied their significant skills to the betterment of society rather than to the detriment of it. But, of course, that instantly answers the above question. They have no interest in contributing positively to society. Their political genius comes from having to mask that simple fact. On a mission to drive back the gains made for the greater good by FDR’s New Deal, LBJ’s War on Poverty and PET’s Just Society (or any other government intent on making life a little fairer and more equitable), they dance and sing populist songs, with generically uplifting titles like Respect For Taxpayers while exemplifying none of it.

They are the political ‘Hidden Persuaders’, Vance Packard’s 1950s term for the marketers and ad men who convinced the public that cereals were the only breakfast food, cigarettes were the epitome of cool with health benefits to boot, and that consuming more of everything than we needed put us on the path of enlightened happiness. We applaud them for doing their jobs well, for convincing us to go against our best interests and better instincts and buy into a truly toxic, detrimental world view. Yep. They got us to put the shotgun barrel in our mouths but, damn, were they smooth!

I have little doubt that Rob Ford, like George W. before him on Ronald Reagan before him, truly believes that government in all its forms is the source of much that is wrong in society today. Raised on the teat of neo-conservatism with his beloved late father a small part of the Common Sense Revolution, Ford may be many things but disingenuous about his politics does not seem to be one of them. He is the perfect spokesman and front man for the movement of the privileged class to be embraced by a big chunk of the population that shares absolutely nothing in common with it.

What’s even more remarkable about this political sleight of hand is the timing of the current version of the trick. Economic calamity brought on by overly zealous free marketeering combined with governmental lapse of judgment and negligence of duty. Crushing private sector debt piled into the public purse, followed by immediate calls of out-of-control government spending and demands for cutbacks and rollbacks. A mere two years after a deep lingering recession brought on by neo-liberal/conservative politics, we’ve already internalized the counterintuitive belief that only neo-liberal/conservative policies and politicians can dig us out of the hole they helped us dig. It is truly a bravura performance, delivered by masters of their profession who should be richly rewarded for their outstanding efforts in pulling such a feat off.

Except that, they are amply enriched by the narrow interests they serve and protect. Except that, inevitably they’re much better at campaigning than they are governing and tend to leave big, heaping piles of steaming crap in their wake. Except that, society is that much worse off because of what it is they do, the dark arts they practice.

You can admire, even applaud, those whose brilliance is obvious even though their purpose is contemptible. The great villains are always our favourite characters. But what we really have to stop doing is handing them the keys to power. They aren’t in it to make the world, the city, the neighbourhood a better place for anyone else beside themselves, and those sharing their perspective, regardless of how much they try telling us otherwise.

People who use their talents for evil should not be expected to do good. It’s not in their nature. We need to stop expecting anything else from them. Experience should’ve told us that a long time ago.

— full of goodnessly submitted by Cityslikr