Tag Archives: The Clamshell

Irony 101

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Stop the Presses!

I was right in the middle of another post for today, desperately trying to set aside my agitation with the guest columnist op-ed by our budget chief, Mike Del Grande, in today’s Toronto Sun. Why, oh why do I insist on thumbing through the Sun before having a hearty breakfast? Get your tasks for the day done before sitting down with that paper because you know you’re going to be driven to distraction by it. Or at least, just go to the sports section first, ease yourself into the nonsense.

Besides, David Hains over at The Clamshell already took the budget chief’s piece to task. No need for a pile on. Just close the paper up, back away slowly and get on with your day…

But here’s the thing.

What exactly is Budget Chief Del Grande trying to accomplish, mewling and moaning about agenda driven media outlets in what is the most hyper-partisan newspaper in the city, the Toronto Sun? Oh, the Toronto Star is out to get the mayor. The CBC has ‘… lost their journalistic compass.’ This he has the temerity — no, the chutzpah — to write in the pages of the Toronto Sun?!

As I tweeted earlier this morning, Google ‘Toronto Sun’ and ‘David Miller’, see what pops up. “David Miller’s magical makeover”. “David Miller’s math still vefuddling.” “David Miller’s nightmare still unfolding before our eyes.” Better still, Google ‘Toronto Sun’ and ‘David Miller’ and ‘Sue-Ann Levy’. “The latest leftover bull from David Miller”.

So the budget chief takes to the pages of the same newspaper that hounded, derided, mocked the previous mayor, even going as far as running a cartoon that compared David Miller to Adolf Hitler (unable to find a copy of it, alas; only references to it), to decry the agenda driven motives of other media outlets? All this shows is that our budget chief is oblivious to the meaning of irony. He should’ve just stood inside a glass enclosed green house and threw rocks.

Actually, I’m wrong. What his piece in the Sun actually proves is that the budget chief is nothing but a rigid, small government ideologue whose intent all along was to cut the city down to size. “Our mayor was elected because voters perceived him as a simple guy,” the budget chief writes, “the people’s mayor, who would clean up City Hall.

But last year’s election is clearly not over for news outlets like the Star and CBC.

Apparently they cannot stand to think changes in the way City Hall operates are imminent, and they will do all they can, not to offer any alternative, but to derail them, simply for the pleasure of saying, ‘I told you so’.”

Only partially right, councillor. Mayor Ford may’ve been perceived as ‘a simply guy’ or ‘the people’s mayor, who would clean up City Hall’ but he was also elected because he said he could do all that with no service cuts, guaranteed. There were so many efficiencies to find that he could cut, trim, slash, burn and no one would notice. Easy. Toronto didn’t have a revenue problem. It had a spending problem. Remember when the mayor said that back on the campaign trail, councillor?

It’s not that the election isn’t over, Mr. Budget Chief. It’s that the mayor hasn’t lived up to his election promises. There was no talk from candidate Ford, out on the hustings, of any “tough medicine budget”. If there had been, do you think Rob Ford would now be mayor of this city? Or you’d be its budget chief?

Don’t think of it as an ‘anti-Mayor Ford agenda’, Councillor Del Grande. Think of it as ‘the chicks coming home to roost for another mendacious politician agenda’. That’s really the message you should be hearing.

— helpfully submitted by Cityslikr

The Awful Untruth

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Of all the responses we get here at All Fired Up in the Big Smoke, the pushback we receive when criticizing Mayor Ford, by far the most frequent… No, wait. The 2nd most frequent, just after ‘Why don’t you guys get a real job?’… tends to be, ‘Well, Miller did the same thing.’, Miller being the former mayor, David Miller. Whether it’s how Mayor Ford’s conducting business at council or City Hall or fiddling with the budget numbers. Whenever we level a critique his way, we inevitably hear, ‘Well, Miller did the same thing.’

To which, our initial response is: yeah, so? It doesn’t make it right. The former mayor also received plenty of criticism. In politics, two negatives do not—you get where I’m going with that.

Besides, wasn’t this mayor elected on a platform that included not doing business as usual? He was going to be sticking up for the little guy by putting it to the fat cats and lazy bureaucrats. He’d put an end to all the backroom deals. Clear and transparent would be the Ford Administration. No more game playing with the budget. No sudden finds of hundreds of millions of dollars. We were going to get an open and honest debate.

Step forward all ye steadfast Ford supporters, and with straight faces all, tell us your man has kept his word. Follow the bouncing ball on the sing-along that has been the 2012 police services budget debacle and belt out the coda that it’s all been on the up and up, yep, an open and honest debate. Without cracking a smile or a knowing grin. Tell us this is exactly what you voted for.

“It’s a huge reduction!” exclaims TPS board member, Councillor Frances Nunziata.

Wait, what? No. No, it isn’t, Councillor. Not only is the police services budget not facing ‘a huge reduction’, there’s no reduction at all. None. In fact, just the opposite. They’re getting an increase.

David Hains over at The Clamshell, Daniel Dale at the Toronto Star and Ford For Toronto’s Matt Elliott all go into much more interesting detail than I can but here’s the nuts and bolts of the situation. Mayor Ford demanded a 10% reduction to all city departments based on their 2011 budgets. Putting it to the fat cats and lazy bureaucrats. Police Chief Bill Blair announced he could do no such thing without laying off front line police officers and endangering public safety. So instead, he asked for an increase. A modest one by the police standards but an increase nonetheless.

All hell breaks loose. A showdown seems imminent between the mayor and police chief. Hardcore Ford ally and TPS vice-chair Michael Thompson plays the heavy, letting it be known that the police budget faces the same pressure as every other department and agency in the city. There must be a 10% cut or else…

Last week’s TPS meeting to deal with the impasse was postponed at the last minute. Details of some sort of compromise leak out. We learn that the mayor’s OK with the 10% cut being carried out over a two year period which, if my math skills are up to snuff, isn’t 10% but 5%. It’s an offer made to no one else on the city payroll.

Then comes yesterday’s news of an agreement. The chief has found almost 5% in cuts, 4.6% to be precise for the 2012 budget, through attrition, a 10% reduction in senior management and a host of other bits and bites. No layoffs of police. The city’s safety has not been compromised. The rest of the cuts will come next year.

“It’s a huge reduction!” exclaims TPS board member, Councillor Frances Nunziata.

OK, actually the councillor’s right. It is a huge reduction. Just not from the 2011 budget which is what the mayor called  for. It’s nothing more than a reduction in the original ask from the TPS. The one everyone got up in arms about and said wasn’t possible. The 1.6% increase Chief Blair proposed that, apparently, put his job in jeopardy. He scaled that back 4.6% and settled instead for a mere .6% increase.

An increase, folks. The Police Services Board approved an increase to the police budget not a cut which every other department is facing. There’s no cut to the police budget. There’s just less of an increase.

“It’s a huge reduction!” Shut up, Frances. Doesn’t matter how many times you say it. It simply isn’t true.

What does Mayor Ford have to say about such an about face? Who knows? He was coaching football at the time. How about his hard-assed enforcer on the TPS board, Michael Thomspon? Away on family business.

So what this says is that the mayor holds the police to an entirely different standard than the rest of the city departments. He boasts about giving them a pay increase while everyone else on the city payroll must make do with less. For the overall budget to balance, somebody’s going to have to give up more to make up for the TPS increase. (Nope. Don’t say it, Frances. It’s an increase. Shh-shh!)

Now, maybe Mayor Ford values the police more than any other employee of the city. Perhaps his worldview is such that happy police make for a happy town. I wouldn’t agree but there it is.

Or maybe the mayor’s afraid of the police. Butting heads with them would put a serious dent in his law and order veneer. They might remind voters that on the campaign trail the mayor promised 100 new police officers and delivered none. Bad optics all round.

But the straight-shooting, tell it like it is mayor ain’t talking. Instead he’s hiding behind monumental spin, trying to convince us that an increase is really a decrease, black is white, up is down and there we go through the looking glass, people.

Just like every other politician Rob Ford railed about as a candidate, saying one thing to get elected and doing the exact opposite when in office. The kind of politician he pledged not to be. It’s all just business as usual.

— matter of factly submitted by Cityslikr

Did You Know Our Budget Chief Is A Chartered Accountant?

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Anyone who follows us regularly here at All Fired Up in the Big Smoke knows we possess little good will toward our budget chief, Councillor Mike Del Grande. We don’t care for his politics. His gruff, curmudgeonly demeanour is not in the least bit lovable. On top of that, he’s from Scarborough… That’s a joke. Some of our best friends reside in Scarborough. OK, that’s not true either. Point is, we have nothing against Scarborough. But the axe is huge that we have to grind with Mike Del Grande.

Our dislike of him is not entirely pathological. We are willing to step up and say, hear, hear, councillor, well done. Which is what we do now. According to the Toronto Star’s Royson James, Budget Chief Del Grande admitted freely and openly that the mayor’s move to seize waterfront land through the Toronto Port Lands Corporation is all about the money. “The truth, [Del Grande] said, is he needs revenues from the sale of the Port Lands to fix holes in his budget. In essence, a money grab.”

There it is, up front and out there. Team Ford has turned its beady eyes toward the waterfront in the hopes of a quick cash infusion to plug upcoming budget holes. Simple as that. Kudos, Mr. Budget Chief, for cutting through what amounts to all the other bullshit and pretend rationalizations.

An honest to goodness thanks from us to you.

Our admiration and gratitude is cut short, however, with the knowledge that this course of action is something the budget chief approves of. David Hains of The Clamshell took him to task in our comments section in yesterday’s post and we can’t offer up much of anything further but do think it bears repeating. Over and over and over again.

“But while Del Grande is honest,” Hains writes, “he’s not principled. He frequently mentions his CA — a good asset on council — but any accounting textbook says you don’t solve operating deficits with one-time sales of long-term assets. Where does that leave us next year? Weren’t we promised creative and innovative solutions to make the city more efficient? Didn’t Ford, Holyday, Minnan-Wong, Del Grande, Thompson et al frequently criticize Miller for one-time cash infusions to solve the budget?”

How many public pronouncements does the budget chief make without referring to the fact that he is a chartered accountant? It is a constant refrain. Don’t worry about our budget woes, folks. I am a chartered accountant. The implication being, that anyone who isn’t a C.A. or who deigns to criticize the budget chief doesn’t know what they’re talking about, doesn’t understand the numbers he’s dealing with. Moan about all the ‘widows and orphans’ you want but a chartered accountant is obliged to only see the numbers.

You see, Mike Del Grande C.A. is all about budgetary discipline. We just want our ‘cupcakes’.  He’s the adult in the room. We’re the needy, greedy children. Our budget chief is a chartered accountant. Has he told you that lately?

As soon as he signed on to the reckless ways of the Ford Administration, Councillor Del Grande lost all credibility as a prudent fiscal manager. He voted along with the mayor to repeal the VRT, a small but not insignificant revenue stream for the city’s coffers. He agreed to freeze property taxes. He OK’d using the previous year’s budget surplus to paper over holes that he was part of creating this year. When questioned about such dubious bookkeeping practices, the budget chief, like every other member of Team Ford, blames the previous administration for any and all problems.

Literally, he passes the buck backward and is now threatening to do so forward by sanctioning a quick, cheap sale of valuable city assets for very, very short term gain. I’d like the budget chief to point us all in the direction of any of the books he studied on his way to becoming a chartered accountant (Did you know that our budget chief is a chartered accountant? I hadn’t mentioned that in almost two paragraphs.) teaching that kind of economic approach to building a solid portfolio. Cut revenue. Sell assets. Prosper.

It’s impossible to know if Budget Chief Del Grande is just simply a bad C.A. or if he’s ignoring everything he learned in school for the chance to finally sit near the seat of power or if it’s nothing more than a blind adherence to radical right wing ideology that renders his diploma meaningless. Whatever the reason, chartered accountants everywhere should cringe in embarrassment that he so publicly counts himself as part of their ranks. It gives the entire profession a bad name.

Chartered accountancy, it’ll recover. Unfortunately, I’m not as convinced the city will.

— by the numbersly submitted by Cityslikr