All Fried Up In The Big Smoke

Less political. More fictional.

Corruption

Posted on June 11, 2014 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

Where does the corruption start?

We have had a provincial election campaign full of corruption talk – some may be legit, some of it shorthand for “We disagree with a decision that was made”. It is a word tossed around easily. Nothing hangs heavier on a public figure than the accusation of corruption.

An all-encompassing smear, corruption is. It doesn’t necessarily have to mean cash-stuffed envelopes exchanging hands in some hotel room although that’s kind of the image it evokes. No. Corruption can and often does simply mean putting politics, personal or party, before principle.

So the Liberal government at Queen’s Park faces the voters in tomorrow’s election, trying to run from the shadows of eHealth, Ornge, the gas plants. Rightfully so, too. I’ve heard very few, if any, defenders. At the only leaders’ debate of this campaign, the Liberal premier, Kathleen Wynne, spent the first 15 minutes apologizing for her involvement in the billion dollar gas plant boondoggle, to use the parlance of our corrupt times.

Clearly, it is time for the Liberals to go. Clean house. Renew and regenerate.

“We endorse Tim Hudak, for Onatrio,” states the Toronto Sun. “A Conservative government for Ontario,” declares the National Post. “The Globe’s editorial board endorses Tim Hudak’s Progressive Conservatives,” proclaims the Globe and Mail.

There you have it. Three out of the four Toronto daily newspapers offer up their choice of alternatives to the Liberal government. Tim Hudak and the Progressive Conservatives. Hardly surprising, for the most part, given that all three sit on the right side of the political spectrum. It takes some doing for a conservative politician or party not to secure their endorsement. Remember Rob Ford back in 2010?

It makes perfect sense. Except for just one small, niggling thing. The Progressive Conservative platform is built on a foundation of lies. Its signature set piece, the Million Jobs Plan, is total fabrication, debunked by everyone and anyone regardless of political stripe. Even the endorsements acknowledge it.

“We disagree with Hudak’s declaration he can guarantee one million jobs,” confesses the Sun. “Governments don’t create jobs.”

“But Mr. Hudak is also running on a platform of simplistic slogans,” admits the Globe and Mail. “The Million Jobs Plan has been rightly mocked for failures of basic arithmetic.”

“Notwithstanding some of the glitches in Mr. Hudak’s campaign materials,” shrugs the National Post. ‘Glitches’ in his campaign materials? Are you fucking kidding me?

Essentially, what these newspapers are suggesting to us is, get rid of this lying, corrupt, incompetent government and replace it with a lying, mathematically suspect party. Why? looktheotherway Well, because politics.

Is that not the very definition of, if not corruption, corrupt thinking? We abhor that kind of double-dealing and chicanery. This kind of double-dealing and chicanery though.. ?

I might even be able to forgive them their partisanship if Tim Hudak had stepped up and admitted to the accounting errors at the heart of his campaign centrepiece. But he didn’t. He brushed them aside with an easy, breezy ‘everybody’s got a theory’ nonchalance. All the glitchy campaign materials had been printed up. The TV ads shot.

What kind of government does the Toronto Sun, the Globe and Mail, the National Post expect Tim Hudak to form if he gets elected on the basis of deceit and a dodging of responsibility? Isn’t this exactly what we’re angry at the Liberals about? That’s not what you might consider cleaning house. It’s more like changing tenants while ignoring the red flags in their letters of reference.

How can we demand that our politicians stop lying to us, stop putting politics before good governance, cease and desist with their corrupt practices when our very own opinion-makers so blatantly skirt around open and honest debate? At the heart of each of these editorial endorsements sits the uncomfortable truth. Some lies are preferable to other lies. When our side does it, that’s just playing the game, yo. When they do it? Scandalous and corrupt.

We can hardly expect ethics from our politicians when it’s a practice we don’t adhere to ourselves.

— rottingly submitted by Cityslikr

Hudakery: Not A New Cocktail

Posted on June 3, 2014 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

Leading up to tonight’s provincial election debate, Progressive Conservative and Opposition leader Tim Hudak laid bare his (and presumably his party’s) approach to governing and government in an interview with Metro newspapers. And it ain’t pretty, folks. In fact, I’d call it completely and utterly devoid of substance, intelligence and imagination.

Oh yeah. Let’s not overlook a fundamental lack of understanding of how exactly our democratic society operates.

“Look, why do we pay taxes in the first place?” Hudak told interviewer Jessica Smith Cross. “We pay taxes because we’re generous Ontarians and we want to make sure it helps the most vulnerable populations. People who may be sick, people with disabilities, seniors.”

Taxation as a charitable donation.

Look, my heart bleeds for the unfortunates in our society. The sick. The disabled. The elderly. What taxpayer wouldn’t give up a little bit of their hard-earned money to help out the needy?

Everything and everyone else, apparently, goes about their business, fueled by the absence of government and magic beans.

“Leadership is about setting priorities,” says Hudak. “And I think we’re going to be looking for a politician who’s going to be straight-up and say, we can’t fund every project with this amount of money.”

You want transit improvements or full day kindergarten? Tell that to your ill, wheelchair bound grandmother. Government is a zero sum game. There’s no room to help the disadvantaged and build a healthier, more equitable society. How do we continue to cut taxes and deliver more services? The answer is, you can’t. Tim Hudak knows that. He’s an honest broker and a trained economist. Facts and figures are his forte.

And about that 1,000,000 Jobs Plan, Tim?

“I stand behind our numbers and I think that it’s been justified by other economists [or not] who say that’s the ballpark of what this will create.”

Ahhh, ballpark numbers. The stuff master’s degrees in economics are made of, evidently. When his claim of creating 120,000 new jobs with further corporate tax cuts was called into question by the Conference Board of Canada – the Conference Board of Canada, people – Hudak blithely responds, “Whether it’s 80, 112, 120 or 150 thousand, [the CBB says 15-20 thousand, but whatevs] I think we agree it’s going to create jobs.”

When you’re also pledging to cut 100,000 public sector jobs, the actual number of jobs you’re promising to create does matter. Twenty thousand minus one hundred thousand equals minus eighty thousand jobs. Kinda puts you in a hole as you build toward that million jobs mark you’ve set for yourself.

Tim Hudak’s hidebound attachment to questionable economic theories seems to be matched by his dubious grasp of democracy.

Like many of his federal conservative brethren, Hudak has an abhorrence of the idea of a governing coalition in a minority government scenario. “I think that’s cheating voters…” Hudak said. “My position is clear — no coalitions. We will follow whatever the voters tell us they want.”

And if the voters tell you they want a minority government again on June 12^th, Mr. Hudak? Regardless of plenty of parliamentary precedent being in place for coalitions, in fact, there’s one operating right now over there in Westminster, I do believe, it’s still cheating in your mind? “I say no to coalitions, let the voters decide.”

You might think that, given his inability to come to terms with traditional aspects of democracy, Hudak might be open to opportunities for it to evolve with the changing times. Like ranked ballots and proportional representation. You might think. You’d be wrong, of course.

“I think that voters should decide who they want to be elected, whoever gets the most votes wins.”

But Tim, voters would still decide who they wanted to elect under a different form of ballots, it’d just be…

*sigh*

Never mind.

Look, I’m not stumping here for either of the other two parties currently occupying space at Queen’s Park. The ruling Liberals don’t appear to have learned anything during their transition from Dalton McGuinty to Kathleen Wynne, and seem determined to continue putting politics before policy. And the NDP, I’m at a loss to explain anything they’re doing at the moment.

But Tim Hudak and the Progressive Conservatives have a fundamental disconnect to what I believe is the role of government in our lives. They see it as alien and an imposition. A beast to be tamed and shrivelled down to irrelevance. A lonely outpost for the destitute in a world governed by laissez faire free markets. Collaboration and co-operation take a back seat to competition.

Tim Hudak refuses to make the distinction between bad governance and government. It’s one and the same for him. He’s not someone we should put anywhere near the levers of power.

— submitted by Cityslikr

Crazy Like A Crazy Person Or Just Crazy?

Posted on May 19, 2014 by "Brother" of Cityslikr

There’s that old aphorism, credited variously to Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw or Winston Churchill, that goes something to the effect: If you’re not a socialist when you’re twenty, there’s something wrong with your heart; if you’re still a socialist when you’re forty, there’s something wrong with your head.

I’d like to riff on that, thinking about modern day conservatives. If you’re a conservative these days, regardless of age, eighteen to eighty, there’s something wrong with both your ticker and noggin.

I mean, how else to explain that a good 30% of the Ontario electorate are still telling pollsters they are willing to vote for Tim Hudak’s Progressive Conservatives in next month’s provincial election. This, a week+ into his campaign of the axing our way back to prosperity plan. 100,000 public sector jobs gone. Corporate taxes slashed to the lowest in North America. LRT plans for Toronto, Mississauga, Hamilton and Brampton? Gone, gone, gone and gone.

Never mind that none of this is good or sound policy. His 1, 000, 000 Jobs Plan is laughable even by some of his strongest supporters. While his threats appear to be real, his promises are empty.

Now, there are all sorts of reasons to want to see the governing Liberals chased from office. But Tim Hudak isn’t offering a better alternative. He’s merely being spiteful. It’s vengeance, he wants, not better governance.

What do his supporters think this would accomplish? Zero economic benefits, at best, and there’s a lot of wishful thinking and blind faith going into even seeing that as a possibility. His transit plans for the GTHA won’t make a dent in the region’s congestion woes. He’s even admitted there are going to be bigger class sizes in schools if he has his way.

To what end?

The eradication of the province’s deficit and any semblance of the last decade of Liberal rule, it seems.

Neither of which, by almost every count, will contribute in any positive way to the daily lives of average Ontarians.

That’s kind of the very definition of cutting off your nose to spite your face, isn’t it?

Even while his policy announcements raised more eyebrows than they did serious consideration, Mr. Hudak has been applauded in some circles for his forthrightness, his no pulling of punches, his boldness in laying out his plans.

“But its value is mostly for what it signals of his resolve,” writes Andrew Coyne in the National Post, referring to the pledge to cut 100,000 jobs for the public sector.

The resolve is the thing, you see. Not its effectiveness or necessity. Who cares about the economic results as long as you do what you say you’re going to do, ridiculous or not. determined

Now, let me state right here that I’m in no way comparing Tim Hudak to Adolph Hitler aside from a stylistic similarity. Whatever else his faults might’ve been, Hitler was a politician of certain resolve too. He offered up a few solutions of his own, back in the day. So what if one in particular was a little genocide-y? He said he was going to do it. He did it. You can’t fault the guy for a lack of resolve.

What is the appeal of a politician full of bad ideas, unflinchingly out there promoting them? Bad ideas are bad ideas whether you yell them to the mountain tops or keep them to a parlour whisper.

What exactly has the conservative voter become that this is now seen as a constructive attribute? Loudly, proudly pronouncing nonsense. Has it really come down to a case of my guy, right or wrong? Positive change isn’t their goal so much as any change, good or bad, is better than no change.

I get why nearly 3/4s of us want to see a new government at Queen’s Park. The stench of scandal, misspending and cover up hangs over the Liberal government. But frankly, I’d take that over the smell of scorched earth which I feel is what’s being offered to us by Tim Hudak. It isn’t an alternative. It’s a vendetta.

— fearfully submitted by Cityslikr