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Plus it would be wildly entertaining to watch.
One could argue that Rocco Rossi is the most rightwing candidate in the race, as Rossi is the only who supports privatizing Toronto Hydro.
Well, he's definitely the most "upper class elite" candidate, i.e. the one who, on paper at least, would paradoxically play better with the "Harper Richview" crowd. Whereas Ford's more of a "little guy" Reagan Democrat populist--a lot of his voters are the kind who might have gone for Ed Philip a generation ago...
Rossi is also the candiate least likely to do best in his "home" riding (which is St. Paul's).
In the case of Vancouver the relevant entity to look to would be the Metro Vancouver board, and that has 37 members.
I'm not sure on what basis it needs downsizing. Yes, it's expensive but even making it disappear completely doesn't make a whole lot of difference to the city budget. Council could stand to be faster and more functional but I think the reasons for that have more to do with disagreements as to how the city should be run and what's important that aren't just going ot go away as a result of there being fewer councillors to express them.
It's a pretty academic discussion anyway because it's not going to happen. There's no way half of council is going to vote to eliminate itself. There's not much in it for the provincial government to impose that change.
Ford's brain trust speaks (referenced here). Hmm, who do I trust more on transit: this guy, or Steve Munro?
Rossi has an ad on www.democraticunderground.com which says he's not 'rightwing' in the way rob ford, and ford promoters adler/stafford/oakley (hate radio) etc, are.
Rightwing isn't bad, in itself. The problem with the typical, harper style rightwinger is the endless variations on truth they use up to try to defraud their supporters, and we too, needless to say.
"PLUS Smitherman would gratuitously try to knee cap anyone with NDP ties at every opportunity and try to create a Toronto Liberal Party."
Funny, Stockholm, I thought the current Ont Libs were a Toronto party....
They are - but do you really want to sign a formal Liberal Party of Toronto running candidates under the Liberal party banner in all 44 wards - all sworn to vote for 100% of what Smitherman wants?
I wouldn't simply dismiss Rob Ford and say that he will fail on all his agendas because he's unintelligent. That's a bad strategic play. Instead, we should all be engaging to create an alternative we want to see. Grooming real alternatives involves seriously looking at what current candidates are offering.
ROB FORD
A) Promise: Cut taxes and Government spending.
Problems:
- Fiscal austerity doesn't grow a city. The real question we need to answer is what investments do we need to make now, to get the city we want to see in 5 to 10 years. I think "investments" in transit, social/city services, arts, et al will give more than their returns for the life of the investment. Imagine not having the Yonge University subway lines. What if they didn't make that investment back in the 50s.
- Everyone makes promises, especially to cut taxes (land transfer tax is the only one that should definitely go) and gov't spending. George Bush famously promised to cut taxes, spending, but expanded both by more than 50% in his term. And Barack Obama who famously rose to power on "hope" and "promise", has also broken most of his promises.
- He doesn't have a structured analysis of where to allocate funds for which programmes , for a given tax revenue stream.
- The spending analysis he has on his site is what councillors spend of their alloted amount (a blame game). We can reduce councillor's spending budgets if it bothers people. But I want to see the overall city spending, lending etc. I'm sure councillor budgets will be miniscule in that pie
B) Promise: Introduce a Customer Service focus to City Hall
Problem:
- All the candidates, including George Smithermann, Sarah Thompson and Rocco Rossi have advocated a more customer focused approached to City Hall. Rocco Rossi was the first that I remember, followed by Sarah Thompson
- Being close to the "User Experince" (part of Customer Service) industry, I know there are a lot of structural / admin tasks that have to be tackled in order to get Customer Service right. Things like License registration (for Businesses, etc), Zoning (which is currently being reformed) have to be tackled and are tricky to get right. Rob Ford has not discussed any of these or any other things that actually have to do with Customer Service.
C) Promise: Downsize Council from 44 to 22 Councillors
Problem:
- Removing half of Council doesn't guarantee that only the bad councillors go. Statistically, there would then only be 11 bad councillors if there were 22 prevously (If the downsizing is done on a district basis (2 neighbouring districts are represented by 1 councillor)).
- Ford doesn't address the issue of representation. Will 2 wards be represented by 1 councillor?
- Reducing salaries doesn't guarantee that City Hall will work any better. Any organisation's effectiveness depends on it's structure, not the number of members in it's organisational unit.
General Problems
** makes too many mistakes of low complexity ( a reasonably intelligent person wouldn't make these mistakes ):
1. Ford stated he was a people person, answering thousands of constituents calls over the past few years. When Rossi pointed out that that meant 100s of calls a day, every day for that period, he didn't apologise for making an untrue statement, just continued on.
2. In this video ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8EpSdyB0zY ), Ford fights with a journalist. That was due to the fact that Ford was caught making an untrue statement about a city councillor. Instead of addressing the discrepancy, he picked a fight about his weight.
3. Promised to help obtain illegal substances for an AIDS sufferer. I don't know if he was speaking out of compassion or what, but you have to know how an illegal drugs claim will look on anybody especially while running for mayor. Whether or not you agree with current drug laws, I think this speaks to Ford's judgement.
** Rob Ford's lead policy analyst advocated selling off the TTC to the private sector. Didn't care that people would lose out on service. Ford's campaign has distanced itself from said comments. But you have to be worried that the campaign would have to distance itself from positions of it's top policy analyst.
** Planning and Transit. I haven't heard Ford say anything intelligible about Urban Planning ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_planning ), the profession and mechanics of how a city integrates land use, transportation, etc to improve the built, social and economic environment. When asked about this, he mostly talks about successfully running his own business - again avoiding the question on an important issue.
Summary
** I DO agree with Ford that there should be fiscal responsibility. Specifically, I agree that the increase in land transfer tax should go, and that subways are the way to go (for major lines) as opposed to light rail.
** I also agree that City Council should be making efficiencies in Customer Service. But this takes more than just inspirational phrases - "leadership and accountability" ( "hope" and "change" anyone? ). This involves understanding and tackling real issues like land use and zoning laws, document management & transparency (ex: getting web access to court decisions, zoning history, etc), etc ).
But Rob Ford fails in my mind on my first and biggest golden rule for leaders. If I don't hear a structural analysis (taxes, gov't spending, whatever), that's my first and biggest politician red flag Also, a bombastic politician talking to an angry public is one of the most dangerous things in politics. I think Rob Ford is well intentioned (in his own mind), but would make an atrocious Mayor. A Harold Ballard for the City of Toronto.
Now, what alternatives can we create?
Quote of the year.
Rob Ford 911 Calls Raise Questions
http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1108648--911-calls-to-ford-s-home-a-...
"Early Christmas morning, police were called to the home of Mayor Rob Ford about a reported domestic dispute. It was the second such call in as many months.."
But wait, there's more.
From the Ford-friendly Toronto Sun:
Wow, spot the code words.
Update from the Toronto Star, basically the same story without the ass kissing.
Fucking hell fuck.
Just got this from a friend: City Council Reverses Many Key Ford Cuts
excerpt:
In a stunning loss for Mayor Rob Ford and his allies, in one of debate councillors have reversed a significant raft of cuts he was pushing to include in the 2012 budget. Among them: closures of shelters, daycare spaces, and pools, cuts to community grants (to fund things like HIV-prevention services), a major cut to the library system, and a major cut to the TTC. Not all of those cuts were fought back: the library budget is still scaling back on staff and collections, and perhaps most prominently the TTC will still need to reduce service on three dozen bus routes, but the full force of the original draft budget has been substantially blunted.
You mean almost none of the cuts were scaled back, just a mere 15mil