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Ford's cost-cutting promises resonated with the business community in Toronto, winning him an endorsement from the National Post. That he was perceived as the most business-friendly candidate had a lot more to do with his victory, IMO, than homophobia.
I totally disagree with this. He wasn't the candidate of business. Smitherman was. I'm sure we'll see that when Smitherman releases his donors list. Ford managed to get the Post and Sun to endorse him because they'll endorse anyone that isn't a Liberal. But serious business people are scare shitless of a Ford mayoralty. The reality is, Ford was elected largely by low and middle income Torontonians. The message there is that with the on-the-ground recession still in full force and many people still struggling, people are sick and tired of spending thousands of dollars on going-away parties for departing councillors, bike lanes that most people didn't really want in the first place, construction projects that never get finished, bunny suits for councillors, etc, etc.
I agree.....Smitherman was the establishment candidate........Most people were anti establishment. Left or right.
Ford looks like he is calming down lets see who he chooses for the plum jobs.
This tendancy is evident one province over from you. In Winnipeg, several NDP-backed councillors failed to take seats that are traditionally safe for the NDP. In Brandon, every incumbent who was challenged lost. In Dauphin, not only was the incumbent mayor thrown out, but former Mayor and MP Inky Mark lost as well.
Wow, talk about a city divided. Funny how the Smitherman vote vaguely resembles someone giving the finger. But shouldn't that be the other way around?
http://torontoist.com/2010/10/which_wards_voted_for_who_for_mayor.php
This long article in the Globe about how Smitherman blew it is quite an interesting read:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/toronto/city-votes/city-vot...
I was surprised to learn in the article that one of Smitherman's "strategists" was Bob Penner of Stratcom who used to poll for the NDP before they switched to Viewpoints and who also was a "key strategist" for Barbara Hall in 2003 (a lot of good that did) and that another "strategist" was Sean Hill who is in the NDP as well and used to work for Mihevc. It also mentions a plethorsa of big "L" Liberals and Tories in the campaign. It all sounds like an extreme case of "too many cooks spoil the broth"!! Enjoy.
All Ford had to do to win an endorsement from the National Post was have a pulse
I wasn't at all surprised by that. Indeed, these boys were doing everything they could to use their "left" connections to wring endorsements from the labour movement and left wing personalities. It looked like in the case of Mehevc it may have worked. Stratcom should be put on the left "no fly" list, and punished for their indiscretion IMO. Their organization is built on left wing causes and the union movement money, and they should definitely be cut off. If they are going to shill for the Goldman Sachs agenda, I don't see why they should be rewarded with future contracts.
Pissed-off in Fordland
on a completely different note, i did not notice Smitherman's husband during his concession speech..just his child..is he ashamed to be gay? there is a sense that he tried too hard to be like Ford he is almost ashamed of his family..
And character like Adam Giambrone feed into the cynicism, and the fact that Miller stood up for this guy was a mistake in character judgement. If you want to build a city and ask people to trust you with their money, you better choose someone who doesnt treat women like crap or have a trophy wife for a campaign , those things do not go well with the regular voters.
anyways, i agree that the car registration fee is a problem, anything a politican that can promise that will save a few bucks will be appealing to the poor and lower middle class because people are not listenning to anything else other than how they can save some extra money..
nice zing cueball...heh,heh. had i expanded further on that, there are two things that transcend socio-economic classes, and that is social conservatism and the "business" mentality.
In my 25 years as a shop steward, i've only known a single handful of fellow members that ever voted NDP, and about the same who weren't socially conservative. With the erosion of full time work through employers exploiting the "contract worker" loophole enabling them to get away with not paying benefits or overtime to part-time workers, more and more middle to low income folks are seeing themselves as "businesspeople" or "independent contractors" who think they have no use for unions in this dog-eat-dog world. no free rides etc.etc. they have drunk the neo-liberal koolaide and can't see through the rhetorical smokescreen the business sector has thrown up. They now truly believe that union members are the "elite" because of their job security and higher wages and benefits, not getting for a second that they could have the same if they did the same work standing up to the corporate class and organising in their better interest. The triumph of individualism through it's relentless promotion in the corporate owned media in our time has left everyone, as was said above, isolated and afraid and jealous of the "other".
The social conservative vote sunk Slitherman (in addition to his own self...how many Liberals/NDPers that he's pissed off with his style over the years didn't vote for him?), but i think the "business" vote sunk Pantalone. Pantalone was tagged early by the 7 years long meme war against Miller by the Post, Globe, and Star that the City was a mess, and it was all Miller's fault, and his campaign never got around it. He represented the percieved anti-business establishment at City Hall that just wants to raise your taxes and gouge you with a vehicle tax.
If the left and progressives need to learn anything about Ford winning the mayor's job in the supposedly most diverse city in North America, and Harper consistantly winning federally, is that Canada is a tolerant country, not an accepting nor progressive one. It's right there if you want to see it. Just take off the politically correct glasses and the civility the Left promotes and you'll find it staring you right in the face ready to give you a good wallop.
Millionaire Doug Ford is "donating" his councillor's salary to "charity" (tax deductible of course). And now Georgio Mammoliti's going to give up his suburban constituency office to "save money". Why not give up their City Hall offices too? The lobbyists and contractors are really going to need some space and it's not really fair for them to be traveling back and forth now that Toronto is open for business again. According to the millionaire Mayor-elect, a councillor's job is only part-time anyway. Perhaps the councillors could be moved to a soon to be renovated section of the City Hall garage?
I'm not sure that's good to explain more than a few percentage points. Smitherman's legitimate negatives seem much more important.
Could they? As a union member in the private sector I can tell you what would happen if we got pushy. It might well happen even if we don't but it becomes more likely the higher our costs go. Some or all of the jobs we do would become subject to contracting out, the ones that don't absolutely have to be here for whatever reason going to companies in India or the Phillippines. This is something government employers have been slow to do for various reasons and fairly or not, it creates a privileged class of workers.
Sometimes. Not in Port Hope or Cobourg, where the incumbent mayor was re-elected (Port Hope) or incumbent deputy mayor moved up on the mayor's retirement (Cobourg). The odd incumbent councillor who ran one time too many lost, but there was no general dissatisfaction here.
So what's different about Port Hope and Cobourg?
Not just Port Hope and Cobourg.
The incumbents were also returned in Waterloo Region (Waterloo, Kitchener, Cambridge) and Guelph, and a lot of Conservative "suits", newbies with their hold the tax lines were repulsed.
If I tried to organize a union at my part time job, i would be fired immediately and I would be kicked out of my rental or use my credit card to pay my bills. Um, yeah, not going to happen. Unless if Karl Marx is coming back to the dead and can borrow m som money.
What does Karl Marx have to do with you not being able to form a Union at your work? Other then the fact that in his writings, you can find out why the capitalist make it hard to form a Union.
It's going to be exhausting to stay at this level of enraged for the next 4 years.
Fuck.
Closing for length.
P.S. FUCK!