Ford Desecration Pt IV - the march to Detroit continues

Perhaps his opponents will return to analyzing the reasons for Ford's popularity and ways to mobilize against the anti-people policies that he represents, instead of cheering from the sidelines when he commits a technical conflict of interest error, or when some non-existent video shows him using (gasp) illegal drugs.

Tiresome sideshows.

Unionist wrote:

Perhaps his opponents will return to analyzing the reasons for Ford's popularity and ways to mobilize against the anti-people policies that he represents, instead of cheering from the sidelines when he commits a technical conflict of interest error, or when some non-existent video shows him using (gasp) illegal drugs.

Tiresome sideshows.

yep fighting battles in the "gray zone" only alienate would be supporters. this whole moral majority outrage over this gags me.

Because then there is no difference between them and us and principled people will cease to vote for us whatsoever. 

Like when the vote is split in many elections letting the tories win because no one can distinguish which of the opposition is best

Junkyard Dog wrote:

Again, do you suppose the Fords and the Sun, et al, would be this gentle, or respectful of boundaries, treating it as some inexplicable out-of-the-blue tragedy (and not some personal failing) if this were happening to a leftist

Hard to say about the Fords and the Sun, but I do suspect that certain posters here at Babble would be throwing plenty of bricks "if this were happening to a leftist".

.

Good post in the Grid from Edward Keenan about Ford fucking up the TCHC file.  It's a sad read actually, given the suffering people have experienced due to the mismanagement there.  That said, I used to work in low income housing, and it is a challenge.  TCHC was far from perfect, but it was better in many ways than the private non-profit I was involved with.  Still, from this article, it sounds like mismanagement from the top was a factor.

There's also another post on the issue that Junkyard Dog and Unionist have commented on.  The article is good, but goes on a bit too long.  Keenan has flip flopped on this a couple of times, since he's struggled with the issue.  He continues to struggle with it, as shown by the length of the article and numerous analogies within it, but ultimately comes to a decision (he favours Unionist's take on the situation).  Here's a quote from the struggles he has:

Quote:

the governance of Canada’s largest city will not be decided by courts weighing a decision about the disposition of $3,150 in donations to a charity. In big-picture, general, terms, this doesn’t seem like the wrong outcome to this case. The ballot box seems like a more just place to make decisions about who leads us. And yet nothing in particular seems right about this conclusion, either. Someone—the mayor of Toronto—broke the ethics laws meant to ensure government acts to serve citizens rather than their own interests, and he will suffer no penalty for it. If we aren’t enforcing the rules when they are broken, what is the use of having them?

Anyway, it's an interesting article.  Not sure if I agree with him, but I sometimes like his writing, which is why I put it forward here.

I believe him.

Mayor Rob Ford says Liberals ‘blindsided’ him over funding for Toronto Mayor Rob Ford accuses Premier Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government of “blindsiding” him on a change to funding arrangements for the city of Toronto

http://www.thestar.com/news/city_hall/2013/06/24/live_mayor_rob_ford_mee...

John Tory considers mayoralty, but stresses no decision has been made  

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/tory-admitts-he-considering-...

Is this for real?

A campaign organizer who won't identify himself. 

Karen Stintz off and running in Toronto mayoral race: 

TTC chair Karen Stintz is already on the 2014 election trail in a campaign to defeat Rob Ford and Olivia Chow in Toronto mayoral contest.

 “People like her theme of fiscal responsibility and they like the idea of having a mayor who knows they have to respect voters and respect the image of the city,” says the political consultant, who spoke only on condition of anonymity.

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2013/06/20/karen_stintz_off_an...

Is there anyone even left at that office now?

One of the upstanding citizens Ford posed with in the infamous crackhouse photo has just pleaded guilty to manslaughter:

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/man-tied-rob-ford-scandal-pleads-guilty-manslaughter-153422524.html

He cut a deal with the cops, and is getting a reduced sentence of 9 years. Many of the Ford supporters contributing to the comments section in the above link are complaining very loudly about that while simultaneously screeching that there was nothing sleazy or suspicious or even remotely inappropropriate about their hero posing in pics with convicted killers...outside of a crack house in the middle of the night. Just another tiresome sideshow!

Junkyard Dog wrote:

 Many of the Ford supporters contributing to the comments section in the above link are complaining very loudly about that while simultaneously screeching that there was nothing sleazy or suspicious or even remotely inappropropriate about their hero posing in pics with convicted killers...outside of a crack house in the middle of the night. Just another tiresome sideshow!

Sleazy... suspicious... inappropriate... posing with killers... Guilty! Why don't they just lock him up now? Have these cops never heard of guilt by association??

Junkyard Dog wrote:

If a political enemy hands you ammunition on silver platter, then you use it. Is that so difficult to grasp?

Yup, it is, and I'll tell you why:

1) It's unprincipled.

2) It doesn't ever work - ever.

3) It gets used against you, and you end up whining and wailing and crying and wondering what went wrong.

To win, we need to build a new, fairer, more inspiring world - not just defeat some evil fuck of a mayor who is swiftly replaceable by countless more skillful ones. And we won't build a new world by using the ammunition the enemy hands us. It will inevitably blow up in our faces.

At least, that's what I believe. Very strongly. Mind you, I could be wrong. Anything is possible.

That makes total sense, Catchfire. The evidence against Hashimi isn't public domain.

If, on the other hand, the Crown felt there were enough material within those wiretaps etc. to charge [i]someone else[/i], they would obviously be free to do so. In that case, and if there were a trial, that same evidence (to the extent required for the Crown's case) would be presented in [i]that[/i] court. And, it would all have to be disclosed to [i]that[/i] defendant.

If this were Québec, on the other hand, everything would be made public, trial or no trial, charges or no charges, on live TV by the Charbonneau Commission. That's why I choose to live here.

cco wrote:

So, what are the odds he was "encouraged" to take this plea? Perhaps a wealthy individual promised to take care of his family while he's in the hoosegow in exchange for making sure the investigation seals off?

Smells funny ...
[I] Sapiano, who is not involved in the case, called the plea deal "unprecedented.""In 20 years of practice I have never seen a guilty plea on a homicide without disclosure," said Sapiano. "And in less than three months! There is absolutely something going on here."
"The questions over Rob Ford's possible involvement [with alleged drug dealers] will remain unanswered as a result," he said.
[/i]

As I stated earlier, many of the Ford supporters contributing to the comments section in the Yahoo report (linked above) are absolutely outraged at the light sentence being given to Hashimi. But it doesn't appear to trouble them in the least that the murderer Hashimi is getting off comparitively lightly solely in order to protect his good buddy Rob Ford. No further scandal there, is there?

To win, we need to build a new, fairer, more inspiring world - not just defeat some evil fuck of a mayor who is swiftly replaceable by countless more skillful ones. And we won't build a new world by using the ammunition the enemy hands us. It will inevitably blow up in our faces.

At least, that's what I believe. Very strongly. Mind you, I could be wrong. Anything is possible.

You're wrong. Or at the very least, you're partially wrong. I'm all for high-mindedness, and yeah, building a more equitable world is obviously important and necessary...but trying to do that without getting our hands dirty and actually engaging the enemy on their own level is as futile as trying to grow wings and fly. Correct me if I'm mistaken, but there was an election in BC just recently, in which the "leader" of the NDP there evidently figured he could cavalierly tra-la-la-la-la-la his way to victory by campaigning in a way that made him indistinguishable from a doormat. Astonishingly enough, the stupid, useless son of a bitch got his head handed to him on a platter. Goodness! Who ever could have seen that one coming?

I recall a rather grim analysis the late Alexander Cockburn worte about one of Margaret Thatcher's electoral victories; as he put it, every one of the candidates who basically said "Eat the rich" won handily, while most of Labor's self-styled "reasonable" types - those who were desperately trying to be as non-threatening as possible to the general population - largely went down in flames.

Whitewashing the poisonous antics of the Rob Fords of the world - and make no mistake, that's exactly what we do when we refuse to even acknowledge them, never mind dismissing their bad behavior as irrelevant and not important - doesn't come across as "principled" to the nonpolitical types who might be peeled off from Ford's base and be encouraged to vote against him next time. On the contrary, it makes us look weak and cowardly and fundamentally unserious about actually winning elections. It makes us look like losers, when most people are only interested in backing winners (or at the bare minimum, in backing those who at least look like they're trying to win), and worse: It makes us look like suckers.

Especially if the opposition plays dirty. Sitting on our hands and refusing to fight back in the face of uncompromising political hardball doesn't look principled or ethical or moral; it looks like unilateral disarmament. And I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but that doesn't make us look more attractive to potential voters. If all of Ford's recent scandals and blunders had been from a political rival on the left, the Fords and their media allies would have been turning somersaults in midair out of sheer joy...and they would have been right to. The bastards would have been dining out on all the sleaze for months on end, not letting it fade from public consciousness for a single second...and they would have been right to. I'm not talking about the usual lies and hate we get from conservatives and the reactionary right, where they normally have to make shit up out of whole cloth in order to manufacture fake scandals. No, I'm talking about the real thing: If an enemy gives you an opening, then you take it. there's nothing illegitimate about that at all.

Junkyard Dog wrote:

Sitting on our hands and refusing to fight back in the face of uncompromising political hardball doesn't look principled or ethical or moral; it looks like unilateral disarmament. And I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but that doesn't make us look more attractive to potential voters. If all of Ford's recent scandals and blunders had been from a political rival on the left, the Fords and their media allies would have been turning somersaults in midair out of sheer joy...and they would have been right to. The bastards would have been dining out on all the sleaze for months on end, not letting it fade from public consciousness for a single second...and they would have been right to. I'm not talking about the usual lies and hate we get from conservatives and the reactionary right, where they normally have to make shit up out of whole cloth in order to manufacture fake scandals. No, I'm talking about the real thing: If an enemy gives you an opening, then you take it. there's nothing illegitimate about that at all.

But it's also a matter of *how* one takes advantage of the opening--after all, there've been plenty of defeats at the hands of goons that've happened because of the anti-goons "trying too hard" and coming across as yappy little dogs, yap yap yap yap--and so, the goons kick them away and yap yap yap yap becomes yike yike yike yike come election day.

You can't just yap yap yap: you need something to hit the solar plexus--it could be a devastating sound bite or "bingo" moment; or it could just be projecting oneself and *registering to voters* as a truly valid governing alternative on grounds that go beyond the "reactive".  And some of this may also depend on "assists" from the other end that may come by pure chance.

The McGuinty Liberals in 1999 were yappers; the McGuinty Liberals in 2003 hit the solar plexus.

If road resurfacing is public infrastructure, Toronto is doing well. The Warden/401 intersection is much better, and so is Avenue Rd. north of Bloor. More areas are getting ripped up, but it does not seem to take them long to finish. This is providing work for the construction workers, and reducing wear and tear on the preferred means of Toronto transportation: The car. Meanwhile, Ford's popularity numbers are improving.

It must be an alternate universe or something. 

Meanwhile, a group of news media organizations have pooled their resources in trying to uncover certain truths:

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/ford-scandal-prompts-court-fight-over-drug-gun-084319896.html

The howler monkeys from Ford's fan base are in fine form in the comments section in the above link. One half wit pules about the "Communist Broadcasting Corp," while all of them are screeching about "lefties," "leftards," and (of course) the "leftist," "liberal" media. They seem to have missed that the groups looking into Project Traveller here include the 'liberal' Globe & Mail and that well-known left wing monolith, Sun Media. Of course, this particular brand of simpleton tends to be, shall we say, a tad selective about which facts to acknowledge, and which to ignore.

Rob's going off the rails on a gravy train...

It's curious to see so little commentary in this thread since the feckless Liberals and our even more feckless City Council handed Boss Hogg an enormous propaganda victory on a silver platter. Yeah, it's far from certain that Ford's fantasy subway deal is going to go through, but even supposing that turns out to be the case, it still never should have been allowed to get this far.

One thing's for certain: Those of you who continue to bizarrely insist that Ford's just a harmless incompetent, incapable of causing any real damage by himself, have just been proven 100 % dead wrong. A more competent right winger or right-of-centre type would have known enough to cut their losses and move on when it became clear they weren't going to get their way. Not Ford; with schoolyard bully persistency, he simply kept demanding for what he wanted until he got it, reality be damned. And this after the infamous debate that's linked to just above, in which it's crystal clear that Mayor Lying Sack of Shit obviously didn't know what the hell he was talking about when it came to the whole subway issue.  But then, the genuinely stupid usually don't have any real notion of their own limitations, which can lead to the most unlikely victories at times.

Looking at the title of this thread, and considering what's actually hppening in Detroit right now, one can't help wondering if this is going to prove to be some kind of tipping point for the worse as far as Toronto's future is concerned. And all thanks to a gang of soulless political hacks desperately trying to buy votes from a reactionary 'constituency' that wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire.

Awww, sure is tough up on that cross, isn't it, Unionist? Or maybe I should pose that question to our heroic Mayor, seeing as his campaign theme for the upcoming electoral season is obviously going to be: "Rob Ford, History's Greatest Victim." A charming piece of obvious bullshit propaganda that you have just brainlessly validated. Again.

It's a funny thing about your little list; I must have missed the part were somebody put a gun to Ford's head and forced him to break conflict of interest laws, or commit sexual harrassment or cavort with underworld characters. All of which he's done. And all of which would bring out the usual right wing screamers in full force if committed by anyone remotely liberal or leftist, with nobody screaming louder than Ford himself were this behavior coming from a political enemy. And never even mind the alleged crack smoking video, which the police were treating as real, as were the idiot fanboys in Ford Nashun, as quoted variations of "What the man does in his own time is his business!!!!" in every online news commentary section at the time amptly proved. Those hypocritical fuckers would be calling for slimy bastard's head on a platter if he were a lefty (or "leftard," as they like to call us), but since they think he's one of them, that kind of sleaze is automatically upgraded to being perfectly legitimate behavior in their eyes.

Which won't stop them from flip-flopping on a dime and calling for the harshest imaginable penalties the next time someone on our side of the fence is so much as rumored to have taken a few puffs on a joint during his/her teen years. But never mind that.

What's left?

Oh yeah, his ultra-right-wing "populist" anti-people policies.

Nah, people will never understand that. Over their heads. Gotta wait for another scandal that sticks.

As I have repeatedly tried to point out here, there is nothing wrong with doing both. Of course hammer the rotten sack of shit for his ultra-right-wing "populist" anti-people stances. Who said otherwise? But there is nothing illegitimate with using the man's own outrageous behavior against him. It's deliberate political malpractice to piously avert our eyes from the numerous Ford scandals and barely pause to wipe the snot off our faces as we disdainfully sniff that gentlemen simply don't stoop to such vulgarities, don'cha know. "Gasp! Why that would be...unchivalrous!"

Give me a fucking break. Let Ford reap what he's sown. Maybe you haven't noticed, but in the real world, that's what people want to happen to their political enemies. You're implying the Ford scandals had no traction because they were without merit. No, they're simply running the course of their natural lifespans and Ford appearing to have emerged victorious is due to him shamelesly brazening out the entire series of self-manufactured messes. But more importantly, he's being allowed to do so by our gutless, chickeshit political system, which clearly has no clue how to handle someone this over-the-top crooked and corrupt. As our useless Premiere and the invertebrates on Toronto City Council nicely proved just recently.

If you're curious what happened to the Crackstarter funds, here's the answer:  link.

Unionist, perhaps if you lived in Toronto insted of Montreal you would take a different view of things.

Your mayors are merely finacially corrupt. We on the other hand have Rob Ford.

Mohamed Siad is the man who showed Robyn Doolittle and Kevin Donovan the video of Rob Ford incoherently rambling racist and homophobic slurs while smoking what appears to be crack cocaine.  Apparently he was arrested during the police action code-named "Project Traveller".  Here's the Star story.