Rob Ford's Toronto

[Riverdale Rink Rat]

CBC's followup

Thx for that. Solid.

 

[FromTheHammer]

So we are going to entrust an $11 Billion budget to a guy who couldn't notice a $14,000 difference in his personal bank account (in his favor)? You can bet that Rob Ford would have noticed this difference! Rob Ford has been accused of a lot of things but trying to line his pockets with taxpayer dollars isn't one of them !

No, Rob Ford wouldn't line his pockets with the cash. He'd go out and score a mountain of crack.

 

[euler]

While I'm in wifi range, can someone provide Coles notes of the last 10 or so days?

Lots of gaffes from Rob, bad interviews.

Council had 2 special meetings. He's basically mayor in name alone now. He still has statutory powers - he has a highly reduced budget, and he's still the figurehead of the city, but he can no longer hire/fire the deputy mayor, he no longer heads the Executive, he can no longer appoint committee heads, his staff have been reduced down to 8 or 9. Norm Kelly is now defacto mayor, with Wynne saying that any important discussions she has to have with City Hall will go through the Deputy Mayor's office. Rob's threatening to sue, doesn't look like he has any grounds though.

It's winding down. No doubt Rob will still make a spectacle of himself, but he can no longer influence council and is no longer important. He can basically just not show up to work and no one will care.

 

[typezed]

If there was any justice in the universe Rob would be sentenced to several years sitting in a room listening to Norm Kelly talk about history. No one wants Kelly as mayor, but that's the way it unfolded. People do want Ford gone. Kelly was made deputy because he's barely awake, and Ford thought he could be depended upon to defend the Mayor with boys-will-be-boys excuses, just like Holiday did. And he did, until Ford basically crapped in a pizza box and blustered around displaying it to the international media. Plus Kelly is old, and Holiday was old, so he met the job description for Ford's 2mm deep thought processes. The real poison pill would have been Mammolitti as deputy mayor (or Doug, I guess). What would council do then? There are principled conservatives who could be interim mayor without striking the brass band to welcome the gravy train back into station. Parker, maybe Thompson, but that's not the way the process unfolded.

Not to defend Kelly, who is a ponderous bore, but that bold act can also be done with Ford. despite all the claims of being the one man who watches every dime Used staff to coach his football teams, hiring staff into his office because they were former football players; pressured staff to make road improvements in front of his family business; hired a longtime friend of his brother, who may be involved in extortion attempts to retrieve the video, into his office at double usual remuneration, for duties unexplained; had staff run personal errands, including purchasing alcohol.

 

[inyyz]

I almost always go with "Better the devil you know than the devil you don't", but in this case I'm quite happy with Norm.

 

[Roy G Biv]

I am not trying to defend Rob Ford as someone who is perfect. He is far from perfect but Ford was elected mayor by a large majority. Not one vote was cast to elect the creepy looking Norm Kelly as mayor and we are now finding out that Norm Kelly has more than a few skeletons in his own closet! (and these are the ones that we know about - what about skeletons - if any - yet to be uncovered?).

Firstly, Ford was not elected by a "large majority".

Secondly, Ford was elected to make decisions like appointing a deputy mayor. He appointed Norm Kelly. We elect people/governments to make decisions on our behalf. Unless you're Switzerland, of course.

 

[Dubster]

The Star on the two Brazen II arrests. Looks increasingly like the Richview Cleaners is ground zero of the investigation. Wonder if MetroMan knows whether this might be the supply source for the "celebrity ring" he hinted about a couple months back. The only downside is that this just seems like pot so far...which is pretty lame.

 

[arksi]

BFF's.

 

[TinyTiny]

I cannot conceive of circumstances under which it would be legitimate for a city councilor to fly to China - with his wife!- under "official" city business. Normally when a Councillor goes on an exotic overseas trip it gets voted on by the city council. The fact that Kelly dipped into his office budget seems suspicious. And then there is the case of Kelly billing the taxpayer's for a personal side-trip to Paris! This kind of conduct stinks and I wonder if he should have been charged with misappropriation of public funds? (perhaps it's not too late).

This is what happens when YOU vote for a crackhead for mayor. YOU are dealing with the ramifications of your actions.

If Kelly used taxpayer money to fund vacations, that is absolutely wrong. But YOU should be happy, because his level of indiscretion, let's put it at $20,000 is a drop in the bucket compared to what Ford has done.

Let's do some math.

Reading carefully through the ITO and going over the Star's attempts to document Ford's work schedule reveals that he basically works about 20 hours a week in what should probably be about a 60 hour a week job if done by a competent, committed individual. YOU pay his salary of $167,000. Considering that he works about 30% of what would be expected of the mayor of Toronto, that computes to roughly $115,000 of waste.

Price is hired at $130,000, double the salary of what his position should entail. $65,000 of waste.

Staffers who stayed loyal to Ford - $5000 bonus, staff of 20 - $100,000 waste.

Finkel and Ransom 'vodka runs' on the city's dime, probably another $1000-2000 in terms of manhours.

Time spent by the mayor and his staff dealing with crackgate when they should have been running the city - probably running up into the hundreds or thousands of hours, easily another $50-75,000 in waste (probably vastly underestimated actually).

So right now, by conservative measures, you're looking at roughly $300,000+ of waste generated by mayor McCrackinstein.



So, yeah, you should be HAPPY if Kelly used $20k of your taxpayer dollars to finance personal trips. That is an order of magnitude less graft than Ford has been involved in over the last year (that we know of - I've no doubt that when all of the skeletons are out of Ford's closet we'll find out about some unscrupulous financial dealings. A man with his total lack of moral compass most likely let his moral bankruptcy permeate into his financial dealings as well).

 

[King of Kensington]

I think to be fair, the general conservative voter probably has the same educational background. Conservative politicians have been courting the ignorant side of society since Reagan. Prior to him, they didn't much go after low-income, low-education types.

As a general rule, education has the impact of moving people leftward but people become more conservative with higher incomes. So there are 2 relationships at work. Thus a successful small business owner that didn't attend university is much more likely to be a political conservative than a lawyer or doctor.

Ford however seems to have completely lost any well-to-do educated vote, a group he underperformed with to begin with (and a vote Harper very much captured by 2011 federally) and the split between well-to-do, educated conservatives that back John Tory and working class, less-educated conservatives that back Ford is very sharp indeed. Shades perhaps of PC/Reform splits in Ontario in the 90s, or of Romney vs. Gingrich/Santorum.

 

[basic]

Another segment on The Daily Show

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3gpSJRhO-o

Best one yet! So hilarious.

 

[TonyV]

Is there some kind of selective dyslexia with Ford Nationals, where they see 47% as 74%? Where a plurality becomes a "large majority"? Where falling short of the combined votes of the next two candidates is a "landslide"?

Yes there is that selective dyslexia that you speak of, with the diehard types. I have a relative like that in Willowdale.

 

[King of Kensington]

Demographics of Ford Nation http://www.thestar.com/news/city_ha...bicoke_according_to_ipsos.html?app=noRedirect

"Wright identified the hard-core supporters who will not abandon their mayor.
They are predominantly people with lower-income and lower education levels. Some 44 per cent of respondents who don’t have a high school diploma support Ford, while only 17 per cent of those with university degrees do."

A caveat: the poll included a whopping 15 people with less than high school diplomas. Still, the educational difference is very notable.

 

[darmstrongd]

Is it possible that the Crown offered him a deal so they would not have to spill the beans on evidence they're holding for the Ford investigation?

Ding Ding Ding Ding, we have a winner!!! Bingo!

 

[juniorfox]

I'm just going to pipe up in my defense and say that I was just trying to counter some of the things one particular other person (who seems to have disappeared) was saying, that I thought were a little out of line. But it was a stupid conversation. One of those things where you start off with one innocent clarification, and then four hours later you realize you've wasted half a day arguing whether the Pacific Ocean is a better ocean than the Atlantic.

Yeah no need to defend. I really wasn't attacking. Just stating my feelings about the tenor some of the discussion had taken. What do I know though. I apparently used the phrase "fuck him in the ear" about someone and now people are blocking me haha.