pattycakes
Senior Member
No problem, he's got Mama, Kathy and Randy to watch over them. He'd want custody just to prove he was a better parent, no mercy shown.
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Rob Ford's Toronto
- Thread starter MetroMan
- Start date
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sno man
Senior Member
That makes sense.
Dubster
Active Member
Well either MM or Jimmi T are wrong here, then. Or both. This whole thing has left a bad taste. I'll believe a Ford arrest when I see it.
jml
Active Member
What Jimmi T said syncs up to some degree with MM's latest claim about somebody higher up slowing the investigation... though it wouldn't seem to be for quite as political a reason as MetroMan made it out to be.
JWBF
Senior Member
It still surprises me how racist, crude and just plain ignorant Robbie and Dougie are. Maybe Dougie should have said Robbie also has a coloured t.v.
pud99
Senior Member
The piece is too long to set out in a post:
The Passion of Rob Ford, or the Neoliberal Making of Toronto’s Municipal Crisis | Dissent Magazine http://www.dissentmagazine.org/onli...eoliberal-making-of-torontos-municipal-crisis
An extract:
...
The real story in Toronto, then, is not Rob Ford. It is how three decades of creeping neoliberalism have made it possible for one of North America’s most diverse cities in one of the west’s most robust democracies to elect a right-wing populist. It is how successive federal governments—Liberal and Conservative alike—shrank government spending by 20 percent as a share of GDP since the early 1990s and flattened the tax structure (Canadian businesses now pay one of the lowest corporate tax rates in the developed world). It is how right-wing parties and pundits have successfully reshaped the national conversation so that taxes and government spending seem like ills in and of themselves. It is how calls for lower taxes can gain the most traction in places where taxes are lowest—like Toronto, which already enjoys some of the lowest property taxes in North America. It is how cities like Toronto spent penuriously on their urban environments, leaving them ill-equipped for the future. And it is how voters in precisely those Toronto neighborhoods that have suffered the most from shrinking government threw their support behind a man who promised to reduce services even further. Just as progressive Americans have had to ask themselves what’s the matter with Kansas, Canadians need to think about what’s wrong in Etobicoke.
The nominally nonpartisan character of local elections in Ontario has made it easier for Conservatives to erase their associations with Ford (in most places in Canada, candidates for local office do not run under party banners). Others have resorted to bad faith to cover the tracks leading from Ford to neoliberalism. In a classic case of protesting too much, the Globe and Mail recently ran a masthead editorial insisting that Ford was a “non-conservative.” When Toronto’s antiquated power and drainage systems were overwhelmed by a powerful summer storm in 2013, leaving public transit stilled, commuters stranded, streets and roadways flooded, and nearly half a million without power, Margaret Wente complained that “it’s begun to feel too uncomfortably Third Worldish here in Canada.” She forgot to remind readers that it’s precisely the anti-government mantra she constantly relays that got the city into this mess. Ford is living proof that Canada’s Conservatives are happy to play with right-wing populist fire.
...
The Passion of Rob Ford, or the Neoliberal Making of Toronto’s Municipal Crisis | Dissent Magazine http://www.dissentmagazine.org/onli...eoliberal-making-of-torontos-municipal-crisis
An extract:
...
The real story in Toronto, then, is not Rob Ford. It is how three decades of creeping neoliberalism have made it possible for one of North America’s most diverse cities in one of the west’s most robust democracies to elect a right-wing populist. It is how successive federal governments—Liberal and Conservative alike—shrank government spending by 20 percent as a share of GDP since the early 1990s and flattened the tax structure (Canadian businesses now pay one of the lowest corporate tax rates in the developed world). It is how right-wing parties and pundits have successfully reshaped the national conversation so that taxes and government spending seem like ills in and of themselves. It is how calls for lower taxes can gain the most traction in places where taxes are lowest—like Toronto, which already enjoys some of the lowest property taxes in North America. It is how cities like Toronto spent penuriously on their urban environments, leaving them ill-equipped for the future. And it is how voters in precisely those Toronto neighborhoods that have suffered the most from shrinking government threw their support behind a man who promised to reduce services even further. Just as progressive Americans have had to ask themselves what’s the matter with Kansas, Canadians need to think about what’s wrong in Etobicoke.
The nominally nonpartisan character of local elections in Ontario has made it easier for Conservatives to erase their associations with Ford (in most places in Canada, candidates for local office do not run under party banners). Others have resorted to bad faith to cover the tracks leading from Ford to neoliberalism. In a classic case of protesting too much, the Globe and Mail recently ran a masthead editorial insisting that Ford was a “non-conservative.” When Toronto’s antiquated power and drainage systems were overwhelmed by a powerful summer storm in 2013, leaving public transit stilled, commuters stranded, streets and roadways flooded, and nearly half a million without power, Margaret Wente complained that “it’s begun to feel too uncomfortably Third Worldish here in Canada.” She forgot to remind readers that it’s precisely the anti-government mantra she constantly relays that got the city into this mess. Ford is living proof that Canada’s Conservatives are happy to play with right-wing populist fire.
...
VintagePunk
Active Member
Hoping someone can clarify something for me. Regarding the whole Russian mafia thing, I saw where someone linked to an article that said Hotmail Lawyer had represented a Russian mobster 10 - 15 years ago. Is that what this whole thing is based on, someone found that (or a similar) article and then passed the information on to MM and that's what he's basing the Russian connection on, or did MM hear it independently from someone with insider status, and then someone else found the article after MM's information came out?
euler
Active Member
I may be missing something here, but how is what he said crude or racist? I mean it's clearly just another off-the-cuff Doug Ford lie like "he's a social liberal" or "he's the white Obama", but I don't really find there to be any racism in his comment. Mandela fought apartheid which specifically segregated black people; Mandela was black; so he said "no guys listen we support the black community".
It's dumb (HOW does he support them?) but it's not racist.
jml
Active Member
I think this is unclear to you because it is unclear. MetroMan's tweets about it were rather cryptic, though he did at one point say police ARE investigating Russian mafia ties. No sources given beyond the Dennis Morris thing though. Who knows?
VintagePunk
Active Member
sno man
Senior Member
I think it plays to the guys in nice cars with briefcases of cash too, although I'm not sure anything in that implied Russians v. Italians v. any other otherwise out of place guys with briefcases of cash.
stoobiedood
Active Member
John Tory's campaign manager has just clarified that a code of conduct has escaped from John Tory.
kensingtoncat
New Member
All right, I've got Dissent's The Passion of Rob Ford open in one tab and Metafilter's thread on it in another.
Metafilter led me to http://thewalrus.ca/the-story-behind-the-rob-ford-story/, which I'm not sure has been linked here, so I'm off for a ponder.
Metafilter led me to http://thewalrus.ca/the-story-behind-the-rob-ford-story/, which I'm not sure has been linked here, so I'm off for a ponder.
newearthling
Senior Member
Great article! It is amazing that we can take inspiration from LA and their attempts to solve their conjestion problem.
betty183
New Member
I also heard this version through twitter.
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