Rob Ford's Toronto

[christiesplits]

Overheard in the office. My boss had a client of Iranian descent over from North York. Following a good five minutes of laughter over the last three weeks worth of antics, the client whips this out:

"You have to admit, he's done a pretty good job. The best job out of everyone in probably the last thirty years. Rob Ford has balanced the budgets. He has a bit of surplus. I like him."

 

[rndhd]

This.

All the people equating "democracy" with "elections" drive me goddamn bananas. I'm not sure how I feel about a "licence to vote" but this idea should be stamped out by the time you pass a 9th grade history or civics class.

The belief that democracy is nothing more than periodic popularity contests, with nothing in between them, is exactly the kind of foolish and false reduction of ideas and issues that makes a Rob Ford possible. Democracy is a complex system of checks and balances on power. It's not simple and definitely not binary---not "I got elected, so we're done." It should ALWAYS be in flux, reviewed and revised to better serve the needs of everyone participating in it.

Hear hear!

It drives me crazy that people think democracy is just about having elections. It's so much more than that.

 

[rightwingSUVdriver]

Overheard in the office. My boss had a client of Iranian descent over from North York. Following a good five minutes of laughter over the last three weeks worth of antics, the client whips this out:

"You have to admit, he's done a pretty good job. The best job out of everyone in probably the last thirty years. Rob Ford has balanced the budgets. He has a bit of surplus. I like him."

For cases like these, an image exists that expresses the appropriate emotion correctly:

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

mjl08

And you have to admit, he clearly don't have much knowledge of the municipal system.

AoD

 

[Not Slovenian]

so 'juiceman' could really be any juiced up meathead.

That sounds like a reasonable description of Doug Ford.

 

[manhandler]

It's all speculation of course, but I've been wondering/hypothesizing along these lines for quite some time. The Hashimi plea deal was convenient because the case was never in court and therefore details never had to be released, so the entire 'gang argument' justification could be a fabrication. Or not. I'm just not buying 1st degree murder plead down to manslaughter because Hashimi was high and on cough syrup. Seems like a ridiculous justification to me, how many murders are committed by people under mind altering substances that go from 1st degree to manslaughter? I'd think 2nd degree would be more appropriate there, no?

If Smith's phone was indeed stolen then that is strongly suggests that the video was a motivating factor in his murder.

The phone calls on the date of Smith's murder may be suspect, but Ford and Lisi called each other all the time anyway, could just be random mid-day calls. Does anyone know if the time of the calls has been revealed? If the calls all took place just before and just after Smith was shot, then that would certainly look circumstantially bad for the mayor.

My gut feeling is that the murder had something to do with Ford in the sense that someone wanted to get their hands on the video, but that it wasn't directly related to Ford. In other words, I don't really think that he or his goon squad called in a hit. But I think that it indirectly relates to Ford in the sense that it was tied to the video in some way.

Also, correct me if I am mistaken but in the court narrative, it is Smith as the instigator of the fight under instruction from another gang member so it appears that Hashimi is actually defending himself. True or not, that would make manslaughter more plausible than murder.

 

[TinyTiny]

If this is the case, why isn't the mayor in cuffs right now?

Maybe the Crown wanted to keep the Ford/phone/extortion evidence tight. So rather than show it all in court just to prove Hashimi's motive, they gave him a quick deal that's far better than he'd get if they charged it as a 1st degree murder, allowing the investigation to continue under the radar.

My thought is that because it is not easy to get to Ford. Let's speculate for a second that Ford had a hand in this (not saying he did - in fact I think he didn't, I'm just speculating here) - the most likely scenario would be that Ford gave someone the order, to give someone the order... so the chain of command here would/might be Ford to Lisi, then Lisi to Hashimi.

So if they give Hashimi a plea, it would be based on Hashimi saying, yeah this guy Lisi asked me to do it... but he likely wouldn't be able to directly point to Ford.

Sooooooo.... the play here for the cops would be to turn Lisi on Ford. One way to do that would be to arrest him. So you bring him in for a pot bust, that seems minor, but then you look at the ITO and say why the hell is there 465 pages to bust a guy for selling weed??? (because that would be ancillary to the actual intent). Then you slap the extortion on Lisi, so he is now facing a more serious sentence. Then the cops ask Lisi how he's connected to Hashimi, and use the leverage of multiple charges against him to see if he rolls on Ford, to tie the whole scenario together.

This scenario would explain a LOT of the lingering questions that people have - why was Hashimi's deal so lenient, why was the ITO 465 pages, why did TPS let Ford get away with what appeared to be criminal behavior while under surveillance? But for Ford to be arrested under this scenario it would require both Hashimi and Lisi to roll over, so it would be a tough/dangerous high risk/high reward game for TPS to engage in.

OK, all that said, the simplest and maybe most likely explanation is that Ford is related to the Smith murder through sheer crackity-drunken-cracked-out-stupor circumstance with nothing nefarious behind it.

 

[dforthandbview]

That sounds like a reasonable description of Doug Ford.

He doesn't look like much of a juicer to me:

 

[Cooper]

"You have to admit, he's done a pretty good job. The best job out of everyone in probably the last thirty years. Rob Ford has balanced the budgets. He has a bit of surplus. I like him."

Anyone who says RoFo is doing a good job because he generates surpluses should be reminded that surpluses are *shrinking* under his administration.

 

[pud99]

He doesn't look like much of a juicer to me:

 

[salsa]

Five Things Rob Ford Says that Aren't True

Only five things?

 

[Dubster]

OK, all that said, the simplest and maybe most likely explanation is that Ford is related to the Smith murder through sheer crackity-drunken-cracked-out-stupor circumstance with nothing nefarious behind it.

I would agree, and almost EVERYONE is adamant this is the case, but that would also mean someone called Towhey and tipped him off for no reason on the Smith murder's relation to the crack vid, and that Smith's cellphone was stolen from him after he was killed because either Hanad or Hashimi wanted a phone for some reason, and that Smith appeared in front of 15 Windsor Dr with Ford by coincidence, AND if the Vice story is true that Ford just happened to be in running contact with the getaway driver in Smith's murder.

 

[requiem]

I also wonder if Hashimi didn't mean to kill Smith but some kind of argument/intimidation got out of hand, whether directed by Ford/Lisi or within the gangs themselves. If there are gang members discussing Ford on those wiretaps, then there may have been arguments over what to do with the video, who has it etc. Do we know when those wiretaps featuring Ford talk were recorded? It would help to put together a timeline. And I wish we had some kind of info on the tipster who called Towhey.

ETA: Reading again, I see that it was reduced to manslaughter because the court accepted that the murder was not intended. So none of the evidence in this trial will ever be seen by the public?

 

[Les Nessman]

Anyone who says RoFo is doing a good job because he generates surpluses should be reminded that surpluses are *shrinking* under his administration.

Correct me if I'm wrong...

Did Ford not borrow from city reserves to balance his budget?

If so, that's not efficient! Haha get it...efficient...efficiencies......don't forget to tip ur waitress, I'm here all week folks!

 

[TinyTiny]

Also, correct me if I am mistaken but in the court narrative, it is Smith as the instigator of the fight under instruction from another gang member so it appears that Hashimi is actually defending himself. True or not, that would make manslaughter more plausible than murder.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/guilty-plea-in-killing-of-man-linked-to-rob-ford-scandal-1.1380870

This whole article seems to be full of red flags to me.

Blair had mentioned that murder one of the major factors that motivated Project Traveler. Why aggressively go after that, and give the guy a manslaughter plea deal?

All the 'action' in the case was decided outside of the court. The article makes it sound like all of the details that were exposed in the courtroom came from a written statement that was prepared before. So the entire court narrative was prepared away from the public and didn't need to be made public. It would not be the first time that a public explanation and a private admission were not one-and-the-same. And you have a 20 year veteran defense lawyer pointing out how fishy the whole thing looks to him, not only in terms of the sentencing, but also in terms of the speed of the case.

My first thought in June was this was a cover-up to protect Ford, but maybe it's the opposite. Or most likely we're speculating grand scenarios in the place of simple explanations.