Monday, September 30, 2013

The Rob Ford Revival

Rob Ford's chances for re-election have improved lately:
Almost half of Torontonians approve of the job Rob Ford has been doing as mayor of Canada’s largest city, a new poll suggests.
Forty-nine percent of the 1,082 Toronto residents over 18 surveyed on Sept. 21 and 22 indicated they supported Ford, an increase from 44 per cent at the end of August.
It's because 1) Rob Ford will never lose the support of the most stupid and/or ignorant of the electorate, and 2) Ford's opponents sought to steal his thunder on the idiotic Scarborough Subway and only ended-up playing into his hands.

Let me deal with the latter factor first.

The subway idea is a stupid one. There isn't enough money. Despite the surprise announcement from dim-bulb, Jimbo Flaherty (more on that later), there still isn't enough money. (At least from the present set of political-economic circumstances.) With neither the city, nor the province, nor the federal government willing to pony-up the tens of billions of dollars necessary for an integrated system of subway lines that the city needed ten years ago, the Metrolinx light-rail system was the most realistic alternative. It even had its own long-term benefits, including integrating suburban riders better integration with existing bus lines and lower maintenance costs for the TTC. Finally, the lower cost for the LRT's would mean more money to improve services in the desperately under-served hinterlands.

But Rob Ford has stoked the anger of a vocal minority of Scarborough residents who have come to believe that the LRT is a slap in their collective face. Too clever by half, transit committee chair Karen Stintz thought she'd get behind the proposed subway line proposed by the too-clever by half Ontario Liberals, who fucked everything up by proposing a shitty two-stop subway for one billion dollars more than the longer LRT route would have cost. Suddenly, Rob Ford was back in play. He led the charge against the two-stop route, not Stintz. And then, sleaze-ball harper and shit-head Flaherty found (at the drop of a hat in the age of austerity) $660 million dollars. Now THERE's co-opertative urban transportation planning for you. "Hey! We've got $660 million to buy votes for our pal Rob Ford, if you want it!"

Disgusting.

But none of this should matter if actions and words had consequences in right-wing politics. Rob Ford is the incompetent, ignorant fuckwad who said there was hundreds of millions of dollars in wasted spending ("gravy" as he put it) at City Hall. Once he became mayor, Mr. Gravy Train was slashing TTC service, library hours, park wading pools, and on and on, and even mused about closing women's shelters to save half-a-million dollars.

And everyone with half a brain also knows that Mayor Stupid, the same asshole who turned down provincial money for anti-gang initiatives because he called them "Hug a Thug" programs, is actually smoking crack with those gangsters.

He's the scum of the earth and he should be political poison. But you can say and do any fool thing you want when you're a "conservative." These people are idiots and fuck 'em.
 

3 comments:

Owen Gray said...

A truly sad turn of events, thwap.

Anonymous said...

Dear Thwap,
Although I muchly enjoy reading your blogonations immensely, I wish you would quit stifling yourself and tell us how you really feel! ;-)
Well and truly spoken, Sirrah!
Keep swinging for the fences!
Cheers,
Jack

thwap said...

We are all the inhabitants of a big old sorry sack of shit.