It’s rare that is happens, says John Elvidge of the city clerk’s office, but sitting mayors do have the right to poke their noses into the various standing committees at City Hall, including sitting in on and taking part in votes, exactly as Rob Ford did on Monday night. It’s an executive privilege.

It’s the second time Ford has done this in a week, this time on the 2014 Service Level review for the Parks and Environment Committee. The Committee, which meets irregularly once every three months or so, makes decisions on things like spending on public parks, gardens, and outdoor programs.

The vote before the Committee on Monday included a number of potentially sizeable increases which were not spelled out in any detail that I saw, although considering the fact that only existing services were listed, it seems that the numbers should be straightfroward to estimate.

Regardless, Ford declared that the as-yet-unspecified amount was too much, voted the item down, and walked out before another motion was adopted to move everything under the purview of the 2014 city budget process. Dougie was also absent for this follow-up vote.

“We can’t have these lefties spending like drunken sailors,” Ford said after his rare appearance at the parks and environment committee.

Ford says a lot of things about money at City Hall.

Things like swearing that freezing property taxes is “job one” for his administration, a claim which he rescinds drastically and early on after being voted into office (actually defending a hefty property tax increase in the process). Then, after being unable to come up with any alternative ideas to fund various city projects, settling on optimistically championing a property tax increase, then a month later calling for a property tax freeze yet again. And all of it in the unabashed service of business, which Ford says is tantamount to working for the common man.

So when Ford says that he’s getting involved in cherry-picked committee votes to curtail leftie spending, or for the benefits of the taxpayer, or any of his other disproved, divisive, and derisive nonsense, let’s just say I’m very skeptical.

Rob Ford’s office published a video today thanking Toronto for a great summer.

Maybe this is supposed to take everyone’s mind off of another certain video?

This obvious campaign piece was apparently passed by the Integrity Commissioner before being put put online. Remember her? The woman Ford wanted to have fired because she was doing her job? The same Integrity Commissioner which who’s decision Ford didn’t see fit to abide by because, well, he can do whatever he wants?

I wonder if there’s a stronger word for “irony”.

Rob Ford is basking in the knowledge that he has personally wrestled Toronto’s unemployment rate down to the ground where he beat it senseless and left it soaking in a pool of its own blood.

Unemployment, it seems, is down – that’s true.

But people are having trouble making the connection between this news and Ford’s efforts:

Pressed by reporters to explain how, exactly, he had managed to slay the beast of unemployment, Mr. Ford said he has been cutting red tape, making the city safer and cleaner, fighting gridlock and campaigning to build subways. The last, obviously, is a work in progress; the others, pretty hard to quantify. “We’ve made it a business-friendly atmosphere,” the mayor said, “and you have to have business experience to do that, and obviously I do.”

Others too are having trouble with is on a conceptual level:

Councillor John Parker, who represents Don Valley West, said, “I frankly think that the case [the mayor] is making is a bit of a stretch. As the Canadian economy grows, Toronto’s economy grows with it.”

Mr. Ford said in his speech that, “we have adopted a very aggressive plan to fight gridlock.”

Mr. Parker, who sits on the works committee and the Toronto Transit Commission, said he is unaware of such a plan.

I’m not insinuating that good news is unwelcome, just that taking the credit for something you didn’t really do is pretty weak sauce.

And even if I were of the opinion that I’m just, like, #1 top business guy in Canada and when I snap my fingers jobs fly out of my ass, I still think I’d have the tact to say something to the effect that I’d contributed to the unemployment rate.

Oh, Fordo.

The 2010 G20 demonstrations, along with the repeated slaps to the face that Torontonians received from the courts afterwards, were about to become a clean sweep with the cops completely exonerated in caging (literally) 1,1100 innocent people and breaking  many laws in the process.

Those thousand Torontonians who had no charges laid whatsoever were submitted to quite brutal and demeaning conditions, often after being illegally assaulted by gangs of police who made up their own laws and rules as they went along.

The abuses by police far outweighed any provable good they did on that weekend which, judging by what the cops allowed to happen, had nothing to do with protecting Toronto or its citizens.

The incident of Adam Nobody, though probably more provoked than most bystanders those days, has demonstrated some of what went on that day, resulting in the first (and probably only) conviction of a cop for assault.

Constable Babak Andalib-Goortani, now convicted of assault with a weapon, plus three other officers had the chutzpah to make up vivid stories about Nobody as a troublemaker that day (having made no such notes in their notebooks). At least that’s what the judge thought. The same constable also removed his name tag and badge number before the assault.

Together these would seem to be aggravating charges, no? After all, the police viciously pile charge upon charge on innocent people they want to put the squeeze on. But as we see repeatedly they escape with, at worst, a paid vacation and the reassurance that their brothers, sisters, and supervisors are working hard to serve and protect their asses.

Among the rare times I’ve had an interaction with police that didn’t include them being confrontational and aggressive, one — some physical threats from meth-cooking neighbours — further demonstrated this simple fact to me. They went to their door first first to let them know who was complaining, then visited us to tell us that he’s known to them but that his “alleged” drug production (which the landlord spent many months and much money cleaning up after), and her “personal choice” to prostitute herself out of their premises, were none of our business and we would just have to get along. And while in our place acting like we were ticking them off with our very existence,  they took the time to snoop around, a courtesy they did not extend to the neighbours.

Not accurate? Let’s do the math:

1 conviction to 1000 wrongful arrests, assaults, Charter Rights violations, etc. = 0.1% justice rulings in favour of innocent citizens, 99.9% justice rulings in favour of armed, trained law-breaking paramilitary forces (especially on that day). The established facts are simply that when it comes to crunch time, the Toronto police do not serve and protect the community or citizens, and the courts will back them up.

Of course it’s not fair to say that all cops are in on this racket, and every once in a while we see a successful prosecution, but with numbers like these and story after story of cops getting away with pretty much anything and everything, it is completely fair and accurate to say that this corruption is systemic and far reaching.

My earlier assertion that there’s little, if anything, to hold politicians to account when they or their office break the law, has been re-affirmed by some very stark statements made by the City of Toronto’s Strategic Communication Director, Jackie DeSouza:

“It is the honour system; a lot of this is based on trust.”

…

An issue has arisen over emails, sent or received, that in the normal course of business are deleted. Those emails reside on the city’s server and can be restored, but DeSouza said it is up to the mayor’s staff to go looking for them.

Okay, so it’s not exactly a concrete plan of action or anything, but finally it’s looking like Metrolinx is investigating a downtown relief line for the Yonge subway. I say finally because the subject of at least one downtown relief line has been floating about for some time (and certainly far longer than any TCL post would indicate).

The problem is a two-fold, compound one at the present time:

1. This seems to be a far second consideration for almost everyone with a say in the transit debate, from Metrolinx to Karen Stintz. Most of the focus is on building new lines to the suburbs and this is just the beginning of starting to think about the topic.
2. The downtown lines are already pretty crowded as it is. Take any downtown train, streetcar, or bus — especially when the weather’s a bit iffy — and you’ll get the idea.

So while there are big efforts underway to get more people onto the downtown lines, there’s almost no effort to expand the already crowded system — certainly not from the Ford administration.  If something doesn’t change, and soon, the disaster will be one of Fordian proportions.

Boy did I need a break from the Ford news cycle — and what a doozie of story to do it on!

I wasn’t aware of this but apparently Christopher Peloso, husband of former mayoral candidate George Smitherman, went missing late on Monday afternoon.

He was found just before noon today, needing “immediate help” but alive near some train track in the western section of downtown. There are no indications that going missing like this is something that Peloso is likely to do, and turning up injured near train tracks even less so.

Obviously something strange and interesting happened, and that’s about the only obvious thing we know right now.

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You may have noticed some out-of-place advertising on TCL. Not sure exactly when this popped up, but they were clever enough to hide it from me so that I couldn’t see it.

Sadly for them, I analyze stuff like this for breakfast.

Here’s the pictorial:

Never mind.

By the way, Softonic or whoever did this on your behalf, smart thinking trying to hide your link in TCL’s dynamic site code. However, it is now gone.

“In our respectful opinion, connections between drug dealers, gun dealers, a notorious crack house and the chief magistrate of Canada’s largest city fit the definition of something that can and should be explored in the public interest.”

These were the words of Michael Cooke, editor of the Star, yesterday at a hearing before the Ontario Press Council about complaints in which the news (including the Globe and Mail) has been reporting on the Ford family’s blatant lies, hypocrisy, and criminality. Those are my own words, by the way, which I have also gone to great lengths to back up in previous posts.

But that’s not good enough for some people.

One complainant, Darylle Donley, had this to say:

“I would be curious to know just how far a TV or radio reporter or newspaper person, has to go before they are sanctioned or curtailed? The Ford brothers are being lied about, innuendos and allegations are being made against them. The news should be concrete and proven truth.”

Of course, the same questions must never be posed about our public officials — right, Darylle? And what about the fact that you’re publicly slandering the newspapers by calling them liars? Where’s your “concrete and proven truth”?

And what sort of insane newspaper prints only well-established and proven truths? By that logic, we wouldn’t know anything about the gas plant cancellations by the provincial government which, judging by her allegiance to Ford, is exactly the type of thing she would want to have revealed. Donley’s narrow-mindedness is staggering and, sadly, unsurprising.

And just to demonstrate her bizarre mental processes, she followed up with a not-so-subtle racist rant that had nothing to do with the hearing:

“The persons in the story, were they connected with the Don Bosco football team? Around the Don Bosco football team, there were a lot of unsavory characters.”

If you’ll recall, this is the same community that decided to tell Rob Ford where to go after he slandered them in pretty much the same way as Donley (clearly she swallowed his shit, hook, line, and sinker). He then used city staff and resources to collect his football equipment “donation” from Don Bosco — if they aren’t willing to play the poor, disadvantaged, drug-addled hood kids to his magnificent white saviour image, fuck ’em!

In other words, the community itself rose up against Rob Ford to tell him unequivocally what they think of him. So of course his supporters, instead of listening to all of the people directly affected by Ford’s benevolence, decided instead to listen to, and wholeheartedly believe, the crap that poured out of the mouth one well-known public liar.

Donley is no stranger to publicly exposing her ability to blindly jump to conclusions, even going so far as to make not-so-veiled threats against those she deems unacceptable:

Regarding the 411 on Ford’s 911 (NOW, November 3-9). I wouldn’t know Mary Walsh if I tripped over her. If she accosted me at any time, never mind in that outfit with a sword on her ample hips, I would probably push her and then call 911.

She touched Mayor Rob Ford on the shoulder. How would Walsh react if someone came up to her early in the morning in her driveway?

Walsh is not a particularly delicate, fragile-looking person and could easily be a threat to anyone, even without opening her vicious mouth.

Darylle Donley
Toronto

Donley readily admits that if someone who she had never met, but doesn’t like because Rob Ford told her to, she would be willing to get violent on the spot.

Maybe this isn’t the same Darylle Donley, but that’s a pretty unique name, and the attitude fits to a “T”.

That’s Ford Nation for you, prototype or personified. They have such a hate on for anything that dares to question their beloved leader that they reject it all outright. Even when they claim that they are the subject of persecution (offering zero evidence, which of course makes their own claims complete lies by their own definition), they do offer insights into why they are so universally adored with statements like “Maybe it’s a woman thing”, and “…this is all down to a bung of women who like spending money…”

These are the same supporters of Rob Ford who, on his radio show cuts off people while inserting questionable “supporters” which, it turns out, openly lie about their identity and work directly for Ford.

This is the same Rob Ford that openly lies about his administration’s accomplishments – unquestioningly championed by glassy-eyed Ford Nation.

This is the same Rob Ford that calls the media all sorts of names and gets openly angry at anyone who wants to look into what he’s doing on the job as a public official. He is, after all, the Mayor and doesn’t need to answer to anyone.

This is the same Ford that repeatedly demands that the media are just a bunch of liars, despite the ridiculous number of statements by editors  and staff standing firmly behind their stories, while Ford himself abjectly refuses to answer any questions (and insults whole groups of people while doing it —  par for the course for Ford).

This is the same Rob Ford that has had to defend himself against a slew of lawsuits on a broad range of topics. None of these are being mentioned, of course, including the fact that it was legally proven that Ford had broken the law numerous times while on the job.

This is the same Rob Ford that surrounds himself with criminals and ne’er do wells who run around trying to cover up the fat man’s misdeeds.

Above all, it doesn’t matter that these allegations have been corroborated by so many independent sources, or that the so-called “anonymous” sources that Ford supporters complain about are not anonymous at all. And of course it’s just fine and not at all sheer hypocrisy that 30 of the 41 complaints before the Press Council meeting are anonymous (and only 6 are formal and in writing)! Besides this, many of the names connected with the Ford crack scandal have been corroborated (not to mention being printed in the news), to the n-th degree. Rob Ford’s evidence in his own defense: zilch.

I could go on for days but the brunt of the issue is that Ford and his supporters are entirely guilty of the very same accusations they throw around like they invented them. They want news media to engage in responsible journalism while they themselves think it’s perfectly okay to deceive and insult and threaten, while there’s not a single shred of evidence that the stories about Ford are false, and much evidence exists to prove that they’re true.

Isn’t it hypocritical of me to be name calling like this? In fact, isn’t it slanderous?

Recently a TCL reader left a reply to a mayoral candidate post I’d done a while ago that reminded me of how deluded and just plain bizarre people’s understanding of these things are, so let me explain what the difference between slander and merely an uncomfortable yet fully legal article is: facts.

This little concept still seems to be lost on so many people.

They think that calling a proven liar a “liar” is slander. They think that anyone who mentions a known, proven criminal as a “criminal” is engaging in irresponsible journalism.

Whatever you do, just don’t bring up facts and use words that accurately describe those facts, especially if those facts are about the Fords!

They believe that corroborating and linking to the facts that back up your claims are irrelevant — only what known liars and criminals say, with no proof or evidence of any kind, is acceptable.

There is an interesting closing point I’d like to mention here:

Snickering, sneering Ford Nation are about to get a taste of their own medicine. While Rob Ford managed to scrape by on appeals when it mattered, we’ve seen many examples where breaking the law has had absolutely no repercussions — from campaign finances to conflicts of interest. There seems to be no mechanism to hold our elected officials to account at all. And while I think this Ontario Press Council thing is a sham, the reason I’m not getting upset is that they have roughly the same teeth as those groups tasked with making sure politicians don’t break the law.

In other words, even if they find that the Star, Globe and Mail, etc. all did something inappropriate, the best that they can do is have the newspapers print the decision.

I’m certain that, no matter the decision, the news outfits will make at least this small gesture. I’m equally sure that, based on everything we’ve witnessed thus far, Rob Ford would do no such thing. In fact, he would deny any wrongdoing whatsoever, insult and denigrate those who question him, genuinely slander a few more for good measure, and then fuck off for the rest of the early afternoon to go coach football with city staff and resources. And it wouldn’t be the Fords if they didn’t repeatedly lie about it all afterwards!