Ahh, Giorgio.

Remember him?

The Councillor who once said he was willing to break laws to get what he wanted? He had a few interesting ideas, to be sure, but I think this particular one ended up being the truly visionary one, and it didn’t end up being the kind in which he assaults someone on live TV (though there were chances).

For now, it seems, Giorgio’s broken election laws to the tune of $12,000. Toss into this unfortunate bit of news the fact that he’s Ford ally (or was until recently). Ford is still in power, hanging on by his nails, and I think this is where we’re going to start seeing some genuinely interesting developments.

Consider that Mammoliti was, for about a year, part of Ford’s inner circle. He might know stuff.

And Ford will now be asked to choose sides with someone who publicly claimed he was under a great deal of “undue pressure” while working with Ford’s team.

Ford might end up relying on the “we’re both victims of legal technicalities” line, and it’d be a good one except in this case the numbers are a little higher. Four times as much — enough, and for purposes (to win an election), that I think even the most bitter “but it was just a small amount” clingers would be satisfied that the amount is not so small.

So will Ford be expected to criticize his former (current?) ally? And is he willing to say what he thinks an acceptable limit on going over the line is? (Oh, and by the way, what’s the possibility of legally moving the line instead of just telling the current one where to go?)

I mean, what would Ford say about something that ran at about the $12,000 limit? How bad of an infraction is that? And if, in theory, such an infraction was legal but looked bad, what would he think of an infraction that both looked bad but was also illegal?

Perhaps Doug et al. would like to weigh in too?

Should be interesting, I think.

By the way, Happy New Year!

Rob seems particularly coherent and lucid in this press conference. Seems…odd.

It’s still making the rounds!

Rob Ford was taken out on a technicality! He never should’ve been tossed out since the original decision forcing him to repay was invalid!

And so on.

Let’s pick this apart. It won’t take too long, it’s very simple!

1. Voting to let yourself off the hook for something is the very definition of “conflict of interest”. Had Miller put a motion before City Council to appoint himself Fuhrer of Toronto, and then voted on it, would that be considered a conflict of interest? Unlikely as that may sound, it would be within his power to do so, and yet it can easily be argued that it doesn’t involve any money. But I guess if you’re a Fordite, that kind of thing would’ve been perfectly fine — just so long as Miller didn’t make any money off of it. Thumbs up, Ford supporters; brilliant logic!
2. Let’s say that the decision forcing Rob to repay the money was in fact beyond the pale of City Council — if that’s the case, what’s to stop any councillor from abusing their office at any time? Let’s say Adam Vaughan decided that he would support the destruction of the Gardiner Expressway in exchange for donations to his personal  charity. That’s called “influence peddling”, and it’s exactly what Ford did. But guess what, Vaughan didn’t get any of the money, it went to his own charity, so once again it’s all perfectly fine and above board, right? Or is it only wrong if someone who isn’t Ford does it? Can’t have it both ways!
   Furthermore, if Fordo believed that this was completely out of the Council’s jurisdiction, why did he completely validate it all by not only “explaining” how important it was for him to abuse his position as mayor, but also vote on it? By the same logic, any Fordite approached by anyone claiming to be a cop on the street should immediately submit to anything that the “officer” says, because after all, that’s how you insist that your mayor behaves. Then, once you’re in the back of the unmarked van, complain about how fucking stupid you were to have trusted the “cop” in the first place — just like Rob Ford.
3. Maybe the mayor didn’t know that Council wasn’t able to make such rules? Maybe he didn’t read the handbook? Maybe he claimed complete ignorance of anything associated with his position? How about all of the above? But that’s okay — why would we need a mayor that knows how to do the job? It’s just like business: we should entrust the operation to someone who admits to complete incompetence and ignorance.
   Once again, bravo on your logic, Fordites!

And Ford should be allowed to continue to be mayor in the face of all of this? Anyone who supports this position supports all of the above: incompetence, lies, naivete, brazen self-indulgence, ignorance, and corruption — none of which Ford denied.

I’m getting sick of repeating these simple facts, but the media are pumping out so much blatant misinformation, misdirection, and just plain bullshit, we need to keep repeating it for them.

Nice … and slow … and simple.

Does Toronto need more condos?

It’s not that I’m against development, especially when new buildings appear on top of parking lots. And although there are always naysayers out there who are against any changes, I doubt that they lament the loss of paved lots that much.

But when it comes to places like the section of King west between John and Spadina, I don’t see why developers and people like the Mirvish family need to rip out an established and thriving chunk of the downtown just so they can put in their own condos.

But that’s exactly what they’re trying to do right now, with the help of councillors like Adam Vaughan who seem to think that if it’s not a giant tower, it doesn’t belong downtown. And it doesn’t seem to matter that no one along the so-called Restaurant Row wants to move, or that the Bell Lightbox tower, freshly built, is right across the street.

I’m not at all against progress or development, and I think Toronto’s often better for it. But this is a matter of cutting off the nose to spite the face, leaving little in terms of culture or uniqueness behind, and replacing it with private, off-limits property intended to only generate money.

The Mirvhishes, who at one time were pretty big patrons of the arts, have managed to do a full 180 since the death of Ed, and are now not only ripping up their own father’s legacy of love for the city, but also trying to push smaller business owners out of their way in what’s proving to be a lust for money and control. Pretty sure Ed would be furious to see what his kids are doing under his name.

And besides, a cold, heartless, exclusivist, and corporatist Toronto is not where I want to live.

Please visit for more information:

Someone (presumably Ford’s election team), recently created a video called “Respect Democracy“. Toronto City Life has responded by including a few inconvenient facts in the same video — and unlike them, we won’t hide behind anonymity:

(Yeah, I realized I’d made a spelling mistake after I uploaded it. Oh well.)

I know that the headlines prior to “Respect?” in the video are hard to make out, so here they are (all easily found using Google):

This is not something I thought I’d ever be saying in my entire life, but Christie Blatchford actually hit the nail squarely on the head in a November 29 piece for the National Post (which makes it doubly stunning).

In it, she talks about Clayton Ruby, the lawyer who worked for free with Paul Magder to bring Rob Ford before the judge on the conflict of interest thing. I was instantly thinking she’d be ripping into the “lefties” who banded together to make this happen, but instead, and rather shockingly, she directly concedes that this is no left-wing conspiracy.

She puts an almost-human spin on both Ruby and Magder, describing some of their past work and the types of causes they put their weight behind. And rather than taking one side or another (i.e. the “left” or “right”), she exposes a much more direct and accurate picture of what motivated both men:

In April of 2010, Toronto Star food writer Corey Mintz wrote a piece headlined “My dinner with Clayton Ruby.”

…

Mr. Mintz was doing the cooking. As his friends discussed the “polarizing allegiance to the left or right,” Mr. Ruby cut through the verbal red tape, Mr. Mintz wrote.

“I think it’s all abstractly meaningless,” Mr. Ruby said. “There are people who do good in the world. And there are people who do not. And we make judgments.”

And that, I suspect, has much more to do with the efforts to fell Rob Ford than anything else: They do good; Mr. Ford, in their eyes, does not.

It’s interesting to compare this to Blatchford’s earlier pieces where she doesn’t come across in quite the same way:

November 26: “So, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has been given the boot from office because an opportunistic citizen hired a smart and politically savvy lawyer who found a club of an arcane statute with which to tie the hands of a judge who was willing to play ball.”

November 23: “That week in court refreshed my memory, as the lawyers say. It was never that I loved Mr. Ford, either the detail of his politics or who he is particularly.

Rather, I liked who he wasn’t.

He wasn’t David Miller, his pretty-boy predecessor. He wasn’t the late Jack Layton. He wasn’t Sandra Bussin, the former councillor. He wasn’t Olivia Chow, another former councillor, Mr. Layton’s widow, who may yet return to run for the mayoralty (but only, of course, if “the people” demand it).

Mr. Ford wasn’t a part of that soft-left ruling class which, during my time at City Hall in the mid-1990s, ran the show, and appears to still. He wasn’t an earnest subscriber to the conventions of downtown city politics, with its sure convictions about What We Believe In.

I remember that so vividly, the smugness, the preening disdain for outsiders, even if, sometimes especially if, they were actual citizens.”

Maybe this is just some opportunistic writing now that it’s looking like Ford’s popularity isn’t all it was cracked up to be (how very Mamolliti of her). Still, the piece is out there, and I’m left with a profound sense of confusion.

Adding to this is feedback from newspapers like the Sun. Okay, well, that one’s perhaps a little more understandable ever since Ford made it clear he and they weren’t friends. Still, writers like Joe Warmington are usually through-and-through Fordites, often quoted by people like Newstalk’s Jerry Agar to prove just how much mainstream support the mayor has.

Just look at Warmington’s latest about a scuffle between Ford and Adam Vaughan:

But many of his leftists enemies — not all — have shown themselves to be graceless. Others have acted like classless lowlifes — the kind who would make fun of his weight, bother him at home with his kids and spread hateful, and hurtful lies, like him going to a gun club when he didn’t or incorrectly saying he called a 911 operator a “bitch” when the tape proves it did not happen.

To be fair, Warmington mentions Ford’s conflict of interest fiasco in this article, recognizing that Rob is somewhat responsible for some of his own mess, but it doesn’t quite stack up to the finger wagging that Warmington gave the mayor when the verdict was delivered:

In reality it would never have ever been put in the judiciary’s hands had Ford shown some humility and displayed a modicum of tolerance for people, and views that don’t walk lockstep with his.

Self-destructive or self-sabotage are other words. It’s as if he prefers the turmoil and conflict more than agreement. Every scandal he’s been involved in, he created himself.

He won’t go to Pride Parade. Dumb.

Talking on cellphone while driving. Avoidable.

Getting into ruckuses with reporters or comedians at his home. Childish.

In this instance, like he did when he slipped and fell at the Grey Cup event on the field in Nathan Phillips Square last week, he sacked himself.

“It is difficult to accept an error in judgment defence based essentially on a stubborn sense of entitlement and a dismissive and confrontational attitude,” wrote the judge.

He played chicken with a judge and lost. Had Ford played the game a little bit it would not have come to this. Had he listened to his peers that he was in conflict and not voted on his own motion, there would be no story. There was no need for any of this. In a culture of us and them, he made it easy for them.

Compare this further with Warmington’s most recent representations of Don Cherry as he backs Ford:

November 28: “Cherry did that himself (get flack for public commentary) last hockey season for emotional comments about three former NHL enforcers and never looked back.

He said now that Ford has done that, there needs to be some compassion and let him get back to doing his job.

“Here’s a guy that has dedicated his life to helping under-privileged kids and this is what happens to him?” Cherry said. “The guy made a mistake with the letterhead (and voting) no doubt. But he didn’t waste or lose billions of dollars like so many other governments have. His was a minor mistake. A human mistake.”

The Hockey Night in Canada legend made headlines two years ago at Ford’s swearing-in by telling Ford’s enemies to “put that in your pipe, you left-wing kooks.”

So he’s not surprised by what’s happening now.

“Let’s lay the cards on the table. The only reason this happened, the only reason, was because of the left-wingers out to get him,” Cherry said.

It has been difficult for him to watch.”

November 29: “Ford has no one to blame for this mess but himself since everybody from his brother Doug, to Don Cherry to deputy mayor Doug Holyday warned him to stop leading with his chin.”

Again, and shockingly so, Warmington is one of the most balanced voices at the Toronto Sun at the present time. Still, with only a day to separate his take on Ford’s situation, Warmington still meekly manages to flip flop more than a fish freshly tossed onto dry land.

And that right there is what I see as being the crux of the problem. It’s not a fight between the “left” and “right”, it’s a toss-up between those who choose a side and obstinately stay with it, even to the point of doing a 180-degree turn in their thinking whenever the breeze changes, and a more centrist approach that is willing to look at all sides with a more critical eye. In other words, the right/left stick bullheadedly with an ideology, often resorting to a 1984-like “doublethink” in order to maintain their blind allegiance.

Of course, I can’t say that this is true across the board, but it certainly seems to be more predominant with those who identify themselves as “right”-leaning (though I’ve seen plenty of examples of exactly the same thing among the “lefty” types too). I couldn’t even imagine the shock to their system when they realize that their beliefs are in line with the most repressive and conformist sort of communist-socialism one could conjure up.

Then again, these same people believe that the extreme right belongs to the Nazis — National Socialists – an extreme form of collectivized,  totalitarian control — and the left to the Communists — an extreme form of collectivized, totalitarian form of control. Only rhetoric, lack of critical thought, and instantaneous doublethink could possibly keep such things separate.

To anyone who is critical, none of this sits well.

Take Adam Vaughan, for example. This Councillor is typified as the anti-Ford at City Hall. He is the predominant “leftie” who the Sun holds up as the source of all evils in their nonsensical didactic.

Because Vaughan has publicly butted heads with Ford, he is placed by the “right” as the man who played the leading role in the mayor’s downfall, and furthermore, that he’s one of the major figures responsible for the “gravy” at City Hall. Ipso facto, anyone who doesn’t blindly follow Ford must necessarily love Vaughan, and by extension waste and gravy and so on and so forth. You get the idea.

That would have to make me a Vaughan-loving “leftie” then, wouldn’t it?

Only problem is that I don’t subscribe to that kind of stupidity. I’m no more enamoured with Vaughan than I am with Ford.

I mean, Vaughan has had fewer dictatorial tendencies thus far, but there’s something I learned recently (and about which I’ll be writing), that make it obvious that both Ford and Vaughan are cut from a very similar cloth.

Point I’m trying to make is that we need to decide where we stand, not where our politicians stand, or what rhetorical one-liners we want to support, etc. Yeah, that does mean we all need to dig a bit deeper, follow politics a bit more closely, read the news (all of it!) with a critical eye, and be willing to take a stand when something doesn’t fit with our own souls.

Sometimes that might even mean — *gasp* — changing our minds about someone!

It’s clear that a large percentage of the population isn’t doing any of this.

And by the way, next time you’re hearing about or discussing the Nazi Holocaust, or the rise of the Communist regime, or any one of the multitudes of evil that spring up around the globe, and you’re wondering how people would allow themselves to fall under such systems en masse (and once you’re under it, good luck!), try comparing what happened then to what’s happening at this very moment.

Blatchford mentioned it, and people like Clayton Ruby are keenly aware of it. And the similarities are horrific.

Technically not the very first flakes, but definitely the first that decided to hang around for more than a few minutes. Enough, at least, for me to dust off the ole camera.

Crude rage faces say it better than my words can at the moment…

…true story.