Rob Ford's Toronto

[Peepers]

What is it about Chow that would drive you to vote for Ford again? She's tough, politically savvy, well connected, was a former City Councillor, is a strong supporter of transit, she works well with those "across the aisle" and would represent the city better than Rob Ford any day. She's smart too.

There are many reasons why I would not vote for Chow. Off the top of my head I would say the fact that she still pledges to kill the Island Airport even after it has been proven to be so positive for Toronto pumping $Billions into the local economy and providing thousands of jobs (including at our largest Mfg employer Bombardier) disqualifies her for any public office in Toronto.

I think Chow is a fraud much like her late husband and lets face it, had she not married Jack it's unlikely that most of us would have ever heard of her name. I will not forget how when Jack was alive these two dippers double-dipped on housing allowances in Ottawa (over $1 Million A YEAR in housing & travel expenses!) and when confronted explained it was OK because they didn't break any rules (just like they didn't break any rules when they lived in Toronto Public housing years before while making over $100,000!)

 

[mrtinfoilsocket]

(just like they didn't break any rules when they lived in Toronto Public housing years before while making over $100,000!)

It's my understanding that this isn't actually true. They were paying market rent in a co-op building completely legitimately. There is a government subsidy for the co-op as a whole but living in one is an option available to any middle class person if they choose. Mixed income is one of the key goals of the co-op concept.

If the rules aren't an arbitrator of what's fair and what's not then who decides? You? Me?

I make a decent income and live down town. But every tax season I enter in my charitable donations and claim the tax credit that I'm entitled to. I don't need it and it maybe shouldn't be available to me but it is. Is that fraudulent? I don't consider it any different than what Jack did in the co-op.

 

[adma]

To expand upon your analogy - if the defaced building shown above represents Rob Ford - I would suggest to you that George Smitherman was the equivalent of a nuclear waste dump. I suspect most of us who voted for Ford did so because he represented the lesser evil. Considering all options it was better to live next door this EIFIS clad monstrosity than live next door to a nuclear waste dump. Given the same choices I would vote for Ford again even knowing what I know about the man now. Hopefully next time around we have better choices but I will say right now if it becomes a race between Ford and Chow - Ford has my vote again!

Somehow, framing this in "live next door to" terms, as opposed to more generalized endorsement/non-endorsement terms, illuminates the inherent blinkered selfishness of much of Ford's support base. All the more so if we may hypothesize, for the "what if" sake of argument, that the former state of the premises actually may have stored nuclear waste, PCPs, grow-op, meth lab, whatever. It's still no excuse for defending what happened here....

Oh, and maybe: for "nuclear waste dump", substitute "jail".

 

[christiesplits]

It's my understanding that this isn't actually true. They were paying market rent in a co-op building completely legitimately. There is a government subsidy for the co-op as a whole but living in one is an option available to any middle class person if they choose. Mixed income is one of the key goals of the co-op concept.

It's amazing how the lie that Layton and Chow were living in subsidized housing has survived for so long. I was in a barber shop in Layton's former riding a few months ago and the barber was moaning about the same thing. I have heard it menhtioned by callers on CFRB. I guess we should forgive Ford Nashun for not understanding the whole "co-operative housing" thing. It does sound a lil' communist.

 

[James_D]

They paid market value in mixed-income housing. The funny bit is robbie nation would whine about them being entitled, elitist teat-suckers had they lived in a big house.

 

[freshcutgrass]

I would say the fact that she still pledges to kill the Island Airport even after it has been proven to be so positive for Toronto pumping $Billions into the local economy and providing thousands of jobs (including at our largest Mfg employer Bombardier) disqualifies her for any public office in Toronto.

What billions??? Are these "Ford" billions? (as in using the word billion because you think it sounds cool but just a term you pull out of your ass rather than anything resembling a fact)

The island airport has cost us untold millions in subsidies to both the airport and airlines.
The island airport is a safety and environmental hazard
The island airport is incompatible with the $BILLIONS (real billions) in development on the waterfront
The island airport represents a massive waste of 215 acres of super prime waterfront land

So, whatever else would replace the island airport would be immensely better than the status quo. This would be the long term positive move for the city. Anybody who supports this is working in the best interests of the city and more than qualifies them for public office.

I think Chow is a fraud much like her late husband

(just like they didn't break any rules when they lived in Toronto Public housing years before while making over $100,000!)

HA!!

Tell me what upper middle class couples (especially conservatives) would purposely choose to pay full market rent to live in social housing with "marginalized" people?

Yea...exactly.

It's called walking the walk. Which is the opposite of what being a fraud is in case you weren't aware.

And no matter what your political stripe, nobody did it better than Chow & Layton, which is why everybody, even a POS like Ford had respect for him.

We know why people like you don't like people like Chow or Layton. And the fact that you prefer a POS like Ford says all we need to know.

 

[James_D]

So now douggie is saying that it is a problem that his idiot brother was wasted at TotD and robbie knows it was wrong. So he's gone from never, ever even seen rob have one drink to a couple of pops who cares to it was wrong.

 

[RC8]

It's the little things like that that remind me that Ford and most Ford supporters are if not mentally challenged then anti-intelligence.

Mind you, so is Horwath.

And people like somuchwater are enablers who legitimise the right of the masses to be ignorant. It is fine and reasonable for different people to believe in different solutions and different priorities in politics, but an internally inconsistent discourse should be unacceptable regardless of where you stand on the political spectrum.

For too long in this country and generally in North America, educated people have been terribly afraid to call out those who spout a logically inconsistent dogma. Why would you alienate the rural vote? Why would you alienate the religious minorities? Why would you alienate the self-entitled millionaires? This is why you end up with a large chunk of the population that doesn't believe in evolution, elects the likes of Rob Ford, and votes to subsidise big oil as a social policy.

 

[animated]

They paid market value in mixed-income housing. The funny bit is robbie nation would whine about them being entitled, elitist teat-suckers had they lived in a big house.

I'm truly interested in Peepers' response to this.

It's what makes politics so tiring to me:
Repeat debunked falsehoods and refuse to answer for it when your claims are proven wrong.
And if (by some small miracle) the wrong is acknowledged, it's accompanied by an attack on your "enemy".

 

[scar_resident]

They paid market value in mixed-income housing. The funny bit is robbie nation would whine about them being entitled, elitist teat-suckers had they lived in a big house.

Market rent in co-ops are not market rent as the general public knows it to be. Currently a one bedroom apartment in the esplanade co-op buildings market rate is $800-850 a month including all utilites no parking. Co-ops were inherently subsidized with "land grants" by various forms of govenment. Their market rental rates are actually lower than market rates that's why the wating lists are over 5 years.

 

[OSS 117]

I would also be comfortable suggesting that 20% of people are below average intelligence, but mostly because I know what the word 'tautology' means... (Seriously, think about that for a second).

But here's what you're doing: you're setting up an entirely arbitrary, perfectly contestable standard by which you measure 'intelligence'--in this case, whether or not someone voted for Ford--and then simply saying that those people are 'unintelligent'. Here's what's wrong with that: 1) It assumes that the only reasons someone would be willing to vote for Ford are either stupidity or spite, which is totally false; democracy is always about choosing the candidate who best represents as many of your interests as possible, but not all. Maybe many people simply felt like Ford best represented what they wanted and absolutely no-one in the press or the public sphere ever explained why Ford's policies were mostly crap; 2) to assume that the only two options are 'informed voters' and 'stupid ignoramuses' is to grossly oversimplify not only the mechanisms and context within which public opinion is formed, it also overstates the extent to which people are in fact informed voters. Many people on UT who are way more informed than the average person also make mistakes about things like transit policy, taxation, budgeting etc. It's simply naive to assume that broad swaths of voters are equipped to deal with the details of policy, a fact which is a result of structural issues - education, poverty, the state of media - not just simple ignorance posited as a unique quality that somehow exists outside of a socio-historical context, free floating like a magic spell.

Maybe more to the point, though - what is the voter turnout amongst the mentally challenged? You're just eager to blame ordinary people, rather than the structures of power that enabled Ford - at which point, you may as well just vote for Ford or some other 'fiscal conservative' who just sides with the power of the establishment and the status quo.

Okay, we're discussing two different things. You seemed to have a problem with the suggestion that a certain percentage of the population was stupid, or to put it more politely, of below average intelligence. Now that we've agreed that this is most likely the case, the question becomes "are the less intelligent more likely to have been conned into voting for Ford than people of average intelligence or above?" I would say yes. Obviously I wasn't saying that every BAI (Below Average Intellect---nicer than saying stupid) voted for Ford. That was obviously hyperbole.

You make a very good point about the structures of power that made it possible for Ford to win the election. I mean, absolutely, you're right. But people have to take some responsibility. If you want it to not happen again, I think people need to be shamed a little bit, and not patted on the head and told "It's okay, they made you do it."

 

[OSS 117]

There are many reasons why I would not vote for Chow. Off the top of my head I would say the fact that she still pledges to kill the Island Airport even after it has been proven to be so positive for Toronto pumping $Billions into the local economy and providing thousands of jobs (including at our largest Mfg employer Bombardier) disqualifies her for any public office in Toronto.

I think Chow is a fraud much like her late husband and lets face it, had she not married Jack it's unlikely that most of us would have ever heard of her name. I will not forget how when Jack was alive these two dippers double-dipped on housing allowances in Ottawa (over $1 Million A YEAR in housing & travel expenses!) and when confronted explained it was OK because they didn't break any rules (just like they didn't break any rules when they lived in Toronto Public housing years before while making over $100,000!)

You're opening up a can of worms bringing up the public housing thing. That's been covered a few hundred pages back, and not in a way that backs up your point.

 

[Tulse]

Market rent in co-ops are not market rent as the general public knows it to be.

But those rents are available to anyone. The point is that Layton and Chow were not somehow cheating or gaming the system -- they did what anyone would be permitted to do.

Because of the nature of co-ops, not everyone wants to live in one. Those who do can do exactly the same thing that Layton and Chow did. There was nothing nefarious here.

 

[OSS 117]

What billions??? Are these "Ford" billions? (as in using the word billion because you think it sounds cool but just a term you pull out of your ass rather than anything resembling a fact)

The island airport has cost us untold millions in subsidies to both the airport and airlines.
The island airport is a safety and environmental hazard
The island airport is incompatible with the $BILLIONS (real billions) in development on the waterfront
The island airport represents a massive waste of 215 acres of super prime waterfront land

So, whatever else would replace the island airport would be immensely better than the status quo. This would be the long term positive move for the city. Anybody who supports this is working in the best interests of the city and more than qualifies them for public office.





HA!!

Tell me what upper middle class couples (especially conservatives) would purposely choose to pay full market rent to live in social housing with "marginalized" people?

Yea...exactly.

It's called walking the walk. Which is the opposite of what being a fraud is in case you weren't aware.

And no matter what your political stripe, nobody did it better than Chow & Layton, which is why everybody, even a POS like Ford had respect for him.

We know why people like you don't like people like Chow or Layton. And the fact that you prefer a POS like Ford says all we need to know.

You're probably right about all the downsides of the island airport. But, jeez, it's pretty handy.

 

[RC8]

Market rent in co-ops are not market rent as the general public knows it to be. Currently a one bedroom apartment in the esplanade co-op buildings market rate is $800-850 a month including all utilites no parking. Co-ops were inherently subsidized with "land grants" by various forms of govenment. Their market rental rates are actually lower than market rates that's why the wating lists are over 5 years.

That's because co-ops are not for profit housing. It's not different from how a rental apartment works except that no one uses it as means to get rich.

If well-to-do people were more willing to live in co-op housing, average rents in the GTA would be much lower than they are today. We would all benefit, and at virtually no cost to the government.