Rob Ford's Toronto

[newearthling]

Addiction isn't about smart or stupid. When in the depths of a craving, an addict can find themselves with literally no choice in the matter. The systems in the brain that govern choice, desire and decision making are short circuited, and the addict will engage in drug seeking behaviour even though they don't "want" to use.

It's something that's really hard to understand if you haven't experienced it.

Recovery is about learning to recognize and avoid those triggers, so you can make the choice not to use.

That explains Rob, but not Doug....unless DF has an addiction we don't know about.

 

[ROFOMOFO]

Addiction isn't about smart or stupid. When in the depths of a craving, an addict can find themselves with literally no choice in the matter. The systems in the brain that govern choice, desire and decision making are short circuited, and the addict will engage in drug seeking behaviour even though they don't "want" to use.

It's something that's really hard to understand if you haven't experienced it.

Recovery is about learning to recognize and avoid those triggers, so you can make the choice not to use.

I've experienced it and been in rehab and posted about it. Addicts ARE capable of leading normal (as far as the casual observer goes) lives. The term "high functioning alcoholic" exists because some of us have been able to juggle job, family etc while few to none realize the extent of our troubles.

Rub displays none of this, he GLORIES in his abuse and gangster like lifestyle, that is indicative of his stupidity, to think that that could remain hidden. He's a stupid individual that tells lies even though he knows they are easily discovered. A few of the people I met in rehab were like Rub, they continued lying in rehab and my guess is they ended up back to where they were beforehand, a prognosis I suspect will follow Rub given his first week of rehab antics.

 

[LowPolygon]

 

[L23]

What is that photo?

 

[casita]

What is that photo?

Flu shot?

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

That explains Rob, but not Doug....unless DF has an addiction we don't know about.

Power and fame? The guy seems rather vain, and I am sure he enjoyed being the Dowager Empress.

AoD

 

[casita]

"3rd day in a row, Deputy Mayor Norm Kelly's office releases a public itinerary for the deputy mayor. Rob Ford never did this"
https://twitter.com/reporterdonpeat/status/466560559308357634

"A return to NORMalcy"?

Temporarily at least.

 

[NormEron]

The funniest part is in the Global-TV article:

quote:
Ford... is currently at an undisclosed rehabilitation facility for his alleged alcohol abuse.

This quote angers me... Why is his alcohol abuse "alleged" but not the rehab? If ANY part of this whole story is to be prefaced with the word "alleged" the rehab part has got to be at the top of the list.

There are multiple videos of him abusing alcohol, drugs, other people. There are numerous accounts of his racism, and yet there's only the account of a documented serial liar and someone he brought in that claims to be a doctor to back up the assertion that Rob's in rehab.

The doctor's timeline doesn't even make sense:
The claim that Rob had been admitted to Rehab on May 1st is barely possible, and not remotely plausible. He was headed for a "facility" in Chicago that morning. Assuming it took him an hour to fly there, an hour to argue with border patrol, eventually conceding that he will not enter the US, then an hour to fly home, they had half a day to get him admitted to a rehab facility that there's no chance they had the foresight to book in advance.

While this story doesn't break any of the laws of physics, it breaks all manner of reasonable timelines.

CHALLENGE: start making calls right now and find just ONE rehab in-patient facility in Canada (as Rob did not enter the US) that you can be admitted to today.

Admittedly, I've never had to deal with this myself, but from my basic internet research, I've noted one common theme in the admissions process for rehab facilities: they all refer to a START DATE in their discussion of the admissions process leading me to believe that it's not a "Hi I'm here" kind of process.

Someone prove me wrong.

 

[newearthling]

What is that photo?

Since it looks like he is taking off his shirt, maybe RoFo's 'rehab' is a nudist football camp, and this pic is of him getting ready for scrimmage.

Is that the right word for football, scrimmage?
Sorry for the visual!

 

[Sweet Mister]

Someone prove me wrong.

That's not how it works.

RoFo is clearly in some kind of facility. I'm sure there are several that would jump at the chance for the free publicity -- indeed one issued a public invitation (and that may well be the one he's in). Private units do not have to abide by anybody else's rules about waiting lists, even their own.

 

[pattycakes]

I've experienced it and been in rehab and posted about it. Addicts ARE capable of leading normal (as far as the casual observer goes) lives. The term "high functioning alcoholic" exists because some of us have been able to juggle job, family etc while few to none realize the extent of our troubles.

Rub displays none of this, he GLORIES in his abuse and gangster like lifestyle, that is indicative of his stupidity, to think that that could remain hidden. He's a stupid individual that tells lies even though he knows they are easily discovered. A few of the people I met in rehab were like Rub, they continued lying in rehab and my guess is they ended up back to where they were beforehand, a prognosis I suspect will follow Rub given his first week of rehab antics.

Bingo. You can't go to rehab for stupidity. I wish it was available, I know a few people that could use the service.

 

[the lemur]

Well, in 1996 that probably is what he would have got from a hairdresser, no?

I think that picture's older than 1996 ... I have an old issue of Maclean's somewhere from 1994 with Harper in it as a member of the Reform caucus and his hair is about the same as it is now but for the colour.

ETA: it's from his 1988 election campaign in Calgary West.

 

[the lemur]

The funniest part is in the Global-TV article:

quote:
Ford... is currently at an undisclosed rehabilitation facility for his alleged alcohol abuse.

Ford... is currently at an undisclosed alleged rehabilitation facility for his alcohol abuse

Fixed that for you, Global News.

 

[ThoughtArcade]

Can I ask generally how people are feeling about MetroMan's "intel" these days?

 

[newearthling]

I don't think this was posted back when it was published in March. But it is a great article, so well worth a re-post!
Also, Dissent is awesome.
It details how RoFo came to power and reviews the neo liberal history of Canada, Ontario and Toronto.

The Passion of Rob Ford, or the Neoliberal Making of Toronto’s Municipal Crisis
By Paul Cohen - March 19, 2014

Blaming Rob Ford frees Torontonians from asking uncomfortable questions about their city, and leaves unchallenged its image as a model of diversity and civic-minded urban life. That so many declared themselves shocked, shocked to find that Toronto was governed by a human train wreck belies the mayor’s long and abundantly documented track record of undignified behavior. Toronto Life magazine coined the term schadenford—a neologism to describe Torontonians’ sport of gawking at Ford’s misbehavior—as early as 2008, when police arrested him for allegedly assaulting his wife. It was already painfully clear that Ford was utterly unfit for public office well before he ran for mayor in 2010. That so few dwell on Ford’s ugly habit of tossing about racist and homophobic remarks suggests a broader unwillingness to contemplate the possibility that multicultural Toronto knowingly elected a bigot.

...

Mike Harris’s Common Sense Revolution could not have come at a worse time for Toronto. With the metro region already fast outgrowing the city’s straining infrastructure, his predecessor as premier proposed a new subway to link the communities just north of Toronto; once the budgetary pork was trimmed and served up, only two additional absurdly short subway lines were begun. Upon taking office, Harris canceled one of the subways, spitefully ordering an already-completed station filled in to insure that construction could never be restarted (the second project has operated since 2002, a 5.5 kilometer–long rump subway that sees few passengers). Harris also offloaded responsibility for funding public housing and social programs from the province onto cities, and at the same time dramatically reduced provincial transfers to urban areas (from 4.1 percent of provincial GDP in 1994 to 2.9 percent in 2002). Harris pushed through the amalgamation of Toronto and five neighboring municipalities in 1998, promising that it would reduce operating costs (it hasn’t). This urban fusion transformed Toronto, welding vast suburban communities to a densely urbanized downtown to create the fifth-largest city in North America. The incorporation of Toronto’s inner suburbs into the city also redrew its political map, folding the more conservative voices of the periphery into the electoral mix.

...

Toronto’s aging and inadequate infrastructure has made it all the more difficult to meet the challenges of growth and amalgamation, let alone to mend a fraying social fabric. The metro area grew from 3 to 6 million inhabitants between 1971 and 2011, and virtually all that growth came in the suburbs. Scarce public transit and strained social services beyond downtown have worked to accentuate social gaps between core and suburbs. Toronto today is one of the worst congested cities in the world: 70 percent of the metro area’s inhabitants drive to work, making the 401 the most heavily trafficked highway in North America and forcing automobilists to endure average commute times longer even than those in Los Angeles. In a 2013 report, the Toronto Board of Trade—hardly a champion of tax-and-spend profligacy—estimated that Toronto’s aging transportation infrastructure cost the city $6 billion per year in lost productivity and declared it the local economy’s “Achilles’ heel . . . woefully inadequate for a region of six million people.†In their conclusion, they all but begged the city and province to raise taxes and spend more on public transit.

...

The real story in Toronto, then, is not Rob Ford. It is how three decades of creeping neoliberalism have made it possible for one of North America’s most diverse cities in one of the west’s most robust democracies to elect a right-wing populist. It is how successive federal governments—Liberal and Conservative alike—shrank government spending by 20 percent as a share of GDP since the early 1990s and flattened the tax structure (Canadian businesses now pay one of the lowest corporate tax rates in the developed world). It is how right-wing parties and pundits have successfully reshaped the national conversation so that taxes and government spending seem like ills in and of themselves. It is how calls for lower taxes can gain the most traction in places where taxes are lowest—like Toronto, which already enjoys some of the lowest property taxes in North America. It is how cities like Toronto spent penuriously on their urban environments, leaving them ill-equipped for the future. And it is how voters in precisely those Toronto neighborhoods that have suffered the most from shrinking government threw their support behind a man who promised to reduce services even further. Just as progressive Americans have had to ask themselves what’s the matter with Kansas, Canadians need to think about what’s wrong in Etobicoke.

...

Torontonians might also draw inspiration from what is going on in Los Angeles, which has successfully navigated California’s notoriously tax-allergic politics to imagine a public-transit future beyond its infamous dependence on the automobile. In only twenty years, LA has built a rail-based transit system substantially bigger than Toronto’s, and in 2008 Angelenos even approved a tax hike to cover the costs of continued expansion. The Ford debacle should serve as a wake-up call to Torontonians—and Canadians more broadly. They are overdue for a serious conversation about taxes, inequality, urban policy, environmental sustainability, and the public good.