HWB: It gets better
May. 27th, 2013 09:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyUm.
So. When the guys selling the Rob Ford crack video disappeared, I made one of my usual tasteless jokes, which was that they were probably wearing concrete shoes at the bottom of Lake Ontario.
Well.
What does it take to get rid of this guy?
Of course, now I'm hoping that he stays in office for just a little bit longer, on account of my rock star t-shirts, due to arrive on Tuesday night thanks to the seriously charming kindred spirit at the local t-shirt printing place. And because at this point, if he leaves office, the right-wing could get someone with similar politics but a more subtle approach in, whereas if this drags on and on, we are guaranteed a left-wing mayor (hopefully one named Olivia Chow) with a wide majority on council to clean up Ford's clusterfuck.
But I mean. The Globe is outshining the Star with their epic investigative report that, among other things, links the Ford family to fucking Wolfgang Droege, notorious Toronto neo-Nazi. Note: I don't give a shit if Doug dealt hash in high school—who didn't? What does interest me is whether he knows people who can have inconvenient people disappeared. Answer: Apparently yes.
So. When the guys selling the Rob Ford crack video disappeared, I made one of my usual tasteless jokes, which was that they were probably wearing concrete shoes at the bottom of Lake Ontario.
Well.
What does it take to get rid of this guy?
Of course, now I'm hoping that he stays in office for just a little bit longer, on account of my rock star t-shirts, due to arrive on Tuesday night thanks to the seriously charming kindred spirit at the local t-shirt printing place. And because at this point, if he leaves office, the right-wing could get someone with similar politics but a more subtle approach in, whereas if this drags on and on, we are guaranteed a left-wing mayor (hopefully one named Olivia Chow) with a wide majority on council to clean up Ford's clusterfuck.
But I mean. The Globe is outshining the Star with their epic investigative report that, among other things, links the Ford family to fucking Wolfgang Droege, notorious Toronto neo-Nazi. Note: I don't give a shit if Doug dealt hash in high school—who didn't? What does interest me is whether he knows people who can have inconvenient people disappeared. Answer: Apparently yes.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2013-05-27 02:38 pm (UTC)Do you think The Boss is modeled on Rob Ford? If so it would mean he'll be dying in a couple of years, but maybe not that closely modeled.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-27 02:42 pm (UTC)I kind of like the idea of living in a city run by a crime boss. It adds a certain narrative something. I would prefer decent transit and community housing, but I have to admit that this is a bit exciting.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-27 03:27 pm (UTC)Ah, apparently it was actually Richard Daley that was the model.
Seems to have been cancelled already.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-27 03:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-27 07:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-27 04:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-27 07:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-27 05:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-27 07:23 pm (UTC)unrelated
Date: 2013-05-27 06:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-27 07:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-27 07:20 pm (UTC)Turns out it was made by the SMBC people. http://teespring.com/marxistutopia
oh, but you may not be able to get one. crap.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-27 07:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-27 07:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-28 07:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-27 07:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-27 07:28 pm (UTC)One day (probably soon) I'm going to base a character on him and everyone will say it's unrealistic.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-27 08:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-27 08:39 pm (UTC)I can't even.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-27 08:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-27 08:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-28 07:37 pm (UTC)i can't imagine why
no subject
Date: 2013-05-27 08:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-27 08:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-27 09:12 pm (UTC)And then I think, 1) Ha! I feel so lucky to be in a city where the mayor faces nuanced criticism on his policy decisions rather than just being a complete and utter embarrassment.
Then I think, 2) Wait a moment... when is the last time I heard anyone in my Canadian social sphere talk about poverty and homelessness in Toronto? I actually think that the entire time Rob Ford has been mayor, he has so successfully drawn attention to himself that not even progressive bloggers/tweeters are taking much time to talk about substantive problems facing Toronto. And why would they, when they have Rob Ford to talk about?
no subject
Date: 2013-05-27 09:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-27 10:40 pm (UTC)Interesting commentary on rabble.ca about the culture of entitlement, privielge and "magical thinking" that surrounds Rob Ford and many other public figures who are given a pass for bad behaviours.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-27 10:46 pm (UTC)I wonder if it's the same people. Like, whether he lost the right-wing anti-drug types but gained the intertubes crowd because of the sheer absurdity of his antics.
Interesting commentary on rabble.ca about the culture of entitlement, privielge and "magical thinking" that surrounds Rob Ford and many other public figures who are given a pass for bad behaviours.
Was that Michael Laxer's? He had a good one on there the other day.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-27 10:57 pm (UTC)They either give him a pass (because he's The Boss, and the Boss is doing good work) or dismiss it all as a fabricated leftist plot.
I think it was Michael Laxer.
There's more there along that vein.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-28 08:09 pm (UTC)Seriously, what the hell, BC?
He eventually was forced to resign over the improper (and really fucking annoying) sale of BC Rail, but the Liberals are still in. Catch this: remember when Kim Campbell took over for Brian Mulroney, and she stayed in office just long enough to get a new election sorted out? Well, Christie Clark took over as Premier from him in the beginning of 2011, and she's ONLY JUST NOW called an election. Seriously, what the everlasting fuck?!!?
I'm actually pretty ticked off at this, because I really, really, REALLY wanted to vote against that stupid woman, but she's dragged her feet for so long that I've moved TWICE since she started and now that I'm on the other side of the country, I'm pretty sure I couldn't vote as I'm no longer a resident of BC. Missed the mail-in deadline anyways because of all the forwarding, and now she's been re-elected.
Why are average citizens so very bad at politics (and voting in general)? Do they no longer teach it in school? The hell, Canada.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-28 10:36 pm (UTC)"Gordomatic" (as his handlers used to call him) did not resign over BC Rail, he gave it up because his bonehead move of forcing the Harmonized Sales Tax on BCers, scant months after winning an election in which they said they would not do that thing there.
The BC Rail thing has never been properly investigated, and with a fourth Liberal term, probably never will be.
We had an election in May 2013 because we were supposed to have one.
One of the first things Gordo & Coy. did on taking power in 2001 was to establish fixed election dates: Christy Clark did have to win a byelection (in Point Grey) to become the Premier in 2011 - she barely won then and lost by just a little now, so the next question from her point of view is which MLA is to step aside (into a nice sinecure, most likely) so she can win a byelection in a nice safe district.
So probably she will have some bogus residence in the Interior somewhere, which voted solidly Liberal except for Hippieland down in the southeast corner there.
As it was, she didn't ever live in Point Grey either.
Anyway, she ran out the clock to have this election, and yes, for almost two years it was in pretty much constant pre-election mode, but things looked worse and worse as the scandals multiplied and deepened (and these were just new ones, not the old ones that needed to be investigated too).
Now, as to why she won - the reasons are many and varied and I can't really rank them.
- Item: the voter turnout was somewhere between 51% and maybe 53% (there were a lot of absentee ballots and they have just started counting them), pretty bad but about the same as 2009. The Liberals got about 43% of the popular vote, so that means that barely 23% of all the people who could vote, voted Liberal, which means they get to give the finger to the other 77% for the next four years. As it was there were 19 districts with turnouts of less than 50%; I think such places should have no MLA at all, or have the election rerun until they make it past that miserable D- level of civic engagement.
- Item: it was the NDP's to lose, and they lost it big-time; detailed nicely here: http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2013/05/27/BC-Election-Rubble/
- Item: it was the Liberal's to lose, and they defied that by, well, again, detailed here: http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2013/05/28/What-Beat-BC-NDP/ . There's a phenomenon here called the "Ten-Second Socred" where people gripe about how awful things are under the Rightwing Party, but in the ten seconds they spend actually in the voting booth, they ticky that box anyway because SOCIALIST HORDES WILL KILL ALL THE JOBS AND MAKE ME HAVE GAY BABIES.
So yes, this one was a very important crossroads, and the road was not taken.
I blame the echo chambers that many of us live in – not just the right wing, massively apparent, Big Lie Machine that we see everywhere and especially in evidence the last month here in BC, but the ones we construct for ourselves.
I read two or three papers (online editions, anyway) and several political blogs (Canadian and American) every day. I vote every chance that I get and I have fairly well-defined personal positions on most economic, political and social issues.
The problem with that is that everyone else in my life is also much like this – not that they agree with my opinion on things, but that they consider it important to be well-informed, to take politics seriously and that voting is the minimum price of admission to society.
Almost half of the people who could vote in this province never bothered to.
For many people, their only sources of news are TV soundbites, yakfests like CKNW (from which our Premier descended) and Charles Adler, and the distorted rumours other people distil and filter from these same sources.
So in the end there probably was a large section of “undecideds” who literally made up their minds hours before going into the polling booth, and an even larger section who just never bothered to get there at all.
I could not believe there could be anyone left in the province, after 12 YEARS of this, who could not have made up their mind definitively about the fix we’re in.
But that’s the echo chamber I made for myself.
And I was wrong.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-29 12:13 am (UTC)That HST was still a stupid move, insofar as bringing it in like a month after getting elected, after promising to not, pre-election (really, dude?) but I have to admit, I think getting rid of it again was even dumber, considering that accepting it got us enough federal funding to wipe out half of the provincial debt. Which of course we lost again, once the HST was cancelled again. Dumb as the way they brought it in in the first place was, getting rid of it again was fiscally irresponsible. But it made for better politics, sigh.
The Liberals aren't well-liked up in the Interior, where I lived for the past ten years I was in BC; something about shutting down hospitals and schools and things is just annoying, I guess, for some reason *eyeroll*
Do you know, when I had my second child, we had to drive an hour north to the next main town over, because we lost our anesthesiologist and if I needed an emergency C-section I wouldn't be able to get one? Which it ended up I did need. But first we got to hang around there for a week, because I had false labour and wasn't progressing, but might go into real labour any time, so they didn't want me an hour away. And since we didn't know anyone up there, we all got to stay there for a week. Happily there was a hostel on the other side of the parking lot, but it meant shutting down our home-based business while we were away, to say nothing of trying to get the animals fed. ><
Hell, when I later was trying to get an ultrasound for an injury--man, see, our local hospital didn't have an ultrasound machine. So normally we'd go to that same town an hour away, but they no longer had anyone trained to use it. So then the next option would be the main hospital for the area, two and a half hours away, except their waiting list was at A YEAR AND A HALF. So I had to wait only a few months, and then go EIGHT HOURS AWAY to get a bloody ultrasound!! It would have been faster and more convenient to go to Vancouver, where we had people we could stay with and which was only six hours away, but Salmon Arm is part of the Interior Health Authority and Vancouver isn't. Which meant that if I went to Vancouver, I would have to go on the very, very end of the list, where I would be bumped back every time a local needed it, too. So Vancouver was never going to happen.
Plus BC Rail was the only affordable (and comfortable) alternative to the Greyhound to get between Prince George and Vancouver. Via still runs between PG and Kitimat, where you can go from PG to Terrace for about $50 either by bus (which is sheer hell, and about a nine-hour drive) or by train (if you book at least four days in advance, and which is a comfortable, civilized way to travel, even if it does take about two hours more). So taking away the passenger rail from the Lower Mainland through the Interior and leaving only Greyhound busses that have less than eight inches of leg room and seats that recline a whole five degrees (and no movies; it's an eight-hour trip but apparently they only break out movies for "long-distance" journeys--wtf??), and never, never have any water in the bathrooms to wash with, even when they've just spent two hours in the main depot--well, there was a hell of a lot of anger at the Liberals up there. But we didn't have the population to change anything.
--I have never understood why, when people wonder about a party's stance on something or other and their answer is "I don't know," it isn't immediately followed by "Let's find out." Last federal election we did our research, looked into all the parties and their stances on items we considered of particular importance--and then changed who we were going to vote for, based on that research. Jesus, it was half an hour with all three parties' websites. It wasn't a big deal.
Some people, I don't know. *Shakes head* Hey, Australia has managed to get really good voter turn-outs recently, like at around 95% or so, simply by making it illegal to not vote, and attaching a fine. Fines trump "Meh, couldn't be bothered" most times, I find. ;-) And for all I know, they still have idiots elected, but at least it's the idiot that the majority actually wants.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-29 06:53 pm (UTC)http://nationalpostnews.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/bc-election-2013-results1.jpg
I'm osrry to hear about your medical difficulties. Certainly the Liberals did not campaign on promises to shut down more schools and hospitals, they campaign on "fiscal prudence" and "an efficient, lean public service" which is really just code for doing just that. Worse before it gets better.
Passenger rail service is shutting down everyhwere in North America except the most densely populated areas, even though it's the most efficient way of moving people. I've never had a bus ride over five or six hours, nine is rough - and when it's over, your reward is that you're in Terrace.
I didn't address this much last comment - but yes, most people are so disengaged from politics that they are barely aware of them, except when there is an election on. Then you have the phenomenon of the "ten-second Socred". Doing research and finding out about serious things like this is too much like school, an unpleasant enough experience most people also want to leave behind them.
I also think that for many people "gubmint" is just an abstraction, and what it does is about as constant and unpredictable as the weather. This is perhaps why people are reacting to the Mike Duffy scandal strongly - everyone can relate to a single fat man stealing $90,000, because everyone can imagine that amount of money and how it was done. Match that to another recent story about how the Federal government cannot account for $3.1 BILLION flying out the window on unknown "counterterrorism stuff", on behalf of hundreds or thousands of faceless bureaucrats and contractors, and there's barely a stir of the waters. It's mentally inconceivable, which is why so much of politics relies on faces, images, minor slips of the tongue, etc..
no subject
Date: 2013-05-27 10:38 pm (UTC)Gawker now has more than the $200K needed to get the video, but I fear they may never see it.
I could be wrong (and probably am), but I think the drug dealer responsible has been already either bought off and escorted to the border, or is face down in Lake Ontario, or as the storr alleges was killed months ago - if the former, obviously Ford has allies in the police department who know who it was, and could find him, and persuade him into whatever course of action they thought best.
Probably took a few days to get this done, hence his initial silence.
So when Ford says there is no video, there may well be no video.
Now.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-27 10:48 pm (UTC)Pretty sure the original video guy's dead, and fairly sure that the Fords had something to do with it. And I can't believe that I'm even typing this.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-27 10:53 pm (UTC)Sometimes Hogtown is not a nice place.