Gravydämmerung: Getting away with it

[sabotabby]

The video of the Honourable Wife-Beating, Drunk-Driving, Bird-Flipping, Crack-Smoking, Possibly-Drug-Dealer-Murdering, and Evidence-Destroying Mayor smoking crack is apparently "gone." (This is why you always make a back-up, people!) The CBC was suggesting this morning that it might have found its way into the hands of police, who are refusing to comment (which means that they have it), where as the Star suggests skittishness on the part of the video's current owner. Occam's Razor suggests that the entire thing was about drug dealers blackmailing Ford, he paid up, the staffers resigned because of it, end of story.

At any rate, the laughable bumblefuck seems to have gotten away with it again. Not surprising. He routinely flouts the law, but the cops love him, so they don't investigate. Despite his everyman persona, he's a white millionaire, and white millionaires do not go to jail for breaking the law. Or lose their jobs.

(On a related note, if you haven't read this article about racial disparity in pot arrests in the U.S., you really should do that now.)

The mayor of Toronto smokes crack. It is known. It's hardly the worst thing he's done, but it was looking for awhile like the one thing that we could pin on him. But he's proven remarkably Teflon-coated. If I were more conspiracy-minded, I might point out that the crack video provided an excellent sideshow that distracted everyone from the fact that the federal Conservatives blatantly stole the last election. (I do think Ford's provincial and federal allies were completely willing to throw him under the bus, but it probably wasn't their preferred option.)

Meanwhile, Ford's actual policies still suck. Toronto recorded a $248 million surplus for 2012, mostly from the land transfer tax that he wants to cut. So there's that, but math is hard, and crack videos are funnier.

In other local news, Walmart wants to take a giant shit all over Kensington Market, while Frank Gehry is trying to take a slightly differently shaped shit over the Entertainment District. (Can't we just ship him to Dubai or something? I hear they like that kind of thing.)

You wouldn't know it sometimes, but I really do love my city. It's just run by people who hate it, which is a hell of a tragedy.

Comments

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

I have to confess I care a lot more about what happens to Kensington than I do about the Entertainment District. I appear to have already mentally written off the latter.

[sabotabby]

Yeah, same here. Mainly, I care because there are few things I enjoy in life as much as I enjoy hating Gehry. Like, they could put the Walmart in the Entertainment District and I wouldn't care. It's the fact that he's been given another opportunity to make buildings that look like they're wrapped in wet toilet paper that bothers me.

Whereas fucking with Kensington fills me with rage. It's already bad enough that it's gentrified, but they seem to want to rip out what's left of its soul.

[ltmurnau.livejournal.com]

I wonder how much he paid in the end? Must have been over $200 K. Yesterday's CBC photo-spread on "the agony of Rob Ford" mentioned that the family business was worth $100 M.
But yeah, looks like he wriggled out of this one.
If we learn nothing else from this, it is that it certainly helps to have the police on your side, which is also probably why the Senate has suspended its investigation of Mike Duffy, claiming that the RCMP has the ball now - well, they actually don't, but when they pick it up they will keep it for a year or however long it takes, then drop it saying, "no criminal activity. nothing to see here. move along."
It's becoming obvious that the RCMP, when it matters, takes orders from the PMO - this has been true since at least the days of Chretien.
My father was a Mountie for 28 years and he left, over 25 years ago, because of the political interference that was brewing even then.

[sabotabby]

He doesn't necessarily need to have paid the full amount. If, as some are claiming, the main purpose of the video was to blackmail him, Crackstarter might have been used to up the price, but the video guys were never planning to sell it to anyone other than the Fords.

It shouldn't amaze me how incredibly corrupt various law enforcement agencies are, but it does amaze me that they can be so obviously corrupt and no one seems to object very much.

[ltmurnau.livejournal.com]

Well, whatever was paid, it must have been more than pocket change, even for the Labelstickin' Ford Empire, but nothing that would ruin them.

And, like most things, people won't seem to mind very much about police corruption until the day it touches them personally - the joke about buying tickets to the "policemen's Ball" to get out of a traffic violation is an old one, but for most of us, it is just a joke, until the day they start setting up checkpoints for such "collections" like in Mexico. But by then it's too late.

[symbioid.livejournal.com]

Conservative stances on surpluses: If you have some, it means you are holding on to taxpayers money and you should give it back via tax-cuts.

If you don't have any, you're reckless and irresponsible and you need to cut cut cut services.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Fuckin' sucks that he got away. :\

[sabotabby]

Yep. It's not like the city has been bled dry with service cuts and is horribly underserved by transit even as they're planning to build more condos and increase population density when it's already faster to get to the town where I grew up by car than it is to cross the city itself. Grr.

I didn't actually want him to resign but I hope this doesn't fizzle out. The rabbit hole goes pretty deep, and we still have a shot of exposing just how fucked and hypocritical our ruling class is, even without the video.

[franklanguage.livejournal.com]

Does anyone have a copy of it? We all saw it, didn't we? Did no one save it?

[sabotabby]

Only three people have seen it, excluding the dealers. There are rumoured to be multiple copies, but it's just a rumour right now.