Mayor Ford Gone Wild

What more can I add to what's been said about Mayor Rob Ford?

Mayor Ford has, while in office, used illegal drugs, been inebriated in public, and driven a motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol.   He has also been caught driving distracted (apparently, he was reading printed material), and when caught, he gestured as if he was pointing a gun at the witness.  There have been other transgressions by this mayor against the people of the community, and against the finer sensibilities of decent, civil citizens.   This is no way for a government leader to lead.   This mayor has lost his dignity and his respect.

Mayor Ford is truly a politician gone wild.   For the good of his city, for the good of his family and all who are dear to him, and for his own good (not least his own health), he should step aside.  But, alas, this mayor will not go quietly.

One way or the other, Mayor Ford will not be mayor of Toronto much longer.  But the ending is likely to be ugly.

What a shame.

Abolish the Canadian Senate!

The Canadian taxpayer is fed up with the Senate, a government body that does nothing except rubber stamp all legislation and exhausts nearly $100 million of taxpayers' money each year.

Yes senators are connected to major Canadian corporations and can provide a back-channel conduit to Canadian business for the government.  Yes they sometimes give advice to our political parties in Parliament.   But those are weak reasons for preserving a body which, at the end of the day, really exists as a way for the prime minister of Canada to reward his influential supporters, to keep them comfortable well into their retirement years.

No thanks.

As long as we're doing some belt tightening, it's time to close down this useless (to Canadians) body of gas bags and use the hundred million dollars saved each year to help a few more poor people in this country.

Tea Party Terrorists

U.S. Tea party supporters ought to know better.  You don't hold a gun to someone's head until you get what you want.   But that's what happened with the debt ceiling stand-off last week.   That's what happened with the government shutdown that started on October 1.   That's what terrorists do.

You know what happens to terrorists?   They either get shot and killed or they get caught and then either executed or given a life sentence.

Tea party terrorists -- let's call them TeaTs, for short -- should be sent packing by voters, never to be seen again.   That would be the equivalent of political execution.   Unfortunately, with partisan redistricting and other tricks, it probably isn't going to happen.   And the unintended consequence for Republicans -- the upstanding kind, that is -- is that they will be stuck with TeaTs within their ranks for some time unless they do something to rein them in for the good of the Republican Party.

The best the United States can hope for during this president's remaining time in office is for saner Republicans (and that includes the deep pockets behind the party) to zip up their TeaTs.

There was a time, not long ago, when the GOP was indeed a grand party.  But to put the "G" back in G-O-P, first, it has to rid itself of political liabilities and useless baggage.

And there's nothing more useless than teats on a bull.

Why the US Won't Default - Part 2

John Boehner wants to get a deal done.  His only problem now is he can't round up enough votes in the House.   The best he could do is 217, when he needs 218 to approve a budget and lift the debt ceiling.

Assuming a deal can't be done before October 17, the U.S. will start running short of cash and will stop paying some people.   Bond holders aren't due to be paid until later in the month but plenty of others are.

President Obama has said, right from the start, that he would not let the U.S. default.   I believe that means he will break the law and order a rise in the debt ceiling.  What happens after that is anyone's guess but that's what I believe will happen.

Why the U.S. Won't Default

Like many people, I wonder whether I should cash out my mutual funds and other investments this week before the U.S. defaults on its debt on October 17 and the markets tank.

In my opinion, John Boehner is the one person that can determine whether that cataclysmic event can be avoided.  That's beacuse he can hold an up-and-down vote if he wants in the House which, at this point, would pass a bill to raise the debt ceiling, according to media reports.

So I do a little research on who this man really is.  I discover, among other things, that he's interested in padding his own pockets and watching his own investments.  I conclude that he will blink in this game of "chicken" and avoid a default.

And lo and behold, today, October 10, Boehner extends an olive branch.

It may be a bumpy ride, still, to October 17, but I think I'll leave my money invested.

Hang on!

Who Is the Tea Party

You can see the Tea Party caucus here.

As you'll see, they hail from mostly rural, mostly white, mostly well-off congressional districts.

So much for helping out those less fortunate.

Time to Amalgamate Toronto With the 905 Belt

On a recent weekend visit to downtown Toronto wherein my wife and I played tourists in our own city, as I walked around the empty bank towers and skyscrapers I realized that this city is made up of two groups of people.  Group 1 consists of the people who work in these towers who are career professionals and predominantly affluent.   Group 2 is made up of the workers who service them.  They are the restaurant workers, the retail workers, the guys who wash Group 1's cars and shine their shoes, the stage hands and special events guys, and perhaps the flea market merchants who try to earn their daily keep from the sale of junk, otherwise known as antiques.

Group 1 leaves the downtown by night to retire either to the comfort of its home in Rosedale, Forest Hill or  some other posh neighborhood in the city or, more typically, to the "905 belt", the suburbs surrounding the City that donned that moniker to distinguish them from the City of Toronto's 416 code.  Group 2, on the other hand, is more likely part of the bottom 50-percent of the income distribution, probably doesn't own a car, and therefore probably lives in one of the city's less affluent neighborhoods with access to bus transportation, at least.  Group 2 travels on foot, by bike, by bus, by streetcar or by subway.

And in that moment I could feel the decline of the middle class in this city we call Toronto.  A quick Google search found this article which describes succinctly what is happening here, socioeconomically.

It occurred to me as we were leaving the city that the infrastructure linking Toronto to the 905 belt around it where roughly two thirds of the metropolitan area's citizens live was crumbling because Toronto's democratically elected council in City Hall could not agree on how to move forward; not just recently but over the last forty years.  It occurred to me that unless something revolutionary were done, that the infrastructure would hold back Toronto and the rest of the metropolitan area.   It occurred to me that, given the hollowing out of the City's middle class, given that the majority of Group 2 lived outside of the City of Toronto, that a large voting bloc had given up its right to vote on matters that transcend City borders, matters like the Gardner Expressway, for example, which is crumbling and needs to be replaced.

It occurred to me that the solution is to reconstitute City boundaries to include the 905 belt.  The solution is to create a regional government that consists of a government that presides over the metropolitan area, one that allows metro residents to vote on Toronto city issues, and vice versa.

The Government of Ontario passed an amalgamation bill in 1998 which reconstituted the City of Toronto, ostensibly, for cost efficiency.  This time the provincial government needs to cast a wider net and do it in the name of ending the political gridlock in Toronto City Hall which has slowed or prevented progress on issues like metro-wide transportation and infrastructure improvements.   The City of Toronto belongs to the metropolitan area, not just to the people who reside within its borders.   It's unfortunate that the income gap is widening within the City's borders.   But that is no reason to allow it to paralyze development of the City within the context of its role within the wider metropolitan area.   Until the City's government is reconstituted to allow the 905 belt to have a voice, development will be sub optimal, at best.