[URBAN NOTE] "The wheels come off Toronto’s experiment in Tea Party politics"

[rfmcdonald]

John Moore in the National Post describes the emerging consensus about Rob Ford, that he's just not capable of being a mayor, a politician with actual constructive policies. He's perhaps over-optimistic that Ford will stay mayor; depending on how the conflict of interest lawsuit turns out, Ford's term might end two and a half years early.

[W]hat can you expect of a government run from an alternative universe? The Ford administration exists within a hard right template established by American talk radio and Fox television. People with dissenting views are the enemy. Expertise is suspect. Everything can be had for nothing. This is a world in which budgets are balanced by cutting revenues and what one knows in one’s gut trumps established facts.

To be fair Ford had a good first six months. He cut a tax, followed through on a promise to privatize garbage collection and passed a raft of small but symbolic spending cuts including canceling free muffins and coffee for council meetings. Where he hit the wall was on transit. The details are too tedious to burden a non resident with but suffice it to say the battle that proved to be Ford’s Waterloo was about subways versus light rail surface transit. Ford wanted subways. He insisted everyone wants subways. Of course he’s right but I want a pony and no-one seems to be willing to buy me one.

The money simply wasn’t there. Undaunted Ford proceeded to go to war against reality. When the head of the Transit Commission said the city couldn’t afford subways the mayor had him fired. When studies failed to support a case for subways Ford found his own study. When the financial numbers didn’t add up he simply claimed that money would magically appear once a shovel was put in the ground. At a town hall meeting he declared “You’re either with us or against us” and before council he emphatically shouted “The people of this city have spoken loud and clear, they want subways folks, they want subways, subways, subways”.

That’s the ethos of the Tea Party movement: the insistence that something can be had for nothing and the belief that government programs are a waste of money….except if one happens to be benefiting from a particular program. Rob Ford’s administration in Toronto has proven to be a controlled experiment in hard right politics in power. His no compromise approach has left him almost without allies. His rejection of expertise leaves him on the wrong side of facts and evidence. His insistence that “real people” can’t have the things they want because of downtown snobs has left a foul taste in many mouths.