My earlier assertion that there’s little, if anything, to hold politicians to account when they or their office break the law, has been re-affirmed by some very stark statements made by the City of Toronto’s Strategic Communication Director, Jackie DeSouza:

“It is the honour system; a lot of this is based on trust.”

…

An issue has arisen over emails, sent or received, that in the normal course of business are deleted. Those emails reside on the city’s server and can be restored, but DeSouza said it is up to the mayor’s staff to go looking for them.

Okay, so it’s not exactly a concrete plan of action or anything, but finally it’s looking like Metrolinx is investigating a downtown relief line for the Yonge subway. I say finally because the subject of at least one downtown relief line has been floating about for some time (and certainly far longer than any TCL post would indicate).

The problem is a two-fold, compound one at the present time:

1. This seems to be a far second consideration for almost everyone with a say in the transit debate, from Metrolinx to Karen Stintz. Most of the focus is on building new lines to the suburbs and this is just the beginning of starting to think about the topic.
2. The downtown lines are already pretty crowded as it is. Take any downtown train, streetcar, or bus — especially when the weather’s a bit iffy — and you’ll get the idea.

So while there are big efforts underway to get more people onto the downtown lines, there’s almost no effort to expand the already crowded system — certainly not from the Ford administration.  If something doesn’t change, and soon, the disaster will be one of Fordian proportions.

Boy did I need a break from the Ford news cycle — and what a doozie of story to do it on!

I wasn’t aware of this but apparently Christopher Peloso, husband of former mayoral candidate George Smitherman, went missing late on Monday afternoon.

He was found just before noon today, needing “immediate help” but alive near some train track in the western section of downtown. There are no indications that going missing like this is something that Peloso is likely to do, and turning up injured near train tracks even less so.

Obviously something strange and interesting happened, and that’s about the only obvious thing we know right now.

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You may have noticed some out-of-place advertising on TCL. Not sure exactly when this popped up, but they were clever enough to hide it from me so that I couldn’t see it.

Sadly for them, I analyze stuff like this for breakfast.

Here’s the pictorial:

Never mind.

By the way, Softonic or whoever did this on your behalf, smart thinking trying to hide your link in TCL’s dynamic site code. However, it is now gone.

“In our respectful opinion, connections between drug dealers, gun dealers, a notorious crack house and the chief magistrate of Canada’s largest city fit the definition of something that can and should be explored in the public interest.”

These were the words of Michael Cooke, editor of the Star, yesterday at a hearing before the Ontario Press Council about complaints in which the news (including the Globe and Mail) has been reporting on the Ford family’s blatant lies, hypocrisy, and criminality. Those are my own words, by the way, which I have also gone to great lengths to back up in previous posts.

But that’s not good enough for some people.

One complainant, Darylle Donley, had this to say:

“I would be curious to know just how far a TV or radio reporter or newspaper person, has to go before they are sanctioned or curtailed? The Ford brothers are being lied about, innuendos and allegations are being made against them. The news should be concrete and proven truth.”

Of course, the same questions must never be posed about our public officials — right, Darylle? And what about the fact that you’re publicly slandering the newspapers by calling them liars? Where’s your “concrete and proven truth”?

And what sort of insane newspaper prints only well-established and proven truths? By that logic, we wouldn’t know anything about the gas plant cancellations by the provincial government which, judging by her allegiance to Ford, is exactly the type of thing she would want to have revealed. Donley’s narrow-mindedness is staggering and, sadly, unsurprising.

And just to demonstrate her bizarre mental processes, she followed up with a not-so-subtle racist rant that had nothing to do with the hearing:

“The persons in the story, were they connected with the Don Bosco football team? Around the Don Bosco football team, there were a lot of unsavory characters.”

If you’ll recall, this is the same community that decided to tell Rob Ford where to go after he slandered them in pretty much the same way as Donley (clearly she swallowed his shit, hook, line, and sinker). He then used city staff and resources to collect his football equipment “donation” from Don Bosco — if they aren’t willing to play the poor, disadvantaged, drug-addled hood kids to his magnificent white saviour image, fuck ’em!

In other words, the community itself rose up against Rob Ford to tell him unequivocally what they think of him. So of course his supporters, instead of listening to all of the people directly affected by Ford’s benevolence, decided instead to listen to, and wholeheartedly believe, the crap that poured out of the mouth one well-known public liar.

Donley is no stranger to publicly exposing her ability to blindly jump to conclusions, even going so far as to make not-so-veiled threats against those she deems unacceptable:

Regarding the 411 on Ford’s 911 (NOW, November 3-9). I wouldn’t know Mary Walsh if I tripped over her. If she accosted me at any time, never mind in that outfit with a sword on her ample hips, I would probably push her and then call 911.

She touched Mayor Rob Ford on the shoulder. How would Walsh react if someone came up to her early in the morning in her driveway?

Walsh is not a particularly delicate, fragile-looking person and could easily be a threat to anyone, even without opening her vicious mouth.

Darylle Donley
Toronto

Donley readily admits that if someone who she had never met, but doesn’t like because Rob Ford told her to, she would be willing to get violent on the spot.

Maybe this isn’t the same Darylle Donley, but that’s a pretty unique name, and the attitude fits to a “T”.

That’s Ford Nation for you, prototype or personified. They have such a hate on for anything that dares to question their beloved leader that they reject it all outright. Even when they claim that they are the subject of persecution (offering zero evidence, which of course makes their own claims complete lies by their own definition), they do offer insights into why they are so universally adored with statements like “Maybe it’s a woman thing”, and “…this is all down to a bung of women who like spending money…”

These are the same supporters of Rob Ford who, on his radio show cuts off people while inserting questionable “supporters” which, it turns out, openly lie about their identity and work directly for Ford.

This is the same Rob Ford that openly lies about his administration’s accomplishments – unquestioningly championed by glassy-eyed Ford Nation.

This is the same Rob Ford that calls the media all sorts of names and gets openly angry at anyone who wants to look into what he’s doing on the job as a public official. He is, after all, the Mayor and doesn’t need to answer to anyone.

This is the same Ford that repeatedly demands that the media are just a bunch of liars, despite the ridiculous number of statements by editors  and staff standing firmly behind their stories, while Ford himself abjectly refuses to answer any questions (and insults whole groups of people while doing it —  par for the course for Ford).

This is the same Rob Ford that has had to defend himself against a slew of lawsuits on a broad range of topics. None of these are being mentioned, of course, including the fact that it was legally proven that Ford had broken the law numerous times while on the job.

This is the same Rob Ford that surrounds himself with criminals and ne’er do wells who run around trying to cover up the fat man’s misdeeds.

Above all, it doesn’t matter that these allegations have been corroborated by so many independent sources, or that the so-called “anonymous” sources that Ford supporters complain about are not anonymous at all. And of course it’s just fine and not at all sheer hypocrisy that 30 of the 41 complaints before the Press Council meeting are anonymous (and only 6 are formal and in writing)! Besides this, many of the names connected with the Ford crack scandal have been corroborated (not to mention being printed in the news), to the n-th degree. Rob Ford’s evidence in his own defense: zilch.

I could go on for days but the brunt of the issue is that Ford and his supporters are entirely guilty of the very same accusations they throw around like they invented them. They want news media to engage in responsible journalism while they themselves think it’s perfectly okay to deceive and insult and threaten, while there’s not a single shred of evidence that the stories about Ford are false, and much evidence exists to prove that they’re true.

Isn’t it hypocritical of me to be name calling like this? In fact, isn’t it slanderous?

Recently a TCL reader left a reply to a mayoral candidate post I’d done a while ago that reminded me of how deluded and just plain bizarre people’s understanding of these things are, so let me explain what the difference between slander and merely an uncomfortable yet fully legal article is: facts.

This little concept still seems to be lost on so many people.

They think that calling a proven liar a “liar” is slander. They think that anyone who mentions a known, proven criminal as a “criminal” is engaging in irresponsible journalism.

Whatever you do, just don’t bring up facts and use words that accurately describe those facts, especially if those facts are about the Fords!

They believe that corroborating and linking to the facts that back up your claims are irrelevant — only what known liars and criminals say, with no proof or evidence of any kind, is acceptable.

There is an interesting closing point I’d like to mention here:

Snickering, sneering Ford Nation are about to get a taste of their own medicine. While Rob Ford managed to scrape by on appeals when it mattered, we’ve seen many examples where breaking the law has had absolutely no repercussions — from campaign finances to conflicts of interest. There seems to be no mechanism to hold our elected officials to account at all. And while I think this Ontario Press Council thing is a sham, the reason I’m not getting upset is that they have roughly the same teeth as those groups tasked with making sure politicians don’t break the law.

In other words, even if they find that the Star, Globe and Mail, etc. all did something inappropriate, the best that they can do is have the newspapers print the decision.

I’m certain that, no matter the decision, the news outfits will make at least this small gesture. I’m equally sure that, based on everything we’ve witnessed thus far, Rob Ford would do no such thing. In fact, he would deny any wrongdoing whatsoever, insult and denigrate those who question him, genuinely slander a few more for good measure, and then fuck off for the rest of the early afternoon to go coach football with city staff and resources. And it wouldn’t be the Fords if they didn’t repeatedly lie about it all afterwards!

For once I’m not going to involve Rob Ford in this except to mention that it’s his office that’s involved in the situation. I’m not blaming the man personally, though if you were to tell me that it was his doing then it wouldn’t seem at all out of place.

This all has to do with various Municipal Freedom of Information Act requests to City Hall — Rob Ford’s office, to be specific — that are being basically ignored. The law states that Ford’s office has 30 days to comply, or give reasons for a delay, but the Star is noting that some of their requests are more than a month past-due without so much as a peep from Ford’s office.

This isn’t terribly out of place with today’s increasingly authoritarian, secretive, and oppressive model of government; Canada being no exception. More than one professional journalist group has raised the alarm about this as they discovered the same tactics being used by all the various levels of government.

For the common Joe, it can quickly become prohibitive to keep paying for the little bits and pieces of information (or more likely appeals), that the government deems that he’s worthy to know. That’s because the government has few, if any obligations to Joe.

Instead, almost all of the obligations, requirements, rules, stipulations, demands, laws, by-laws, regulations, and penalties fall on the head of common Joe. The rights, expectations, protections, aegises, mandates, wills, and general declarations of “this is what we can and will do to you” are exclusive to governments and big corpo.

Take the Municipal Freedom of Information Act, as a contextual example. There are a couple of sections in there mentioning your rights, hardly any mention of what happens when your rights under these terms have been violated, and the vast majority of the document describes how you can and will be refused FOIA requests as well as all the ways in which your privacy will not be protected. Within the “Offenses” section, a maximum $5,000 fine is specified as a penalty for six items, one of which potentially punishes a government employee for sharing personal information, and five of which punish you for a broad variety of things. For example, the government implicitly retains the right to lie and mislead you while specifically stipulating that it’s against the law for you to do so to them.

On the flip side of the same coin, while most corporations will break the law and then pass the financial penalty (if any) onto their beholden customers, some large and established organizations are emboldened enough to publicly demand that they are not, and should not be legally required to tell the truth in things like contracts and advertising claims.

Legalese is carefully crafted and such things don’t happen by accident. Most laws and regulations are squarely aimed at the everyday citizen and designed to exclude government and large corporations. This is cold hard reality, publicly expounded and codified.

This is also why it seems that these same groups seem to be getting away with breaking the law. That law, if applied to you or me would see a swift and decisive response before you could bat an eyelash in protest. Not so much if you’re part of a government gang or elite corpo clique. And even if it turns out that they had actually broken a law, that law is just retroactively changed by them or their buddies to make it all good and legal — now it’s even more in line with what the law was intended for!

Even something as trivially simple as taxes reveals this disparity: if you pay late, they will come after you no questions asked and charge you interest for the privilege. If they mess up and send you a rebate cheque late, or for the wrong amount, would any court seriously entertain an interest charge in your favour? In fact, who do you complain to?

Keep in mind that this isn’t the free market and so we don’t just up and over to a new government. A waxy dead-eyed new figurehead, yeah, but that’s hardly the same thing.

Unchecked, I think it’d obvious where this is headed. However, I also console myself with the fact that some people are cynical about all things corpo-government. In my experience, they don’t really care much for laws that seek only to oppress and control them. Some people don’t need to be told by some pinhead with a lofty title what’s right and what’s wrong. When these same people are in the majority, it doesn’t much matter how much that pinhead insists that he is the moral authority. And no matter how much that pinhead insists that without his laws society would just crumble into a depraved orgy of destruction and death, we know otherwise.

The problem is that right now there is a great deal of complacency, fear, and childish distraction among Canadians. The laws being erected against us are turning into real, physical systems. At the same time, Canadians are unwittingly being chemically lobotomized and mentally damaged while subsisting on a diet of numbing drugs and chemical-laced water, all while consuming mindless media that promotes violence and vulgarity. This confluence of factors may be nothing more than coincidence, but it doesn’t change the facts.

Politicians and money men have been called scoundrels (and much worse), since time immemorial, probably owing to the fact that it’s a perfectly true statement. What we’re just beginning to experience now, however, is what happens when those scoundrels are allowed, encouraged even, to rule over us through fear, violence, and deception.

In addition to his numerous flashes of brilliance, one of Giorgio Mammoliti’s ideas included sticking a huge flagpole in a spritely section of town called Emery Village. Business owners in the area were to be mafia-style-“convinced” to support Mammoliti’s tourist-magnet concept of Canadian majesty.

“Emery village is not a tourist area. You put a giant flag at city hall or the Eaton Centre. It’s an industrial area here.” – Walter Berton, owner of Berton Seeds on Weston Road

Sadly, it seems that Giorgio’s brainchild may not be coming to fruition. The thing was supposed to have been erected at some point in 2011 and the winning idea has been hanging limp since.

It seems that Mammoliti’s bluster exceeded his capacity to carry it out. Even the concept flag in the scale model sitting outside of his office has been purloined.

This comes at the same time as Mammoliti’s buddy and everyone’s number one guy, Rob Ford, is being bitch-slapped by the Toronto Star about his economic claims. Some of the more interesting revelations on the 11-item list include:

1. “I said from Day 1: the city has a spending problem, not a revenue problem. I have proved my statement to be correct.”

For a mayor that claims that the city doesn’t have a revenue problem, Rob has spent a lot of time trying to come up with various revenue tools for city projects.

2. “Before I took office, any annual surplus was used to fill holes in bloated operating budgets. Guaranteed, this will not happen while I’m mayor. We have put an end to the unsustainable budget practices of the last administration. It is over.”

This is a Rob Ford “guarantee”, so that tag alone should be indicative how how true this statement is. In addition, the Star points to three specific instances where surpluses or “unsustainable budget practices” were used to fill budget holes under Robbie’s reign.

3. “As many of you know, I came from the private sector before I got into politics. Very, very fortunate to run my dad’s company that he started 50 years ago.”

Apparently, Rob never ran his dad’s company, he only worked for it. If his current schedule is evocative of his earlier attendance at Deco Labels and Tags, however, to say that he “worked” there would be a further stretching of the truth.

Amidst all of this looms the end of summer, spelling the end of easy season down at City Hall as everyone comes back from vacation; plus, we’re just over a year away from the next election … not a good confluence for Ford Nation.

Even if you don’t smoke pot yourself, chances are pretty good that you know someone who does. As a result, you’ll probably also have experienced what marijuana does to people, and you’ve probably noticed that it lacks the nasty side-effects of other, legal medications.

It’s interesting to note, in fact, that it’s been primarily governments and scientists who have been spreading many of the lies and misinformation about the topic, with police eager to support these well known perjuries in order to bump up their drug enforcement budgets.

It’s not surprising to learn that the “authorities” openly lie and deceive the public like this, so I can’t help but wonder what changed behind the scenes that so many politicians are now coming forward and admitting to the occasional puff or two.

It started with Justin Trudeau and Kathleen Wynne, both of who gave the standard “I tried it a long time ago and didn’t like it” response. Rob Ford, stunningly and especially considering the whole crack thing, went way beyond this and admitted to blazing “a lot”.

In the meantime, tea-totaling Stephen Harper openly lied to millions of Canadians by claiming that, because Trudeau admitted to smoking pot, he was promoting it to children. Of course, this is not even close to the truth. Harper has embraced misleading the public in pretty much the same way that his cadre of underlings have done … even down to the same bullshit invocation of children.

Harper claimed that Justin’s “actions speak for themselves”. True. Harper’s actions also speak for themselves, and they describe a horrific, lying, slandering, murdering sociopath who should be behind bars. The man is a criminal and he proves it a little more every time he opens his mouth.

Our social media buddy Zach Bussey is making a name for himself with his project to live life off of $12,000 in savings and whatever freebies his online presence get him.

He described his idea to us, just a few weeks old at the time, when we partied it up at the Bud Light event earlier this year, and I have to give him kudos for sticking with it as long as he has, not to mention taking it to the national news level.

In the latest development, a condo owner has decided to put Zach up in an empty condo for a week in exchange for blogging about the property. It’s one of the bigger perks in an otherwise tough year — food, clothes, and even a bed, have at times turned out to be luxuries.

I suspect I’ll bump into Zach at some event or another before this is all through, and I’ll definitely grill him on whether or not it was worth it. But if the purpose of this was to get exposure for potential future projects, which I suspect it was, the man has already found success.