A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
– Winston Churchill
So over at his place, @cityslikr's on about the fact that politicians have an uneasy relationship with the truth, and the cynicism and disengagement that breeds.
Writing in Toronto Life, John Michael McGrath draws the comparison but then appears to soften it:
... but given that 96 per cent of Toronto’s services are impossible to cut, as those KPMG audits keep finding, Ford really isn’t going to be able to change people’s lives the way, say, a Latin American junta might. So it’s a mild shock, if it’s anything.
That may be, but the broader picture includes a looming provincial election which could see the return of the Harrisite slash-burn-and-pillage approach in the form of a Hudak government. When we consider that the municipal government is a creature of the province in that light, there's no telling what kind of services will continue to be mandated, and what kind of latitude Mayor Stupid is going to have to wield the axe.
... aaaaand, guess what? Can't find any way to charge anyone else.
Who could have foreseen such a thing?
Oh, well. Maybe the Toronto Police will actually come forward and out the other members of Team Curbstomp. Otherwise, the whining they do when witnesses don't step up and their nice words about acting to regain our trust might look ... hypocritical or something.
(Why, yes – as a matter of fact, that was a monkey flying out of my ass. What's your point?)
For Christ's sakes. This isn't just about the lack of any coherent policy justification, or the Machiavellian political gamesmanship, or the schoolyard-bully dynamic evident on the council floor, or the Speaker's obvious bias and procedural cluelessness. It's about all of those, but something worse as well.
