Arguing with people on different parts of the political compass can be difficult. Given certain starting assumptions, almost any political ideology is mostly self-consistent. The problem is that any two disputants are likely to have starting assumptions so vastly different that to make any real headway they have to descend into a seemingly pointless argument about the definition of harm, or the harms of definition. I claim this as one reason why my philosophy degree is not totally useless in the real world, but unfortunately most people don’t have time to build up their convictions from first principles every time they get into a political discussion. Political arguments, including those carried out by the spokespeople of major parties, therefore tend to devolve into “Yes it is!”, “No it isn’t!” exchanges including frequent appeals to emotion and ad hominem attacks.
Sometimes, however, fate smiles on you and you encounter a political ideology that is so sublimely stupid that no examination of founding assumptions is necessary because it fails even by its own standards. Unfortunately, sometimes proponents of such ideologies somehow attain actual political power. By now you may have guessed that I am talking about Rob Ford.
A brief review. First: Ford’s rhetoric. It can be pretty well summed up by this quote:
“I’m the only person tough enough to go down to city hall and put an end to the wasteful spending and an end to the gravy train.”
Translation: arts grants, homeless shelters, bike lanes, public transit, and other traditionally liberal causes are wasting taxpayers’ money for silly pet projects. Ford has made good on this rhetoric by slashing budgets across the city and, recently, attacking the livelihoods of unionized civil servants.
Whose votes did this kind of rhetoric garner? It’s no secret that Ford’s support comes almost exclusively from uptown and Suburban wards, and that his rhetoric and action matches the convictions of these voters at the expense of downtown.
So Ford’s policies of ending the gravy train which funnels taxpayer dollars into useless downtown projects is mainly attractive to voters in the outer limits of Toronto.
The final piece of the puzzle is this Freakonomics Podcast. While not exactly known for their left-wing pinko views, the freakonomics guys take less than twenty minutes to eviscerate Ford’s position. If you’re anything like me, you read blogs on your RSS while walking places and don’t bother to look at media files, but this one really is worth a listen.
(This pause is for you to listen to the podcast)
While Canada does not have a tax deduction for mortgage interest, we do put an enormous amount of public money into building the transportation infrastructure that allows Ford voters to get to work, and have access to basic necessities like food and medical care. It is far more expensive to provide services such as police protection and garbage collection to the suburbs than to downtown, and yet suburban living continues to be aggressively promoted by politicians like Rob Ford. Ford and his constituents rail against the gravy train, when the suburban lifestyle they prefer is the single largest recipient of municipal subsidies! Far be it from me to quote scripture, but Ford and his supporters appear to have a rather large plank in their eye.
This post is largely a rehash of what I wrote in the earlier article linked above, but I thought I should re-state it with the added authority of the Freakonomics podcast. Rob Ford’s and his supporters attack cyclists, environmental artists for having a little straw dipped in the gravy trough while conveniently ignoring their multiple high-volume gravy pumping systems. Arts grants and bike lanes are cheaper then highways and low-density suburban services.
katietoth
February 20, 2011
okay, I had this whole thing written out and then it disappeared. I come from a Ford Ward (5). This tangential rage-fest is not a direct response to what you wrote but a response to some of the implications of it and what other people have been saying.
1) the majority of people in inner-suburb wards actually have the most to lose from Ford’s general ideology, particularly his transit plan. (Ask a Ryerson or York University student who lives at home how they feel about the Subway to Nowhere.)
2)said folks are often disenfranchised, lied to, and have a harder time voting because it’s harder to get time off work: LOTS of folks in the inner suburbs come from lower-income backgrounds and immigrant communities
3)I’m sick of this idea that the inner suburbs aren’t Toronto and are some sort of living episode of Desperate Housewives—Ward 39, Ward 6, so many wards make it pretty clear that that’s not what’s going on. What’s going on is that INNER SUBURB RESIDENTS AREN’T HAVING THEIR VOTES FACILITATED AND WE’RE NOT MAKING IT EASY ENOUGH FOR FOLKS FOR WHOM ENGLISH IS A SECOND LANGUAGE TO HAVE ACCESS TO UNBIASED, CLEAR INFORMATION.
Then, d-bags from Ward 21 sneer and say things like “Ohhh yes. Those suburbanites in their giant houses with their declassé SUVs. Ruining Toronto from everyone. Oh, sorry Yolanta, we don’t have time to let you leave to vote today, we need you to take the kids to school. It’s so hard to find good help these days.”
We only see ‘white bread suburbanites’ and Ford voters in the inner suburbs because Toronto is full of classist fucks who think that multiculturalism means sweet restaurants. The problem isn’t inner suburbanites—it’s that our politicians and political systems have the power to give voice to some inner suburbanites and not others.
katietoth
February 20, 2011
are your posts moderated?
katietoth
February 20, 2011
nope, theeeere I am!
relativisticgeologist
February 20, 2011
Point taken, Katie. Perhaps I came off a bit too aggressively. I didn’t mean to pick on the inner suburbs, only to point out that the majority of people who support Rob Ford’s policies tend to come from there. That isn’t meant to say anything about the people in those areas who placed their vote elsewhere, or who would have had they been given a chance. If my post came off as too regionalist, I apologize.
I was mainly responding to the Toronto Tory Twitter Trolls (TM), (see @regulusdeleo, @416647905, and @phil_mcracken1), who insist that arts grants, environmental campaigns, and the like represent some kind of co-optation of what is rightfully their money. Ford claims to be fighting for two groups: drivers and taxpayers. I’m just pointing out that the interests of those two groups are, unbeknownst to Rob Ford and most drivers, fundamentally opposed. If there is no special tax on driving, then road infrastructure requires the graviest of gravy trains.