Dangerous addictions: Toronto, right wing hypocrisies and Rob Ford

Another week in Toronto, and another scandal involving our sideshow of a mayor, Rob Ford.

This latest one, in case somehow you have not heard, involves an apparent video of the mayor allegedly not only smoking crack cocaine but also using homophobic language to disparage Justin Trudeau and describing the players of the high school football team he coaches as "just fucking minorities".

It really is one thing after another with Ford. For example, very shortly after entirely credible claims were made regarding apparent drunken sexual misconduct by Ford by Sarah Thomson back in March, new allegations that the mayor, prior to this, was asked to leave a different public social function also due to apparent intoxication burst onto the headlines.

Despite the overwhelming and constantly mounting evidence to the contrary, Ford himself and many of his allies have continued to insist that all the allegations are simply a fabrication of his enemies and the "liberal media", most especially the Toronto Star.  (In the specific case of the latest alleged video, this is especially silly given that the story was first published by an online American publication). This is almost humourously delusional for a bunch that presents itself as hard-headed, no-nonsense "realists".

Even before this latest and extremely serious allegation and regardless of its specific veracity, however, Ford has to be seen as having come to symbolize the basic unfairness of our society. If there has ever been a more obvious personification in the Canadian context of the reality that rich white men can get away with actions and behaviour that absolutely no one else would be able to, I am not aware of it. And, not just get away with the behaviour, but get elected to office and defended by otherwise self-described "law-and-order" right wing types despite it! From drug possession, to driving under the influence, to repeated domestic assault calls (and, indeed, charges), to not being held to account for violating campaign finance laws, to avoiding any repercussions for having violated conflict of interest rules, to seemingly using staff payed by the public inappropriately, it goes on and on and on as outlined in this Google doc. And nothing really happens to him as a result. The one and only time he was punished, the punishment was reversed on appeal.

There is an understandable temptation to regard all of this as a bad joke and an irrelevance or to see it as merely fodder for the international press and late night satirists to sneer at Toronto; which is already happening and is richly deserved. A temptation to see it as a distraction from the truly pressing issues facing the city.

But that, I think, is a mistake. First, if this is a distraction that has derailed the city's agenda, there is only Rob Ford to blame for that. But more importantly, the fact that this farce has played out for so long with so little consequence for Ford cannot help but to foster and reinforce entirely warranted cynicism in many communities about our society's claim, such as it is, to the equality of all before the law. It also emboldens the forces on our Far Right who have an essentially anti-democratic notion that their partisans are above the law and that the actions of their heroes, like Ford, should be dealt with and viewed in ways entirely different to how they would view them were they to be committed by citizens who are not white or wealthy and who are not populist folk icons.

Let us recall that many of the same Toronto media outlets, talk radio devotees and reactionary politicians  who are turning a blind eye to this pattern of both proven and alleged behaviour or pretending that it is all an invention of the media, were the same people who were driven to self-righteous rage when a TTC employee on medication for a serious illness (he has since died) and who was, in fact, an actual hero, fell asleep in a ticket collection booth during a shift and had the misfortune to be photographed. They regularly take sadistic glee in pillorying and publicly humiliating public employees and officials for far more minor transgressions than those Ford has been accused of, charged with and, in the case of campaign finance rules, found guilty of having violated.

In fact, of course, much of their whole narrative and vision of the world is based around lies about "wealthy" and "lazy" union workers, the supposed immorality or criminality of immigrant and minority communities, that the poor or people on welfare are the authors of their own misfortune and are usually scam artists, and so on.

How ingrained these ugly and racist views are in right wingers of Ford's ilk can be seen from the mayor's own false and derogatory comments about the young men on the football team he coaches. He has, completely insultingly and erroneously portrayed his coaching as some kind of heroic and charitable act that keeps the players out of jail and gangs (and, ironically, off drugs) and that keeps them in school. His comments so infuriated the parents and teachers of the high school (Don Bosco Catholic Secondary in Etobicoke) that many feel he should no longer be allowed to coach.

Yet, the irony is that it is Ford who has never had to work for anything, who has been caught in possession of drugs in the past, who treats his job as a joke, skipping meetings to coach football or leaving the floor of a council meeting to watch playoff hockey, and so on. Far from being "one of us" Ford is proof that rich and powerful men are not us at all. They get to play and live by an entirely different set of rules.

This toxicity and anti-social attitude on the part of the right has grown more shameless in direct correlation to the rightward drift of our politics and the mainstreaming of what used to be extremist ideas and viewpoints. Moreover it is gripped by a stunning hypocrisy in that many right wing commentators, politicians and voters feel entitled to make sweeping generalizations about the moral conduct and fiber of different communities, and to espouse social philosophies and narratives centered around the necessity of personal morality and "restraint" and the primacy of personal conduct in the determination of social outcome, disparaging notions of systemic oppression and denying the reality that there does not, at all, exist a level playing field or equality of opportunity in Canada, and yet they are completely unwilling to apply to these "principles" to themselves or those they support. It is meant for the "other", not for those in the club.

Otherwise how is Conrad Black, a non-citizen and convicted felon, who was sent to jail in the country that the right idolizes, the United States, in Canada at all? One need only ask oneself if a person-of-colour without the bank account and the lordships would also have been allowed this great courtesy by our supposedly tough-on-crime government to know the answer to that.
Punishment, mandatory minimums and prison are for ordinary people, people who cannot afford fancy lawyers, and people who they see as not really "Canadian". Compassion, understanding and second chances are for their own.

Did Rob Ford smoke crack cocaine with drug dealers while spouting off homophobic and racist comments. Who knows? That it seems completely believable says a lot, but it is, of course, possible that it is not true. It is also possible that the video will never see the light of day. It is possible that the allegations will be proven and that Ford, with near certainty should they be, will be forced finally to resign in disgrace.

But in some respects no matter the outcome the salient fact remains that the system that created Ford, that allowed his rise and that excused and forgave his many transgressions will survive him either way. While Ford may be an unusually buffoonish and ignorant child of social privilege there can be no doubt that a different set of rules are applied to all the other children of the rich and powerful as well, especially if they are male and white.

Rob Ford's confederacy of dunces: Doubling down on dumb on transit in the GTA

If it were not so terribly serious, one could almost be amused by the latest sad battle cry of Toronto's deeply confused politicians, calling on the province to give them subways that they ultimately want no one, at all, to pay for. To paraphrase Dire Straits, they seem to want to get their money from nothing and their transit for free.

And dire straits are exactly what transit plans for Toronto are in, now depending on a minority Liberal austerity government, whose only potential de facto budget "partners", the NDP, have outright rejected the proposed dedicated transit taxes and whose Hudak Tory opponents would no doubt cancel most existing transit plans, just as their 90's equivalent Mike Harris did. While the Liberals have indicated a willingness to support what is known as the "Big Move", the $50 billion long term  plan to expand and integrate transit in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and beyond, they have also made it clear, very recently, that they are open to rethinking it.

In the midst of this already negative political context for transit advocates and funding,  Toronto City Council this past Thursday (May 9) has voted to ask the province to reject thirteen potential revenue tools for the Big Move, and refused to actually endorse the two revenue tools that it did not ask to be outright rejected!  They have also muddied the waters even further by changing their mind, yet again, after signing a legal agreement just a year ago, on whether or not they support a Sheppard St. subway expansion or LRTs. This development is a complete fiasco and a truly serious setback given that the council meeting and vote itself were held against the wishes of Mayor Rob Ford and his Executive Committee and was expected to have been a moment of triumph for the pro-transit wing of council.
But, with a handful of notable exceptions, many councillors got cold feet. In a move of almost unbelievable political short-sightedness and cowardice, the council has all but handed the Wynne Liberals, who thanks to a generation of tax cuts dating back to the mid-90's find themselves cash strapped, the perfect way out of future dedicated funding commitments should they chose to seize the opportunity.

In a shocking and explicit admission that what had transpired was an outright manifestation of crass gutlessness, we have one of Toronto's least principled elected officials, Josh Colle, speaking of his role in this farce:

Centrist councillor Josh Colle said he proposed councillors vote against, rather than for, specific levies to give tax-shy colleagues “cover” to leave some on the table, in effect endorsing them.

“We as a council endorsed revenue tools as something to use. Obviously when it got down to the specifics there was less willingness to cite them,” he said, adding the province will view the vote as endorsing a regional sales tax and one-time development charges.

The city manager’s report estimates the two levies together could generate up to $1.5 billion per year.

What neither the article nor Colle note is that even if this estimate is true, it is at least $1 billion short per year of what is required for the Big Move.

After this vote the Liberal austerity government can simply say that Toronto's elected officials have flip-flopped so many times on the nature of the transit that they wish to see built, and are so clearly unwilling to have a serious discussion about dedicated funding sources for it, that no consensus exists to get anything done. Who, they could note, are they to implement a plan against the will of the people's representatives in Toronto?

This was all very predictable in a way. Why, given the fantasy world our political leaders and, obviously, the business "community" seem to live in when it comes to taxes, would we expect anything different to happen?

The Toronto Region Board of Trade, while finally becoming a rare business group to acknowledge the reality that new revenue tools were required for the government to achieve an objectively necessary investment in infrastructure, went about it in a totally self-serving way. While all of their specific proposals are worthy of consideration, and three of the four primary revenue generating proposals would also aid in the critically important environmental objective of creating a disincentive to driving, they notably leave out corporate and personal tax increases. (To be fair, in the case of personal tax increases, no one else is remotely proposing them either).

The provincial NDP eschews the dedicated revenue tools altogether, and has, as I have written of previously, chosen to propound a "Gravy Train" style fiction that it can all be paid for by closing corporate tax loopholes; a claim that is demonstrably and manifestly false. Sadly, some left-leaning councillors like Maria Augimeri, possibly looking towards a future in provincial politics, have parroted this line to the detriment of their constituents.

The "left wing" case, such as it is, against some of the revenue tools proposed is that they are regressive. For example, opponents of the idea of a fuel or gas tax have a farcically retrograde tendency to wax poetic about "poor" car drivers in the suburbs of Toronto who have to drive to work to survive and who will, presumably, be impoverished further by this.

Yet when it comes to consumption taxes, such as the fuel tax, that also achieve a completely obvious social and environmental objective both in terms of how the revenue accrued  will be spent and how it will impact on the driving behaviour of those paying it, this anti-tax narrative is dangerously misguided. Instead of talking about the "poor" car drivers, insofar as they exist, one might note the enormously positive impact of putting the fuel tax revenue into public transit, an investment from which far more poor and working class commuters, if that is who we are actually worried about, will benefit.

Further though, and equally apparent, is the fact that if we had an extensive and efficient, properly funded transit system in Toronto, with low or even no fares, maybe that "poor" driver would leave their car at home and take the subway, bus or LRT. And what, exactly, would be wrong with that? In fact, well beyond the borders of Toronto, the future of the planet may well depend on such changes.
In reality, however, these politicians are not really talking about the poor at all. The "poor", in this case, are being used as a transparently flimsy excuse to oppose a socially and environmentally progressive tax as they wish to avoid being seen as advocating for something that they are worried will alienate middle class suburban convenience drivers.  And convenience drivers are what almost all GTA drivers who do not car pool are.

This is a textbook case of how "progressives" joining into phoney notions of how taxes "hurt" working people are the best allies the Right has. They soft sell a reactionary message.
As to Toronto's Right, they are are now feeling greatly emboldened. And so they should. Some of their number have been somewhat circumspect, perhaps realizing the potential backlash to celebrating an attack on essential transit expansion too publicly.

Typically Rob Ford, however,  is loudly hailing what has transpired as a victory for "taxpayers", that mythical person that the Right has created to replace the more civic minded sounding "citizen" of bygone eras. Veritably gushing with enthusiasm that any serious commitment to funding desperately needed transit in the city he is mayor of has now been repudiated by the city government itself, Ford, with his usual lack of coherence or grip on reality, effused:

“I’d advise her [Wynne] to not even talk about revenue tools any more,” said a jubilant Ford. “I feel fantastic. We fended off the wolves today and saved the taxpayers at least $1,000 a family, a household, and I couldn’t be happier."

“This is one of the greatest days in Toronto history,” said the mayor who had earlier chided councillors for daring to support taxes he said the provincial government couldn’t be trusted not to stick in a “slush fund.”

Given that what the councillors had just voted against was supporting dedicated funding for transit, the "slush fund" that the mayor is referring to is, in fact, public transit.

He may get his wish. Wynne may yet stop talking about revenue tools. If she does, the city's transit expansion plans will be stalled and stymied yet again.

And maybe that was the point all along.

Canada's heart will go on...and on: Justin Trudeau's national vision

When Justin Trudeau, back in October of last year, began his campaign to lead the once great, once natural governing party of Canada, the Liberal Party, he did so with a vision statement that is worth returning to, now that he is the party's leader, if we wish to really understand what he represents in our politics.

Easy to deride in parts, it began with some genuine groaners such as:

So I’m here to ask for your help, because this road will be one long, Canadian highway. We will have ups and downs. Breathtaking vistas and a few boring stretches. And with winter coming, icy patches.
But we will match the size of this challenge with hard, honest work.
Because hard work is what’s required. Always has been.

It also had the broad strokes of rhetoric, which many see as his hallmark, that say much less than they at first seem to as with:

The Liberal Party was their [Canadians] vehicle of choice. It was the platform for their aspirations, not their source.

When we were at our best, we were in touch, open to our fellow citizens and confident enough in them to take their ideas and work with them to build a successful country.

If there is a lesson to be drawn from our party’s past it is not where we landed but how we got there. We were deeply connected to Canadians. We made their values our values, their dreams our dreams, their fights our fights.

Who Trudeau means when he says "Canadians" is made abundantly, indeed almost absurdly clear throughout the speech with its constant repetitive reference to the middle class; a class that is set up as the beating heart of Canada and as its "hard working", no nonsense, moral compass.

Thus:

We need to get it right. We need to open our minds to new solutions, to listen to Canadians, to trust them...
...Solutions can come from the left or the right, all that matters is that they work. That they help us live - and thrive - true to our values.
Because middle class growth is much more than an economic imperative.

As if this was not enough, Trudeau goes on to assure us that "It is the middle class, not the political class, that unites this country. It is the middle class that makes this country great."

The middle class, that amorphous, apparently vast group is not simply the backbone of Canada; in Trudeau's vision it is Canada. Its class needs, ideals and prosperity are what should be the primary needs and ideals that will ensure Canada's prosperity and they should be the frames of reference of its governance.

Trudeau wants not only to fight for the middle class, he wishes to embody it politically. And embodying a class so disparate that it lacks any kind of cohesion ideologically or even in terms of mutual interest, other than an overwhelming consumerist impulse to equate personal material milestones like owning a house or two cars with the "public interest", is an impossibility if one is unduly specific as to policy.

This has, understandably, led Trudeau to be seemingly vague on this front and has led his opponents to label him as a "lightweight" or to contrast him unfavourably with his father. Both the NDP and the Conservatives, as well as many political pundits in the media, have written him off saying that once the public has seen him bested in both ideas and in policy debates by Mulcair and Harper, and they feel it is inevitable that this will happen, Trudeau will come crashing back down to Earth as the "fashion dandy", empty-headed pretty boy who is only where he is due to the fortune of birth.

He will fail as all he ultimately has are platitudes.

Yet, one has to ask, what if that is, in fact, the strategy? What if Trudeau's politics are intentionally devoid of ideas and of substance?

Policy wonks, political junkies and party partisans like to think that, at least to some degree, citizens pay attention to and care about the details of the daily goings-on on Parliament Hill and in committee rooms as they themselves do. They are also certain that citizens will eventually fixate, in making their voting choices, on the increasingly minor differences that exist between the parties in terms of program ahead of factors like image, personality or the ability to inspire.

But politics in Canada has been dumbed down for a generation now already and both the Tories and the NDP are keen to appear "moderate" to those wings of the electorate that they feel might vote for them. These are different wings, and thus their appeal to "moderation" is different.  In the case of the NDP it is renouncing publicly its already largely meaningless connection to its distant socialist past and desperately trying to prove to everyone that they are "ready to govern". In the case of Harper it is to convince the public, in spite of all the evidence, that the unbridled lunatic social conservatives in the party are not anxiously trying to pry open the closet door and create the Republic of Gilead.

Into this race to jettison outward differentiation comes a likable and attractive figure who promises to people that he will reflect back to them in his leadership the best things they feel about themselves and wax poetic to them about the great things that can be achieved through positive thinking and believing in yourself, the middle-class and the country.

Trudeau is only seemingly devoid of substance, despite what his opponents say. It is this apparent emptiness that is his ideology. He is aiming at inspirational banality that looks to appeal to those tired of the harsh reality of Harper and tired of what they have been led to believe is the  "harsh tone" of a politics where often relatively little seems to change when the government changes

Thus, going back to his speech above, he states:

To millions and millions of Canadians, their government has become irrelevant, remote from their daily lives, let alone their hopes and dreams. To them, Ottawa is just a place where people play politics as if it were a game open to a small group, and that appeals to an even smaller one.

He is not really wrong. Government has become increasingly irrelevant under neo-liberalism. Maybe "hopes and dreams" are the new "bread and circuses" of democratic discourse. Trudeau is especially talented at conveying these in a suitably Obamaesque fashion.

During his campaign for leadership, he disavowed any fixation on the deadweight of policy, which is always a proverbial "buzzkill", with  a call to others to do the thinking for him:

This campaign is about conversations, not one-way monologues...We believe that good ideas can come from any corner, and that Canadians deserve the opportunity to share their concerns and offer up their ideas.

In his acceptance speech after his coronation he lashed out at the supposed politics of division, while invoking the memory of a Liberal Prime Minister dead so long that only fifteen history nerds somewhere could take exception:

We are fed up with leaders who pit Canadians against Canadians. West against East, rich against poor, Quebec against the rest of the country, urban against rural...

Canadians are looking to us, my friends. They are giving us a chance, hopeful that the party of Wilfrid Laurier can rediscover its sunny ways.

And, of course, his first foray in parliament as leader led off with a lament for the poor middle class. "The fact is when middle-class Canadians go to a store to buy a tricycle, school supplies ... or a little red wagon for their kids they will pay more because of a tax in this government's budget."

His is a politics that is aimed squarely at the all-encompassing middle class. This inevitably has a vacuous, "what about the children" quality to it, as what else can it have? If your aim is to pander, then one has to distill what is felt to be what your target audience wants to hear  and release uplifting statements that are slightly less complex and slightly dumber than that. Trudeau is highly adept at this.

Trudeau has made a calculation that the winning strategy for him and the Liberal Party is eloquent vapidity.

In the end this makes him the Celine Dion of Canadian politics. His rhetoric, like her music, is soaring, emotional, seemingly inspirational, sometimes almost moving, and basically meaningless and hollow in any lasting sense.

Celine Dion, not unlike Trudeau, is held in complete contempt by her many critics. She is also the best selling female musical artist of all time. Whether Trudeau can do the equivalent in the political arena with pleasant superficiality remains to be seen. But given the obsessively image driven, sound-bite based political culture the parties have created, there is little reason to think it is not at least possible.

Requiem for a preamble: A lament for a socialist ideal

The New Democratic Party believes that the social, economic and political progress of Canada can be assured only by the application of democratic socialist principles to government and the administration of public affairs.
The principles of democratic socialism can be defined briefly as:
That the production and distribution of goods and services shall be directed to meeting the social and individual needs of people within a sustainable environment and economy and not to the making of profit;
To modify and control the operations of the monopolistic productive and distributive organizations through economic and social planning. Towards these ends and where necessary the extension of the principle of social ownership;
The New Democratic Party holds firm to the belief that the dignity and freedom of the individual is a basic right that must be maintained and extended; and
The New Democratic Party is proud to be associated with the democratic socialist parties of the world and to share the struggle for peace, international co-operation and the abolition of poverty.

It was a real vision, wasn't it? This preamble, soon to be gone, was a call to action. A direct contrast to our appallingly unjust society, made by those who really meant to be in opposition to a system, to capitalism, as opposed to being in "opposition" to a government, while enjoying all the perks, financial and otherwise, that a job as an MP brings.

This was a statement that made it clear that this party, the New Democratic Party, whatever tactical steps it might take, whatever short-term compromises it might make, was an opponent of the basic idea of capitalism. That it sought to remake society to eliminate the injustices that this system, by its very nature, inflicted on millions of Canadian citizens, and that it sought, once-and-for-all, to end the barbaric and entirely socially created "institution" of poverty.

It was a vision that understood that the context of any given short-term media spin cycle was not the context that the party fought in. That power was not an end, but a means to an end. And that that end was the reworking of how society functions.

But in a process that began many years ago, and that was consolidated under the leadership of Jack Layton and now validated under the leadership of Thomas Mulcair, the NDP has become little more than an ideological clone of what it once most despised (and continues to out of habit), the Liberal Party of Canada. A party driven by a desire to govern. A party that is "progressive," and that is, indeed, quite different from the Conservative Party, but that accepts that things fundamentally are as they are, and that they will basically remain so.

Thus we hear from the Huffington Post, in an article talking to the NDP's National Director Nathan Rotman:

Several top New Democrats told HuffPost that this weekend's convention will reveal whether the party’s membership is ready to accept the challenge of governing.
In 2008, when Layton told reporters he was campaigning to become prime minister, few took him seriously. Now, the party believes it has a real chance of forming government in 2015 — if it can convince Canadians the party is ready for the responsibility.
The first task, Rotman suggested, is highlighting to the party’s membership the importance of winning.
“We need to bring our people along and say, here are some of the great things we can do (if we have power),” he said.
For a long time, many New Democrats were content with being the “conscience of Parliament,” he said.
“We are still the voice of principle — I don’t want to make it sound like those principles alter — but you need to think about how you govern for all Canadians. You need to think about what happens when disaster strikes, when the economy goes south, when the economy goes north and how we can build a strong sustainable economy, and how we can support small businesses, and what a Canadian New Democrat government will look like,” Rotman said.

The language here is fascinating. Talking of bringing "our people along" and whether or not the membership will "accept" the challenge of governing, juxtaposing this, as they are, with the notion of standing on principle. Implying that leftists should no longer be content to be the "conscience" of parliament, as if this was a bad thing. As if this did not, as it did, actually change Canada by the threat that the conscience driven NDP posed to the existing political order.
Now, according to the new preamble:

New Democrats belong to the family of other progressive democratic political parties that govern successfully in many countries around the world. In co-operation with like minded political parties and governments, New Democrats are committed to working together for peace, international co-operation, and the common good of all - the common good being our fundamental purpose as a movement and as a party.

A totally meaningless statement that says the NDP belongs to a "family" that includes two of its three primary political "opponents", the Greens and the Liberals.  Are they not "progressive" and "democratic"? Do they not seek to work for the "common good of all", whatever this means? Including, of course, business people and the upper middle class.
And the new (proposed, though we all know it will pass) preamble also states:

New Democrats seek a future which brings together the best of the insights and objectives of Canadians who, within the social democratic and democratic socialist traditions, have worked through farmer, labour, co-operative, feminist, human rights and environmental movements to build a more just, equal, and sustainable Canada within a global community dedicated to the same goals.

A pleasingly inclusive statement that is also subtly dismissive. Removing as it does the commitment to end poverty, a fundamental trust that a socialist party has with the poor. It is also like those people that all leftists have met, at parties or meetings,  who go on about how left wing and radical they once were, and how much they still admire that, but how they had to "grow up" and "mature" and become "responsible" in their thinking. It is always a condescending and particularly unoriginal way of justifying "selling out", and it remains so here.

Yes, we were socialists once, but that was a long time ago. Now we need to get elected. For Canada and, presumably, future generations. Or whatever.

But now, on the eve of its dismissal, let us take a moment to lament the passing of what made the NDP something different in the United States and Canada.

The cynic, largely correctly, will point out that the NDP has been irretrievably lost to a crass form of diluted and empty parliamentary careerism for many of those involved for at least a decade. And it is also true that retaining the original preamble, in light of the victory  of Mulcair and the Layton right-shift, would be little more than a token and entirely symbolic last grasp at the memory of how profound what the party used to stand for was; but somehow I think that would still be a powerful if unfulfilled beacon.

It would be a memory and a constant reminder to those who now hold the reigns that it was not always so, and that so many sacrificed and struggled for an ideal very much apart from the hegemony of today. It would be a memory and reminder of Tommy Douglas fighting the War Measures Act despite public opinion polls because it was the right thing to do. It would be a memory and reminder of the inspiration that the idea of socialism once was to the oppressed, the workers and to those who felt that they had no future, and that it could be today to those whose futures are dying on the alter of grotesque inequality, runaway climate change, and triumphant corporate state capitalism.

It would be a tiny echo, if nothing else, reverberating in the ears of those who now hold the reigns in the NDP, reminding them of the promise of the New Jerusalem that lies just over that receding horizon of the possible. A promise that without which the future is nothing other than a discussion among the loyal parliamentarians of the state as to how to divide up the leftovers. A promise that, without which, poverty is no longer something to be eliminated, but rather "mitigated". A promise that, without which, the idea that the workers can one day own the factory is simply a fantasy.

So, while there is no real reason to mourn the passing of a preamble that was in practice already tokenism, there is an important symbolic one.

When this preamble passes into the mists of history this weekend, so too will the ghost of the NDP of Tommy Douglas. The NDP of socialism and principle.

The NDP that mattered.

The perils of populism: Andrea Horwath, taxes, road tolls and the 'war on the car'

History is ripe with irony, though the irony is generally lost on those in the midst of it.

Today we have the irony of an Ontario New Democratic Party (ONDP) running on a "pocketbook"-driven right-wing populist platform that is antithetical to the founding principles of their own movement, and doing so with seemingly no sense that they are, in reality, engaging in the final sacrifice of these principles on the alter of the moral false god of power.

Recently, in the Toronto Star, Trish Hennessy and Hugh Mackenzie argued very persuasively that austerity, the lack of economic growth, and tax cuts are inextricably linked (as I have previously, among others, argued on the pages of rabble)  and they outlined a list of entirely responsible changes to taxation policy that, sadly, absolutely no one at Queen's Park is remotely interested in implementing.

In the present context of neo-liberal austerity and ideological consolidation, and this is very specific to this context, there is not a single case or situation in which advocating for tax cuts is "progressive" let alone left-wing. In fact, in the present context, any calls for tax cuts are inherently reactionary and enabling of the forces, like the Hudak led Ontario Tories, who have been successful in making Canadians believe that the very notion taxation is burdensome and somehow damaging to a "middle-class" lifestyle.

All tax cuts, including cuts to consumption taxes, benefit the austerity agenda and aid in perpetuating the growth of our culture of extreme inequality. This is due to the fact that taxes, socially speaking, are redistributive in the present context by definition.  The "bottom" 50 per cent (if not more) of income earners will always get far more out of increased or maintained taxes (in terms of services, health care, social security, etc,) than they put in.

Hudak has outlined a plan of tax and service cuts that, if implemented, are nothing short of an attack on the very foundations of the Ontario economy and that would guarantee a U.K.-style economic collapse.

The Liberals, being Liberals, have coasted through their years of power by being Mike Harris with a human face; cutting taxes and, until 2008, evading the consequences of it due to the fortuitous situation of a global economy firing on all cylinders.

New to the game is the ONDP, who have only recently become certified tax fighters, and so-called "consumer activists" on the backs of the environment as well as the actually poor and "working poor". As the ONDP (and the NDP in general) is fixated on the notion of power, they have embraced the underpinning of a consumerist culture with a zeal that is, even now, rather surprising.

They have adopted the Ralph Nader like "consumer protectionist" values of American "progressives" in the era just prior to the rise of neo-liberal forces and replaced formerly held notions, however vague, of class with a non-ideological version of them.

Thus they eschew, when it matters, (such as when holding the balance of power as they have since the last election) issues such as welfare (which they allowed to be cut, in real terms, in the last Ontario budget) or programs related to poverty and instead emphasize making life more "affordable" for the middle-class; a class that is seemingly very large given that the ONDP has only advocated raising personal taxes on the top third of Ontario's "1 per cent"... those making over $500,000 a year!
Beyond the silliness of centring a supposedly leftist or progressive agenda around policies such as "rewarding job creators" (namely small business, the worst employers in the economy) through tax cuts (which is what the ONDP is proposing for incorporated "small businesses"), one has to begin to question the zeal with which the ONDP embraces that retrograde symbol of '50s Americana: the car.
Horwath's unwillingness to discomfort the "middle class" at all in the aim of changing personal behaviour  to aid obvious budgetary and environmental goals has already been demonstrated by the entirely wrong-headed, pseudo-populist campaign the ONDP has led against the HST on home heating.

The campaign is driven by a desperation to appeal to middle-class and upper middle-class home owning consumerists. Most tenants, for example, do not actually pay for home heating. So they already pay no HST. Much worse, the HST cuts would apply to everyone, including Bridal Path mansion owners. Apparently Conrad Black needs a home heating tax cut. If helping low-income citizens, as opposed to attempting to appeal to the upper middle class, was the actual goal, the ONDP could offer rebates capped at a certain amount per year of home heating consumption (say $500-1000)... thereby excluding rich people, the upper middle class and those indulging in unnecessary gas consumption. They are not doing this.

Given the very pressing need to see middle and upper income citizens alter their consumption patterns, an across the board HST cut on home heating is outright reactionary.

The ONDP is on the wrong side here. David Suzuki was right about that.

Even worse, Horwath and her caucus are almost Rob Ford like in their enthusiasm to end the "war on the car."

Thus we find Horwath virtually completely rejecting a recent proposal by the Toronto Region Board of Trade (TRBOT) to raise revenues to fund transit and road infrastructure by implementing a variety of new taxes, including:

-  A regional sales tax.
-  A $1 a day parking space levy.
-  A 10 cents per litre regional fuel tax.
-  High-occupancy toll lanes in which drivers of single occupancy vehicles would pay 30 cents a kilometre.

She does so by stating "I've said all along that the solutions have to be found, but when the solutions are simply putting the burden of the costs on families who are already struggling, I'm concerned." She then claims that none of this should even be discussed until the government has closed a variety of unspecified "corporate tax loopholes" that she implies would allow for the funding, a claim that is as manifestly and easily proven to be false as were Ford's claims of being able to fund his platform by ending the "gravy train". While the loopholes should be closed, given all the things that need to be covered in the Ontario budget, these loopholes amount to a minuscule addition to the revenue stream. Any revenue generated by them would also unquestionably be more than lost through the implementation of the tax cuts the ONDP advocates.

Her position is even more astounding given that investment in transit infrastructure will directly benefit those Ontarians who are most "struggling" in Toronto, those who rely on public transit.  They have carried the financial burden of subsidizing the car-culture-driven lifestyle of suburbanites for a very long time. Apparently Horwath wishes to extend this.

While the TRBOT proposals are, of course, self-serving and do not go nearly far enough, (as they exclude the obvious need for increased personal taxes, something neither the ONDP or anyone else is advocating for either), they are not wrong. In fact road tolls and transit focused taxes such as those they are advocating for are long overdue.

As a society we desperately  need to shift people out of cars and onto mass transit. It is the morally and environmentally correct course. It also directly benefits our lowest income citizens in entirely obvious ways.

This is not the first time that Horwath has sacrificed environmental and transit concerns for suburban car owners. Back in 2011, as Martin Regg Cohn noted:

 Andrea Horwath’s love affair with the car is also boundless -- she made lower gas prices a major campaign plank, promising to shave a few pennies off the HST at the pump. And her antipathy to tolls prompted a stunning public rebuke of star NDP candidate Paul Ferreira, who was trying to win back the seat in York South -- Weston.

Ferreira’s crime was to call for an adult discussion on gridlock: “I think we owe it to voters, to residents, to citizens to have mature conversations on topics like that. Should there be road tolls?” he asked in a CBC radio debate on GTA issues. “I am proud to say that in 2006, when I ran for city council in this city, I proposed levying a toll on the DVP and the Gardiner Expressway.”

Horwath did not find his musings amusing.

“Definitely no tolls!” she told reporters the next day. “I’ve been pretty clear about that so I was quite surprised to find that this is something Paul said during a debate. He knows very well that that’s not in my plans. If he’s trying to do that then it will stop at my desk."

Of course Ferreira was right and Horwath wrong.

But it would seem the "mature conversation" is no more likely to be had within the ONDP now than it was then. And transit users, environmental policy and lower income Toronto residents will pay for this.

Online misogyny, Sarah Thomson and the new culture of backlash

Sarah Thomson. The latest in a long line of women, from before Anita Hill on, to fall victim to the reality that many men (and sadly women) will take the word of a rich or powerful male, or excuse their behaviour, over the completely plausible claims of a woman. Even when, as in this case, the man in question has a long history of having a problem with the truth.

To those who have somehow missed the latest scandal to hit Toronto's Ford administration, Thomson is a former mayoral candidate who ran against Toronto's present mayor Rob Ford in 2010, and who says that Ford groped her and made inappropriate comments to her at a social function a week ago.
Her account has been disputed, of course, by the mayor, as well as by his staff (a hardly disinterested group) and others, including a Richmond Hill City Councillor who has himself been accused of inappropriate conduct.

Much ink has been wasted on entirely unproven whisper campaigns about Thomson, when we know the actual, public record truth about Rob Ford and his past conduct.

Ford is a rich man, raised with a silver spoon firmly in mouth, who has somehow managed to get out of drunk driving and drug possession charges in Florida that would have landed most in that state in jail, who has a proven track record of behaving inappropriately when drunk, who has had his wife call the police on him on multiple occasions, including one time where he was actually charged with spousal abuse, who broke the rules when it came to campaign finances and got off only due to the cowardice of a municipal committee, (to name just a few of many incidents), and whose entitled arrogance is not only predictable... it is justified by the fact that he is never held to account for the actions that would end the carriers of so many others.

Yet we are supposed to doubt Thomson's account?

Beyond the self-evident idiocy and misogyny of this, and beyond the totally reactionary nature of disputing a woman's claims of sexual assault or misconduct based on her "character" or her supposed "mental instability," a week later what has happened to Sarah Thomson is a case study in the nature of today's online and media misogyny.

It is as if the last 40-plus years of feminist struggle and education around issues of sexual assault simply never happened.

This is not a question of Ford's guilt or innocence in a legal sense, which would be for the courts to decide if Ms. Thomson were to lay charges. It is the fact that so many are so outright dismissive of, indeed hostile to her claims, finding the very idea that a powerful man  could do such a thing so brazenly and publicly must either automatically be a lie or that what he did was really no big deal. The fact that so many would act as if rape culture didn't exist. The fact that so many feel it is acceptable to attack a woman who says she was victimized either because they like Ford, dislike her, or both. And that they would use all the historic methods of attacking a woman's claims as if we have learned nothing as a society about just how, sadly, rather ordinary and commonplace such incidents of groping and sexual assault actually are (A very good overview of the legal issues around this, and, among other things, why going to the media instead of the police may have been a sensible choice, can be found at Slaw, an online legal magazine).

Take the completely irrelevant claims that Thomson is "not playing with a full deck" put out to discredit her by Ford, and parroted all over the place by his supporters and others. This is not only unsubstantiated, but even if it were true that Sarah Thomson had mental health issues, this has no bearing, at all, on the legitimacy of her claims. This tactic of claiming that a woman who suffers from mental health issues is disqualified from being taken seriously when she makes accusations of sexual assault is an old and particularly vile one. One would have hoped that it had been relegated to a previous era unenlightened as to the realities of sexual assault, but apparently this is not the case.
Much of the print media has joined in the action, casting doubt on Thomson's claims in columns and opinion pieces in ways they never would were it to involve someone other than the far right's Teflon mayor.  Examples range from a totally disingenuous column in the Toronto Sun by Jerry Agar stating that Thomson's story "lacks consistency" (and, among other things, citing the online news poll of a right-wing talk radio station as "evidence" that Torontonians agree with him!) to the appalling column by Christie Blatchford that starts with a heart-warming anecdote about how proud her dad was when a famous hockey player grabbed her knee under the table at a dinner event when she was a young woman and ends by telling Thomson that if she was unwilling to go to the police and if "she believed the mayor had just been a boor, she should have kept her mouth shut; wherever did the notion of discretion among ostensibly capable adults go?".

How very original of Ms. Blatchford, telling a woman who says she has been groped or assaulted by a powerful man to shut up and show some discretion.

Much worse are the deeply disturbing and profoundly misogynist  comments that can be found all over the Internet from her Facebook wall to almost any article on the subject you will find online. They are indicative of a new climate of hate towards women and a newly emboldened sense among many men (and some women) that they can publicly say whatever they want and not have to fear being held to account for it, no matter how disgusting.

From the commenter who said " Maybe you'd be better accommodated in jamaica (sic). cheap pot and genuine ass-grabbers.", to the one who opined "You Kevin are a complete fucking idiot. Typical liberal. Stating she is a role model when she is nothing more than a lying, deceitful whore," to "There was a lot nicer looking women at that party, so WHY would he grab your wrinkly old ass? And get rid of the dreads.", to much, much worse. And these were taken from her Facebook page alone!
This is by no means, as we all know, happening to Thomson only. Disgraceful misogyny is normal online and is regularly directed at women; whether public figures or otherwise. One aspect of this is what is known as the "manosphere," the online web of misogynist hate sites where the type of rape culture denial and language we are talking about is commonplace. The Southern Poverty Law Center drew attention to this in the spring of last year.

More insidious and pervasive is the daily misogyny one runs into on mainstream websites in the comment sections. With the advent of the Internet  most North Americans now constantly and repeatedly  encounter such explicitly misogynist language anytime they look at online discussions or forums that have anything at all to do with specific women or women's issues, never mind discussions of female movie stars, sports figures, singers, etc. This no doubt helps to fuel the politics of backlash as this relentless online misogyny makes every sexist pig aware that they are not alone.
Constant exposure to it also leads many men to feel that it is acceptable to talk this way in public, and it is impossible not to think that it is having an impact on the way young men, raised on the Internet, see and talk about women.

Rebecca Meredith, asking rhetorically after being subjected to misogynist heckling at a university debate, writes:

Worse still, outside the world of debating there are those who think nothing of posting on the internet terrifying and often violent threats towards women they have never met, and happily discuss on forums how they will ‘bag the next honey’ on a Saturday night by plying her with alcohol.
How on earth did this happen? And why? Years ago such behaviour was regarded as not merely ungentlemanly but a symbol of the yob. How has it now become acceptable among some well-educated young men?
What has heralded this tide of fury and disregard for women? After all, these men must have mothers, sisters or girlfriends.
Yet they seem to find the topics of rape and abuse hilarious, or worse, typical ‘water-cooler conversation’.

One of the many millions of girls and women publicly abused and denigrated by the rise of this newest, latest, internet driven culture of misogyny.

When women come forward, as Sarah Thomson did, to face a barrage of hatred, not only do they not deserve to have their characters, mental health and motives insulted and dragged through the mud, they also deserve our support.

Guess what's coming to U of T: The Men's Rights Movement, Janice Fiamengo and Paul Elam

The Canadian Association for Equality (CAFE) is back in action on the University of Toronto's campus through its campus Men's Rights Awareness group. CAFE, as I have previously outlined, is an umbrella group for a variety of MRA sub-groups, many targeting university students, that claim to be about "fairness" and "equality" while promulgating a variety of falsehoods and inaccuracies that seek to both undermine feminism and also to perpetuate their reactionary ideological myth that men also face systemic injustice and discrimination as men. They describe this as "misandry," which they posit as a counterpoint to misogyny.

However, CAFE, unlike most of its American counterparts, is always sure to put on a face of openness and tolerance to mask their agenda.

Back in November CAFE hosted an event at which Warren Farrell, a guru of the MRA, spoke. This was protested by student activists, a protest at which the activists attempted to block access to the event, which led to some arrests. It also led to a subsequent campaign of vicious and obscene intimidation specifically targeting female anti-MRA U of T student activists by the U.S.-based misogynist hate site, A Voice for Men (AVfM). Information about this campaign was posted on the CAFE website, despite their outward claims of not being associated with AVfM, and details of the protest, as well as the subsequent actions by AVfM,  can be found in an article about this I wrote for rabble at the time.

Now CAFE's U of T branch is hosting another speaker; a speaker whose rejection of the social progress that society has made to redress centuries of injustice and discrimination goes well beyond her attacks on feminism.

Janice Fiamengo, an English Professor at the University of Ottawa, was proudly announced by CAFE to be the latest addition to their Advisory Committee on January 5th. Not long afterwards CAFE (1) announced that she would be speaking at their next on campus event, to be held Thursday, March 7th, What's Wrong with Women's Studies? Academic Censorship, Feminism and Men.
CAFE describes the event in this way:

Dr. Janice Fiamengo, U of Ottawa English Professor, discusses the problems of academic feminism at Canadian universities: dubious scholarship, indoctrination, dogmatic teaching approaches, limitations on free speech, effects of “equity hiring,” and the consequences for men in the humanities.

According to CAFE:

The University of Toronto has kindly offered us complimentary use of one of their beautiful theatre venues, for reasons related to the law-breaking protest that occurred at our last event. CAFE offers its appreciation to the University for its strong commitment to free speech on campus.

In a recent Metro News article (2) we find Fiamengo:

 In her upcoming talk, Fiamengo will say that feminism has changed from the pursuit of equality to the pursuit of women’s power.
“It became about women’s power in certain areas and it came to represent men in very negative ways, as oppressive, as dominating, as violent, as discriminatory, as exclusionary,” she said. “It became about women’s victimization and their moral superiority as victims.”
Fiamengo believes that feminism, through the influence of women’s studies courses, has alienated young men in humanities courses.
“If I were a young man going through university, I couldn’t bear to sit through course after course drumming home that I am part of one half of the human race that is violent, responsible for the ills of the whole society,” she said. “In English, there are fewer and fewer young men and I can certainly see why.”

Fiamengo and the self-described "moderate and inclusive" CAFE are seeking to redress a new injustice.

Interestingly and tellingly, the same article includes an interview with a U of T activist who has clearly, and understandably, been intimidated by the actions of the Men's Rights Movement after the November protest:

Heather, a feminist and social justice advocate, says at least one of those young women has been exposed to online bullying and harassment. For that reason, she doesn’t want to see the Janice Fiamengo talk go forward. However, she doesn’t know if she will take place in any kind of protest because she fears the backlash.
Heather, who asked her last name be withheld because she doesn’t want to become a target for harassment, said she doesn’t think a talk criticizing women’s studies belongs at the University of Toronto.

Heather may be right. In fact, the gutless Texan thug, Paul Elam has this to say, about the upcoming event:

University of Toronto Student Union, it is time for you to just shut up, get out of the way and let other people share ideas whether you like them or not.
Of course, it is up to you. You live in a free country as long as people like you are not running it. But whatever you choose to do, you might want to consider what happened the last time you had a bright idea.
And last November, we were not even prepared for anything to happen.
You can bet we are now.

Subtlety  is not his strong suit. Given that "we" cannot possibly include him, as he is in Texas, one can only assume he is talking tough for his brothers in Canada. Namely, CAFE and the U of T Men's Right's Group. Given that they did not disavow his previous campaign of intimidation, they are unlikely to disavow this one.

I wonder if the U of T administration sees this as just more "free speech"?

But it would seem, returning to Fiamengo, that anti-feminism is not her first attempt to strike at the politics of modernity and inclusion, and it would seem that there are other reasons that many might doubt the legitimacy of a campus club that, while claiming to be a moderate and inclusive voice, would have her as a speaker and adviser.

CAFE's newest front person is an outright reactionary and Islamophobe who is rising through the ranks of the extreme right online community by writing for hard right American websites and espousing obviously  extremist views.

In fact, in the most recent article she posted, on February 25,  Fiamengo (who is, one might add, notably obsessed with, and largely only published in, the United States, with its Fox News, talk radio ultra-right subculture) led in with:

Proclaiming himself a conciliator and a moderate with a vision of Americans “stand[ing] with each other” and “paying their fair share,” President Barack Obama is in fact one of the most partisan presidents ever to occupy the White House. Fine-sounding words notwithstanding, he is a leftist ideologue and no-holds-barred political fighter whose practice has consistently been to demonize the American equivalents of the hated kulaks (farmers) and petit-bourgeoisie (small business owners) persecuted in the Soviet Union. Obama’s enemies include those “bitter” people who “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them” as well as the presumably benighted bigots who fail to realize that “the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.” With his anti-American, neo-Marxist outlook shaped by mentors and heroes such as Frank Marshall Davis, Bill Ayers, Saul Alinsky, and Jeremiah Wright, Obama is naturally inclined to be suspicious of freedom and to feel sympathy for groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood.

This is, to say the least, a fascinating way to characterize the President of the United States. A President who has, in fact, been astonishingly aggressive, imperialistic and  violent in his on-going extra-judicial war murdering people in the  Middle East (including hundreds of innocent bystanders) without any pretense of a trial or due process. To say that this would be the characterization that would be made by an extreme-right zealot would be obvious.

Fiamengo posted this, as she has many other anti-Islamic articles, on David Horowitz's notoriously bigoted frontpagemag.com, a website that promotes Horowitz's outright racist musings like those found in his joint diatribe, Black Skin Privilege, which is promoted as showing that "in fact the most insidious bias in our culture today is black skin privilege."

It would seem that not only have women and feminists unjustly taken power, but so have blacks and other groups.

Fiamengo is not at all shy about this, attacking Islamics directly and vociferously. She wrote an article on Horowitz's racist site in praise of Gavin Boby, an English bigot who crusaded against mosques in British neighbourhoods, sadly often successfully. She writes glowingly:

Only in a nation hobbled by political correctness of the most mind-boggling sort could a speaker proposing nothing more shocking than residents’ right to defend their neighbourhoods be so vociferously denounced. The self-righteous outcries at Boby’s “fearmongering” came not only from the predictable sources -- in this case the Canadian arm of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-CAN), fawningly reported on by the press despite its close ties to terrorist organizations -- but also from self-proclaimed free-thinkers and mainstream journalists. When everyone involved declares their commitment to free speech while seeking to suppress, distort, and censor Boby’s message, one is left staggered by the House of Mirrors confusion passing for informed debate in this country.

Of course, she is writing of the "right" of residents to "defend their neighbourhoods" from mosques. Places of worship. In an article decrying the supposed lack of "free speech" she praises a bigot and others who would seek to deny freedom of speech to Islamics by denying them the very ability to build houses of worship.
She then, as she is aiming at an American audience, goes on to condemn the "notoriously left-wing Canadian Broadcasting Corporation" for not taking up Boby's cause.
But Fiamengo is not content with Islamics. She also "outs," in the extreme right American Libertarian site, PJ Media, the supposed preference given to Canada's Native People and other peoples in a stunningly offensive diatribe in which she belittles fellow academics who come from backgrounds that she sees as having been "favoured".
In one of her multiple attacks on the very students she teaches, who she herself holds in total contempt, she states:

Indeed, some students become so immersed in Leftist ideology -- a kind of secret society whose code language they have learned in fear and trembling and now exercise with pride -- that they believe it the only possible view of the world and have never seriously considered alternatives except as the deplorable prejudices of the hateful unwashed. Their conviction of rightness has revealed itself in a multitude of anti-intellectual and repressive behavior on university campuses across the country.

One could go on and on. There are many more examples of her work that are readily available online.
I have contended, as have others, that the so-called Men's Rights Movement is little more than a wing of a broader North American reactionary movement that uses false and grotesque arguments of reverse sexism ("misandry") and reverse racism to oppose efforts by historically oppressed communities to redress this oppression. They do so by claiming to be "radical" and fighting for "justice" and "freedom of speech" when in fact they are nothing but a continuation of the same old racist and sexist counter-movements that have sought to keep things the way they are from the beginning of all the movements for social justice of the 19th and 20th centuries.

These movements are interconnected. They all share the essential false analysis and they are all equally lying when they claim that all they want is "fairness". They are all explicitly either racist, sexist or retrograde. Often they are all of these.

Crossover backlash reactionary Fiamengo simply proves this.

(1) As an interesting side note, it is well worth checking out the demented, juvenile and misogynist ranting and "commentary" on the Facebook wall for the event.

(2) Humorously and pathetically Paul Elam of AVfM requested that his followers comment collectively on the Metro article, which they did. The comments on the article require no commentary.