As some of the better comments on the video bring up, do Ford’s policies actually save tax money? If they don’t, that’s something to bring up. Yes, there will always be those who would rather pay less taxes than have better social services, and presumably that’s why Ford was elected, but if he can’t even succeed at that…
If you elect me mayor of Toronto, I will lower taxes to nothing.
I also don’t smoke crack.
Just don’t expect me to live there.
Cf. Jerry Brown.
Seems we had a president or two who promised “No new taxes, weed my lips” or something like that
I wouldn’t say they “Keep voting him in.” He was elected in 2010. He’s serving a four year term. His four year term ends in 2014.
No, no, no, no, no.
I’m sure that helps that he blathers about taxes, but we have to stop dignifying people like that with the pretense that they care about policy, even moronic policy. They care about tribe. Our tribe vs. their tribe. Suburbanites vs those nasty, stinky, queer, ethnic whatever people who live in cities. They’d vote for someone who promised to raise their taxes and murder their children (cf. George Bush the Younger), so long as he was “one of us” not “one of them”.
No, they don’t. In fact, at least one of his policies (the Scarborough subway) necessitated a raise in taxes.
But Ford keeps repeating, loudly, and with no accounting at all to back him up, that he’s saved the taxpayers a billion dollars, and because apparently Ford Nation can’t be arsed to do the math, they believe him.
Mercer nailed it.
I don’t know, if a gerbil got up and made a promise, any promise, I’d be tempted too.
He does have accounting to back him up on his billion-dollar claims, and BoingBoing recently linked to a Star article taking a closer look at that accounting.
quote from video “…[his politics] should not be written off, just because he’s about to be.”
wrong. lazy answer. clean the slate. start fresh. funny, i thought you had to be mature enough to be an adult (if not actually an adult) to be a successful representative in any democracy. why i avoided even considering politics.
Apologies to our Friends to the North for bringing in a US stat, but in the US, there’s been a “complete collapse” of routine infrastructure spending. http://www.businessinsider.com/us-infrastructure-spending-collapse-blog-2013-11 Being cheap now can have serious costs later on.
Um, the second paragraph in that article starts, “In truth, the mayor’s fiscal claims are exaggerated.”
It’s an article showing he’s full of crap and how the numbers don’t add up.
I thought it was maybe the “Boris Johnson Effect” where people vote for him just to see what the nut job will do next.
Yeah, that would be why I said the article takes a closer look at his claims.
But the article does make clear, contrary to your earlier claim that he has “no accounting at all to back him up,” that there are plausible claims to savings being made, and that the city’s CFO has backed some of his claims.
Geez, I hate paying taxes like any other guy, after all we’d all like to take home 100% of our salary.
But I need to have my garbage collected, the roads plowed of snow, the traffic lights maintained, the roads and bridges maintained. I need the police to keep the peace and, heaven forfend, the fire department in an emergency and if anything goes horribly wrong, the doctors and the hospital to look after me and get me back on my feet. I need all these things and so much more and there’s no way in hell I could pay for it all out of my 100% take home salary. I need the support of the community to build these things together for our mutual benefit. If I make a little more today, I pay a little more today because some day I might not be making that much and I might need to pay less than others. It’s called the social compact.
What we are witnessing is the beginning of a breakdown of civil society.
He has not saved a billion dollars, which is his central claim.
I didn’t say he had. I said that, contrary to your statement, he had provided accounting to back up his billion-dollar-savings claim. I mean, you can disagree with his claims (and I don’t know of a politician who won’t make claims that demand a very generous interpretation of facts), but he clearly didn’t simply pull the figure out of thin air and present it without any support.
Please stop referring to the suburbs in a pejorative fashion. Idiocy is not the exclusive provenance of those living in the urban sprawl.
His policies may save tax dollars but how much are his actions going to end up costing the taxpayers?
