Meet Doug Ford, next preem of Ontario

This will no doubt have the media bed-wetters in a tizzy. After all, Doug is the slightly more stable brother of former crack-head TO mayor Rob Ford, and surely you remember how relentlessly our "free press" hounded him to death.

In fact, Toronto Star intern Dan Dale did such a bang-up job on the Ford file that the Star dispatched him to Washington, complete with an actual paycheque and expense account, to become the official Donald Trump Fib Tracker.

Why a money-losing Canadian news platform would consider that a useful deployment of their dwindling resources is a question you'd have to ask them.

But back to Ford. Rob was relentlessly portrayed as a racist and misogynist bigot across the spectrum of our mainstream media.

That was mostly fake news.

Take a gander at this video of Rob Ford's funeral.

WTF?

I see brown people galore paying their respects to the racist. And women too!


Frankly, I didn't believe Doug could pull this off, but the Conservative leadership race was such a shit-show that anything was possible.

And here we are. Doug was the only candidate who had a chance at unseating Wynne. She could have easily whupped those females candidates, but Doug Ford is a new game.

Doug Ford will be the next premier of Ontario.


And that's not a happy thing.

Why the Toronto Star deserves to fail

I'm looking at the front page of the business section of today's Toronto Star. Four stories are introduced to us on the front page.

Dream of starter homes fades in TO.

HBC's activist investor has been here before.

Wynne welcomes Amazon in Canada.

Airports ban ads from passenger aid company.

In the first story, Tess Kalinowski informs us that Toronto's chief planner, Jenn Keesmaat, is sad that regular folks can no longer afford a single family home in Toronto. But she is happy that when a family of five squeezes into a 500 square foot condo, they leave a smaller footprint.

Well, I guess that's nice.

But Keesmaat also informs us that Toronto home-buyers are competing with global capital.

So tough shit, I guess. My question would be this; does Jenn Keesmatt draw her generous salary for planning a city for global capital, or does she draw it for planning for Toronto residents?

Too bad the Star never asks this question.

Then Jennifer Wells has a reasonably informative story about a big-league finance sharpie, Jonathan Litt, who is offering unsolicited advice to Hudson Bay Company on how to stay afloat. Monetize your real estate!

HBC is run by another finance sharpie, Rick Baker, who has done very well by doing exactly that. This is the guy who made billions selling the Zeller's leases to Target, and is now making more billions selling them again after Target went tits up.

Seems retail is stressed because "disrupters" are turning the retail world upside down!

So here's the next story; Wynne welcomes Amazon to Canada.

Oh ya! Amazon! The "disrupter" par excellence!

HBC is on the ropes and Target and Zellers are long gone but we should welcome, as Wynne does, the "disrupters." Apparently if we are not on board in destroying our retail infrastructure we will be "followers" instead of leaders...

Alrighty then!

So far the Star has told us it's OK that Toronto only builds housing for "global capital" and retail is fucked anyway so let's spread 'em wide for Amazon.

Last story on the front page of the Star's business section today tells us that a company that helps airline passengers get compensated for delayed, cancelled, or overbooked flights has had their adverts blocked from Toronto's only international airport!

What a surprise!

What's the common theme in these four tales from the front page of the business section on the Toronto Star?

The way I read it, they're telling the regular folks to fuck off and suck it up. Big Biz knows best!

Remember, this is Canada's "liberal" newspaper of record.

Remember too, that although the Star can't afford to hire someone to connect the dots between their various stories, they can afford to keep a correspondent in DC to catalogue the lies of Donald Trump, because... that's what Canadians are really interested in?

All of these stories would be toxic to Star founder Joe Atkinson, a guy who believed that the common man deserved at least a little bit of truth-telling.

Meanwhile, the five multi-millionaire families who have controlled the Star forever are busy lobbying the government for subsidies so they can stay in business.

I say, let 'em sink.

We already have a CBC.

Preem Kathleen dips into loot-bag and gifts Ontario min wage workees 30% raise

But it doesn't kick in till after the next provincial election, nudge nudge wink!

On the face of it, that may appear to be a cynical bit of political opportunism - vote for me and get a 30% raise.

In reality, she's gifting a cohort that tends to be under-represented in the voting booth. Min wage workers are often too busy, too disillusioned, too distracted and too discouraged to bother voting. Maybe this will get their attention.

After all, it's beyond the pale that ANY worker in one of the most prosperous jurisdictions on the planet labour in poverty.

Enough already!

Brace yourself for the chorus of bleating that is guaranteed to issue forth from those sectors of the economy that depend on full-time workers toiling for poverty wages.

Whaaaaa!! We're gonna move our restaurant to Alabama...

Well, off you go then.

Somebody else will figure out how to deep fry frozen potatos while paying a living wage.

Sure, prices at restaurants will have to go up somewhat, but look at how many more people will be able to afford a dinner out.


This is a small step in the right direction, but at least it's a start.

The selective myopia of the "queer friendly" press

Why is it that any news story about Ontario Liberal premier Kathleen Wynne is more likely than not to mention that she is Canada's first "openly gay" premier?

Could it be that the media, almost entirely an organ of the neo-liberal right, seeks to mine the residual homophobia that might swing a few votes here and there?

The fact is that everybody already knows that Kathleen Wynne is gay and we don't need to be reminded of it every time we read a news story about Ms. Wynne, because NOBODY CARES!

On the other hand, the same media outlets never ever mention that John Baird is Canada's first openly gay Foreign Minister.

Baird gets a free pass because he is a stalwart of the most neo-liberal far-right government that Canada has ever had in the modern era.

And aside from an occasional crusade against a marginal player like Mike Duffy, that's not a boat the neo-liberal press is interested in rocking.

Openly straight candidate fails in bid to win Ontario premiership

Openly straight candidate Sandra Pupatello narrowly lost in her bid to become the next preem of Canada's most populated province. She was hoping to step into the loafers of the outgoing openly straight Dalton McGuinty.

Pupatello lost to contender Kathleen Wynne, who is apparently not openly straight, which every headline in the nation has informed us multipe times makes Wynne the first not openly straight first minister in the history of Canada.

I beg to differ. Richard Hatfield was the Premier of New Brunswick forever back in the days when it was considered a political liability to not be openly straight. And while he didn't wear a pink triangle on his sleeve, there wasn't a voter in the province who had any delusions about his straightness or lack thereof.

While he may not have been "open" about not being straight, it was certainly an open secret.

They just kept voting for the old queen.

So the new not-openly-straight premier takes the helm of a province facing a host of issues. I'd like to read more about her policies and plans and how she will tackle these issues, and less about her private life.