A search for real conservatives finds few at city hall

If Rob Ford were actually a conservative instead of a spoiled, rich Baby Huey, he’d have saved us $1 million or more a year by not dumping poisonous fluoride into our drinking water. Conservatives don’t believe in medicating people without an individual diagnosis and certainly not without their consent. And that’s just for starters.

But Rob’s no more a conservative than Mike Harris was. You see, both Mike and Rob sh ould have hated the idea of Big Government ruling the City of Toronto. Big Government is anathema to conservatives. They rail loudly against it. So Mike would never have amalgamated Toronto with the suburbs—as he did, to make city government humongous—and Rob would have done his best to undo that mess.

We know Mike is somewhat of a dim bulb and was happily led by his belt by smarter folks who handled him.

Now Rob is another story. Before he became mayor, he often sounded pretty smart. He was able to point out waste at city hall and seemed to have a handle on tactics to counter it. He—or his handlers—kept track of a number of wrong or costly things various council members did and was lucid in describing it. True, he didn’t usually come up with a recommendation to do otherwise, but he sounded so good anyone would think he had the sensible, civically responsible ideas to reverse the wrongs he vigourously cited.

So much for that hope. Like the big-business coterie he serves, Rob takes the Libertarian view that those job-creator elites need to keep their money in their investment accounts here and overseas so they have a few bucks to hire pool cleaners and horse groomers. But taxes, which sustain our civilization, should be borne by the hoi polloi. Elites must be liberated from those costly burdens. Besides, there are so many more of us than there are
of them. That’s why Canada’s revenuers are so vigilant in tracking down little guys who skip or skimp on taxes: little guys in total pay most of the taxes.

Common as he seems,Rob Ford is an elitist. But a conservative? Nope. However, he manifests for Calvinist bumpkins the
image of being an enemy of the leftists who would spend them into the poorhouse by supporting the poor who deserve nothing but hard times and short,unhappy lives.

But on to more substantial subjects.

Mike Harris was no conservative while his physical replacement and ideological bedfellow, Dalton McGuinty, was no liberal.Both were merely elitists, pandering to developers and other permutations of those with deep pockets backing their lusts to influence government.

The Common Simpleton’s Revolution (CSR) of Harris was aimed at selling off taxpayer assets to corporations and resulted in foreign-owned Highway 407 using the province as a collection agency. That’s hardly conservative. Our electric utility broke down to five unsold public electricity companies, some with millionaire executives.

Nothing conservative about that, since it makes electricity more expensive and more bureaucratic.

In nearly his first act as premier, McGuinty-theenvironmentalist let a developer build 900 houses on the crucial and sensitive Oak Ridges Morraine. McGuinty’s campaign manager was another developer. To insulate himself and his party from the depredation the unelected developer-driven Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) wreaked on towns and cities across the province, McGuinty retained the Harris-era separation of OMB from Cabinet.

Before Mike and his wrecking crew changed things, the Ontario Cabinet was the final appeal against OMB ravages. But
Harris divorced Cabinet from accountability and McGuinty reaped the Teflon coating it gave him as well.

So finally, like Harris, McGuinty has bowed out in disgrace. The question is whether his replacement deserves a chance to rule like a liberal or whether the NDP should have a shot. Former NDP Leader Bob Rae, belittled as he was for Rae Days, actually ran a pretty good ship of state in the province. Much to the surprise of all, Rae alienated the unions—usual NDP supporters—and did contribute positive benefits to the province.

The Tory alternative, a former member of the Harris wrecking crew, is out of the question. Tim Hudak was a major villain in the bad regime, as was his wife, the former Deb Hutton, who was a key operative in Harris’ office and, as a former journalist,helped with his propaganda

Hudak and his crowd aren’t worthy of running a dog pound and it would be a disaster should they return to power over the province. He wants to reinstate the destructive CSR and further harm energy, education and health as Harris and McGuinty managed to do.

Under the CSR, oligarchs would take over our public utilities and all that the people of Ontario still own.

We live in hazardous times. The feds want to push us around in our own streets as they did during G20. They hope you’ll get used to it and expect it. Now they’ve come up with a timely claim to have uncovered a domestic train-bomb plot. Your odds of dying from a bee sting are much greater than being hurt by a terrorist action.

So live in fear and envy.Vote conservative.Whatever that is.