When Mike Hatred’s Common Simpleton’s Revolution came to an end and everyone was so sick of it and of him that the Liberals romped to victory, the last thing we expected was what we got: Mike Harris with a brain
By Frank Touby –
Before it’s too late, the Ontario Liberals should force Dalton McGuinty out the back door and out of the party’s leadership. Months ago when the Toronto Star published the picture of an old man lying on the floor in a private old-age home, Dalton said, essentially, “That’s it, I’ve got to run again. They need me.”
The doofus didn’t even catch on that the atrocity occurred on his very own watch. Or he thought the rest of us are too stupid to have noticed that his government regulates those facilities and it is what failed. That’s been the story of his entire loopy reign. When Mike Hatred’s Common Simpleton’s Revolution came to an end and everyone was so sick of it and of him that the Liberals romped to victory, the last thing we expected was what we got: Mike Harris with a brain.
ober 2011
McGuinty is as big a developer’s lackey as any Tory. First off the mark he let a bud build 900 houses on the “protected” Oak Ridges Morraine.
Next he not only retained the pro-developer-anti-citizen Ontario Municipal Board, he kept in place the Harris dodge that gives OMB final say. It gets the premier off the hook because there’s no appeal to Cabinet for the aggrieved, as there was before Harris. Go developers! Screw the cities!
Oh yes, and “Screw the poor and middle class!” Suppress wage increases. Lower corporate taxes. Constrain outside income to those on welfare to keep them in dire straits.
Wreck the hospital system worse than Mikey did: invent Liberal Health Integration Networks (LHIN) to rob the taxpayer, harm the non-rich sick and create a mean-spirited gravy train for friends and relatives of those in power. Shut down hospital facilities.
Attack the health system: devastate OHIP beneficiaries by cutting out coverage for chiropractic and physiotherapy to help Big Pharma avoid competition. Drug them up instead.
Dalton continues Mikey’s lunatic market-value assessment against property owners, raising taxes so high on elderly who want to stay in their suddenly high-value family homes they are forced to sell to avoid becoming house-rich and tax-poor. It also creates a bureaucratic monster, MPAC, filled with high-paid folks with nice pensions when they retire. Of course if buildings were taxed on their square footage of livable/useable space, it wouldn’t require such an army of swivel servants constantly testing the vagaries of the real estate market. Cities would just adjust the mill rate.
While he impoverishes us with the HST and higher electricity bills, McG enriches big corporations that make “green” electricity and equipment. He kept that ridiculous hydro monstrosity of separate kingdoms that Harris invented to make our electricity bureaucracy more like the corporate sector, replete with overpaid executives and competing missions. That way our public electricity system could be sold to private companies who would rape us unmercifully as private companies always do when gifted with property that should belong to the people. Expect a corporatist yokel like Tim Hudak, McGuinty’s likely soon-to-be successor, to attempt just that.
But Tim’s no greater a corporatist than Dalton is. They’re in the same league, which is to enrich the elites and impoverish the rest of us. They’re just on separate teams. Dalton crippled the cities just as Harris did. He kept in place the downloads that Mikey slapped down with his usual heavy fist. The very livable, well-run CityHome was dumped into the TCHC bureaucracy with a monstrous mess of public-housing slums from the former Metro Toronto and the province.
McGuinty didn’t protect Toronto from the G20 disaster a year ago this month and that horror story continues to resonate in our psyches and haunt our collective dream of a livable, well-policed city. He should have been firm that Torontonians mustn’t be imposed upon and pushed from their Downtown in order to entertain foreign bigwigs on behalf of the federal government. He saw what happened in Pittsburgh. He could have and should have told Stephen Harper to conduct the G20 on federal property and not to restrict the freedoms of Ontario citizens for this event.
In the aftermath of the catastrophe that did occur Downtown, Dalton should have been investigating and arresting the numerous felons wearing uniforms, guns and badges who committed outrageous criminal acts against innocent civilians. Instead, those felons are still on the police forces of Toronto and elsewhere in Ontario and it’s all being swept under the carpet.
This same premier who just gave police whopping big pay raises hasn’t even raised the issue of cleaning up the departments, arresting those who committed crimes, and ensuring that if convicted they can never serve in uniform again. With Hudac pledging to create chain gangs, tougher prisons and all the stuff that appeals to the huge Tory Neanderthal element, don’t expect our police to improve during his reign. G20 gave us a taste of the police state. It’s a fact in the U.S. and it’s a clear danger in Canada. If you like being pushed around by your own police on your own streets, thank Dalton for letting it happen.
It’s been a voter tradition that Ontario’s premier is in the opposite party of the federal leader. But not with Dalton. Progressive Liberal Glen Murray would be a saner choice.