He sure looks pretty tired for a “do nothing” Mayor
August 4th, 2009 by NoisyI can’t be the only one watching a growing concordance between Toronto’s corporate press and right-wing politicians over the last months.
The strategy seems to be: ignore or obfuscate the initiatives of Mayor Miller’s administration in one gesture, then drum up populist outrage over the “do nothing Mayor” in the next. He must be a “do-nothing!” I mean, have we told you about anything he’s doing?
A Mayor is one person, with one vote on Council and some influence over the decision-making process. In other words, a Mayor can really only be as good as her or his Council, and by that metric, sure, I guess Miller has been pretty useless, given a strong minority on Council who believe their entire job is to delay and dilute anything that comes from the Miller camp. In a war of attrition, it’s not whether you win, it’s how slow you lose, and who you drag down with you.
This puts lefties in an awkward position. There’s a lot about Miller’s administration that’s been problematic, but with no viable challenger from the left, progressives are required to put too much time in to defending one man, when we’d really much rather be building a constituency that could push the general drift of Toronto politics out in to a less constrictive space.
If I thought Council’s privateers were co-ordinated enough (there are intelligent right-wingers, operating from principled positions, who one feels obliged to engage with respectfully - this lot doesn’t qualify), I’d call it a masterful strategy - but they aren’t, so let’s just call it a morbidly fascinating side-effect: through constant and judicious application of what in political circles is called “so much fucking noise,” the common denominator of political discourse is kept as low as possible (that would be 2: the binary of black and white, left and right, Abbot and Costello), and people who could be engaged in building that progressive (dare I say radical) constituency are otherwise engaged in keeping the giant zorb of what’s considered reasonable from rolling downhill and rightward.
It’s not long before the “do-nothing Mayor” starts becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yet even a cursory overview makes the the “useless” accusation baffling.
Miller was instrumental in opening up new revenue streams for a city saddled by ancient fiscal rules, and negotiating a provincial upload. He oversaw the first freezing of police spending (outside of wages and benefits, which are linked to arbitrated settlements) in memory. He is helping bring new rapid transit to Toronto. He’s prioritized some very promising climate-related initiatives. He’s championed an imaginative and concrete (if controversial) housing plan. He’s empowered staff to actually make progress on the Bike Plan. Among other things.
Just because these things aren’t useful to you personally doesn’t mean they’re useless.
I find the way in which he’s done some of these things (specifically rushing through the Streets to Homes plan) problematic. There are things I wish he hadn’t done. There are plenty of things I wish he would do. There are ways in which he could seriously improve his communications strategy. He could check in with the grassroots sat least, say, once every year or so.
And there were plenty of reasons to find the position the City took up against its employees during the strike really troubling.
Yet, judging the strike deal from the frame of city finances - which, after all, the dailies and news stations seemed to decide, was all we were supposed to talk about anyway - the negotiating position which Miller championed did just save the City a whole titload of money.
But then, those savings won’t happen all at once. Nothing constructive ever does. And that’s the major weakness of any progressive politician, anyone who wants to engage in city-building, as opposed to simple maintenance of the status-quo: it takes time, it consists in details, and requires some imagination - not to mention hope - to understand.
And there is a real, oddly enthusiastic undercurrent of hopelessness running beneath this town. For a particularly loud, slow-to-rouse but hard-to-placate minority, it’s a de-facto civic identity. Maybe that’s endemic to any big city. Maybe it’s just that short-term issues facilitate a whole lot of complaining, which is cathartic, and doesn’t imply the responsibility of optimism.
In any case, it’s the right wing’s bread and butter: bitch and moan about potholes. The taxes you pay are being spent on things. Music was better when you were young. Toast gets burnt more often now that homosexuals are parking hybrids under condos. That sort of thing. Keep discourse as simple as possible. That’s how you’ll keep getting elected.
So the cycle continues. And, with the exception of certain writers, the papers would appear to be eating it up and shitting it back out. You can almost hear publishers across the spectrum popping a collective chubby for the image of Miller swinging in the garbage-tinted breeze. The editorials take an ostensibly populist tone: We’re on your side, Average Toronto Citizen. Nevermind that the folks behind the big desks are all a sufficient number of tax brackets above you to piss down your chimney.
It’s a recession. In some ways, the only bones with any profitable meat left on them right now belong to the state. Miller’s made it pretty clear he’s not interested in privatizing. And let’s not forget that Land Transfer Tax. In a town being built on property speculation, that was tantamount to wealth redistribution. The post-Lastman honeymoon is well over, and I wonder if the decision hasn’t been made: Miller has to go. Because he’s a “do-nothing Mayor.” Facts notwithstanding.
News Triage Mashup - Week of June 29 09
June 29th, 2009 by NoisyI often wish my weekly columns could just be mashups of all my potential weekly columns. If they could, this week’s (sub)headline might be:
Are Tories dumping streetcar funding in neighbourhood parks because Richard Florida is embarrassed by striking garbage workers?
…And part of me almost wants to say, Maybe. Maybe they are.
I’m not with the union, but I’ll take them over the alternative
June 18th, 2009 by NoisyIn my column this week I try out the idea that in the middle of theglobaleconomiccrisis (has anyone named their band Global Economic Crisis yet? Is that still up for grabs?), protecting workers’ collective agreements becomes more important. Because apparently that’s become just so nutty that we need 900 words to make a case for it - considerably more than the current accepted wisdom, “ARGLE BARGLE GREEDY BASTARDS!!!!!”
“I’m not sure I buy into the idea that these times require concessions,” says Ferguson. “This is a crisis largely driven by the banks and bad credit, and I find it disingenuous that the city would ask its employees to bear the brunt of an economic situation not of their making.”
Certainly, a lot of other employees out there are thinking the same thing. One has to wonder: are complaints about civic workers expressions of outrage or just jealousy of workers who still have the power to stand up for themselves?
In today’s news: There was no news yesterday
June 11th, 2009 by NoisyHere’s a partial list of people who swore on Monday.
- Me.
- Your best friend
- A garbage collector
- Zach Galifiniakis (twice)
- Most of the rest of the planet
- John Baird
But you only heard about Baird doing it: he’s Minister of Infrastructure, and so… I don’t have an end for that sentence. I don’t know why it was news.
Well, alright, not news. Scandal? No - too grave, too weighty. Just call it a sugary jolt through the pituitary– just enough to get some eyeballs flitting across a paper. ‘Cause, guess what, gentle reader? John Baird just told you to fuck off. How does that make you feel? (Note: the editors do not intend for this question to imply an assumption that you are necessarily capable of feeling anything).
Sure, it’s vaguely satisfying that a Google search for John Baird’s name will now turn up, first of all, the fact that he dropped “the Fuck bomb” (am I doing that right?) at a news conference. And I guess there’s something to be said for the news media occasionally checking in to keep us aware of the character of public representawhat do you mean, front page? Like, the page on the front?
That’s from Wednesday’s Toronto Star, two days after Baird used everyone’s favourite nounverb.
These things make it above the fold (oh good lord, they put it above the fold) for a reason. It seeds the discourse– it gives reporters something they can milk if they hit a patch of slow news days. And, let’s face it, with corporate outlets expanding coverage to Constant and Everything just to stay relevant, ’slow news day’ has pretty much become a business model.
So, for instance, Royson James gets another chance to riff on mayoral strategy (but between you and me, internet, I think wonks and columnists - myself included - too often see complex strategy existing after the fact in what could have also, really, just been a bunch of stuff that happened. It comes from thinking our jobs are more important than they are).
Hold on, what’s that off to the side?
You… really? Seriously?
Torstar’s new thing is burning up inches to let you know they put out a paper yesterday as well. Look, you can trust us! Shit, we do this, like, every day, dawg. Heavy hustlin. You should probably pick up an issue every day, too, and think about the products offered by our fine sponsors. That’d totally work for you.
So, the story there is essentially: today is a slow news day - so slow, in fact, that we are writing not just about how yesterday was also a slow news day, but about how we pretty much straight up told you it was slow news day.
The desperation in the biz is starting to get pungent. Worrying, and exciting. But more on that later.
Gridlack: The Perspective With Respect To
May 27th, 2009 by NoisyThat isn’t just the name of my future electro band and our first album (but it is definitely both of these things). It’s also a sample of all the finely lacerated rhetoric which was collapsing wetly upon the floor of City Council chambers this past Monday, after succumbing to an injuriously epic “debate” on The War on Cars bike lanes on Jarvis.
With people so concerned about the future of the Jarvis bike lane proposal, it went virtually unnoticed when an apparently underslept Councillor Michael Thompson’s brain failed a ROM check and did a hard reset, sputtering with Aphex Twin-like aplomb in the process:
“Pedestrian walking.” That’s the new kind. With the legs.
Now, it’s easy to make fun (it’s fun, too), but in fairness to Thompson, council meetings are a special kind of long, and the short version of a city councillor’s job description is “Ad-lib while tired.”
But, still… I just can’t help finding a kind of poetry in abject confusion. I might find some time to post two or three more gems from the comedy B-roll tomorrow.
Rennet-baiting to swerve you better
May 26th, 2009 by Noisy
The site is still in the middle of an overdue overhaul, and will be for a while, I imagine. The front page is serviceable; everything within is horrible. This is a metaphor for something.
What old posts? This is the only post. This has always been the only post.
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