Rob Ford getting his due

Two years ago I talked about how Toronto had elected a homophobic, racist jackass as mayor on a campaign of "I will slash spending while lowering taxes without any loss in services!"  Unfortunately what we got when we elected Rob Ford is someone who slashed revenue and then tried to close libraries, subsidizied day care spots and pretty much everything else in his bid to cut the budget.  No great surprise but when you slash budgets from libraries there is going to be a loss in services!  Crazy talk, I know.  At the time I was really concerned that Ford was going to make a royal mess of the city because the city councillors were all lining up to back him figuring he was the new darling of the masses.

Oh how the mighty have fallen.

Ford has managed to turn the city council against him in spectacular fashion.  Since the mayor's office largely holds symbolic power and only one vote he actually can't do much when the rest of council decides to stick together.  He used his power to appoint people to the Toronto Transit Commission board and fire the head of the TTC so council removed his power to appoint people, put new people in place and trashed Ford's idiotic and financially impossible transit plan.  Now they are working together to restart the transit plan Ford unilaterally killed when he came into office and pretty much preventing him from doing anything at all.

This is good news from the perspective that Ford is no longer in charge of Toronto in anything but name but it is bad news in that it makes the voters of Toronto look like a bunch of fools.  We elected a guy on a platform of magic and free ponies and now we get to deal with the aftermath of a split council and a city leader who can't get anything done because no one respects him.  I wonder how many people who voted for him are upset because he promised massive tax cuts with no loss in services to go with it.  If there are any they need to face up to the fact that they fell for a scam hook, line and sinker.  Hopefully when the next election rolls around people will remember how awful things go when you elect someone on impossible promises and disgust and look for somebody with actual leadership qualities.