City for Sale to the Lowest Bidder

(Article on the 2010 Toronto mayoral race)

By Gary Morton, January 29.2010

    The real estate market is hot and interest rates are low … there’s a City of Toronto election this year and everything’s for sale, and that may include mayoral candidates. And it’s all for sale to the lowest bidder.

    From the Fringe to the Fast and Easy, nearly everyone is a fiscal conservative with a plan to save Toronto by tendering out city services to the lowest bidder. Whether it’s Joe Pantalone, Rocco Rossi, George Smitherman or Sarah Thompson … the solution is to sell off Toronto Hydro, or enwave or let NGOs, Unions, Private Companies and Consortiums or whoever bid on city services … and supposedly save us a tremendous amount of money, while the asset sales bring in a big cash fix and save the city budget.

     George Smitherman is easily the front runner, but why vote for him when you can go to the bottom of the fringe and find candidate Rocco Achampong reciting the same conservative/neo liberal mantra of selling everything off? Like the mayor’s job is a sort of transition job, where in the end, it and a public city are really no longer needed.

     Instead of a city of people, we’ll have a huge private sector conglomerate as only the big corporations are going to win in bids for city services.

    Let’s get some comparison working here. Why not vote for Rocco Achampong instead of Smitherman or even Sarah Thomson? Why? Well, Smitherman isn’t running on a gay mayor idea … Sarah Thomson isn’t running to be a woman mayor … Rocco Achampong isn’t running as the young black man for mayor. From the fringe to the big bucks they’re all fiscal conservatives or equivalent neo liberals. 

   Sure there’s some difference, like Rocco Achampong has no web site and only an official campaign photo you can find through Google search. Then for his policies you have to read posts on the Tallahassee Society of Morticians web bulletin board where the comments are: why are these people posting this stuff here?

     Perhaps he may by mistake end up the white mayor of Hog’s Hollow Tennessee. But nevertheless, policy wise he comes out about the same as Smitherman and Rossi and most of rest … which makes me wonder whether behind it all they’re all really FRINGE LUNATICS WITH BIG EGOS AND WANT TO BE MAYOR.

      Here’s another comparison. You go to the grocery store to buy a box of dry cat food. There are the expensive Smitherman and Rossi brands, a cheaper Mammoliti brand with mail in lottery coupons, Pantalone’s slightly softer kibble for older downtown cats and Sarah Thomson’s business woman’s brisket. Yet no matter what you buy it’s really all the same shit and poisoned with the same sell-off melamine.

     At January’s end there are fringe candidates and others that are bigger and of no distinction when it comes to imagination, leadership or policy.

     They’re nearly all in the neo nut camp, looking for quick cash fixes. And saying they’re campaigning as fiscal whatevers and not women or …

    I say … if that’s the race as it is then people might as well vote for Smitherman, for a gay mayor; Rocco Achampong, for a young black mayor; Sonny Yeung, for an oriental mayor; Sarah Thomson, for a woman mayor; Joe Pantalone, for a little guy insider mayor; Rocco Rossi, for an outsider mayor; George Mammoliti, for a gaming mayor; Don Andrews, for a racist mayor … or Mark State or John Letonja as the lunatic fringe idea of mayor.

    Nothing genuinely distinguishes the front runners from the fringe … and they’re nearly all running with the idea that the private sector can somehow buy the public sector and save it. It won’t work. We need better ideas.

    How about you … have you thought about running for mayor? We need genuine human beings working to maintain and build this real city we live in.

--------