Man, oh, man. There’s this:
One week after Toronto Mayor Rob Ford testified under oath that he no longer uses taxpayer-funded staff and resources for football, fresh evidence has emerged that suggests he continues to do just that. Mr. Ford appears to have relied on at least two mayor’s office employees and their taxpayer-funded cellphones to help administer the summer football teams he founded after winning Toronto’s top political job.
And then there’s this:
To which, initially, the mayor did not respond since he was apparently not at City Hall, so his brother said:
“This is on their own time, after 40 hours,” the councillor said. “Rob doesn’t force anyone to work on city time.” … Asked why the aides used their city-issue phones for football purposes, the councillor said: “I can’t answer it. But let’s be honest. If it was the Toronto Environmental Alliance you wouldn’t be writing it.” [AND] “This is all about two things: Rob Ford and football,” he said. “If it was the tree-huggers or whatever, you wouldn’t care.” Councillor Ford accused The Globe of unjustly attacking his brother and vowed to take a tougher stance with the media. “I’m changing my rules,” he said. “Every time you guys go after Rob, I’m going after you.”
And further:
And a “Ford ally” weighed in:
But then it turned out the mayor was in his office, he’d come in the back door to avoid the press. So then he issued a statement:
“I’m okay if Councillors want to criticize me for helping kids. That’s their right,” said Mayor Rob Ford. ”I’m a big guy and I can take it. However, Councillors should not be criticizing my staff. Each and every one of them works hard every day for the taxpayers of this great city. They put in at least 40 hours of work for taxpayers every week. Often more.”
“Only a coward would criticize my staff. They can’t defend themselves in the media against elected officials.”
And this latest bit of nonsense hijacking the city’s business comes after this yesterday:
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is defending his decision to leave a meeting of council’s most important committee more than five hours early to coach a high school football game. “We had our first football game up in Newmarket. If I’m not there the kids don’t play,” Mr. Ford told reporters at a United Way event at Nathan Phillips Square Tuesday. “Very few times it conflicts with my schedule. That’s why I had to leave two hours before [the game.]”
And of course this last week:
The mayor’s own testimony, to summarize, was that he is not just ignorant, but proudly so. That he will proceed, confidently and consistently, from a complete lack of any useful information and refuse to seek any insight or advice that will help dispel his ignorance or clarify his understanding. And that he will do so in the proud, unshakable, certainty that he is correct. It was not just a lack of expertise or even basic knowledge the mayor displayed, it was an outright disdain for expertise and knowledge, coupled with an inability to even understand that this was the case. It was not somehow built into the complaint or into Ruby’s submission that this was going to be the lesson we’d all emerge with. It was the mayor’s own testimony, his own contribution to the proceedings, an insistent assertion he made about himself. Ruby’s assertion, actually, was that the mayor was being dishonest. It was the mayor’s own defence that he was not dishonest, he was belligerently ignorant; uninformed, unadvised, unwilling to even momentarily consider that his interpretation of things—matters he openly acknowledged he knew nothing at all about—were in error.
This week, John Lorinc wrote:
Here’s a short-term goal: With a little self-discipline, and a bit of focus on the part of the media, maybe we can get back to talking about the things that matter at City Hall, as opposed to the things that titillate and scandalize and polarize, which is to say, what everyone (including your’s truly) spent the summer obsessing over.
Sorry, John. Maybe not quite yet.
