The real revelation in the latest release of reports of investigations and wiretaps surrounding the Rob Ford controversy is that there is no revelation. At least not about Rob Ford.
The "shocker" is supposed to be that some people talked on the phone about Ford having done heroin and that people discussed his attempting to buy the "crack video" which was at the centre of the media firestorm.
But these are reports not of anything Ford actually said but what some people have said about him.
There are even some Toronto City Councillors suggesting that Ford should face criminal charges. If your Councillor is among them, the big concern you should have is that your municipal representative is a moron.
Ford should be charged with what, exactly?
If there is actual evidence of his attempting to pervert the course of justice, then absolutely he should face criminal charges. But if there is any such evidence, there has been no indication of it so far.
Furthermore, most of the released information about Ford has nothing to do with a criminal investigation. It seems to be in the report for the sole purpose of smearing and humiliating him. That aspect, which seems designed chiefly to benefit Ford's political enemies, is not, as far as I know, what police or judges are supposed to do as part of their paid duties.
To be clear, to the best of my knowledge, Ward 21 Councillor "Fiasco" Joe Mihevc has never had sexual relations with a farm animal. But the Ford-related transcripts are not dissimilar to what could occur in a hypothetical situation in which a recorded conversation was released in which Mihevc was alleged to have had sexual intercourse with a goat, and if then outraged activists railed "Why hasn't Mihevc been charged with cruelty to animals!?"
What would happen if police released a transcript of a recording in which someone said: "Yeah, Mihevc tied the goat to a post, then pulled his pants down. He lubed up his cock and then jammed it into that goat doggie-style. Or I guess it would be goat-style in this case. Mihevic was grunting and the goat was groaning. Or was it the other way round? Anyhow, he started screaming as he was cumming, 'you're the best goat I ever fucked!!' Then he untied it and walked it back to the organic goat milk farm. That poor goat looked traumatized."
Now, had such a conversation occurred among third parties and a transcript been released, would there be any legal grounds for charges against Mihevc? Of course not. It would have all been unproven allegations and baseless hearsay.
But the release of the conversations among third parties about Ford have been nothing more than a political hit job by a politicized police department for no other apparent reason than that it can be exploited by some sleazy municipal politicians, their allies and media stooges.
Among the issues raised was Ford having been allegedly blackmailed by some of the drug gangs in the suburbs. That would be a serious matter and the first question which should be raised is, did Rob Ford ask or in any way try to influence police to not investigate or enforce the law against those criminals?
Unless there's something I haven't heard, the answer to that question is a clear and resounding "no."
Moreover, Ford has been the more supportive of Police and their efforts to combat drug crime and gang violence than any other Toronto mayor in living history. Ford himself has devoted countless hours to volunteering to help youth in those at-risk neighborhoods, so he is well aware of the need for police to take a hard line on them.
If this sounds like some sort of bizarre contradiction, that Ford associating with some of them and using drugs belies that, the problem is that indeed Ford does have some personal failings which he has committed to remedy.
But this goes further to the point that Rob Ford's personal life and issues have no bearing on the job he was doing as mayor. He is still far more competent and professional in exercising his public duties than his City Hall opponents.
There are a lot of people whose lives may not look so good if continually put under a microscope the way that Rob Ford's has for the last three and a half years. There is even a very, very senior Toronto Police official who has been described to me by reliable sources as having been "a major pot head."
To say nothing of other politicians and media figures.
The new transcripts with fewer redactions do have some interesting revelations. Among them that many of the allegations of which the media are making so much are actually contradicted in the document by other allegations.
It's quite interesting to note that the one person who claims to have seen Rob Ford "do lines at the Bier Markt" never saw it. If the report is accurate, then this server speculated that he saw Ford snorting cocaine and then went around boasting to both as many of his fellow employees he could find and The Toronto Star's Robyn Doolittle that he had eyewitnessed something which he admitted to police that he in fact hadn't. Even more interesting is that this same server had been a volunteer for George Smitherman, whom Ford defeated in the mayoral race.
Speaking of The Star's Robyn Doolittle, she comes across in the report as an obsessive stalker of Ford, practically harassing people and turning up unannounced at their homes to pester them for information after being told by people they had nothing to say to her.
The Toronto Star's vendetta against Ford was made even more clear in a recent panel discussion that included Doolittle and Star editor Michael Cooke. Cooke described to the friendly audience that during the mayoral race, The Star had sent reporters to Chicago to investigate every facet of Ford's business to dig up dirt on them. Disappointingly to him, he described the way Ford conducted his business as "squeaky clean."
Did The Star send cohorts of reporters to investigate "party drug addict" Smitherman's personal life? The Star's anointed candidate cost Ontario taxpayers billions through the waste of the EHealth and ORNGE debacles, but as long as he was toeing the line they liked, evidently that didn't matter. Smitherman's husband was recently found in what appeared to be a drug-induced stupor in a ditch after a massive police search, following his going missing for a day. And that is the same George Smitherman The Star wishes were running Toronto now.
This all points to why Ford's support remains solid. He is a man who, whatever personal problems he may have, confines them to his personal life, but in exercising his professional duties is meticulous. This is the opposite of a number of City Councillors who have clean personal lives but whose incompetence and corruption, along with their subservience to special interests, cost Toronto taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.
Perfectly written - love reading all your stuff but it's "toeing" the line, luv.
ReplyDelete/apologies from the The Grammar Police
Thank you!
ReplyDeleteI've never written that expression down before and did a check and you're absolutely correct!
It's now fixed in the post and I always appreciate it when readers help out!
I am outraged by what you have to say!
ReplyDeleteIf we can't rely what somali gang members and drug dealers say to each other, then who is left who we can trust?
Ford should of course go to jail forever based upon what these drug dealers and members of the Bloods' say. What more evidence do the police need?
Great post my friend and it seems you touch on quite a few of my talking points as well, though you articulate them a tad better:)
ReplyDeleteTo listen to The Star talk like they broke some big story is beyond credulity, you had some Somali drug dealers who were clearly trying to blackmail the mayor, when that failed they ran to The Star to try and get them to buy the video.
This whole Ford story clarifies for any and all to see just what the left of center in Toronto are all about, hypocrisy is the least of their evils that comes to mind and that is saying something.
I'm sure Saul D. Alinsky would be proud of his radicals in Toronto.
Excellent points and analysis. I linked to the post.
ReplyDeleteThanks Gary & Blogwrath.
ReplyDeleteWe're in a pretty appalling situation where Ford's opponents have resorted to everything BUT the ballot box to get rid of him.
At the end of the day, it reiterates how little confidence most socialists have in democracy.
Poor persecuted Rob. Nothing is ever his fault. As a matter of fact, it's a grand conspiracy of everyone who isn't you and the Ford family.
ReplyDeleteExactly why would the Bloods lie to each other in conversations where they almost certainly didn't know that the oops were listening? They aren't exactly like the Mayor and his brother, who call press conferences to tell silly, transparent lies to anyone stupid enough to listen.
As always, you ignore the dark presence of Sandro Lisi in this twisted and hilarious saga.
We know that Lisi had contact with the gangbangers in the wiretaps because he's charged with extorting at least one of them. We also know that he had more contact with Hizzoner between May and October than I had with my girlfriend.
We also know that Etobicoke Slim is a congenital liar, not least about his relationship with ol' Sandro.
A couple of weeks ago, Ford said that he hasn't known Lisi for two years. But in the character reference he wrote for Sandro's sentencing, he said the he was invaluable resource on his campaign ... in 2010.
So when Lisi tells the Dixon City Bloods that the cops will rain unholy hell on them, reasonable people can speculate whether or not that threat came from El Robbo.
Here's a really neat question. If the cops are on such a political vendetta, why didn't they wiretap shithead his own self? Seems to me they could've connected the dots a lot more sufficiently that way.
It isn't the cops that I'm pissed at in this case as much as it the fucking Court. Justice Nordheimer is actually telegraphing any case the Crown could present. If Rob and Doug would listen to their lawyer and shut the fuck up for thirty five seconds, those self-entitled fuckheads might understand that this is the greatest Christmas gift of all - a get out of jail free card!
As for Ford's "solid support," you'e being too clever by half in citing job approval numbers, rather than voter intentions. The latter suggests that it's nearly impossible to map out a scenario where Slim doesn't get almost sexually humiliated next fall, assuming that he isn't in jail by then.
By the way, it doesn't seem like all that long ago that you went batshit over anonymously sourced allegations, but you've been publishing quite a few of them of late. What's up with that?
So where are the criminal charges, Skippy? If this were anyone else and a judge said, let's release all this material smearing a person who is not facing criminal charges, most civil libertarians would be outraged.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, by releasing those records, you can be pretty sure that there won't be any charges against Ford, since if there were to be, the environment has now been far too tainted for him to be able to get a fair trial.
So it seems that other than a smear job, there's no purpose to it. And by the way, I do realize, as someone other than I remarked a couple of years ago when Jack Layton and Olivia Chow were complaining about the news of "Community Clinic" Jack's whorehouse excursion, just because it's a smear doesn't mean it isn't true.
But that's not really the issue here. It's the undermining of the democratic process by some special interests and self-interested political factions.
And as for the anonymous sources, I think "batshit" is, like most of what you're saying when it comes to Ford, pretty hyperbolic. But to that, you've missed the point again. It's not a question of the use of anonymous sources - it's the suggestion that someone's career should be ruined or the political process should be altered, or a serious investigation should commence on their basis.
The sources aren't anonymous to me and I only mention what they've shared with me to highlight the hypocrisy of the lynch mob out to get Ford. People whom, as you well know, for the most part were out to get him long before any of the recent events unfolded.
You're also conveniently ignoring that Ford unintentionally connected two police investigations.
ReplyDeleteThe Dixon City Bloods were already under the gun when El Robbo's stupidity - and the thorough dedication of Sandro Lisi - reated the atmosphere where Brazen 2 became necessary.
Here's a a quandary that I'd like you to answer, Richard.
Lisi was charged with trafficking, and later extortion, in attempting to get the video back. That much is pretty clear now.
How exactly do you prove Sandro's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt without establishing a motive, specifically that he was protecting Hizzoner? What's the connection between Lisi and the Dixon Bloods absent Rob Ford?
I really am coming to admire the way you studiously ignore that.You're gonna make a great mob lawyer one day!
Aside from the unproven assumptions you're making, Skippy, it still a long way from explaining all that irrelevant, and from the sounds of things, untrue smears of those reports about alleged goings on at the Bier Markt and more that was in the report.
ReplyDeleteAs I'm sure you're aware, an Information to Obtain is exactly that. It isn't a trial in an of itself. It establishes probable cause for warrants. Probablr ause leads to warrants, which leads to charges, which leads to a trial.
ReplyDeleteYou must know that from constantly re-running Ezra's shows about Joe Fontana, right?
If you're going to establish that Lisi (and likely, Ford) are going to want to cover up cocaine use, finding probable cause that cocaine use exists might be helpful, no?
At a minimum, those incidents laid the groundwork for charges against Lisi. And protecting Ford seems to be Lisi's motive. And there's your probable cause to investigate everything.
It might just be your boy's bad luck that he decided to have near constant play-dates with a violent idiot, but Lisi HAS been charged.
Or are you going to start acting as Sandro's lawyer/spin doctor now?
As for the waiter at the Bier Markt, all he ever said was that he and some broad were bent over a counter in a way that he had previously seen folks doing blow do.
And for a guy that uses every other post to accuse your political enemies of "stealing," you have enormous balls to talk about unproven allegations, Richard.
Oh, and in making your case, you've also used unnamed sources to make allegations that unnamed "party leaders" are engaged in pederasty. If nothing else, the Star used anonymous sources to implicate Ford in activity that later turned out to be true.
So, if you're so sure of yourself, come out and name names. The Star did. What are you afraid of?
Because it's more hassle than it's worth, Skip, but they are completely accurate - but more to the point, it's pretty common knowledge in political circles and among many in the media, as I suspect you might realize, but they just don't talk about it in public.
ReplyDeleteAnd it seems you didn't read through that report very thoroughly. The Bier Markt server, if the report is to be believed, bragged to a number of his colleagues that he saw 'Rob Ford doing coke'.
So you want to reserve the right to bitch about the Star, while employing even worse tactics, but take none of the risk.
ReplyDeleteIt seems as though you want to argue about journalistic and legal principle while at the same time saying that it's too much trouble for you.
Am I right right in guessing that the party leader in question isn't Stephen Harper or Tim Hudak? And your whore anchorwoman doesn't work for Sun News?
Are you writing for those who are privy to "pretty common knowledge in political circles and among many in the media" or are you writing to people that you want to persuade? Or do you want to just do a nipple-tease about how connected you are?
I think Bill Blair should be in fucking prison for the G-20. You're aching to say in public that he's a pothead. The difference is that I did and you won't.
Here's how awesomely dumb this tactic is. I suspect that the integrity of the people you're citing has never been called into question before, which is why you're not naming them. After all, they do have reputations to protect.
On the other hand, when Ford and his silly friends start implying shit, it only invites deeper looks into their bottomless well of stupidity and criminality.
Hizzoner has no reputation left to defend. He's an admitted liar, crack-smoker and guy who spends a lot of time with (and writing charter references on city letterhead for) a guy who likes threatening to kill women AFTER said buddy was convicted.
I'm saying this as friend, Richard. This is decidedly not the hill you want your reputation to die on. You're a pretty good writer and you seem politically connected.
Why you'd want to be Rob Ford's Ron Ziegler mystifies me.
As for the Bier Markt guy, I could give a shit what he said to his co-workers. Lying to them isn't a crime. Lying to the police is, and he was pretty precise in his statement there.
I appreciate the sentiment Skippy and as you know, despite our disagreements I`m a fan of your writing too.
ReplyDeleteAnd I don`t actually expect to die on this hill. But in reality it`s not about Rob Ford the person for me. It`s about a democratic process that seems to have been hijacked and as a matter of principle, I think I should be doing everything I can to fight back.
But aside from all that, of the many things I could take away from your last comment, I think I`ll rest on being flattered that you seem to be equating my hobbyist blog with the billion-dollar TorStar corporation.
The final paragraph sums up the entire situation and needs to be repeated often and loudly.
ReplyDeleteIt has become clear that a politician has to pay off the special interests, elites, and organized crime or he aims to bring on the wrath of a thousand gods. But if one throws around a billion dollars here and there then everything gets swept under the rug.
Well Skippy you are certainly a special one, lets see what kind of common sense and logic you possess.
ReplyDeleteLets just go by this most recent release of non-sense, the wiretaps, lets not forget as well friend that while you rail about them not being able to get Ford now because everything is public, who desired it all to be public Skippy, the Ford haters and their lawyers.
On to my point about the wiretaps, according to you and Adam Vaughn and many others on the left he is unfit, an alcoholic and a drug addict and he is completely out of control, now, whether of not they had Fords phone tapped means diddly squat, its your contention along with the others I mentioned that he routinely hangs with these criminals.
So after almost 6 months of tailing and thousands of hours of wiretaps they don't have a peep of Fords voice on any of them, none, zilch, tell me how this is possible with a person that is so out of control.
Clearly the mans drinking got himself into a situation that he ended up having no control of, granted, I would still like to know how he ended up in that basement but it matters very little because I believe it was a complete setup from the beginning, with the intent being to blackmail the mayor, when that failed they went running to The Star and Gawker after that, so in addition, The Star, "broke" no story, they were just the known hater that these criminals thought would pay up.
Anyhow, keep it up Skippy as I know his haters just can't help themselves, you folks will single hand-idly help get him elected again.
Gary, I'll address this point by point.
ReplyDelete1) The media petitioned for the ITO release, not any unnamed "Ford haters." More specifically, the police and the Crown - chief conspirators in this paranoid theory - opposed it.
2) I never said that he was unfit for office because he's a drunk a carackhead. I think those are his BETTER qualities.
Nor do I support efforts to remove him. I oppose recalls precisely because I believe that voters should live with the consequences of their own bad decisions. On the other hand, Ford did support the idea during the last campaign.
3) Why would Ford need to communicate with the Bloods when he had Lisi to do it for him? You are aware of how conspiracy laws work, right?
4)"I would still like to know how he ended up in that basement but it matters very little because I believe it was a complete setup from the beginning, with the intent being to blackmail the mayor."
That might be the best example of answering a valid question with a self-fulfilling narrative I've ever heard. Congratulations!
5)If Ford gets re-elected, I won't mind all that much. Conservatism has already eaten itself, so there's nothing worthwhile left to lose and watching Rome burn will amuse me.
But it's almost impossible to build a scenario where Slims wins, and I'm very good at these things.