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Comment by mladenkovacevic | Hacker News Reader

I'm a Torontonian, and definitely not a fan of Rob Ford, but somehow it feels like there is an ongoing, organized effort to get him out of the office and out of politics (whether by the opposing parties, or some other organization). Sometimes he really doesn't help the issue by somehow managing to charge head first into even more trouble, but the string of various things he's been charged/accused of can't be coincidental.

Now there's a video of him smoking crack (which it looks like nobody will see, but trust us - it's there!), then there are some anonymous drug dealers who swear that Rob's brother Doug was a major drug-lord back in the day (which for some reason, just surfaces now).

I don't know... it's all a bit convenient and yet ethereal.

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It is not an understatement to say he is easily the worst mayor the city has ever seen, and further, that he's embroiled in a number of scandals, any one of which could take him down.

He's made a lot of enemies, especially within the press. Although he was treated fairly at first, given the benefit of the doubt, any free passes he's had have long since been used up. Every little thing he does from this point forward is going to be questioned and scrutinized endlessly.

Remember he just spent the last half year stumping for a casino nobody wanted based on expectations that were sky-high. The amount of money he thought was fair was orders of magnitude more than usually given to a casino. This comes after the effort to derail a transit plan with $1.3B in funding, and a decade-long effort to rehabilitate the port-lands.

He deserves every single bit of negative publicity he gets.

He's possibly the worst politician Toronto's ever had as mayor - I'll give you that. Constantly reeling from one self-induced disaster to another.

But why do you think Torontonians elected him, a man who seems to have very little in common with them, apart from a love for the Leafs? Might I suggest it had a lot to do with the actual management skills and records of the previous mayors?

When all you can vote for is people like Ford, people who don't have a recognizable platform, or people with a reputation for reckless spending and massive cost-overruns, you end up with Ford coming out on top.

The previous mayor, Miller, while not universally adored, would have had little problem getting re-elected. There wasn't much in the way of serious opposition. Why he didn't run is a matter of speculation.

Rob Ford is a travesty (though as the mayor of a city that also elected in Mel Lastman, he really isn't that much of an outlier), but saying that he was "treated fairly at first" is a laugh.

The Toronto Star, Canada's largest newspaper, has vilified him from day one. Perhaps they have been vindicated, but the utter trivia that they lambasted the man for daily -- stories that crowded out things like murders on the front page -- bordered on the ridiculous.

As to the casino, Ford thought the province would kick over $100 million. The province said more like $55 million. How does that equal "orders of magnitude"?

As much as The Star has been critical of Ford, other papers would at least give him the benefit of the doubt. If he said he was working on something, or that something was a done deal, that's what they reported.

I'd read that the math worked out to $10M a year, not $100M as requested, and that $55M would be under extremely optimistic circumstances.

This might be a case where there actually should be an organized, ongoing campaign to get this man out of politics. Clearly this is not a man who should be in a leadership position.

Why? Because you don't agree with his conservative positions? The democracy voted for him. Is that not good enough for a "leadership position"?

Hey, you hire a guy, he seems like he's going to perform, but then he fucks up repeatedly. Trying to get him out based on his track record is not the same thing as trying to overcome the democratic election. We're just trying to fire him for cause.

If you like his conservative position, you are probably extremely unhappy with how his behaviour constantly undermines his own agenda. You are probably extremely unimpressed by how little he has actually accomplished. You probably want someone with the exact same agenda but without the baggage and obstreperous behaviour to push it through.

Like Doug Holyday:

http://www.toronto.ca/councillors/holyday1.htm

If the "organized, ongoing campaign to get this man out of politics" is done using media, avoids slander, and the guy gets a reasonable amount of chances to speak back, then I would say the situation is perfectly democratic.

I was thinking more about the smoking crack part and less about his conservatism.

So you have the video! Why don't you turn it in, didn't you hear you've just made $200K?

Should being voted into office give you a free pass on everything? "Democracy has spoken", shouldn't mean that democracy stays quiet for the next X years until the next election... though this often happen, to be fair.

He fired his chief of staff last week for telling him to go to rehab. This is according to the Sun which, as newspapers go, has been his cheerleader for the past ten years.

So you can't claim there's no substance to the drug allegations when his highest ranking staff-member is advising him to get help.

Actually the story has come out that he fired Towhey in relation to his refusal to go reclaim football gear that the mayor had donated to the school that fired him, and then subsequently told the mayor "We have more important things to deal with" when the mayor decided he wanted his chief of staff to organized a BBQ for said football team.

Yup. Our mayor has been using city staff and resources for his football coaching pass-time.. That's nothing new though..

Is this the article? http://www.torontosun.com/2013/05/23/rob-ford-told-to-go-to-...

Here's how that accusation starts: "But a source familiar with the situation told the Sun...". So again, no names, no factual evidence, nothing concrete. Just for the record I'm not saying that Rob Ford didn't smoke crack or that his brother wasn't some kind of drug lord... in fact it wouldn't surprise me at all. I'm just commenting on how relentlessly someone seems to be trying to ruin their political careers.

As far as the Sun being Ford's cheerleader, yes it's true they are the token "conservative" media outlet. Just as Fox News is the conservative source in the US. But here's what I believe about their role in the media landscape. As the most prominent conservative media, their job is to be so ludicrous and untrustworthy that only the most hard-core conservatives would actually listen to them. The John Stewart show is quite good at highlighting just how ridiculous Fox News is, for example. This way you are left with other more-or-less liberal mainstream media as the most accessible and most credible source of news. This way you can channel all kinds of propaganda along with the other "trustworthy" news. And that's how wars and surveillance-drones are sold to tax-payers. Sorry for the conspiracy theory rant.

You say "someone" but the people who are writing these articles are easily identified and researched.

The two journalists who did the Globe and Mail piece are award-winning well respected investigative journalists.

I doubt they would risk their careers, or waste their time, on someone else's false claims.

No I agree... Let's say these are absolutely responsible journalists with solid sources and reliable evidence. What's really strange and somewhat worrying is, why is this torrent of information suddenly coming out now. Both Rob and Doug Ford have been in politics for years.

What if whoever has these anonymous drug dealers in their pocket has decided for one reason or another to unleash them on the media and ruin the Fords' reputations.

The possibility that our politics and public opinion is not controlled by democracy, but rather some private (and possibly criminal) interests worries me far more than whether Rob Ford indeed smoked crack or not.

That's a fair question for sure.. In my opinion, the Ford brothers have been escalating things with the media (who are more than happy to reciprocate) for a while, and things just came to a head with this crack video thing, and everyone decided "let's do this" and the gloves came off..

Oh, and I think they've been doing a fine job of ruining their own reputations (I'm half-joking about that one but Rob Ford really does have almost-weekly blunders)..

You're downvoted but you're spot on. People just don't want to accept that what THEY trust is as wrong as Fox et al

It's quite unnerving that you're concluding things based on hearsay and innuendo. If you have actual evidence of that, please bring it.

"... Sometimes he really doesn't help the issue by somehow managing to charge head first into even more trouble..." or a camera! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj8haZzvaE8)

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