{"id":11788,"date":"2013-11-18T12:30:45","date_gmt":"2013-11-18T12:30:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=11788"},"modified":"2013-11-18T12:30:45","modified_gmt":"2013-11-18T12:30:45","slug":"why-does-toronto-hate-rob-ford-so-much","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=11788","title":{"rendered":"Why does Toronto hate Rob Ford so much?"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_11789\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-11789\" style=\"width: 267px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/marionbarry.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11789\" alt=\"Marion Barry caught red-handed\" src=\"http:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/marionbarry.jpg\" width=\"267\" height=\"189\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-11789\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Marion Barry caught red-handed<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">There are no doubt dozens of mayors and other local officials in the US and Canada who are awash in wrong-doing and very bad habits.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Take the infamous black DC mayor Marion Barry who\u00a0was elected to the city council in 1992 and ultimately returned to the mayoralty in 1994, serving from 1995 to 1999 after he was caught smoking crack.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In January 1990 Barry was videotaped smoking\u00a0crack cocaine\u00a0and arrested by\u00a0FBI\u00a0officials on\u00a0drug charges. Barry made a comeback after he served six months in a\u00a0federal prison.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">But why no wall-to-wall coverage of other foibles?\u00a0The revelations must be serving some purpose to rid the city of Ford.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Since the 1970s, Toronto has been home to the largest Jewish population in\u00a0Canada\u00a0and a centre of\u00a0Jewish Canadian\u00a0culture.\u00a0Why do Toronto&#8217;s elites, and by extention the media, really hate Rob Ford so much? <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2013\/11\/15\/world\/toronto-mayor-rob-ford-profile\/\">CNN gives a clue<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Part of that building has been a heavy emphasis on being accessible to constituents: Mayor Ford even gives out his cell phone number to voters, to call him any time about problems with city services or taxes.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">He eschews a chauffeur and other city perks, all in the name of keeping spending down for the average taxpayer. He\u2019s even been photographed reading work documents while driving on an expressway.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cI don\u2019t believe in wasting taxpayer\u2019s money,\u201d he later said about the controversial photo.<br \/>\n\u2026<br \/>\nUpon winning his first election, Rob Ford immediately garnered a reputation for keeping taxes and city expenses down. In 2001, he advocated cutting limousines as a city perk and slashing each councilor\u2019s $200,000 budget, used for travel and club memberships. \u201cIf we wiped out the perks for council members, we\u2019d save $100 million easy,\u201d he said, according to the Toronto Globe and Mail.<br \/>\n\u2026<br \/>\nIn 2006, then-Councilor Ford offended the gay community when he questioned $1.5 million for an anti-AIDS program: \u201cIt is very preventable,\u201d Ford said about the disease, according to City News Toronto. \u201cIf you are not doing needles and you are not gay, you wouldn\u2019t get AIDS probably, that\u2019s bottom line.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are no doubt dozens of mayors and other local officials in the US and Canada who are awash in wrong-doing and very bad habits. Take the infamous black DC mayor Marion Barry who\u00a0was elected to the city council in 1992 and ultimately returned to the mayoralty in 1994, serving from 1995 to 1999 after &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=11788\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Why does Toronto hate Rob Ford so much?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11789,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1017,7446,2810,2015],"class_list":["post-11788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-canada","tag-marion-barry","tag-rob-ford","tag-toronto"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/marionbarry.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11788"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11792,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11788\/revisions\/11792"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}