His political platform the whole way along has been strongly fiscally conservative with an emphasis on reducing taxes, beating back public-sector unions, law-and-order, and minimizing government while making it more responsive. He would often attack his fellow councillors on their spending habits and was not well liked by the political establishment. To demonstrate that he was different, he reduced his councillor office's spending to basically zero and would respond rapidly to the public's complaints and even give out his personal phone number to constituents. He was essentially swept into office on a wave of resentment aimed at government-employee privilege with his primary plan of "ending the gravy train."
As mayor, Ford has stated that "I've saved a billion dollars." Quite a claim to be sure. Is it true? Well, not completely although he has certainly honestly attempted to cut costs where he could. Taxes were cut by $200 million in the form of getting rid of a license-registration fee. This isn't technically saving money since it's cutting revenue instead of spending but it does fit with his promises of less taxes. However, he contradicts himself when he then adds a savings of $24 million via increased user fees which is a tax increase. It's understandable that he wants the sound bite of being able to say he saved a billion dollars but you can't really have it both ways.
Regardless, reaching a billion is just an arbitrary goal anyway. Any sensible savings are good for a city in the red. He cut $6.4 million from councillor and mayoral office spending. Over seven years, he hopes to have saved $78 million by contracting out garbage collection. He will have saved $89 million from renegotiated public-sector contracts and $606 million from random "efficiencies" found. While columnists have dissected this and demonstrated his numbers are fairly exaggerated, he has been the necessary swinging pendulum that forces the efficacy of programs and spending to be re-evaluated. This rebuilds the faith in the city's politicians which was obviously lacking since they, ya know, elected Rob Ford.
Now to be honest, I like everything about Rob Ford that I've written so far. His love of coaching speaks well of him, even if he was sometimes leaving work early to do it, and his smaller-government mentality was exactly what was needed to combat the massive deficits the city was running. However, his lack of education and wealthy, somewhat entitled upbringing would hurt him later on with some bizarre statements that really polarized people.
In 2006, Ford was angry about the city spending $1.5 million preventing the spread of AIDS. At one point he said: "It is very preventable. If you are not doing needles and you are not gay, you wouldn't get AIDS probably, that's bottom line."
However, the UN's statistics have demonstrated that the majority of people who get the disease are actually heterosexual, non-drug users. When told it was primarily women who get it, he responded: "How are women getting it? Maybe they are sleeping with bi-sexual men."
Not a great response. It seems to be something someone would say who has heard about the issue but personally knows nothing about it beyond stereotypes. And honestly, if you don't understand an issue, you shouldn't be spouting stuff about something so serious until you've done some research.
In 2008, Ford would stick his foot in his mouth again with this gem: "Those Oriental people work like dogs. They work their hearts out. They are workers non-stop. They sleep beside their machines. That's why they're successful in life. I went to Seoul, South Korea, I went to Taipei, Taiwan. I went to Tokyo, Japan. That's why these people are so hard workers (sic). I'm telling you, the Oriental people, they're slowly taking over."
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
