/.The Gravy Train that Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has been looking for EXISTS!!!
It’s as real as he claims but it exists behind impenetrable walls of self-interest and entitlement.
These walls are as real as if they had been constructed of mortar and steel.
And if they could be breached, inside, “on Guard”, watching for intruders hard by the GRAVY TRAIN are the Sacred Cows that have
driven this city’s budget into the red and have every intention of keeping it there.
Independent auditors didn’t find it and because auditors by nature help protect Gravy Trains!
The Gravy Train isn’t about the few million dollars council recently cut from the Budget and Council knows it!
The Gravy Train is the vehicle of the unelected, of the elite.
Self-interest and entitlement bind together the objectives of various city units like:
the fire and police departments, their unions and other city unions that need to maintain their numbers, because Unions have only one
objective-get numbers, increase numbers, maintain numbers. Others who fuel the GRAVY TRAIN are the boards–Zoo, Library and some
City departments-like the out-of-control Water department. When these departments are asked to cut budgets, they ignore the request and
deliver a bigger one.
This year the police department was asked to deliver a 10% decrease, year over year, and delivered a budget showing
a 1.5% increase!
Self Interest and Entitlement also live outside the Units we associate with City departments.
The lobbying for tax dollars to support every conceivable kind of Arts-related endeavour is intense!
The list probably isn’t endless, it just looks like it. So that brings us to the obvious conclusion.
Mayor Rob knows he has not reached the controls of the Gravy Train and he is probably cognizant of this fact–he will not reach
them even if he spent the next forty years in the Mayor’s Chair. There is no one in the city with the political jam, let alone Council support,
who can breach the walls. Furthermore, there is no support among the Media to get to the Gravy Train.
Among the media, the leading excoriator of Mayor Rob’s contention is the Toronto Star.
Almost daily the Star finds some way to ridicule, belittle, denigrate his Worship’s contention that a Gravy Train exists! !
Well we know it exists and now we know where it is–the question is how much money is it carrying—
my guess: between 500 and 700 million dollars.
/…Here’s a quick example. Among the recent decisions of Council looking for those elusive, loose tax dollars was to sell, privatize or come
up with another operating model for the Toronto Zoo. The Zoo loses 11-million dollars a year. One Zoo board member is
Councillor Glenn De Baermaeker. He voted against finding ways to save money and save the Zoo.
He said it was “a desperate and pathetic move.”
The only thing “desperate and pathetic” was De Baermaeker’s solution: keep the Zoo and continue to send the annual 11-million dollar bill
to the TAXPAYER.
He, along with other members of Council, helped build the walls that protect the Gravy Train.
They subscribe to the Neo-Grecian Formula of Collective Penury.
It is real! It is a contagion! And it’s catching!
/…Not offered as issues in this provincial election campaign:
Hey Dalton, where are the 600-thousand jobs that the introduction of the HST was going to bring Ontario?
Hey Horvath, what about your poor, bedraggled Union people who have been fighting the savagery of US Steel?
Hey Hudak, what about Caledonia? This is still a land of Law and Order is it not?
And what about insurance rates and the huge profits churned out by that group of free enterprizers?
And, I almost forgot, what about the Prix Fixe that has been imposed by the even richer oil companies on gas prices
in all the major Ontario cities? Today Toronto residents pay: $5.573396 for a gallon of gas!!
Stateside, the gasoline just dropped again today–next time you’re in Buffalo help yourself to the smaller gallon
for $3.25!! You don’t think we are being jobbed by the Oil Companies–well the politicians didn’t even remember
to bring it up!! They do care! But not for us!
The GRAVY TRAIN is real–
/…AJ/KO
holidayatlarge 
There’s the Gravy Train!!!!!!
2011/10/05 Leave a comment
/.The Gravy Train that Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has been looking for EXISTS!!!
It’s as real as he claims but it exists behind impenetrable walls of self-interest and entitlement.
These walls are as real as if they had been constructed of mortar and steel.
And if they could be breached, inside, “on Guard”, watching for intruders hard by the GRAVY TRAIN are the Sacred Cows that have
driven this city’s budget into the red and have every intention of keeping it there.
Independent auditors didn’t find it and because auditors by nature help protect Gravy Trains!
The Gravy Train isn’t about the few million dollars council recently cut from the Budget and Council knows it!
The Gravy Train is the vehicle of the unelected, of the elite.
Self-interest and entitlement bind together the objectives of various city units like:
the fire and police departments, their unions and other city unions that need to maintain their numbers, because Unions have only one
objective-get numbers, increase numbers, maintain numbers. Others who fuel the GRAVY TRAIN are the boards–Zoo, Library and some
City departments-like the out-of-control Water department. When these departments are asked to cut budgets, they ignore the request and
deliver a bigger one.
This year the police department was asked to deliver a 10% decrease, year over year, and delivered a budget showing
a 1.5% increase!
Self Interest and Entitlement also live outside the Units we associate with City departments.
The lobbying for tax dollars to support every conceivable kind of Arts-related endeavour is intense!
The list probably isn’t endless, it just looks like it. So that brings us to the obvious conclusion.
Mayor Rob knows he has not reached the controls of the Gravy Train and he is probably cognizant of this fact–he will not reach
them even if he spent the next forty years in the Mayor’s Chair. There is no one in the city with the political jam, let alone Council support,
who can breach the walls. Furthermore, there is no support among the Media to get to the Gravy Train.
Among the media, the leading excoriator of Mayor Rob’s contention is the Toronto Star.
Almost daily the Star finds some way to ridicule, belittle, denigrate his Worship’s contention that a Gravy Train exists! !
Well we know it exists and now we know where it is–the question is how much money is it carrying—
my guess: between 500 and 700 million dollars.
/…Here’s a quick example. Among the recent decisions of Council looking for those elusive, loose tax dollars was to sell, privatize or come
up with another operating model for the Toronto Zoo. The Zoo loses 11-million dollars a year. One Zoo board member is
Councillor Glenn De Baermaeker. He voted against finding ways to save money and save the Zoo.
He said it was “a desperate and pathetic move.”
The only thing “desperate and pathetic” was De Baermaeker’s solution: keep the Zoo and continue to send the annual 11-million dollar bill
to the TAXPAYER.
He, along with other members of Council, helped build the walls that protect the Gravy Train.
They subscribe to the Neo-Grecian Formula of Collective Penury.
It is real! It is a contagion! And it’s catching!
/…Not offered as issues in this provincial election campaign:
Hey Dalton, where are the 600-thousand jobs that the introduction of the HST was going to bring Ontario?
Hey Horvath, what about your poor, bedraggled Union people who have been fighting the savagery of US Steel?
Hey Hudak, what about Caledonia? This is still a land of Law and Order is it not?
And what about insurance rates and the huge profits churned out by that group of free enterprizers?
And, I almost forgot, what about the Prix Fixe that has been imposed by the even richer oil companies on gas prices
in all the major Ontario cities? Today Toronto residents pay: $5.573396 for a gallon of gas!!
Stateside, the gasoline just dropped again today–next time you’re in Buffalo help yourself to the smaller gallon
for $3.25!! You don’t think we are being jobbed by the Oil Companies–well the politicians didn’t even remember
to bring it up!! They do care! But not for us!
The GRAVY TRAIN is real–
/…AJ/KO
Filed under daily comments, Uncategorized Tagged with De Baermaeker. sacred cows, gravytrain