Subway. Tax.
There is some serious disconnection going on between those two words in the head of Fordites. I'm afraid their touching might result in a short which could cause an explosion.
It's amazing to me how the roles are being turned all around:
The labelled left are arguing for financial and factual conservatism - cold realism, minus pleas for airy social aims and grandiose ends, the dignity of civil procedure and the rule of law. Staying within the budget and allocated government funds. Meanwhile, the right is arguing for vaster governmental expenditures on public transportation - usually painted by that side as collectivist and impersonal and for the failed - a depersonalizing, manipulative goody wielded by collect-and-spend governments to keep citizens huddled and dependent.
The fascinating warp at the centre of this is how an anti-transit, pro-car crowd has ended up fighting for a unfounded fantasy of the most expensive mass transit system available, while not abandoning their automobilies-equal-individuality mindset. They want this done through nothing less than a coup against existing government and the factuality of their engineering departments. Which, of course, are the only ones who can fund it and make it actually work.
It's also amazing to me how history is being rewritten:
Ford never campaigned 'On Subways'. He campaigned factually on one subway: the Sheppard line. Eglinton and Finch were to get buses. Nothing else. He also stated that it would pay for itself through reallocation of Transit City Funds plus private sector investments, and not cost a dime. His videos are all there online, intact.
The revisions that he supported both Sheppard and Eglinton underground came later.
The Fordian 'subway' that supposed conservatives are demanding as if it were a leftist 'right' and fact (e.g. "housing is a right!"), is seamlessly fused to 'won't cost a cent'. One can't exist without the other. In short, it doesn't exist and never has. It was and is a mirage.
It would be more fair to say that Ford continuously campaigns on subways, rather than he ever had a expansive, workable, fundable, realistic plan that could be realized. In short, it was an election lie. Or, for those who prefer to see Ford as honest, a belief. Currently, a popular and populist desire.
'Subway' is what he campaigned on. 'Underground' was the buzzword. 'Subways' is what he carries on about.
It seems to me that the Ford mayoralty could be called the 'belief' mayoralty. There's more than a few commentators out there who believe that Ford is impeccably honest, because Ford so thoroughly believes Ford is honest. That this circular ignorance equals purity and strength. That because the Mayor doesn't recognize his shortcomings, he might be able to have none. If we all believed, too, then it would be true.
It is clear to anyone with an ear for tone, that Ford's campaign from the start was not going to be one of city-building, but that it was one of blunt, primary fantasies larded with revenge. There's lots of ideas out there about what people were and are angry about, too many for me to write about here. But it was clear that it was revenge against the eggheads, the professors, the experts, the artistic. It was revenge against the core for...what? Complexity? For already having lived through what the suburbs are just starting to face? Both envy and derision? I don't believe it was that Miller ignored the suburbs, as his mayoralty introduced all kinds of initiatives that favoured them. Maybe the issues were bigger than Miller, and no mayor could have introduced enough startups quickly enough to mollify them.
For all the talk about subways, Ford has never indicated the slightest interest in projects that would seriously help downtown, like the DRL. I don't even think he has the talent to be an actual populist - I'd leave that to the slippery persuasion firm led by Mr. Kouvalis and other politicians. I think Ford is simply a Fordist, going around and around, ventriloquising the role he learned in that family of his - the one that first taught him how to be desperate for acceptance.
