Thursday, September 27, 2018

If His Tongue Were Notarized


Having delivered a review of the province's books -- which took six weeks to complete -- Doug Ford says that Kathleen Wynne's Liberals were criminals. Martin Regg Cohn writes:

Listen to Ford’s inflammatory, defamatory language: “If you lie on your taxes ... there are consequences..... A lot of Liberals got rich under Kathleen Wynne.”
Yet more implications of criminality and venality: “If you tried to pull this kind of coverup in the private sector, the (Ontario Securities Commission) would come calling. The police would come calling ... We are not going to let Kathleen Wynne and her cronies walk away from their $15-billion scandal.”
And finally, what did you know, and when did you know it: “Who authorized the coverup?”

But there was no cover up. The figures were there in black and white. The issue was which numbers went into the credit column and which ones went into the debit column. Like the man south of the border, Ford has no respect for the truth:

As for that supposedly damning forensic audit, it was no such thing. Peter Bethlenfalvy, the minister who ordered it up, sheepishly admitted to reporters later that it was produced by private sector “consultants” at EY Canada — not qualified auditors in the firm’s audit department. It was “not a forensic audit, not a line by line review,” he acknowledged.
Awkwardly for the Tories, the quickie study noted that spending increases within the Ontario public service were virtually zero during the Liberal years. What has risen, significantly, is spending on health care and education — precisely what Ford promised not to cut on the campaign trail.

Doug Ford is a thug. He's always been a thug. And what the deputy mayor of New York said of Donald Trump decades ago also applies to Ford today: "I wouldn't believe Donald Trump if his tongue were notarized."

Image: You Tube

4 comments:

The Mound of Sound said...


It's out of the rightwing populists' playbook to sew dissension and undermine social cohesion. Trump has kept going thanks to a herd of Gullibillies. Ford has his own herd.

At the heart of democracy lies the informed consent of the voting public. If you can mislead the voter and redirect that vote with outright lies you can subvert democracy. Ford is an extreme case but you would be hard pressed to find many politicians in the neoliberal era who don't dabble in the same dark art.

Owen Gray said...

Ford is very much part of the times we live in, Mound. And the times speak to our failure to summon our better angels.

e.a.f. said...

Probably was told how to do it by Gordon Campbell. Even though Gordon Campbell told B.C. we had a huge deficit, the NDP had left him several million in the bank. Its lies, lies, lies. tell it often enough the voters might even start to believe it. In B.C. The Socreds and B.C. Lieberalcons always said the NDP ran up deficits, but the B.C. Lieberalcons, like el gordo ran up some of the biggest deficits B.C. ever had. now that gordo and dougie have planted the seed, they will start running up the deficit and continue blaming the Ontario Liberals. Nothing surprising here, we went through it in B.C.

Owen Gray said...

It's a tactic that comes right out of Dr. Goebbels' playbook, e.a.f.