For the record I agree with the voucher idea. I was responding to the notion up thread that we could shut it and spend the money on roads and subways. Having a debate on better ways to accomplish the goal of supporting low income families is useful.
Ford to spend millions on management consultants
- Thread starter canada-man
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Most everyone knows of lazy people who collect welfare or disability pensions because they prefer swindling the gov't to actually getting off their asses......what percentage of recipients are bogus is unknown, but i would take a wild guess and say perhaps 20-25% might be reasonable, and catching those clowns would be a major saving......one way to do it ( besides investigation and/or surveillance) would be giving food vouchers and automatic rent deposits, so these people can't blow it on cigarettes, beer and bingo.
Were you sane when you wrote that? Do 'splain how one might tax the public sector? It's only called 'the public sector' because the public needs and pays for it. A concept about a dozen or more millenia old.
There ain't ever gona be no one nowhere but us paying the taxes nohow. No matter what address we put on the envelope. And there ain't no one but us running up the bills the taxes pay for. When the bills are bigger than the taxes, you—no private, no public sector, just you—have a problem. OK, me too.
Trouble with the taxcutters of this world is they never ever want the services they care about to be cut. So they always start with the taxes. That's like the family loooking at the budget that doesn't balance so Dad asks his boss for a pay cut. Somehow I think there's a more sensible way.
Not promising there will be no service cuts would be a sensible start. Actually telling people which roads wouldn't get paved, or restaurants wouldn't be inspected, or what emergency call times would increase to f'rinstance. But that would only appeal to sensible people.
No votes there.
I appreciate your response......I think you were slightly off the mark with your response. The key word was "more" regarding taxing the public. Simple economics dictate that the more money that the government leaves in the pockets of the public (less taxation), the more people will spend. Additional spending improves the economy in obvious ways and increases job creation as a result. As more jobs are created less money is spent on social assistance, unemployment etc and more money is generated through payroll taxes to increase government revenue. By increasing taxation to fund a "tax and spend" mentality the reverse is true and hurts the economy. The logic is simple and proven.
Now do you see how cutting taxes can help those roads get paved, emergency response times, restaurant inspections etc etc.....
Oh to answer your original question.....sane as can be
blacksock13: "Not so. You've offered no references, details or names to back up your claims except with total puffery and bluster. You're taking a page out of Woodie's Hilroy for windbags."
yea....i'm sure mark twain caught the same flack ...... but now ford's pal georgio mammolitti wants to share the gravy with his mafioso vegas buddies..... i don't hear ford objecting............
yea....i'm sure mark twain caught the same flack ...... but now ford's pal georgio mammolitti wants to share the gravy with his mafioso vegas buddies..... i don't hear ford objecting............
If you think Ford and Mamolitti's are friends you weren't paying attention sometime back when Ford laid into Mammoliti really well. I wish I could remember what he called him but it was prime. Ford was forced to retract it which he did with a left handed apology but I f you think they trust each other and are buddies, you'd better cut back on stimulants a bit. Mammolitti sort of knew who was going to win back in September and made nice, but that was it.
This is an old one:
“I know he’s a weasel and weasels and snakes belong in the zoo. I’m not letting this go. He did it out of spite.” – Feb., 2003
Mr. Ford lashes out after returning late from lunch and learning that councillor George Mammoliti had pushed through an increase to the Toronto Zoo’s funding.
Also:
"Ford has allegedly called Mammoliti a whole host of names (something common to this mayoral race) with the likes of "scammer" to "gino-boy."
Step 1
Get rid of the "Fair Wage Office"
Basically the Fair Wage Office has been set up to ensure that City of Toronto Contracts only go to Unionized Contractors. The City has made deals (I have no idea why) over the years that says that just about every construction trade employed by City of Toronto Contractors has to be unionized. The City will not even sign a contract with a Non-unionized Contractor (and there are lots of good Non-unionized Contractors out there who pay every bit as much as the Unionized ones)
I don't care if the City says that "Thous shalt pay $25.00 an hour, or $30.00 an hour, or $40.00 an hour. But they go way too far in telling you you have to be unionized.
Fuck that.
Get rid of the "Fair Wage Office"
Basically the Fair Wage Office has been set up to ensure that City of Toronto Contracts only go to Unionized Contractors. The City has made deals (I have no idea why) over the years that says that just about every construction trade employed by City of Toronto Contractors has to be unionized. The City will not even sign a contract with a Non-unionized Contractor (and there are lots of good Non-unionized Contractors out there who pay every bit as much as the Unionized ones)
I don't care if the City says that "Thous shalt pay $25.00 an hour, or $30.00 an hour, or $40.00 an hour. But they go way too far in telling you you have to be unionized.
Fuck that.
When Miller took office, the City's budget was 6.5 billion dollars.
Now, 7 years later it's 9.2 billion.
I dunno about you, but I haven't seen service in any city department improve by 33%.
I have no issue with what the City pays its grunt workers. My issue is that there are simply too many of them.
Now, 7 years later it's 9.2 billion.
I dunno about you, but I haven't seen service in any city department improve by 33%.
I have no issue with what the City pays its grunt workers. My issue is that there are simply too many of them.
Sounds good on paper, but the reality is that it probably would not work.
There are some things that should be run by the City and Public Housing is probably one of them. (Garbage Collection is not.)
If you sold off public housing to the so called "private sector" it would be far far far worse than it is now. I'm the furthest thing from a socialist, but I know how the "private sector" works and it aint pretty. I have no doubt whatsoever that "public housing" would just become a huge shit hole. The crime in Toronto is not that bad and a big part of it is that we actually try to look after people. No need to encourage crime.
Besides, we as a society bennefit by paying workers shit wages. You either pay a guy 10 bucks an hour and subsidize his apartment, or you pay him a liveable wage and pay higher prices. Take your pick.
Mr Kirk you hit the nail on the head with that one. I have been saying this all along to anyone that will listen. Answer is NOBODY has seen an increase in services to the tune of 33% which just proves there is too much gravy. Gravy to the tune of give or take $386 million/year if my numbers are correct. All he has left is a legacy of debt which will equate into more more money diverted to servicing this debt (which takes away from meaningful spending) and a bloated civil service. Now Ford has the shitty task of reversing the process which will result in loss of jobs and bad press. Ford will be accused of dismantling the city but I think the city was running ok pre-miller.
As most might realize I've been no fan of His Whiteness. but the large deficit size was not all Miller's fault as a great deal of financial responsibilities was thrust on him/us by the provincial government downloading costs to Toronto. He certainly made some dumb moves to multiply the costs, so he doesn't get off Scott free, believe me.
That's news to me, but hey. If the previous budgets start moving telescoping spending and payment schedules it's hard to calculate those things. He did have something to do with continuing the problems. It's like Harpo blaming the liberal for all their problems when they've now been in power for 5 years and allowed the problems to continue, still blaming someone else.
I was using that $50 million figure to illustrate a point that to spend $3,000,000 to even to save $50,000,000 results in a net savings of $47 million to the tax payers. Money well spent!
Service cuts is such a broad word. What services cuts? Nothing has even been proposed yet! There will be layoffs with out a doubt but Toronto can't continue to spend more then they bring in. Hopefully they will contract out more garbage collection to private companies etc.
There is a pile of dead weight in the bureaucracy down at city hall it should not be too difficult to find some savings by laying these people off. Private industry downsizes all the time. Why is it that people get more upset when a politician finally has the balls do the something when it comes to the bloated public service sector! Job's for life is a thing of the past and people better start living with the reality that alot of taxpayers in the private sector live with on a daily basis that jobs are not for life.
He is the perfect guy to lead this fight as he has led by example for the last 10 years by not spending the tax payers money like other city counsellors who used up all their budgets to through parties etc. Ford's landslide victory was no fluke. He had grassroot support from all types of people in this city from different economic and ethnic background etc. for the great work that he did for people not only in his ward but other people from other wards would call him if they needed to get something done and could not get any calls back from their own city counsellor.
People that advocate that Ford has secret agenda how do they know? Even if he does he is only one vote on city council. It's nothing more then needless noise and speculation. Ford has only been in office for 100 days and I am not sure what people are afraid of unless some of you who speak out against this type of scrutiny over the city's finances that you could somehow be directly affected when the layoffs come.
I say wait and see!
What it proves is that you don't understand the city's finances. The reason why you haven't seen an increase in services is because there wasn't any increase in services. What did happen was that services that used to be paid by the Province were moved to the City of Toronto's books over a period of some years. Toronto was then given new powers of taxation to try and raise funds for these extra costs--however, Toronto politicians, like politicians everywhere, are loathe to raise taxes, so not enough new was raised to cover the newly downloaded costs.
I don't think Ford has any friends on council. The right of center councilors are voting with him only really because they want to surf on the wave of popularity that brought him into office, but none of them really like him, and the moment the shine comes off the knives will come out.
Fuji you sound like a City employee that was riding the gravy train... I neither like the gravy train nor the "we are family" literally hiring practices which give us a fair number of TPS employees with bad attitudes and an outrageous sense of entitlement. Service with a smile is a pipe dream when dealing with the City from my experience!!!
Consultants hired by the city usually means =waste, often there people are hired at 100s of dollars an hour and bill for hours spend going to Tim Hortons - "Donut fee" and the like. I know someone who works such a firm - reminds me of the Toronto computer consultants not far back "leasing" obsolte computers ...
