Speaking of Doug Ford And His Ilk ....

H/t Patrick Corrigan

Paul Rapoport of Ancaster, Ontario, has some advice well worth the consideration of Canada's Conservative premiers:

Keep your Enemies List current. Cut their funding. If you want to remove 50 per cent, make it 100 per cent. In three years, give back 10 per cent and you’ll be ahead and hailed as a hero.

Meanwhile, when you’ve created crises in those enemy sectors, blame them for the bad results.

Go after environmental groups, to keep the big polluters’ donations flowing. Fire anyone who uses the words “climate change.”

Take away women’s rights, because women are smarter than you and must be controlled.

Remember to cut education, because well-educated people tend not to vote for you, and others will more likely believe your spin.

Doctors and nurses are well educated, so cut health care.

What you can’t cut, privatize for your richest cronies. They need more money and power.

If your capital city has called you incompetent, with years of evidence, take over or ruin it.

That’s good for business and “for the people.”

And, given that it is Sunday and you may be in the mood for a parable, letter writer Maurice Sacco of Toronto offers this lesson:

Have we created a new nursery rhyme character complete with a story and moral?

The story of a young man, the Sign Maker’s son, who grew up in a life of unchallenged privilege. He dreamt of one day becoming a king who would ride the subway anywhere in his kingdom and his people stood and applauded him each time he opened his mouth to speak.

He would shower them in beer and they would truly love him. The boy grew to inherit the sign-maker’s business and sold it for a chance to be king.

The people rejoiced at his coronation and sung his praise as cheap beer was now made available throughout the kingdom at every shop at every corner at every hour.

Once crowned, he decided the kingdom’s treasury of health care, education and environmental protection was of little value and traded them for more cheap beer, subways and vanity plates for all in the kingdom to enjoy.

With time, the subways became too expensive to maintain and fell into disrepair, the cheap beer lost its flavour and caused many to become sick and weak and the vanity plates no longer drew attention from anyone.

People became sick and the kingdom was devastated by storms and famine.

Without education the people didn’t know how to change things back to the way they were before. The kingdom fell to ruins.

The king became disappointed with his sick and weak-minded people and eventually abandoned them to return to his sign-making business.

The moral of the story – you get what you vote for.