Obama and David Miller are destructive geniuses, not idiots

When one considers all the misbegotten things that Obama has done in the past 6 month’s - passing the $787 billion porkulus bill, passing the $410 billion omnibus spending bill, getting the Fed to buy Treasury Bills en masse (which is, in effect, printing money), needlessly offending allies, wooing enemies like Ahmadinejad while ignoring their democracy loving opposition, and now cap-and-trade (a huge energy tax, plus corporate welfare) and comprehensive health care reform (a massive entitlement introduced at a time when the US is dead broke) - one is tempted to conclude that he is an idiot.

But one would be wrong. If Obama were merely incompetent, he wouldn’t be systematically pursuing his goals. Instead, he would be flailing about, reacting to events, behaving like someone totally out of his depths. In short, he would be acting like Stephane Dion or John Tory. But whatever you think of Obama’s policies (and I have the gravest reservations about them), he is not doing that. He is proactively and deliberately working towards farsighted goals. This is normally a mark of high statecraft. Unfortunately, there is just one wee, itsy bitsy problem: the principles guiding him are completely rotten and will lead to disaster on many fronts. This is why he is a destructive genius.

Toronto’s mayor David Miller is in the same league. Since 2003 he has done innumerable stupid things but he has never just sputtered about, captive to events. He has pursued his dumb agenda with the same far-sighted determination and skill that Obama has shown.

Take one example coming up: the light-rail network Miller wants to set up across the city. To realize how truly bad this plan is, one needs to go to St Clair Ave West to see the destructive effects that the streetcar right-of-way has had on the local community. For one thing, there is nothing rapid about it. Light rail cars are only just fancy, expensive streetcars, no faster than busses but just as inflexible to the demands of other road traffic – which is its only real attraction to Miller. The streetcar right-of-way that Miller shoved down the throats of local residents who hate the thing is a nightmare for traffic, choking off car traffic along St. Clair West. This is Miller’s real objective. He hates cars and his light rail network is his plan to ratchet up traffic jams by several orders of magnitude. He thinks that if he makes Toronto’s traffic bad enough, people will have no choice but take his ‘light rail’ white elephants. Oh, and the best part, it will cost the city and the province billions to build.

Toronto’s own destructive genius at work.

 

Comments

[Phil]

I think Miller's plan is that if he makes traffic bad enough people will stop driving into Toronto and start living their so they can HUGE taxes.

[General Brock]

Miller's war on the car continues to boggle my mind. Toronto is now facing the worst gridlock in North America, while it's mass transit is already at, or beyond capacity. Mayor Miller won't be happy until he has run that city into the ground. (Which isn't far off at this point)