While I am not down with ‘free’ transit – if only because someone will always have to pay one way or another – someone always does when it’s ‘free’, but Mallick does make a very valid point. Public transit in Toronto is rapidly becoming endangered to the point where only the middle class can afford to ride it with any regularity while the red rocket is speeding by the working poor.

Mallick is getting slaughtered in the comment section by all the ‘free ranging market capitalists’ who have suddenly sprung up in Boss Hog’s Toronto, but what is getting lost in the slaughter is the fact those who regularly commute via car from the outlying suburbs shoulder none of the tax burden for services used. For example, if you live in Pickering, Mississauga or Oakville and commute via car; the roads in the city are plowed for your safety and convenience. It literally does not cost a suburbanite a dime to help maintain the infrastructure a commuter regularly takes advantage of while driving in our city.

Maybe, it is time to end the gravy train and charge a toll at all entrance points into the city of Toronto. I would even go so far as to suggest both entrance and exit tolls be leveled. Entrance or Exit from the city would be approximately the cost of a cash fare of a TTC. The increased revenues could used to continue to subsidize the public transit, maintenance, scheduling and repair of transit infrastructure, and if there is anything left over – put it into maintaining road maintenance.

About 900 police officers have been killed or injured over the past two years as the number of attacks against the police force has tripled, Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev said Monday. The figures include police officers serving in the volatile North Caucasus, Nurgaliyev said, without providing separate statistics for casualties in the region, Interfax reported. In total, about 25,000 criminal offenses toward police officers are committed nationwide every year, Nurgaliyev said, without elaborating. He added that about 1,000 police officers have had to ask for state protection for themselves and their families this year, a 7 percent increase from 2009.

So just why does it seem to be ‘open season’ on Russian cops? Well, the North Caucasus’ is a tad bit of a rough neighborhood, but I really don’t know; although, I would suspect this kind of attitude might have something to do with it. Moscow Times

A former police officer was arrested Monday on charges of beating up a young female schoolteacher in front of her students in St. Petersburg, Interfax reported. Andrei Petrov, 28, who works as a private security guard, was detained Friday on unrelated charges of drug trafficking but on Monday was charged in connection with assault, the report said, citing a spokesman for the Investigative Committee. A surveillance camera filmed Petrov attacking the elementary teacher in a school corridor on Wednesday, RIA-Novosti reported. He sent the woman sprawling on the floor and then repeatedly kicked her, Interfax said.

Or this kind of thing (background story here):

A Toronto police officer inexplicably floors his gas pedal, speeds into an illegal right turn and runs down a grandmother, severing her brain stem and killing her instantly. An OPP constable wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying a baton and pepper spray shoots and kills an intellectually challenged 59-year-old man holding a small pocket knife. During a traffic stop near Canada’s Wonderland, York Region officers rough up a small, 50-year-old accountant, breaking his arm and leaving him roadside. A Peel Region police officer sucker-punches a handcuffed prisoner and breaks his jaw in two places. Two teens chatting on the grass in a public park are run over by a Durham Region squad car, suffering extensive injuries.

All of these officers were quickly cleared by the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) — the provincial agency responsible for investigating serious injuries and deaths resulting from interactions between police and the public. All still work as police officers. The Toronto Star investigated two decades of SIU cases. It found that police officers across the province are treated far differently than civilians when accused of shooting, beating and running over and killing people, some of them innocent bystanders.

While you can go ‘oh well and so it goes’ on this kind of behaviour on the part of the police, the SIU and the courts, but this sense of entitlement and grandiose privledge goes a long way in explaining the continued persecution against someone like Alex Hundert who stepped up against the powers that be or the massive sense of entitlement which more than likely fuels and drives an Officer Bubbles to seek legal redress for citizens pointing out his own personal assholery.

All of which begs the question – who will protect us against agents of the state? And do we, as private citizens, have any legimate course of action from the abuses thrust upon us by agents of the state when the deck is so seriously weighed against us?

Ford allegedly designed his campaign on one single idea; the gravy train ends at the mayor’s office – which is all well and good but he never tells us how he will end the financial juggernaut which has become the city’s budget. Privatize garbage collection, all well and good, but the cost of laying off city employees coupled with the cost of getting out of the city’s contract will cost all of us more. Cut public transit’s escalating costs by ripping up the streetcar service will have us pay more now and later. It might be popular with those who drive into Toronto from 905 areas, but ultimately, those who live, work and take public transit in this city will all be crying later.

I didn’t blog about municipal politics for the same reason American politics doesn’t interest me at the moment – there are simply no grown-ups at the helm. Ford’s election was the kneejerk reaction by the electorate to the excesses of rogue progressivism run amok at city hall for years, but a mayor without a vision by one who lacks the ability to persuade others of the coherence of his vision for the future will spend the next four years battling city hall while the Centre of the Universe burns in the pyre of its own making. Remember, the mayor only has one vote in city council.

So what next? Well, Ford’s explosive tempter and his inability to curb his own excesses with be played out in city council and the pages of the newspapers for the next 4 years. Toronto citizens will be left wondering why Ford has the ability to talk a good ticket but still nothing gets done and the city infrastructure will continue to crumble around our heads but it should keep a few reporters duly employed by the Toronto Star to cover city politics busy reporting on the mayor’s latest antics.

I realize that a great deal of the so-called rightwing conservatives were all enamoured of Ford but he really isn’t one of us despite his promises of ‘tax cuts and curbing excesses’ because he lacks one essential quality in a conservative which is prudence and forethought before action. Yes, the city needs to curb taxes and cut excess but the bills still need to be paid and there is only one way for city hall to pay them.

* I shamelessly stole the ‘Boss Hog’ moniker from JJ at Unrepented Hippie.

My first instinct is to run away laughing outrageously (can anyone say “Jessie”) but I am conflicted between this solution -

Most men with a small dicks can give amazing head, so just push his head under the covers and get off that way. But if he wants to stick it in you, you’re gonna have to let him. It won’t feel great, but it’s the price to pay for all that oral action.

Or this one:

Cheat: Like Prudence said, sometimes there is nothing that will scratch your itch like a big cock. If you can’t get it at home, you shouldn’t have a problem finding it elsewhere. Just be safe and discreet. And don’t feel too bad, this is something you can’t get at home. It’s like when you go to a colorist because your stylist is great at the cut but liable to mess a dye job up eight ways to Sunday. It’s the same thing. Just don’t get caught, though, because a small-dicked guy will never cheat. Well, unless he’s a famous professional athlete.

Although, I am really leaning towards cheating -if running away isn’t a viable option.

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But now Officer Bubbles is back – arresting Santa Claus, beating up a news photographer and subjecting President Obama to the secret five-metre law. The eight cartoons were uploaded on Oct. 17 by a new user – MisterOfficerBubbles – and have already been viewed more than 44,600 times and garnered 77 new comments.

One user writes, “Now sue me! (pathetic)” while another taunts, “He can’t sue the whole world!!!” The cartoons are in response to a viral video posted during the G20 summit in June that shows Const. Josephs threatening to arrest a young female protester for blowing bubbles. For now, The YouTube has not revealed the names of the cartoon creator or the commenters.

Enter David Shiller to do the right thing:

Toronto lawyer David Shiller, who defends the bubble-blower in the original video, has offered to represent those facing legal action free of charge. “His case in a very, very real sense threatens peoples’ right to comment on the police conduct at the G20, and that is undeniably a very important and controversial public issue,” Shiller said.

Shiller stumbled upon the bubbles incident while on a stroll through his Parkdale neighbourhood, and said what was captured in the video is only a small part of a greater display of force he describes as “frightening.” “For a billion dollars, I could’ve got someone with a better attitude,” he tells Const. Josephs in the video, referencing the highly-criticized price tag of the G8 and G20 summits. Months later, Shiller is pleased that the threat of a lawsuit has not put an end to the online discussion. “Sometimes the mere fact of starting a defamation proceeding scares people into silence and a powerful party can achieve their objective without the issue ever being decided in the court,” he said. Shiller suggested the case could rack up quite a bill if it goes to trial. “Litigation is a very expensive process. I wonder how officer Josephs can afford a case that can easily cost $100,000,” Shiller said.

Shiller is a mensch and he is right. Litigation is a very expensive process and fFor a billion dollars we should have gotten a far, far better attitude from the Toronto Police Forces and while I don’t condone the conduct of those who have allegedly threatened Const. Joseph or his family with bodily harm; it is my opinion that Const. Joseph has no one but himself to blame for the ridicule heaped on him which comes about entirely by his own asinine conduct when faced with a harmless bubble blower.

All of which brings me to a recent Toronto Star article on the alleged ringleaders/movers/shakers of the G20 ‘riot’ – no, not the police but the alleged criminals. Now, while the Toronto Star does what the Toronto Star always does; it struck me that the majority of offences these young people face which really amount to sexed up vandalism/public mischief charges. An $80,000 to 100,000 dollar bond seems rather extreme and excessive when crimes and assaults against persons rarely hit the $50,000 bail amount. As far as the conspiracy charges goes – isn’t it really a conspiracy to commit public vandalism? Is a bail of $80,000-$100,000 with restrictions just a tad excessive given there is grievous bodily harm involved?

I really think the taxpayer’s ought to start looking very closely at the idea of garnishing the pay of all officers involved in the civil rights violations given that any payout (not to mention the cost for the government to defend the indefensible in court) will have to come out of out of the taxpayers’ pockets.

It just seems to me when we let the authorities get a free ride on the cost of civil rights violations we enabling the very kind of behaviour we not only scorn in a free society but actively legislate against.

And just because bullies make me feel particularly meanspirited I present Officer Bubbles – the cartoon.

Civil liberties lawyers and Parliamentarians are gathering evidence they say will show Toronto police systematically violated legal and human rights as they quelled protests with the largest mass arrests in Canadian history at the G20 leaders’ summit in Toronto last month.

The evidence includes eyewitness accounts from lawyers who acted as monitors during the protests where police arrested 1,105 people, including bystanders, lawful protesters and some of the legal monitors, but released more than 900 with no charges.

Up to six lawyers who volunteered as monitors with the Osgoode Hall Law Union were swept up by police and have provided affidavit-style evidence to organizers about the abuses they witnessed in the notorious temporary prison Toronto police set up in an abandoned film studio, says Adrienne Telford, one of the organizers. The Canadian Civil Liberties Union had up to 50 legal monitors at the protests and is compiling information.

Go ahead and rant about the violent antics of the so-called Black Bloc rioters but remember this; 15,000 security officers allowed the Black Bloc to riot contrary to in downtown Toronto without a single police officer lifting a hand to stop the riot for over 90 minutes. The Black Bloc could have been easily been apprehended and stopped in their tracks, but instead, security forces chose to stand down regardless of potential threat to human lives and willful destruction to property. There were many law abiding citizens in the stores and restaurants the Black Bloc attacked but security forces chose not to intervene. Now the Toronto Police are spending umpteen hours and funds from the public purse attempting to hunt down and arrest the so-called Black Bloc. It would have been far easier on the public purse to arrest them in the act rather than harassing innocent citizens for wearing black and carrying backpacks long after the Black Bloc had disappeared much like thieves in the night.