Weekly garage sales on Nathan Phillips Square. City run bordellos? Maybe a reality show on the Comedy Network.The Star is/was a strong supporter of Comrade Miller but to their credit they allow some of their columnists to tell the truth about Comrade Miller and his crew of stooges (Executive Committee) and they also highlight the hypocrisy of the left........
For a metropolis desperate to be world-class and cutting edge, what a pity the leading answer to our financial woes reportedly being batted around this week by council's executive committee is so derivative of the second-rate and so very last century.
A city-owned casino! Let them toss dice! Build it and riches will come!
It's hard to think of a surer indicator of both the fiscal desperation and intellectual bankruptcy of our leadership than the fact this is the best we can come up with as an answer to these times of trial and a legacy to future generations.
It's not, of course, that casino gambling is a question of public morals. That debate ended 15 years ago when the NDP government of former premier Bob Rae did one of the most spectacular (though far from its only) policy reversals in recent memory.
It had long been that party's view, as an elder once piously explained, that essential public services should not be funded through games of chance. Rae himself had given that notion its philosophical underpinnings, setting out in characteristically eloquent and unequivocal style why it was no fit way for any self-respecting society to operate.
"The casino plays on greed," he once said. "The sense of the ultimate chance, the hope against hope that the spin of the wheel or the shot of the dice will produce instant wealth, instant power, instant gratification."
Within two years of taking office, however, he had announced a casino for Windsor. There followed casinos to tart up Niagara Falls and lure busloads to Rama. Casinos blossomed on Indian reserves, as they did in the less-than-sparkling municipalities in Mississippi.
Toronto Councillors pitch casino, booze in corner stores
A city-owned casino. Local wine and beer in corner stores. New taxes on big-box stores and gas stations, and no taxes on bikes.
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