Mayor Running Scared

By Robert Tuomi

(WINDSOR, ON) - Are the mayor of Windsor’s sycophants doing considerable damage control by painting an unsubstantiated picture of the mayor’s so-called successes two years before the next election not a sure sign that Edgar Francis, the mayor, knows he is in serious re-election trouble and he and his whole council could go down to defeat in the next election?

The inwards on council and the mayor have largely barricaded themselves into a windowless chamber where they plot what must be to them a masterful war on regular folk and then blame everyone else for their own failures and miscalculations.

There is, of course, a strange folly in this and it is that regular folk are also voters and the more voters that get discouraged with council’s inward and selfish actions the less chance for its members to win re-election. Those chances are quietly declining with every new bonehead move.

For some reason the Windsor Star has assigned its war on regular folk correspondents to be at the mayor’s side on every issue. At the same time the council’s inwards have effectively cut off taxpayer representation at city hall which, in non-war times, would be a headline in itself but goes largely unreported.

To show how worried the mayor must be, his favourite journalists are busy searching for factions that they claim are propagating bad things about the mayor. First out of the gate was Windsor Star’s vanity columnist Gord Henderson who says he discovered a patch of insurgents known as the Eddie Bad Forever Squad. Apparently it is going about the city making waves by pointing out the failures of the mayor. Unbeknownst to Henderson, which causes many to laugh not with but at the journalist, the squad has a very easy job given the mayor is pretty much a total failure.

Next, on July 14, 2012, Henderson’s fellow sycophant columnist Chris Vander Doelen bragged about discovering “a legion of the mayor’s enemies” and the equally obtrusive “Anti-Eddie Coalition.”

Vander, as headline writers like to call him, may have put his journalistic instincts on vacation. If a legion of the mayor’s enemies exist even a freshly minted journalist would excitingly try to find out why, under the axiom of where there’s smoke there’s fire.

Vander is getting to be quite the revisionist of history. A good example is his diatribe that the “auditor-general-for-life at city hall” would have “vast powers to rule like a new unelected chieftain”. Facts say otherwise including that this auditor for life was sacked after less than a year only because he rudely wanted to audit things.

Some of Vander’s claims are more than amusing because they are, to say it politely, down right stupid. Consider him suggesting that the auditor general would paralyze city hall by “constantly chasing empty and unproven accusations.”

Are not all accusations unproven until they are proven to be empty? The auditor’s job was not to chase but to affirm that what the city is doing is good and proper. A number of citizens attended in front of the inwards to discuss that very point and were given the usual cold shoulder. The inwards, who no longer represent regular folk, were not about to listen to them.

If Vander really wanted to show off his journalistic skills why would he not dig deep and find out why the inwards don’t want an impartial pair of eyes with powers well beyond that of a store bought accountant, and at less cost, affirming what they do is acceptable?

There is a lot going down at city hall and now is not the time to hide it, although that appears to be the modus operandi of the inwards.

Consider the International Children’s Games. Why has Vander not looked into why it is being called the faux Olympics. He would discover the many misrepresentations being made by the city including that the kids games are operated under the auspices of the International Olympic Committee. It is not. So why is the truth being stretched?

If the mayor is winning, as Vander boasts, why does it take 107 calls to the police department before decisive action is taken. Why are regular folk denied a cool drink of water from city park drinking fountains on boiling hot days? Would those be useful empty and unproven accusations an auditor general might look into?

If nothing else, Vander’s column exposes a mayor who seems to recognize he is on very shaky political ground and the only way he can fight back is with spin.

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