The Antisocial Socialist

It's another day of Fordsplosion as police have released some wiretaps. (Warning: autoplay video.) The latest revelations:

• Ford was aware of the crack video, despite claiming otherwise.
• He offered $5000 and a car to a gang member for the video.
• There were more images of Ford doing drugs and "being in a lot of fucked up situations."
• Ford associated with gang members, who tried to blackmail him with the video.
• Ford associated with at least one known felon, Lord Conrad Black. (Okay, that wasn't in the wiretaps, but I felt that I should point it out.)
• The crack video was the motive behind Anthony Smith's murder.

Now, the shitty thing about being a pseudononymous blogger writing about an unfolding news story is that, unlike the cops and journalists, I don't get paid to do it. The nice thing is that no one cares what I have to say, and I don't have to worry about libel suits or fucking up a case, so I'm going to come out and say it: Ford had Anthony Smith murdered. At the very least, the Honourable Wife-Beater's poor decision making led to Smith's murder, but I think it's most likely that he directly ordered him killed.

If you think I'm leaping to conclusions, imagine what would happen if Ford, instead of being a multimillionaire white mayor of a major city, was instead a poor 21-year-old black man like the guy he had killed. Would he be in jail now? If he were lucky enough to have a job, would he have kept it for very long once it was proven that he'd committed crimes and taken drugs? Ford is only a free man, making tons of money, and able to keep his job (and not even have to work at it!) because of the race and class privilege that he embodies so completely.

The connections between the HWB and politicians like Hudak and Harper go beyond the fact that they're personally friends. It's something fundamental to the conservative ethos. They are above the law. The law does not apply to them. They can lie, cheat, and kill with impunity, and when they are, on rare occasion, found out, they are given the benefit of the doubt by the police and the media. Ford is a feature, not a bug.

And he had a guy killed to cover up his crack problem.