Raise the Hammer

Us Lifer Hamiltonians? Please Ron. Just get back into your '98 Buick LeSabre and drive back to BURLINGTON where you live. You love Hamilton SO MUCH just not enough to live here. One lane in, one lane out? Clearly its been a while since you have been down Barton St. hasn't it? Like since maybe your horse was about 3? They took Confederation Park off of the table BECAUSE ITS A PARK. You fossil. And by the way Ron. We don't need you to speak for us.

What happens when EM supporters are confronted with evidence?

I won't waste my time listening to that interview. There's enough nonsense just in the small amount of text you posted.

1. "put a stop to everything progressive". HAHA. Since when is a 100 acre shopping centre and 40 acres of parking considered 'progressive'?? That was the condition the Cats put on the EM site before they would contribute a dime of their $15 million towards construction. The city would have had the task of assembling the 100 acres across Stonechurch so Ossmington and the Cats could rake in the money from the sprawl development.

2. "one lane in, one lane out".

Actually, within 1,000 metres of the WH site there are 43 lanes of MAIN road capacity. That's not counting any sidestreets.

But why let facts get in the way of producing good sound bites on a radio interview.

Comment edited by jason on 2010-08-11 22:30:16

No one would argue with Foxcroft's admission that he's confused. Acknowledging a problem, even when you're a consumate windbag, is the first step in seeking help. Just look at what he says:

"There is a side of city council that us lifer Hamiltonians call "the dark side",

First of all, 12 out of 16 could hardly be called a "side" and doesn't a "lifer Hamiltonian" actually have to live in Hamilton?

"They don't get it."

What, exactly, is it, Ron, that they don't get? You never seem to be able to get past that vacuous statement. We're all waiting.

"They don't see it."

It seems to me that they just waged a successful campaign based on the premise that they COULD see it

"They get re-elected in their little wards, and in their little wards the way they get re-elected is they don't spend money"

Didn't they just vote to spend millions of dollars, albeit not on your friends?

"they don't have vision, they put a stop to everything progressive"

So paving a greenfield slated to be tax-generating employment land and turning it into a 6000 car parking lot would be the result of a progressive vision? Exactly how? You need a new clairvoyant.

Of course, all of this is coming out now because Foxcroft, not unlike Young before him, is trying to leverage the City to his own advantage and desperately wants Confederation Park on the table so as to increase the value of HIS adjacent land at the cost of OUR downtown. He's obviously taken a page out of the Mercanti/Carmen's playbook.

How about an election in Ward 5; Chad Collins, who doesn't want to pave over Confederation Park versus Foxcroft, who does? Let the people decide who's got the "progressive vision". My money's on Collins.

Comment edited by realfreeenterpriser on 2010-08-11 22:49:42

Puhleeze. Did Foxcroft listen to anything that the buffoon Bob McCown had to say about Hamilton when Jim Balsillie was trying to bring the Phoenix Coyotes here. He has absolutely no credibility when it comes to discussing Hamilton. This is one of the few times I can remember Hamilton city council being almost unanimous about anything. And they got it right as well.

This article from the Toronto Sun was pretty interesting. It seems that Winnipeg has a stadium issue too, though with a much different tone from their owner.

I just "cannot get it" how they survive in Paris using mostly public transportation and cycling around.

Mr. Young really needs to step back and look at who he has speaking on his behalf. This guys an embarrassment. Foxcroft is upset because of the name calling, yet he resorts to name calling and distorting the facts to serve his purpose.

Why is that guys like Foxy are called Boosters - while Matt Jelly gets labeled as an activist...

Jelly is way more of a Hamilton booster than Foxy will ever be!

So much for "cooler heads prevail".

There is little question in my mind that Ron Foxcroft is miffed because one of his own, a 'corporate success,' is not being listened to by a City Council that has, historically, been in the thrall of the business class, giving taxpayers' dollars to projects that have done little for city-building, serving only to increase the burden on already heavily-taxed property owners.

I suspect the concept of using tax dollars to help develop a far-reaching vision for the City is anathema to people like Foxcroft, whose interests seem to revolve much more narrowly around short-term profits. Therefore, and quite predictably, because he lacks argument, he resorts to invective and name-calling.

Raise the Hammer is one of the few Internet boards I've found where civilized discussion is the norm rather than the exception. Let's not allow derisive, cheap and ill-informed comments from people like Foxcroft to lower that level of discourse.

Comment edited by lorne on 2010-08-12 07:59:21

This group then votes in blocs to stop many things that are progressive.

Don't you just love when people co-opt words that are the complete opposite of what they actually espouse. Like progressive when in fact your ideas are regressive or when "Democracy" and "Freedom" are used to defend fascism or "Hope" and "Change" become slogans for the status quo. It is the times we live in I suppose... but ugh, it hurts my head.

I've got an idea. Why don't we start a monthly contest entitled "I said it, but I can't back it up"

My nominations are:

Ron Foxcroft - they don't get it, they can't see it - (while attempting to get a public park adjacent to hi$ bu$ine$$, not his home, it's in Burlington, considered for a new stadium)

P.J. Mercanti - east mountain supporters were absent because they have jobs - (after failing to convince Council to use public money to boost his business and take land adjacent to his (Daddy's) operation off the market for potential competitors)

John Dolbec - Hamilton Council is being seen as the gang that can't shoot straight - (after one of Council's few nearly unanimous votes on a very controversial issue, the grand poobah of the Chamber of Commerce seemed unable to say anything positive about a bold new direction already embraced by progressive cities across North America and, instead, pissed all over the Chamber's longsuffering downtown members. He reminds me of Columbo; a rumpled suit that just won't shut up....or go away)

Brad Clark - Everyone here is laughing at Hamilton -(while he was abdicating his responsibility to represent his constituents and attending a Micheal Buble concert at the ACC which, of course, is downtown with no parking. Buble, apparently, was frustrated with the fact that while he was doing his best to sing, the large crowd that had paid hundreds of dollars per seat was discussing events in Hamilton and then laughing uproariously. You may have noticed that large attractions such as concerts and Argo's and Jay's games are where people in Toronto go to both discuss Hamilton and have a laugh)

Let the enties flow. First prize - Season Tickets at the West harbour

haha....awesome post freeenterprise.

I said that to a friend last night- nobody in Toronto was saying a word because nobody in toronto cares. it's just one of those tired tactics that people like dolbec and clark use to try to appeal to that segment of hamiltonians who are ultra insecure and worry about what toronto thinks. They'll be laughing at us good and long if we build a stadium in the suburbs like it's 1970 again though....of course, they won't even know about it until they come for labour day.

people in Toronto don't care because people in Toronto don't know!

i work in Mississauga, and have had to explain the entire "storey" to my colleagues from the beginning many times because their sources of news in TO don't report it. bob who?

JM

Reedmere,

The mayor is a Conservative. The last I heard Conservatives were right wing.

Comment edited by bigguy1231 on 2010-08-12 12:36:22

Attention Ron: Queen St. has 3, count 'em...3 lanes going southbound to York from the West Harbour site.

As well, both Stuart and Barton are 4 lane roads.

That's the same capacity as the Gardiner Expressway in Toronto, on only one of several north-south routes leaving the West Harbour area that connect to York Blvd and the 403. Include Bay, Hess, MacNab, Oxford, Ray, Macgill, Crooks and Locke.

Which, by the way, is far more road capacity than either Confed Park (QEW/RedHill/Centennial/Beach or the East Mountain (RedHill/LINC/Stone Church/Prichard).

Plus, parking in WH is distributed through the core. Which means, not everyone will be parking in the same place, and not everyone will be rushing to leave from the same place at the same time.

Arienc it seems like logic is lost on this type of bozo. Kneejerk rhetoric laced with hyperbole is their way...

Mr Young has to open up his business case and identify who these experts are that say it won't work in the west harbour. Where are his investors that he says support his location. Show me the money! I drive and live on the mountain and I hate the EM location. I would rather go downtown where there is more things to go to and see. I'm shaking my head through this whole process because the city council is divided about saving a football team that loosing money with a league commissioner that is very quick not to sit down and work this out before with the city council and the owner and building/revitalizing a city. Where the hell are the other cities going to find the money to build a stadium and support their interests is beyond me. Responsible councils will not. The owner will just waste that community's taxes as well. Hell if this was Bettman running the CFL he would fight like hell and high water to keep the team in Hamilton. I don't want to pay more and more taxes to keep this team afloat...This is crazy!!

arienc you are on point! arrow up!

"I'm distraught, I'm confused, I could cry".

Yea, that's what happens when someone who has been running the show for 30+ years suddenly sees the next generation show up with real ideas and real vision and a real plan that goes deeper than simply filling your pockets.
Keep selling whistles bud, cause the days of poaching taxmoney for your own bank account are numbered. Why don't you try it in your own city - Burlington - and leave us alone for a few years to rebuild Hamilton. You and the rest of the old boys club have left my generation a heck of a mess here, and if you don't mind we'd like to get to work on fixing it.

Why did the Fan 590 even interview Foxcroft? Must have been a friend of a friend who knows...

For such a multidisciplined sporting endeavour such as the PanAm games why interview a local near do well who only superficially knows football, though admittedly is better schooled at basketball.

There is one refreshing guy (John?... Board of Ed?..Highlanders...?) in the Hamilton area who I came across at a local football game who is a national starter for track events. This guy knows his shit! He knows stuff about all sports. In fact I recognised him because of a local cable sport quiz show bit from a few years ago - does anybody know this guy? Big dude. Sort of gruff and intimidating but straight up and articulate and extremely well versed in sport. He would have put Fox croft straight, once and for all. Factually of course.

Fan 590 should get this guy for a local/ regional perspective.

Any sporting refs know this guy.

...

Apparently Ron Foxcroft favours a stadium at Confederation Park presumably because it would boost the value of his adjacent land on the taxpayers dollar and Pyjama Mercanti (did he ever manage The Sheik?) favours the east mountain site obviously because it boosts his (daddy's) business and eliminates the potential for competition (the thing that all capitalists claim to love but really don't)

Picture this; a debate between Foxcroft and Mercanti, each of them in full dudgeon accusing the other of not getting it, having no vision and being unemployed. Then, after telling us how hard they've worked, what they've put into the community, how many jobs they've created, that they're not in this for themselves...zzzzz (sorry, I nodded off) they could tell us how much they love the downtown (answer- not enough to help it). A battle of the titans if there ever was one. There'd be enough hot air to heat Hamilton for a winter.

We made Ron Foxcroft cry.

I guess I'm sorry.

I'm sorry our public utilities were sold off cheap. I'm sorry that the procedes are now going to fund a stadium and not a school, hospital or park. I'm sorry that Hamilton taxpayers don't have more money to spend on Ron Foxcroft and his developer buddies. I'm sorry we spent it building their stupid highway. I'm sorry that the voice of businessmen in this city speaks so much louder than citizens, or reason. I'm sorry that their shenanigans may well cost us our part in the games, or much of it. And I'm sorry that none of the lofty dreams of the stadium promoters will ever come true.

I'm not sorry that Ron Foxcroft is upset. That's actually kinda cool.

Whistleblowers not Whistlemakers!!!

Ron Foxcroft does seem to be confused.

In a Globe and Mail article six weeks ago (July 2, 2010), Foxcroft admitted to having introduced Bob Young and Scott Mitchell to mayors and representatives from other cities.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/fo...

And yet, the first thing Foxcroft said in the McCown radio interview on August 10, 2010 was that he was making his first public statement on the stadium issue. Did he not say what he was quoted as having said in the earlier Globe and Mail article? Did he forget about that article? If the Tiger-Cats do leave Hamilton, Foxcroft needs to publicly clarify his role in this stadium saga.

Comment edited by RenaissanceWatcher on 2010-08-14 18:11:22

Great work RenaissanceWatcher. The following quote from Foxcroft “I got several calls from mayors and leaders of municipalities that wanted an intro to Scott and Bob, which I did. I will not say who they are because I would be betraying confidence. But that's the truth.” earns him another nomination in the "I said it, but I can't back it up" contest. If you can get past the shameless self-promotion (why would "several Mayors" call Foxcroft for an intro instead of dialing Young or Mitchell directly???? They're Mayors, you windbag, Mitchell or Young would jump at their call) consider that this is someone who purports to be a "Hamilton booster" who's claiming to be facilitating the relocation of Hamilton's team. What a booster! Although it's all probably BS, if it IS true, it only goes to show how fruitless the search has been.