A Modest Proposal For Rob Ford: Stop Funding Stop Signs by Adam Bunch

Our city is in crisis. The problem has been growing steadily for more than a century, ever since William Lyon Mackenzie first assumed the mayorship of Toronto and immediately launched a series of big ticket socialist programs, like garbage collection and a public Board of Health. Since then, a long line of tax-and-spend mayors has increased the size of government to that of a bloated bureaucratic whale.

Mayor Ford should be commended for his brave stance on trimming back the fat. There is no doubt that cuts to questionable initiatives like bike lanes and city parks and healthcare and libraries and firemen and police officers are a good place start, but there is more work to be done. There is one vital issue that has yet to be discussed. The time has come to put it on the table.

Mayor Ford, we need to stop funding stop signs.

Stop signs are, without a doubt, one of the most vile symptoms of socialist government. First and foremost, they are on the front lines of the War On The Car. The leftists on city council have repeatedly made it clear that they hate drivers. To them, anyone who owns a car is automatically a bad person. So it's no surprise that they love stop signs; those signs give politicians the chance to tell drivers what to do. These pinkos literally want to make cars stop at the end of nearly every single block. And why? To watch out for cyclists and pedestrians, of course! Cyclists and pedestrians are already coddled enough as it is, thank you very much. And drivers are perfectly capable of making their own decisions. They can look out for our their own safety; I suggest cyclists and pedestrians do the same. Why should some left-wing bureaucrat sitting behind a desk at City Hall get to tell drivers what to do? It's yet another example of big government trying to dictate every little detail of our lives. The nanny state rears its ugly, octagonal head once again.

But stop signs do more than just limit our basic freedoms. By forcing drivers to at least slow down slightly every time they see one, stop signs directly contribute to the out-of-control gridlock in this city. Every time you slow down at a stop sign it means a longer commute home that night. Longer commutes mean even more traffic. It's a vicious cycle. All those seconds add up. The stop signs in Toronto must add entire minutes to some commutes. Those are entire minutes you could be at home spending time with your family. Instead, you're wasting them by slowing down at intersections – all so you don’t gently nudge some downtown elitist off her precious bicycle. Of course pinkos love stop signs. They're one more way to destroy the traditional family unit.

The budget for all of this stop sign gravy? Who knows? It could be as high as 800 million dollars a year. That’s nearly a billion. A billion dollars taken directly out of the pockets of the hard-working taxpayers of Toronto and used to fund a socialist government program that robs us of our freedoms and tears apart our families. And I'm not even including costs for repair and maintenance – or for graffiti “art” removal.

In short, it is no coincidence that stop signs are red. They are communism, plain and simple. Anyone who supports them is against freedom and against our families. It is time, Mr. Ford, for you to show true respect for Toronto’s taxpayers. Wipe every single one of those socialist stop signs off our streets.

After that, we can talk about the ones on the sides of school buses.

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Adam Bunch is the Editor-in-Chief of the Little Red Umbrella and the creator of the Toronto Dreams Project. You can read his posts here, follow him on Twitter here, or email him at adam@littleredumbrella.com.



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