Focusing Like A Laser Beam on the Big Issues...

...Bill De Blasio decides that the thing that needs his first attention is the "problem" of horses being used to draw tourist carriages in Central Park.

HELP! #SaveNYCHorseCarriages Campaign Fights Mayor to Save Jobs

Earlier today I talked about how Mayor Bill de Blasio’s agenda will turn New York City into a squalid nightmare. He has chosen an odd starting spot for his effort to destroy the city’s economy: About 200 people who earn their living as horse-drawn carriage drivers.

“We are going to get rid of the horse carriages. Period,” de Blasio said on Monday. “It’s over.” . . .
NYCLASS, the animal rights advocacy group that has been leading the charge against the carriage horses, donated $220,000 to a group dedicated to sinking former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn’s mayoral aspirations and another $124,000 on their own anti-Quinn efforts. NYCLASS was responsible for $774,000 worth of ads attacking Quinn, and its board members donated to de Blasio’s election fund.
During the campaign, Quinn said she supported the carriage horse industry. Her opponent, Bill de Blasio, promised he would ban it immediately. After his primary victory, some of de Blasio’s biggest fundraisers donated tens of thousands of dollars to NYCLASS.
NYCLASS has suggested replacing the horses with electric antique replica cars.

Electric cars.

That’s going to be a real romantic treat for honeymooners, isn’t it? “Oh, we went to New York and rode the electric cars!”

Don’t let this “animal rights” talk deceive you. Starry-eyed idealist don’t have that kind of juice. The big money behind the anti-carriage effort is rumored to come from real-estate interests who covet the property currently occupied by carriage stables.

Yeah, for my (next) honeymoon I want to go to New York, and let some guy drive us around in a Prius.

Oooh, so what about the connection to the developers who want the land the stable occupies?
Will De Blasio Get Away With This?

“The bad guy in this drama, according to the carriage drivers, is Steve Nislick, chief executive officer of a New Jersey-based real-estate development company, Edison Properties. The company ‘employs legions of lobbyists to influence city decisions on real estate and zoning in its favor,’ journalist Michael Gross reported in 2009, pointing out that two of Edison’s businesses ‘have multiple locations in the same Far West Midtown neighborhood as the stables where the Central Park horses are housed.’ An anti-carriage pamphlet Nislick circulated in 2008 made this interesting observation: ‘Currently, the stables consist of 64,000 square feet of valuable real estate on lots that could accomodate up to 150,000 square feet of development. These lots could be sold for new development.’

 Why do progressive politics seem so corrupt?


New York seems to have a formula.  Elect progressives like De Blasio, Cuomo, Lindsey because it feels so good, and then just before their policies produce an unworkable nightmare like Detroit, they elect a more conservative, or at least a liberal with a realist bent (Guiliani, Koch).