Sometimes The Media Just Doesn’t Tell The Story

ABC News is reporting today that an agreement has been reached in New York City to insure the continuation of the horse-drawn carriage tradition.

The article reports:

“We are pleased to have reached an agreement in concept on the future of New York’s horse carriage industry,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a joint statement with City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and the Teamsters union, which represents the carriage drivers.

The horses currently live in private stables on Manhattan’s West Side, and animal rights advocates have been fighting to get the carriages banned entirely, calling it inhumane to keep horses in loud, car-clogged Manhattan. The Democratic mayor also pledged when he was sworn in two years ago to end the popular carriage rides through the park. But that was met with public and political opposition.

City officials Sunday said the deal would eventually reduce the number of licensed horses from about 180 to 95 when a permanent home is built for them in Central Park by Oct. 1, 2018. The agreement also limits the operation of horse-drawn carriages, with the exception of travel to and from their existing stables to Central Park beginning June 1.

I am thrilled that the horse-drawn carriages will still travel Central Park. But there is a major part of this story that the media isn’t telling.

From The American Spectator via rightwinggranny in January 2014:

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.”

Notice that in this agreement the existing stables will no longer house the horses. Any bets on how long it will be before Edison Properties buys the existing stables, tears them down, and puts up a high-rise. It never really was about the horses, but somehow ABC News didn’t mention that.

Following The Money In The Horse-Drawn Carriage Wars In Central Park

New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio has stated that one of his first priorities is to take the horse-drawn carriages out of Central Park. His argument is that asking the horses to pull the carriages in a setting where they must compete with automobiles is cruel to the horses. Various animal rights groups are backing him up. Well, there may be a little more to the story than meets the eye.

The American Thinker posted an article today which suggests that the idea behind removing the horse-drawn carriages may not be the welfare of the horses.

The article quotes an article in The American Spectator by Robert Stacy McCain:

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.”

The lesson here is that when you are trying to understand a politician’s decision, follow the money.

 

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The End Of A New York City Tradition

Horse-drawn carriage rides through Central Park have been associated with New York City for about 100 years. Now those carriage rides are in danger. On Thursday, CNS News reported that newly-elected New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio plans to replace the horse-drawn carriages with electric cars. The cars would be built with the look of antique cars and would have a driver so that current carriage drivers would still have jobs. However, the article does not mention the horse owners and stable owners who would lose their jobs.

The Mayor claims that horse carriages are “not humane” and are cruel to the animals. The carriage owners are requesting that the Mayor take a tour of the stables where the horses are kept before he makes a decision.

This is being reported as a ‘cruelty to animals‘ issue. Since when is asking a horse to pull a carriage animal cruelty. If the concern is that the horses sometimes have to deal with vehicle traffic, it might make more sense to ban cars within Central Park and leave the entire park to the horses.

Stay tuned. I am sure there is much more to come.

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