Mayor de Blasio, who ran on a platform partially based on a lack of decent jobs for working class schmoes in Manhattan, is making elimination of a bunch of those jobs one of his first priorities in office:
"We are going to quickly and aggressively move to make horse carriages no longer a part of the landscape in New York City," de Blasio said, according to NBC New York. "They are not humane. ... It's over."No doubt the knackers will be very humane in converting Mr. Ed into kibble.
Things I Thought I Would Never Type In All My Born Days #712,863: How long before you see the first pictures of a smiley-faced Bloomberg waving over the caption "Miss me yet?"
Devolution continues apace.
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(Via email.)
Oh, I'm certain things in NYC are just going to get better and better with Mr de Blasio in Gracie Mansion.
ReplyDelete"We believe that the use of carriage horses in 21st century New York City is unnatural, unnecessary, and an undeniable strain on the horses’ quality of life," Stacy Wolf, senior vice president of the ASPCA’s Anti-Cruelty Group, said in an email to NBC News. "
ReplyDeleteA. The ASPCA is an extremist lobbying groups for animal "rights".
B. Pulling carriages in Central park is, as far as getting horses to do work, nothing especially miserable. As fun as gamboling in a green meadow? Nope, but no worse that many of the jobs horses have and do do everyday. Nevermind humans.
C. As a result of this the quality of the life of the horses will be -ZERO ( no life)
D. Tam is 100% correct, this perfectly reveals deBlasio as being an even bigger jerk than Bloomers. I just Weiner had gotten in instead, better jokes.
Glad I got my ride in last year, then.
ReplyDeleteOTOH, the driver spent 45 minutes pointing at and talking about the fountain used in the "Friends" intro. I wished they had already started converting the horses to glue. The vapors would have helped pass the time.
Any bets that the whole thing is being made an urgent issue so the stables can be sold to some connected real estate developer?
ReplyDeleteGot to reward those campaign supporters quickly, after all.
If you can make your liberal supporters feel smug and paint yourself as a humanitarian by being "kind" to animals while doing it, well, so much the better.
Frau Blücher vill be pleased.
ReplyDeleteCarriage drivers, stables, the rather specialized job of maintenance and repair of the carriages, farriers, those who deliver the feed, those who haul away the manure (and whatever economically brilliant use they've put it to, whoever does all of that) veterinarians, east coast feed producers, and whatever city employees were previously involved in licensing, inspecting, and regulating the hacks.
ReplyDeleteAll will take a hit. In a city the size of New York it's not going to be a devastating blow to the economy, but it will be felt, with the loss of the tourist dollars if nothing else.
And if the carriages are inhumane, why don't they take a long hard look at the patrol mounts used by their police?
Welcome to the twenty first century, where working animals in the way they've been bred to work by our ancestors is inhumane, but sticking a camera up a guy's butt because a working animal thought he smelled drugs is fine.
"They are not humane. ... It's over."
ReplyDeleteyes... because... having a cart horse... pull a cart... is... inhu... wha? I don't know if I but wha?
In other news the CONY still maintans a mounted police force.
Presumably the mayor will continue eating hamburger and hotdogs?
ReplyDeleteAaron,
ReplyDeleteno bet
The developer in question is purported to be Edison properties. The CEO is a Mr. Nislick who also is a founder of NYCLASS, the 'animal rights' group which is the main driver for the shutdown. NYC politics = Follow the money.
Has he not considered the fact that the cabbies are TEAMSTERS???!!!! They might not take kindly to this.
ReplyDeleteYou are harshing my mellow.
ReplyDeleteI did a mental back of the envelope calculation this morning and realized in 2013 I got to the range at least 45 of the 52 weeks and burned at least 50 rounds on average which is 2,250 rounds downrange.
Add on top of that at least 1,500 in IDPA matches (include the 30 rounds .30-06 from my ONE benchrest match here) and it seems I had a very productive training year.
I aim (pardon the pun) to do better this year and was feeling pretty good about life.
Then I read this depressing stuff.
I think you're in desperate need of some range time, Tam.
Much I care. One more thing to not do while I'm not visiting New York City.
ReplyDeleteI understand some folks are suggesting that the carriages be replaced with some type of old fashiony looking electric cars. The carriage owners would have to buy them. No word on why any tourist would want to pay to be given a car ride.
ReplyDeleteNever fear, the horses and carriages can be replaced by Rickshaw's pulled by the former Carriage drivers. Win-win. If the horses have to be slaughtered in order to improve their lives, then so be it.
ReplyDeleteWorking animals can be treated humanely or inhumanely. There is nothing inherently inhumane about having horses pull lightly loaded carriages over fairly level terrain.
ReplyDeleteSee Rudyard Kipling's "A Walking Delegate" for another view...
Anyone here ever been around a working animal?
ReplyDeleteAnyone that has - you ever noticed, as I have, that that animal absolutely lives and breathes excitement at the possibility of getting to work?
Ever see a sled dog that wasn't peeing itself in excitement over being hooked up to a sled?
A bird dog not howling in anticipation over going hunting?
I've even seem dim-witted animals like oxen get excited about being hooked up to the cart.
My guess is that these horses love their job, and if you were able to ask them what they'd like to do, they would answer emphatically that they'd love nothing more than to be able to pull that cart some more.
Working animals are bred for that job. They know it, and they love it.
Goober: Everything has to have a purpose, and the purpose of liberals is to damage the lives of others because it makes them feel better. And now "others" includes animals.
ReplyDeleteI'll just put this here.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3105#comic
So... will de Blasio get rid of the NYPD's mounted patrol?
ReplyDeleteOr is animal cruelty okay when it's for the king's guard?
Goober
ReplyDeleteLet's not forget that horses are quite intelligent, and very social animals. I daresay they LOVE the attention they get all day long from random people (read: tourists and familiar locals) walking by and 'petting the pretty horsie'...
It's just little people that'll lose jobs and income, why would the new nobility care?
ReplyDeleteIs there something about being Mayor of New York that requires one to be an interfering busybody?
ReplyDeleteOr is it just that the job attracts them and the suckers love to vote for them?
Replace horse carriages with Palanquins. Slaughter the horses to feed the palanquin "cabbies", nobody loses work QED.
ReplyDeleted-e-B-l-a-s-i-o...that's got to be the weirdest spelling of Ortega I've ever seen.
ReplyDeleteI LOL'ed. At work. Loudly.
DeleteGlad to see a little election hasn't changed traditions like the mayor of NYC doubling down on stupid.
ReplyDeleteIt makes me want to smoke a cigarette while drinking a big gulp during a carriage ride. In an ideal world I would have the spouse pull air guard on the carriage with an AR-15.
I bet if the horses were Mexican they'd be allowed to work...
ReplyDeleteWho knew this lovely song would fit the news one day?
ReplyDeletehttp://grooveshark.com/#!/search/song?q=Horses+in+the+City+Nina+Gordon
am i the only one that mentally whinnied when KM said Frau Blucher?
ReplyDeleteJust like the People's Republik of Kalipornia. Majority voters & those who don't deign to vote: ya gets what ya votes for!
ReplyDeleteUlises from , well, you know.
d-e-B-l-a-s-i-o...that's got to be the weirdest spelling of Stalin I've ever seen.
ReplyDeletefixed it fer ya
kaeghl
from young Frankenstein, every time Frau Blucher spoke a horse whinnied, likely because her name means glue.
ReplyDeleteI clicked on the link, expecting to find that the situation had been reduced, somehow. I figured that there was probably a real issue that complicated things, not mentioned in the quote. Maybe the hansom cab owners were housing the horses in a sewer? Maybe horses were uncontrollably drawn to eat plastic food wrappers dropped on the ground by self-involved Noo Yawkers, causing intestinal distress? Maybe there's some kind of modern caltrop hurting the horses' frogs?
ReplyDeleteNo such complication? It's just "inhumane" to use a horse to draw a cart, in a city which arguably is MUCH more sanitary than it was 100, 150, 200 years ago.
We've got evidence of horses drawing carts 2000 years before Christ was born.
I'm betting that ancient horses in year 2,000BCE weren't shod or fed as well, or brushed down daily, or given the all-around care that modern horses are. But after four+ millennia of horse culture (literally spanning the whole of recorded history), Hizhonor da Mayor da Blasio has figured out what his forefathers had not; it's cruel to put the horse before the cart.
"If the horses have to be slaughtered in order to improve their lives, then so be it."
ReplyDeleteSpoken like a true PETA (or HSUS) believer. (Haven't both of those organizations slaughtered thousands of pets because they felt exterminating them was "better" for the animal than being recycled pets?)
I spent a few years as a high end hunter/jumper groom in the northeast, and still hunt.
ReplyDeleteIf I died and had to come back as a horse, New York carriage horse would be my choice, hooves down.
Anonymous @ 1101:
ReplyDeleteNo, it doesn't. You've missed the joke.
RickC: Not just slaughtered thousands of animals, but actively campaign against no-kill shelters and communities. Google Caboodle Ranch to see how far they'll go to enforce their version of what the shelter movement should be.
ReplyDeleteAngelaG