NYC Horse-drawn Carriage War: Liam Neeson vs. Mayor de Blasioby Shifra on February 24, 2014
(this is a bigger scandal than Christies thing, but the lib media won't report on it)
Posted in: Animal Issues, Just Wrong, Politics
Like most New Yorkers, I usually pay little attention to the horse-drawn carriages around Central Park.
It’s for first–time tourists to the Big Apple.
Although, sometimes, in the sweltering summers, when I see the horses pull their loads, I wonder if they are being treated humanely.
And then, every now and then, news of a horse collapsing and dying in the street, reinforces my feeling that maybe they are being overworked.
So, when Mayor Bill de Blasio stated that one of his first acts as mayor would be to abolish the horse-carriage trade, I thought that he must have serious concerns about the horses’ treatment.
But according to actor Liam Neeson, who has taken up the cause of the estimated three hundred families who will be put “on the breadline” if the decision to replace the carriages with electric antique cars goes ahead, it’s not about concern for the animals.
It’s about money, real estate, and power.
Via NY Post: All the pretty horses, starring Liam Neeson
….“I’m not someone who’s political,” says Neeson. “I just noticed all these celebrities on the other side — and no one speaking up for the boys.”
“The boys,” as he puts it, are the drivers, many of them transplanted Irishmen like himself, some of whom even grew up on farms and are stunned by the accusation they would treat their horses cruelly. These include Colm McKeever, a native of County Meath and a friend of more than two decades’ standing. The men met through their wives, back when McKeever’s wife, Fiona, served as midwife in the birth of the actor’s first son.
The two are up against a villain list right out of central casting — people banking on money, celebrity and political clout to get their way, fueled by an animal-rights movement which argues, somewhat disingenuously, the horses are inhumanely treated.
Today these forces also include two of the most powerful leaders in city politics. One is Bill de Blasio, who has vowed that banning the horses and their carriages would be among his first acts as mayor. Another is the new City Council speaker, Melissa Mark-Viverito, who sponsored the original anti-carriage council measure back in 2010.
The politicians are in turn backed by real-estate interests that have played a leading part in the campaign against the horse and carriages. The drivers believe, not without reason, that some of these people have their eye on the primo West Side site where the stables now sit. “They must just be just salivating over it,” says Neeson….
The ironies here are legion, and Neeson alluded to one of them in a letter to the mayor he made public back in January, “I find it troubling, Mr. de Blasio, that your campaign promise was to fight for the common man and, yet, with the first stroke of your pen, you are willing to put 300 families on the breadline.”
Nor is Neeson buying the argument about cruelty. Central Park’s horses, he says, are among the most regulated animals in America, with regular vet checkups and five weeks annual vacation (“How many people get that much time off?” he asks). And he notes the mayor has declined an invitation to visit the stables….
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