A Ban on Central Park Horse Carriages

    Due to pressure from animal-lovers and "concerned citizens", as well as irrefutable videos online, our city's mayor finally started clamoring about removing the smelly, overworked, underfed horses.  Regardless of the weather, their uncaring and greedy owners force them to pull overweight carriages in NYC's Central Park.  Nobody cares about their lives spent amidst traffic, honking horns, smog, exhaust, heat from asphalt, and winter frigidness.  Knowing the mayor's reputation to merely provide favors to Big Business, skyscraper developers, and whomever pays the most, Lewis and I are skeptical that he'll save the horses.  

     Neglected by their owners, the unclean horses stink up the city's posh streets near Central Park--and its 5-star hotels.  Anytime you get within one street of them, their odor hits your senses.  That is bad for the horses.  Manhattan's uncaring government allows gridlock traffic jams to continue for decades, and those horses ride through that congestion on the avenues.  None of the numerous overpaid government agencies inspects their welfare, water supply, nutrition, or habitat.  

Below, look at that horse struggle to pull the overloaded carriage.

Is this how a horse should spend its life?

     My friends work at the Prada headquarters by Clinton Park in Midtown-West.  They abhor the stench of the crappy stables!  During NYC's sultry summers, the unclean stench is horrific, and it can be smelled from five streets away!  Such a terrible environment is reminiscent of NYC's despicable tenement houses.  Infamous to the world, those dilapidated buildings were operated by the city's wealthiest financiers, and impoverished immigrants were compelled to endure them.  The stables look like them.  (Slumlords continue to exist in NYC's corruption, and the authorities merely make them pay fines for their terrible properties, instead of mandating their improvement).  Some things never change... (in corrupt places).  

     As he does with other corrupt circumstances, the mayor clamored about the issue for years.  Yet, action was never taken.  I wondered why?  

     This morning, he held one of his typical evasive/murky News Conferences.  Suddenly, the man who sought to eradicate the horse-carriages proposed keeping them in Central Park.  He's considering using taxpayer money to give monetary compensation to the carriage drivers--so they don't use their own money for the horses' upkeep.  Next, the mayor removed the eco-friendly pedicab drivers and only let them ride north of 82nd Street, so they cannot "overcrowd" the carriage trade.  I'm certain that was done because conscientious people boycott the horse-drawn carriages and prefer the pedicabs.  

     *He did a similar maneuver when he allowed the corrupt taxi companies to underpay their staff--while instituting a new tax on passengers of ride-share cars, and that money was given to the taxi companies.  (When you are familiar with NYC, you anticipate such sleazy tactics).

     Did he ask voters for their approval?  Definitely not.  It seems like such a subsidy to build them new facilities, pay their outgoing drivers, and push away their competition.  I'm sure there are lots of people in this city who'd want such "help".  I wonder why he's doing it?
     Then I found out...
     The almighty Teamsters Union represents and protects the carriage drivers.