Patricia N. Saffran
After Mayor Mamdani applies his John Hancock to the City Council bill recently passed banning the carriage horse industry, the TWU immediately will be in Federal court defending the carriage drivers. They’ll ask for an injunction. TWU attorney Arthur Schwartz found Fifth Amendment and State constitution violations. He said, “They can’t take away your property without due process. Sometimes the government can act quickly to try to eliminate a public nuisance, but no one is claiming that the horses are a public nuisance. You can regulate businesses, you can adopt reasonable measures to prevent abuses, but to take away property for no reason that bears any relationship to the welfare of the public? It’s unconstitutional.”
Part of the bill involves the City Council appropriating all the 160 carriage horses from their owners and cavalierly giving them to total strangers on retirement farms. The horses’emotional attachment to their owners and caregivers is being completely disrespected. In addition, the bill is vague about any dollar amount cost to taxpayers for the Council forcing the horses into retirement, but it will be many millions of dollars.
It’s unclear why the bill was brought forward at all since the horse drawn carriages are the safest form of transportation in the City. Apparently, the City Council played on the death of Romanch Mahajan, the one accidental death in 167 years in Central Park, and also downplayed ConEd was negligent. The media followed suit. In addition, the animal lobbyists’ and politicians’ unproven, false allegations of abuse have been a constant source of propaganda for years. As Joseph Goebbels said, “Think of the press as a great keyboard in which the government can play.”
Government making false statements (propaganda) to the public was facilitated by Obama when he altered the Smith-Mund Act of 1948. Naturally, local governmental bodies like the NY City Council have glommed on when convenient.
Reacting to the newly passed bill and its reasons for passing, an equine veterinarian said, “It seems that the Conservancy is considering the carriages to be a public safety hazard in the Park, which is laughable of course. As to the legislation, the prohibition against the horses working in the industry elsewhere is unconstitutional. The drivers should be allowed to work with their horses elsewhere.”
Besides City Council’s bill ignoring that the horses are private property, they also refuse to give a concrete dollar amount to compensate the drivers for the 68 medallions, costing as much as $300,000 each and with a future value of millions. They only vaguely suggest job training for unrelated jobs, but the City has no equestrian jobs so there’s no chance of success in this area at all. In short, the bill bankrupts the carriage drivers as well as stealing their horses.
Mayor Mamdani has offered to pay compensation but without any numbers saying, “Our preference throughout all of the conversations was how to sunset this industry while protecting the livelihoods of all the workers who have built their lives around this industry,” It’s empty talk and the TWU will still file in court if the Mayor signs the bill.
NYC Council Speaker Julie Menin celebrated passing the bill and crushing a legitimate blue collar industry. She was given awards for women’s leadership from lady lobbyists saying, “I can’t tell you after the day we’ve had today at City Hall, standing up to – I’ll just say certain men [apparently referring to John Samuelson, TWU president and a vocal critic]. A lot of people said to me, ‘Don’t take this on, you’re going to take on a lot of powerful interests.’ … But that’s what leadership is. It’s about tuning out the noise. There are always going to be haters.”
What “haters” is Julie talking about? The only haters have been the aggressive, nasty animal lobbyists, who for years have pushed for the ban. She may be destroying the carriage horse business but she and many other City Council members who support this bill will be paying back their donors such as real estate who have coveted obtaining the stables on the cheap, and food delivery e-biker services. The e-bikers should be kicked out of the Park since they kill and cause accidents but no, the City Council will let them stay in the Park causing mayhem with an ineffectual legislation package to regulate them.
If and when the Mayor signs the bill to ban the horse drawn carriages, hopefully, the Federal Court will acknowledge the bill’s obvious Constitutional and State violations and throw out this bizarre legislation.
Please follow and like us:
