A wise old reporter told me once that if something smells bad, the odds are it is rotten. Follow your nose, he said.
From the first, Mayor Bill deBlasio’s campaign against the New York Carriage Horses smelled bad. It seemed to come out of nowhere, went on beyond reason, and had little foundation. A career politician who had never owned a dog or a cat or ridden in a horse carriage (or on any horses) suddenly declared that banning the carriage horses was the major priority of his new administration.
He admitted he had never spoken to a carriage driver, and would not speak to any now. He said their work was immoral.
And he did so after receiving busloads of money from a real estate developer who claimed he was also an animal rights activist.
Now, city and federal prosecutors have joined forces to investigate the millions of dollars the millionaire’s animal rights group – it is called NYCLASS – spent to help elect the mayor, damage his opponents and contribute to his campaign. And ban the carriage horses.
NY CLASS spent millions in its obsessive, often vicious, spectacularly unsuccessful campaign to ban the horses.
They lied and misrepresented the carriage trade and the drivers repeatedly, suggesting at various times that they were drunks, bigots, abusers, thieves and torturers of animals.
They hired expensive marketers and direct-mailers, publicists and advertising agencies in a fierce assault against an iconic working class industry.
The political contributions from them and others have been linked to real estate developers and business people who, it seems, don’t know the difference between a horse and a fire hydrant, who had little interest in animals but much interest in the real estate occupied by the horse stables on the West Side Of New York and other interests of the mayor.
NYCLASS – known locally as the group that loves animals and hates people – spent more than a half-million dollars to develop monstrously ugly and unpopular vintage electric automobiles the group still claims are more environmentally sound than horses. That money came mostly from people who thought they were contributing to the rescue, safety and welfare of animals, not to lining the pockets of greedy politicians or meddling in political campaigns.
In my scores of visits to the NYCLASS website, in many ignored phone calls, in contacts with volunteers who work for them, in the study of public statements and records, I have yet to find any evidence of a single animal the group has ever saved, rescued, or rehabilitated.
In fact, their hate campaign against the carriage trade has endangered the more than 200 carriage horses, who – if banned – faced slaughter or exile to inactive and invisible lives on mostly mythical rescue farms.
I wrote many times during this struggle that the truth wants to be free, and that there is such a thing as justice, even in the age of politics and big money. Here it comes.
The mayor is in big trouble. A so-called progressive promising to stick up for the little guy against big money interests made his first priority a brutal and dishonest attack on the little guys who drive carriage horses in Central Park, and who have broken no laws, committed no crimes, violated no regulations. From the first, it smelled bad, and good prosecutors, like good reporters, follow their noses.
The mayor is now getting a taste of his own medicine. Justice has its own curious path.
So, I think, will NYCLASS soon get a taste of anxiety and discomfort. Do not ever underestimate the arrogance and monomania of millionaire fanatics, or of ambitious politicians. The mayor has never met with a carriage driver or visited a horse stable, he meets and lunches regularly with the leaders of NYCLASS. Not exactly the new Robin Hood people were expecting.
NYCLASS is not, in my mind, an organization that will do well under too much scrutiny. They are not familiar with reasoning or empathy or humility. I have been writing about this story for several years now, and one of the things that has struck me the most is the deepening scandal over money and animal rights, and not just in New York City. It is an issue all over the country.
All over America, well-meaning and good-hearted animal lovers have donated hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars to groups like PETA. In 2014, the newly politicized U.S. Humane Society and A.S.P.C.A. were ordered to pay more than $16 million to the Ringling Brothers Circus for paying witnesses to claim circus elephants were abused.
Such a revelation would have destroyed most non-profit organizations or any political candidates. So far, the groups have refused to pay up, continuing their loosely-documented campaign against the circus elephants, all of whom they claim to be tortured and abused.
The animal rights groups don’t seem to care what is true or factual, or what the courts decide. They live in an alternative universe.
The city of Glenville, N.Y., in conjunction with local animal rights organizations, spent tens of thousands of dollars to charge Joshua Rockwood, a local farmer, with 13 counts of animal cruelty for having frozen water tanks in – 27 degree winter weather. Even though every one of the charges has been dropped in an embarrassing and ludicrous series of public court hearings, the town and the animal rights groups have never acknowledged any wrongdoing or apologized to Rockwood, whose animals are much-loved and well cared for.
Only fellow farmers on the Internet – they raised $70,000 for his legal defense – saved his good and well-run farm.
All over the country, secret informers fan out to spy on farmers and private citizens, looking for animals to seize, and calling the police when they find horses taking naps in the field, cows out in the snow, dogs guarding sheep, hunting dogs in kennels, dogs sitting outside on lawns, cats out of houses, ponies giving rides to children, animals making people laugh in circuses. Surely, they have found abuse and cruelty as well, but their methods and disregard for truth, due process, science and fairness have become a scandal of its own, one of great magnitude.
The H.S.U.S. and A.S.P.C.A., once devoted to helping animals the people who care for them, have become absorbed into the rigid ideology of P.E.T.A. Mostly, these groups seem to be driving animals away from people, and persecuting people for owning them and living them. The A.S.P.C.A., who once built fountains in Central Park so the horses could drink fresh water, have abandoned their legacy and become another band of ideologues who say they love animals but mostly use them to hate people.
Adopting a pet has become an elitist privilege.
The poor, the elderly, the infirm and the working class are increasingly denied the right to adopt dogs or cats because they work hard, are not wealthy, do not have giant fences, or can’t walk long distances, or look funny. Or wear the wrong color clothes. People’s dogs and cats are seized without legal process, often euthanized without permission, because someone – anyone – thinks they are not being well cared for. Celebrities are harassed for trimming hearts onto the coats of their ponies, farmers are threatened with death for eating the cows they raise to feed their families.
Since the 1970’s, animal rights has become a trendy and very safe charity for celebrities and millionaires. Who, after all, is against the rights of animals? But people who donate have little understanding of where the money goes. They would not be pleased to find out.
In 2014, the A.S.P.C.A. reported donations of $148 million dollars. Nearly $40 million of that went to the salaries of officials and executives, not to animals. In 2011, the H.S.U.S. reported revenue of $133 million, the largest expenditure – $29 million, went to salaries.
People in Central Florida, reported one local TV station, donated nearly three-quarters of a million dollars to national animal rights organizations, from P.E.T.A. to the H.S.U.S., yet none of the groups could point to a single animal in that region that was saved or a single dollar that went to Central Florida. Like NYCLASS, these organizations have often become political lobbyists, not animal advocates.
Organizations like NYCLASS seem to live in their own bubble, utterly oblivious to the ethical implications of their fund-raising and political ambitions. Why, I wonder, do you need to elect your own mayor in order to rescue dogs and cats and educate people about caring for them? This in a city with staggering social needs and problems. Nowhere on their very expensive website will you find a word about the group’s political ambitions, or where your money is really going.
On its own website, NYClass has brayed about how it used donations from online advocacy groups like nationbuilder to defeat Mayor deBlasio’s major opponent, former City Council President Christine Quinn. It did not address the much broader ethical and legal question: did donors to the group, many of whom thought they were contributing to help “abused” carriage horses, know that the horse were not, in fact, being abused, or that their money was going to built grotesque electric cars, or to politicians instead. Did they know that NYCLASS was seeking to become a major player in city politics?
How could they know? NYClass has never said where the money was really going.
Since the campaign, more than a dozen of the most prestigious equine advocacy and veterinary groups in the world have investigated the treatment of the carriage horses and unanimously – without exception – found them to be content and well cared for. Indeed, the carriage horses are universally considered to be the luckiest horses in the world. Very few horses get free medical care, stringent limits on their work hours, shelter in all weather, five weeks of vacation a year, jobs that keep them inside in hot or cold weather.
It is ethical or legal to claim money is needed to stop the abuse of horses, when there is no evidence that the horses are being abused, and much evidence proving almost indisputably that they are not?
I’ve tried a dozen times to get someone at NYCLASS to tell me about or show me a single animal that they have rescued or helped. So far, no one will even call me back or acknowledge the question, online or off. You can look on their website every day and I challenge you to find evidence of one animal who has benefited from all of that money spent and wasted on the carriage horse ban? It shouldn’t be hard to do if their primary mission is to help animals, they should be eager to brag about that, rather than politicking behind closed doors.
But the mission of NYCLASS does not seem to be the welfare of animals, it is clearly to become a power in city politics. To pick mayors and set their agendas. That’s where the hard earned donations of animal lovers go. The war against the horses was never about the horses, it is clearer every day that they became surrogates in political power struggles. They were just being used by the very organizations who claim to speak for their rights.
Animal lovers have clearly been misled. If you want to get upset, just think about how many animals could have benefited from the millions squandered on one egomaniac’s determination to ruin the carriage trade. Some equine rescue groups have estimated that 100,000 horses could have been saved from slaughter if NYCLASS spent it’s money the way the people who sent it meant for it to be used.
It is illegal for politicians in New York to take money if there is a quid pro quo attached. Like political donations in exchange for a horse carriage ban. Prosecutors will let us know pretty soon if they believe that is what happened.
Do animal lovers really want to donate money to groups whose purpose is to remove animals from contact with people,not preserve their work and connection to humans? Do we wish to donate money to organizations who use animals to persecute farmers, the poor and the homeless, honest working people, the innocent and the few willing to actually live and work with animals? Who own ponies who give rides to children from farmer’s markets? Who ban horses who take lovers and tourists through Central Park, which was built in part for them?
After all this struggle and pain and money, does anyone really believe that animals are better off than they were 30 years ago, when the animal liberation movement was born?
Since 1970, nearly half of the animal species on the earth have vanished, according to the WWF. Nearly nine billion animals languish in giant industrial factory farms while healthy horses are threatened with bans and conscientious and hard-working farmers like Joshua Rockwood are nearly driven from their farms because some unknowing animal rights informer driving by doesn’t know the difference between a sheep guard dog and a dog who is being abused.
This is becoming almost tragically familiar. For all of its millions of dollars, shouldn’t NYCLASS know the difference between a draft horse who is safe and well cared for, and one who is not?
It seems that Mayor deBlasio may pay dearly for his arrogance and ignorance about animal rights. And possibly, for his dishonest nature. The investigations into his fund-raising and its links to the horses are deepening.
But the wider scandal has yet to be investigated. Americans are now spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year to advance what they believe are the rights of animals. But even by that standard, the animal rights movement is a catastrophic failure, in New York City and across much of the country.
The rights of animals have only deteriorated, in great measure because the effort to equate their rights to human rights has been a disaster. It is not remotely possible, let alone a good idea. While animals are being driven from the world in accelerating numbers, the rights of human beings have suffered grievously at the hands of the people who claim to speak for animals.
Who wins in this irrational game, except perhaps the politicians and executives and administrators, awash in cash from well-meaning people?
Two years ago, a Native-American spiritualist told me the horses were angry, they called upon human beings to save them from this unjust and disturbing campaign. He said they had a lot of power, and would soon reveal it. I did not really believe him. I do now.
The real scandal is just beginning to emerge.