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“If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists – to protect them and to promote their common welfare – all else is lost.”- Barack Obama

Thomas Paine wrote that government in its best state is a necessary evil, in its worst, an intolerable one.

In a democracy, the functioning of government depends on the trust and faith citizens place on the people elected to govern. Nothing is more disturbing in the carriage trade controversy than the erosion of trust and faith in the manner in which the mayor of New York City has operated, it will echo long and far beyond the horses and their future in the city. It is damaging and disturbing.

In a sense, that is really what is at s take in the vote the City Council will be taking this Friday: whether an independent and law-abiding and much-loved private industry will be taken apart in a manner which has been shrouded from the beginning in the grossest appearance of impropriety.

People of good faith can disagree about the carriage horses, there are legitimate issues to debate and consider on both sides. But almost no one on either side seems to believe any longer that this process has been fair, honest or open. Or that the mayor of New York is telling the truth about it.

Increasingly, the real issue appears to not be the horses – nobody  believes they are being mistreated any longer – rather  the loss of faith in government it is generating every day.

“They are all crooks just worried about money and real estate,” wrote Sarah on my Facebook Page yesterday, “everyone knows this is about real estate and campaign money, not the horses.” I get dozens of messages like that every day.

At a time when so many people distrust political leaders and the political process, and so many politicians and judges and public officials are working to hard to avoid even the appearance of impropriety, the mayor of New York has created the appearance of a scandal without, it seems, the slightest regard for how it looks, or the damage it is doing to civic trust.

He seems to have forgotten that he is the mayor of all the people, not just the ones with a lot of money, and that he is obliged to behave in a manner that seems ethical and fair.

I have been writing about the carriage trade controversy for two years now, and I have received thousands of messages about it and many more on the social media pages where my blog and writings appear. From the first, most of the public – many polls have confirmed this – believe that the real issue in this controversy is the power of real estate interests in New York. They believe they have bought the mayor on this issue.

For many years, the political and judicial standard of ethics require that public official and judges “shall avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety. (American Bar Association Proposed Rule 1.02) ” It is the duty of a public official not only to appear honest and fair-minded but to avoid the appearance of acting improperly.” Simply put, propriety is the appearance of behaving honestly and ethically.

“I value my reputation,”  U.S. Rep. Richard Hanna of New York once told a reporter, “I work very hard to avoid even the appearance of impropriety.”

It appeared to many – most, really – that campaign contributions were somehow linked to the mayor’s sudden determination to ban the carriage trade.

Before his election, Steven Nislick, a real estate developer and the founder of NYClass, an animal rights group seeking to ban the horses, gave Mayor deBlasio more than $100,000 for his campaign and spent more than a million dollars to defeat Christine Quinn, the mayor’s primary opponent.

After that, the mayor, who has never owned a dog or a cat, who has never taken a carriage ride, ridden a horse,  talked with a carriage driver, visited the horse stables, suddenly declared that banning the carriage trade was his “number one priority” when it came to governing the city.

It was almost inevitable that supporters of the carriage trade would conclude the donations were linked to the campaign to remove them from the city. Since the mayor refuses to meet with them or speak to them, the issue was never fully addressed and has been permitted to become the overarching narrative of this increasingly bitter and destructive issue.

Because Nislick was a real estate developer, and developers were seeking to acquire the increasingly valuable stable properties, supporters of the carriage trade assumed real estate was the motivation, both for Nislick and Mayor deBlasio. There is still no hard evidence to support that claim, but it is also easy to understand why people believe. There is no other plausible reason to explain the mayor’s fanatic assault on the carriage trade, against the advice of even his closest advisers.

From that moment on, from the minute the contribution was accepted and the mayor responded,  the carriage horse issue has undermined the mayor’s credibility, enraged the supporters of the carriage trade and many animal lovers,  and created the appearance of impropriety. Almost no one involved believes a word he says, from the carriage drives to the negotiators for the Teamsters.

These are issues the mayor has never acknowledged or addressed in any serious way. The mayor has never spoken with the carriage trade or their lawyers, sought to address their concerns about his motives,  attempted to listen or negotiate, or tried to reassure an increasingly skeptical and angry public that money and real estate were not the reasons for the campaign against the horses.

The dictionaries generally define “impropriety” as immoral or improper behavior, the very behavior the mayor has accused the carriage trade of being so guilty of practicing that it should be banned. The “appearance of impropriety” is the appearance of immoral or proper behavior, even if it is not literally true. In civic ethics, this is taken seriously, because the damage to public faith and trust is the same, whether the immoral conduct occurred or not.

The appearance of propriety is essential to the functioning of government in a free society, because trust is the reason we obey laws and regulations and accept our obligations as citizens.

I am not in the mayor’s head, I can’t say what his motives are. It is his job to explain them openly and honestly. That has not happened. It is his job to represent the carriage drivers, not just the animal rights activists who give him money.

The public needs to trust the government, or it becomes increasingly difficult for the government to function.

I talked to a judicial and political ethicist at the Hoftstra University Law School yesterday and I asked him how the mayor ought to have responded to this.

“First,” he said, “the mayor should have understood that the taking of so much money tainted his role in this dispute, a judge would have had to recuse himself, the mayor could have and should have said, “I’m compromised, I’m not in a position to judge this issue fairly and I will bring in outside sources to reassure the public and help reach a fair and balanced decision.” There are plenty of equine experts to turn to. There is really no way an ethical jurist or political leader would take so great an amount of money  and then presume to be fair and impartial. The money taints everything, it is the embodiment of the appearance of impropriety.”

The mayor had an easy way out, said the ethicist, he could have turned to one of the many veterinarians and behaviorists with expertise who are available, and agreed to abide by their decision or  recommendation. He didn’t have to blindly, and as it turns out, foolishly, embrace only one side. That further undermined the appearance of fairness. It is also the behavior of an ideologue, not a political leader.

The ethicist added that the problem arises not from taking the money, which is lawful, but in pretending it has no influence on his decisions. That, said the professor, is where the impropriety appears.

It is one thing to be targeted by a city authority, it is quite another to be targeted for reasons one believes are  corrupt and immoral, or to be targeted without any clear or moral justification or input.

Last summer, the mayor sought to ban the carriage trade outright. This effort failed. The mayor, already blind to this appearance of impropriety, has gone ahead again and sought to shrink and some say, cripple, the carriage trade by asking the City Council to pass legislation that would so restrict the carriage trade in different ways that most owners and drivers would go out of business or lose their jobs. If the bill passes, most of the carriage horses would be forced out of the city, the stables would have to be sold,  the trade would be prohibited from operating on the crowded city streets where they have operated for hundreds of years.

They would, in effect, behind a small Central Park tourist attraction. The restrictions would take effect before there is any place for them to go, any new stables for them to work out of.

Now, the mayor is adding a provision that would give the City Council members a 30 per cent increase in pay, a raise they would vote on the same day they vote on the carriage trade restrictions. Again, to the public it seems like an outright bribe: no carriage trade bill, no raise.

In the context of propriety and its appearance, this was a stunning move to me, and many others. It looks so much like a bribe, it seems an utterly immoral and unacceptable thing to do, whatever the true motives behind it. It embodies the whole idea of appearing to act improperly.

There are many good reasons for the members of the City Council Transportation Committee to reject this latest assault on a popular and profitable private industry. The horses are safe and well cared for, they pose no danger to the health and safety of people in the city. If they council cripples the industry and takes a giant pay raise on the same day, they will be doing the same thing the mayor has been doing: undermining the very idea of a government that exists to protect us, not harm us.

It is a frightening idea to think any private group or citizen can be targeted in this way by anyone with a lot of money.

Beyond saving the horses and saving job, the council can sent a very powerful message to increasingly disillusioned people that government might be messy and cumbersome, it might be a necessary evil, but it can work, it can function fairly and openly. We’ll see on Friday. I believe in government, I think the City Council will do the right thing, the outcry is becoming deafening, louder by the day.

Sadly, the messages  I am receiving have gotten angrier, more cynical by the day. The real issues here – the future of animals, the welfare of the horses, the purpose and reach of government, the integrity of the regulating process – have already been lost. The mayor is creating a whole new subset of angry and bitter people who believe nothing he says, and credit him with no integrity of sincerity of any kind.

This does not just damage him, it does not just endanger the horses and put many people out of work, it damages everyone. If  they can do it to one of us, they can do it to all of us.

 

 

 

The Carriage Horse controversy in New York has always spoken to me of the need for a new and wiser and more truthful understanding of animals. Since World War II, 90 per cent of Americans have left farms and rural life – and the world of domesticated animals – to work and live in cities, the world of domesticated pets.

They have lost touch with the natural world, and with the world of animals.

There are two truths in conflict in New York. One view sees the horses as helpless, unable to speak in any way, at the mercy of utterly immoral and dishonest human beings.

The other truth sees then as healthy, content and unusually well cared for. The conflict is about which truth prevails. It is significant that the first truth is believed – without question or contradiction – by the city’s mayor. Two thirds of the city’s residents believe the second truth.

The people in New York City who are seeking to cannibalize the carriage trade and drive the horses out of New York believe that the horses are dumb, helpless and vulnerable. They believe (most, not all of them) that it is cruel for horses to pull carriages and that it is especially inhuman for horses to be working in New York City, going to and from their work on crowded and congested streets and breathing air polluted by cars. Given the choice of reducing the number of cars in the city, or reducing the number of horses, he city is seeking to move a certain number of horses into new stables in Central Park and banning them from the rest of the city forever.

If you have followed the controversy for any length of time, or seen the City Council hearings on the fate of the horses last Friday, you will have seen two strikingly different versions of truth regarding the horses. People may be forgiven for being confused, they hear the horses are safe and healthy and then read horror story after horror story online  and in press conferences of horses being abused, tortured, worked to death. In our world, truth is elusive, facts seem to belong to the loudest voices sometimes, not necessarily the most truthful.

I have been living with animals, studying them, writing about them, reading about them, talking to trainers and behaviorists and veterinarians, written nearly a dozen books about them over the course of more than 15 years. I am by  no means the most knowledgeable person about horses or any other animal, but I am aware of those who are knowledgeable and studied them closely. I believe in science, I believe in the value and integrity of veterinary care, I devour the books and journals of behaviorists and biologists and researchers and animal lovers.

It is my work, and to some extent, my life.

I can’t tell you what to believe or who to believe,  I don’t do that. I can only tell you what I believe, and you must transcend all of the arguments and bluster and outrage and accusation and corruption and self-interest to rise above it and make up your own mind. That is the job of the citizen or the animal lover, that is how it’s supposed to work.

I do not believe the horses are stupid, weak or vulnerable. Horses have lived and worked with humans for thousands of years. I have been to the New York stables a dozen times to see for myself, I have read the reports of scores of well-qualified vets and trainers who have done the same. I know many horse lovers and talk with them often. I  have a horse living on my farm, the second one to live here.

The animal rights movement often claims to speak for the horses. But horses can very clearly speak for themselves, just not in our words. It is very simple to spot a depressed or sick horse. You can tell by the coat, their eyes, their tail, the way they hold their head, they noises they make, the way they eat their food, hold their ears, the way they relate to people and being touched. It is not a sign of sadness for a horse to lower his head, it is a sign of calm.

It is not a sign of lameness for a horse to life – cock – a rear leg. It is a sign of safety and contentment. Abused and depressed animals are quite easy to recognize. So are healthy and well cared for animals. The much-monitored and regulated carriage trade has every reason in the world to keep their horses healthy and content, they have no reason to abuse them.

Working horses are not harassed or discouraged or exhausted by work. Like my border collies, they live to work, it is bred in their genes. They live to work with people and attach to them powerfully. Except in the most extreme weather conditions, it is never depressing or pitiful for working horses to work, or for working dogs or elephants to work. Every trainer will tell you that the cruelty comes when horses are ignored or abandoned on farms or rescue facilities, left to do nothing but eat and drop manure. Those are the ones to pity.

(For the record, so are the nine billion animals suffering in vast industrial factory farms, in many cases in horrible conditions. The demonstrators in New York might do well to take a weekend off from harassing the children riding in the carriages and bus on up to a factory farm and draw attention to the animals who really are being abused, do not get fresh food five weeks of vacation, exercise, attention and loving care.)

This idea of the horses as being pitiful and suffering is a human projection of our own needs and desires onto animals. We do it all of the time, especially to dogs. More than 300,000 dogs are now on daily medication for anxiety and depression, our latest mass projection of our human emotional garbage onto them. Now, we want to do it to the horses, moving them into lifeless ghettos without purpose or sending them to slaughter so we can feel good about ourselves. They are not us, they are not like us. That is the new understanding we need to face and fight for.

Since most of us know nothing about horses or other domesticated animals any longer, and they can’t speak to us in words, it is the simplest thing for us to project our own hurts and fears and emotions onto them. When the animal rights people speak of the horses, it is always to describe them as sad and suffering, helpless and victimized. When the speak of the carriage drivers, it is always to describe them in the most vulgar and ugly ways – drunks, thugs, abusers, torturers, greedy and uncaring, scheming and dishonest.

This is the first step in the de-humanization process, make the victims so despised and vilified it becomes easy to destroy and abuse  them.

In this version of the horse is always suffering, the person is always immoral and reprehensible. The horses are always being injured and maimed and killed, the people who own them are always hiding it, no matter what they say, or the police say, or the inspectors say. This truth is absolute and unwavering.

There is no balance or nuance, a warning sign for those sincerely seeking truth. There are always greys, of course,  the world is not black and white. Every horse is not adored, every carriage driver is not a saint. Things happen, to people and to horses – sickness, death, greed and bad fortune.  It is not the whole truth, it is not the point. In New York, it seems clear the horses fear much better than many people. This is the toll on our lives, this is the toll for their lives.

In New York, 55,000 people have no homes. In New York, every horse has food and shelter. Every horse has a home.

Most horses in nature, or on farms live hard and short lives. Horses in the wild – there are virtually no horses left in the wild – suffer terribly from vicious competition within the herd, diseases, a shortage of food and water, exposure day and night to the elements, hunters, predators, injury, the complete lack of medical care. Without work, they are hunted and slaughtered.  Many horses in nature are found starved to death, or ravaged by wolves, or killed by competitors in their herd. Many die of the many diseases that abound in nature, and from the absence of any care.

Horses without work are in grave peril in America. More than 160,000 were sent to often brutal slaughter in Mexico and Canada last year alone. Scores of Asian elephants will soon join them in the name of loving animals and giving them the right to die. Horses and other animals without work are without protection in our culture. A carriage horses who works in New York for five years is luckier than the tens of thousands of horses who are packed onto trailers and have nails drilled into their heads.

Horses in nature do not live longer or as long as carriage horses. There are no inspections by vets, no city regulations, no people to care for them. Working horses like the carriage horses have never lived in nature, they are too big and hungry to survive there. They have been bred to work and carry loads and pull carriages with people, they have never lived any other way and could not survive any other way.

Every horse trainer, owner, vet or behaviorist I have read about or spoken with – there are many – has told me the same thing. Working horses in the carriage trade are the lucky ones.

The horses in New York are not unsafe, none have been killed in traffic accidents in modern recorded history, four have been injured in accidents (three killed) in the past 30 years.

The mayor and the animal rights groups in New York City have chosen only to believe the First Truth, they will not consider any other: The horses can only be seen through the prism of abuse. If you talk to any of the animal right demonstrators in New York or any of the leaders of the animal rights groups, you will find that few, if any, have ever ridden a horse, or lived with animals who are not dogs or cats.

They seem drawn to emotionalizing animals and identifying them as victims, even when they are not. I can’t say without further examination what their issues are, but I can report that a psychiatrist who works with patients at Bellevue Hospital in New York and has studied the animal rights movement believes that most of the volunteers and demonstrators are so angry and dogmatic because they have suffered some kind of abuse and mistreatment in their lives and are quick to project their anger and suffering onto the horses and  especially onto the mostly male carriage drivers. Invariably, they see as being evil and utterly without moral values.

“I haven’t examined the horses, I am not a vet,” she said, “but I am comfortable saying that kind of anger and rigidity is most often a symptom, not a political issue.”

So we all have a choice to make.

I have chosen the Second Truth, as have most New Yorkers, to the surprise of many: The real abuse is in removing the horses from their work and lives, not in keeping them there. The horses are happy, well-cared for and content. A hundred experts have come to New York to study them in recent years, every one of them has reached that conclusion.

That is also my conclusion, my belief. My truth.

If you really love a horse, get to know them a bit, and I believe you will see what I have seen and believe what I have come to believe: the horses belong in New York, there are among our last connections to nature, a symbol of our humanity and willingness to sacrifice cars and traffic and money for animals that have served us for thousands of years and can serve us for thousands more if we will only let them be and stop dumping our shit onto them.

I hope the City Council rejects the mayor’s proposal to remove the horses from the streets of New York and turn them into a tourists-only  exhibit in Central Park, like the carousel or children’s zoo. The carriage  trade is popular, well-regulated, successful and independent. I hope they stay that way, for the sake of the drivers, but also for the sake of the horses.

The carriage trade has pulled off something that is nearly unprecedented: they are keeping domesticated animals in a big city, treating them well, keeping them safe, keeping them among people who badly need to see them. And earning money, helping the environment and paying taxes, They are a powerful antidote to the greed and development that so many people say is choking the life out of New York. I believe the horses need to stay where we can all see them and know them and love them.

My truth.

A long-time carriage driver – he is the son of Irish immigrants who came to America and chose a life with the horses in Central Park – e-mailed me last night and asked me this: “what do you think a victory for the carriage trade would be in this city right now? What would it look like? What would it mean?”

A good question perhaps the very best one to ask at this point in the life of the horses and the people who live and work with them. Right now, two elements are defining victory, controlling the dynamic and future over this struggle: the mayor and the Teamsters Union.

The mayor has been honest, if nothing else, about his idea of victory. He wants to ban the carriage trade from the city and remove every one of the horses from New York. Whatever his true motives – I do not live inside of his head – the mayor says he believes horses do not belong in New York at all in 2016. Since taking a boatload of money from animal rights political workers, he has never wavered.

He says this idea does not apply to the mounted police horses who, he says, do belong in the city. Just because.

The Teamsters have come to define victory differently. For them, victory is a stables in Central Park, some jobs saved, providing they can get the city to agree to more horses and longer hours and fewer restrictions.

The carriage trade, battered, exhausted, nearly broke and confused does not have single clear or cohesive goal. They are somewhat dependent on the Teamsters for that right now. They just want to survive and be left alone. They are fighting to exist, not to win. Easy for me to say, fighting is stressful, expensive and uncertain.

But victory is not the same as surviving. It depends.

I believe they could win. I believe there is a new social awakening and there are many more people out there eager to help and support them if they would choose to define victory in a broader and more dramatic way. The mayor is intensely unpopular with many New Yorkers, the carriage drivers are an appealing rallying point to challenge a mayor who claims to be progressive but is not.

The carriage driver is the only person in the city who has asked me to define my idea of victory, so I am on my own and willing to oblige. Moving to Central Park is not, to me, a victory. It is a marginalized and trivialized existence of dependence, it puts the proud trade at the utter mercy of the man who is most determined to destroy them. It makes them a ward of the city, and no one in New York seems to like being a ward of the city.

That does not sound like victory to me.

For me, victory would be totally rejecting the “agreement in principle” with the mayor to move the carriage trade into Central Park, and demanding that the City Council  reject it. The Teamsters claim it isn’t really a deal anyway, so why not call it off and start again?  The council members were appalled at the poor presentation the mayor’s staff made on Friday. A good time to strike back. A few more disastrous hearings with the mayor’s staff and they could very well win this round before it even starts. The public is stirred up again and paying attention, another golden moment of opportunity for the carriage trade.

The mayor is strong, but he has shown his Achilles heel.  The horses seem to have  his number, his own blind fanaticism is pulling him down. He has no cause here, his crusade is not just or rational. It has never made any sense, and makes no sense now. In an interview with Dana Rubinstein of Politico, Peter Singer, whose book “Animal Liberation” helped launch the animal rights movement, said the mayor’s focus on the carriage trade was misplaced, the urgent problem facing animals is their horrific lives on industrial factory farms.

The carriage horses, he said, are “no big deal.” It seems every time the mayor seeks to drive the horses away, people’s love for them grows. A rational politician would stay away from that.

The city’s three papers are also aroused right now, pummeling the mayor almost daily over his arrogance and dishonesty the gross violation of his sworn oath to represent all of his citizens, not just those who write big checks to his campaign. The people in the carriage trade are getting savvier by the day on social media, they are everywhere now online,making their case, showing happy horses rather than the tortured and abused images the animal rights people have been putting up for years.

Victory would be for the trade to maintain its independence and to refuse to be a ward of the state, living in stables taxpayers had to pay for when they have their own.

Victory would mean refusing to surrender one single driver, one single stableman, one single horse to what was essentially a bribe, not a public interest.

Victory would mean asking the public for support, not for government money, The carriage trade is making money, they are a viable business, they own valuable property, they have supporters all over the country. They ought to reject living off the public trough – that will just cause the public to resent them – and demand that they be given the right as free men and women to be free to take care of themselves.

Which they have been doing for 150 years, and are doing still. This is not an industry in distress, it is only an industry that has been unfairly targeted by people who seem to have no idea what they are talking about.

Victory would mean a court decision protecting the right of good and hard-working people to live the lives they choose and keep their traditions and way of life. Victory would be a decision protecting all of us from the notion that a single millionaire and a mayor with his hand out can harass us, disrupt our lives and frighten our families,  take our work and freedom and property away, and send the animals we love into peril for no discernible reason or public interest. In fact, in arrogant defiance of the public will.

Victory would be getting a judge to say they can use as many horses as they want, ride them wherever there is a need, work day or night, so long as the horses are rested, safe and healthy. The carriage trade has figured out how to do this. They are not in need of saving by the city government, the same city government that has vowed to destroy them.

Victory would be for the very skilled lawyers the trade has retained – Ron Kuby and Norman Siegel- to go to court to protest the  almost certainly unconstitutional assault against a profitable and law-abiding and popular industry. And in seeking an  injunction stopping an overreaching mayor from enacting new and crippling rules before they can take effect, or before there is any new home for the horses chosen or built.

Victory would be keeping all of the horses in New York City and adding more, and bringing them to the poor as well as the rich. This means finding new and even safer ways for them to live. Car free horse lanes, for one thing, stables in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, access to certain parks,  and development deals for  new stables in Manhattan. The NYPD has a spanking new stables underneath a new car dealership just blocks from the carriage horse stables, the owners of the building and the horses and police officers are all happy and healthy. Perhaps the owners of the carriage horse stables could  also sell air rights, as so many other businesses and institutions have in the city.

Perhaps an honest city government or private real estate consultants would work out a deal similar to the one the NYPD negotiated – the new stables in exchange for the land rights.

West Side real estate values are soaring, similar deals have been negotiated all over New York. A small library in Brooklyn sold it’s air rights in exchange for a modern new building, it will rebuild, survive and thrive there smack in the middle of a booming real estate market. I can be done, it is done all the time in the city.

Victory would mean demanding that the city recognize the importance of keeping domesticated animals in the city and guaranteeing their safety. It is the responsibility of the city government to make the horses safe, not drive them away. They are working to make bicyclists safe in New York, and joggers and pedestrians. Since the horses are already the safest form of public transportation in the city by a shockingly  wide margin, it should be a relatively simple task.

Victory would mean rejecting the idea – already accepted by the Teamsters and the carriage trade as inevitable – that the horses do not belong anywhere but in the park. I do not believe that is inevitable. If there were a different mayor, no one would even be discussing it.

This idea of retreating to the park is false and elitist. It is a form of defeat all its own.

Every borough and neighborhood in the city could benefit from having carriage horses and stables, not just tourists flying in from London. Ordinary people love to see horses, they have been with people in cities for thousands of years. Children love to touch them and learn about animal life from them.  They have helped to build our cities, they lift up the spirits of people, they can do valuable therapy work, they can move people,  help the lives of the handicapped,  haul goods and produce without adding carbon to the atmosphere or making loud noise.

Victory means recognizing that the horses connect us to nature, they are one of the few and most powerful remaining symbols of the natural world and of the great work people and animals have done together building our life on the earth. We are all part of nature, the horses have been our partners and seek to remain with us.

It is a travesty to break this tradition for no other reason than the celebration of greed and money and the surrender of our lives to cars and trucks and real estate developers, which kill more people and ruin more lives every day than horses have ever done or could ever do.

We are a reflection of the horses, they are a reflection of us. What happens to them, happens to us. They should not be further ghettoized, as the animal rights movement suggests, and confined to one building in the great park. They should live everywhere people live, safely and in partnership and service and love.

If the horses move to the park (and most are sent away) most of the children in New York City will never see them, know them, touch them.  That is an incalculable loss.

Perhaps the mayor could propose housing himself and all of the real estate developers and animal rights activists in the park and promise them new and renovated places in which to live at taxpayer expense. I see it as a kind of Hunger Games, they could fill the park with people watching; Greed versus Hate. They could all eat one another and radically improve the cultural and environmental life of the city, as well as its noise and pollution levels, and actually save countless jobs and horses and other animals.

That would be victory for me.

Barring some short of shock or miracle, the City Council is considered almost certain to pass the mayor’s noxious new bill, which would decimate the carriage trade, destroy many jobs and force many drivers to send their horses away and into peril.  The mayor’s legislation is now widely understood to be another effort to ban the horses, just a sneakier and even more dishonest one, if that is even possible.

The people in the carriage trade say the bill could destroy their business and way of life. Their elected leaders don’t care.

Is there good news here? Yes, absolutely, the stable owners and drivers are furious, they are awakening, and beginning to stand in their truth.

The time for angry e-mails and letters to the editor and social media debates is passing.

It is now, and after all, time to fight. It is a moment many knew had to come.

And if you have ever met a stable or horse owner or carriage driver, you know it will be one hell of a fight, and only a foolish or blind man (maybe a mayor) would think it hopeless. These people love to fight, and they know how.

A healthy, popular, profitable and law-abiding industry appears on the verge of being drastically downsized and threatened because a real estate developer who is also an animal rights activist gave the mayor a truckload of money to run healthy, safe and much loved horses out of the city.

No one has put forth any other valid reason to cripple the carriage trade in this way. This is a manufactured crisis, it is not real. The horses are well cared for and safe.

Yesterday, the animal rights groups that had bitterly opposed the mayor’s bill because it didn’t ban the horses outright, suddenly found religion and decided they would enthusiastically support the bill, which would move the horses into Central Park, reduce their hours and the number of horses (and even the hours the carriages themselves could be on the street). If ever the fix was in, here it is.

I wonder how the mayor and the animal rights groups justify the idea that a business they say is immoral, inhumane and abusive to animals should be moved to Central Parka and kept on forever, even in reduced form?

This is a marriage made in hell, a coalition of convenience that smells far worse than any horse stable. What binds them is this: they are assertively ignorant about horses, reject science and expertise, are abusive of people, and dislike democratic process.

The city says it will spent more than $20 million to renovate former stables in the middle of Central Park to make room for only 75 horses. There are many hoops to jump through before that could possibly happen. The restrictions on the carriage trade would go into place long before any stables could or would be built, if they are really to be built at all.  The carriage trade would die from a thousand cuts, not just one.

More and more, the legislation appears to be a trap. The public, whose money will be spent to build a new stable in the park have been excluded from the process and kept out of the closed door meetings and secret plans.

The new landlord for the carriage trade would be the city’s most powerful politician, who has promised to ban the industry altogether as soon as he can. Would you move your family into a home like that?

For me, from my somewhat removed perspective, there is a silver lining in this cloud.

Some carriage trade leaders have long wanted to go to court to stop the extra-legal campaign against them. Very few of the drivers and owners would agree. This is a conservative, cautious and somewhat insular group of people. They seemed to hang onto the idea that there was someone reasonable to negotiate with. Maybe for too long.

But the thing with legal action is this: You can’t go to court to stop a false accusation, you have to wait until something is done. You can’t stop an illegal behavior that hasn’t occurred. Now, that is happening, the dynamic is changing, and when the knobby-kneed members of the City Council pass this bill, they are paving the way to the courthouse.

Now, there is no choice but to go to court, and I am no lawyer, but I know some lawyers, and I am optimistic a judge will come to see that these new regulations are not rational, as the law requires, and that the city has no legitimate interest in forcing this arbitrary and clearly punitive regulations down the throats of the city, it’s people, and the carriage horse owners and drivers.

A successful and well -known attorney in New York acknowledged to me that lawsuits are never easy or predictable, “but this is a very strong case, they are seeking to take apart an industry that is law-abiding, profitable and popular, and for very dubious reasons. This is a good case to try.”

I’ve talked to several people close to the politics of the story, and they all say the notoriously weak City Council will almost certainly pass the mayor’s bill. The hearings scheduled to begin Friday at 10 a.m. are a charade, the mayor did his wheeling and dealing back in December, and this seems to be a done deal. Lots of good people will stand in the cold and wait in line to speak to politicians who aren’t listening.

It is easier for the council members to hide behind this disguised ban than an obvious one.

The mayor’s actions seem arrogant, unjust and indefensible. It is not easy to go to court,  good lawyers are always reluctant to do it. The carriage trade has two good lawyers, Norman Siegel and Ron Kuby, they are experienced fighters for civil rights and troubled causes. They very often win. I think they will give the mayor some hurting, perhaps even force him to reveal just how much money he took and what for.

If truth and justice matters at all – I believe it does – this is a very strong case. And as importantly, a very just case. The mayor has grossly overreached, hardly anyone credits him with being honest, sincere, fair or knowledgeable in this instance. I imagine this will ultimately tar him and his growing national political ambitions.

My heart goes out to the horses, it is always the animals, who cannot speak for themselves, who suffer first and most. I hope the mayor is held accountable for every horse who dies because the people who say they speak for the rights of animals betrayed them.

Mayor deBlasio  is not only seeking to damage the carriage trade, but he is also undermining the lives of animals everywhere by sending more than 100 safe horses out into peril. These are the luckiest horses in the world. At best, they will end up on farms or rescue preserves, at worst to slaughter. Carriage drivers will be forced to make awful decisions, to choose from among horses they have loved, trained and worked with for years.

Stable-hands, drivers, many others will lose their jobs. Their stables will be forced into sale to real estate developers waiting hungrily in line.

Instead of working to save animals and keep them in our every day lives, the mayor has joined forces with the animal rights movement to drive them away, and for no reason other than to pay off a campaign debt. I am eager for the day the mayor has to account in detail for what he has done.

I’m sorry to see the carriage trade endure more harassment and suffering, yet I can’t say I am sorry to see this issue headed to the courts. If there is to be any rational solution or justice to this, it will come from a judge, not from the elected leaders of the city. This was the inevitable outcome, there were never any rational or well-meaning people for the carriage trade to deal with.

I believe the horses and the carriage trade will now get their long overdue day in court. I believe the time for impassioned e-mails, pleading Facebook posts and angry letters to the editor – valuable and important – is over.

I’m not going down to New York City for the council hearings.  I’m saving my energy and my pennies for legal fee contributions.

There won’t be any justice for the horses or the people in the carriage trade from the mayor, his supporters in the animal rights movement, or his toadies in the City Council.

Time to let go.

Time for court.

It is now clear that there is no agreement on the mayor’s proposal to shut down the carriage trade and move some horses to a stable in Central Park that may or may not be built. The Teamsters Union and the carriage trade oppose it in the bill’s current form. You can get a full explanation here.

There has been a tremendous amount of confusion and conflict- a lot of intense and internal politics –  but that has morphed into a common realization that the mayor is simply trying to ban the carriage horses in a back room and indirect way. If the bill passes the way it is written, the carriage trade will be gone.

Last night, the mayor told reporters it is still his hope and intention to ban the carriage horses, which he says he believes do not belong in the city, even in the park. It is not clear why anyone would submit to being dependent on someone who is openly determined to destroy them.

I think there are many people in the trade and the Teamsters Union who like the idea of stable in the park, but not if it means that the carriage trade will be nibbled to death by all kinds of restrictions and curbs, by peckerheads, toothless ducks and midgets.

The restrictions that mayor insists go into effect immediately would double the work load of the remaining horses, drastically reduce the income of the drivers, remove the horses from their historic 59th st stands and put many part-time drivers stablehands and others out of work.

The drivers have put up a help page which spells out the various ways in which people can help.

A hearing is scheduled in the City Council for 10 a.m. Friday, the public and attend and testify if they wish and live in or near New York City. It will be loud, crowded and chaotic there. I am trying to figure out if I can get down there, I have to check the trains, and there’s a good sized storm kicking around Friday evening and I’m not sure if I can even get in. I’m looking into it, I’d love to go. The hearing is expected to last all day.

The opposition to this bill is now fierce and growing,  my wish is that the mayor gets drubbed on this issue once more.

The public has generally been shut out of this process, we are all just beginning to understand what has happened. Many of the drivers are still confused about it.

The people of New York seem committed to keeping the horses and the public-at-large seems better educated about the reality of the horse’s lives than before, the animal rights movement is no longer the only source of information about them.

Many people are writing me saying that they are discouraged that the survival of the horses has come up again, but this will be a long struggle. The more I know about this legislation, the less likely I think it is to pass in this form. But this conflict has been a long time in the making and will continue for a long time. It will require patience, clarity and a massive re-education of the public about what the real lives and needs of animals are like – no matter what the City Council does or doesn’t do.

Many of you have helped and can help now, whether you live in New York City or not. The help page will tell you how. And thanks.