Gotham’s new mayor,
Bill de Blasio, has a “boldly progressive” agenda for the city, but
his first agenda item is perplexing, to say the least. Upon taking
office, he pledged to immediately shut down horse-carriage rides.
Writes Nick Gillespie:
New York is thriving like it hasn’t in decades, but the Big
Apple is still riddled with wormy issues and is always only a few
bad years from the fate of Detroit, Buffalo, and Cleveland. As the
Times noted in its endorsement of de Blasio, 46 percent of New
Yorkers “live in or near poverty” and another 50,000 live in
homeless shelters. Pew Research points
out that the city has funded just 70 percent of its
pension obligations and a miniscule 4 percent of its retiree health
benefits for public-sector workers. De Blasio’s plans for public
schools are still stuck at the rough-draft stage (although
all signs suggest a commitment to screwing over
charter schools that are wildly popular with low-income parents but
the bane of teachers unions and the educational establishment).And yet here’s de Blasio, hell-bent on becoming the Simon
Bolivar of the Mr. Ed crowd. In fact, he’s not just going to free
our four-legged friends. He’s even pledged to “provide a humane
retirement of all New York City carriage horses,” thus loading even
more pension and health-care liabilities on his preferred beasts of
burden, the city’s taxpayers.
from Hit & Run http://reason.com/blog/2014/01/05/is-new-yorks-new-mayor-bill-de-blasio-sh
via IFTTT