If you thought Mayor Michael Bloomberg was bad, with his proposed ban on large sodas and other attempts at social engineering, just wait for some of Mayor de Blasio‘s ideas to become law. De Blasio has gained attention for wanting to ban horse-drawn carriages in Central Park because they are “cruel” to the horses. It’s apparently much less cruel to simply send the horses to glue factories, but that’s a leftist for you: it is more important to put people (and creatures) out of work because you don’t think their jobs are dignified than it is to let them work for themselves.
De Blasio says he wants to replace the horses with electric cars. That’s so environmentally thoughtful of him, especially since half of New York’s electricity comes from burning fossil fuels. It might promote global warming, but at least it’s not cruel to horses. Whatever you think of the treatment of horses who live in roomy barns, get a minimum of five weeks of vacation per year, and see their doctors far more frequently than most humans, the point is that de Blasio is going to try to micromanage everything.
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Case in point: de Blasio has appointed Polly Trottenberg as his new transportation commissioner. As undersecretary of transportation for policy, Trottenberg is probably the source of most of Ray LaHood’s crazy ideas about streetcars, livability (=living without cars), high-speed rail, and other transportation issues. New York’s loss is America’s gain.
You gotta love how the mayor thinks he should dictate how businesses operate and what customers want. A King has less hubris. Calling NYC a “plantation” is to be generous, even though the race hatred profiteers meant a different meaning.
If people wanted to be driven around NYC in electric cars, they already are. Whatever drew people to hire the horse drawn carriage, it certainly won’t be the same with an electric car.
And Dan in 3, 2, 1 to leave some sarcastic comment about how Randal’s post provided much-needed laughs, and msetty with a angry post about how he simply cannot understand how everyone would not love to live in Manhattan. He just doesn’t get it!
I agree with the Antiplanners comments hear but think his use of name calling such as “leftist” decreases the quality of his arguments. I found the Antiplanners articles initially fee of this name calling fallacy. At that time his articles could be used directly in discussion over these issues. As soon as articles or arguments start to use name calling it decreases their use in any actual real policy discussions.
I hope that the Antiplanner and others commentators will discontinue name calling or use of vague terms such as “liberal” or “conservative” and instead use reasoned argument with well referenced data. The Antiplanner has great skill in collecting and presenting data and his use of name calling only gives his critics an excuse to dismiss his arguments.
The Antiplanner wrote:
That’s so environmentally thoughtful of him, especially since half of New York’s electricity comes from burning fossil fuels. It might promote global warming, but at least it’s not cruel to horses.
Excellent point.
According to the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) own data, here’s the 2012 fuel mix for electric generation in New York (statewide):
Gas and oil: 37% (I think this is generation that can burn gas or oil for fuel)
Oil: 8%
Gas: 16%
“Other renewables:” 1%
Wind: 3%
Hydro pumped storage: 4%
Hydro: 11%
Nuclear: 14%
Coal: 6%
Stated another way:
Zero emission: 32%
“Other renewables:” 1%
Fossil fuel: 67%
Ooops.
Hydro pumped storage is really energy that has been stored from other sources, but I count it as zero emission above.
Paul wrote:
I hope that the Antiplanner and others commentators will discontinue name calling or use of vague terms such as “liberal” or “conservative” and instead use reasoned argument with well referenced data. The Antiplanner has great skill in collecting and presenting data and his use of name calling only gives his critics an excuse to dismiss his arguments.
Excellent point. I second.
I will join the “no name calling pledge”.
I was wondering why a new mayor of the largest and richest city in the US would bother talking about a tourist ride on the day of his inauguration as that could hardly be a priority in such a city.
It turns out this issue was important to him because the animal rights interest group ran attack ads against the mayor’s opponent, thus providing early and helpful support. In other words, this is all political payback for attack ads. Politics as usual.
I don’t think I would put the word “Leftist” in the category of name calling.
Now something like “right wing wacko” might fit.
I don’t think I would put the word “Leftist” in the category of name calling.
It does if using the word is an attempt to inaccurately categorize someone. Michael Moore is a leftist. Noam Chomsky is a leftist. Barack Obama is a conservative Democrat, far to the right of Franklin D. Roosevelt or even Harry Truman. You’re welcome to use this term describing someone who gives undeserved sympathy to Castro, the late Chavez of Venezuela, or any number of existing or former tinpot “socialist” (sic) dictators in the Third World. “Left wing wacko” isn’t offensive if you’re talking about assclowns such as the Revolutionary Communists and similar extremist ilk.
Now something like “right wing wacko” might fit.
Not if it is an accurate description of a group or individual who buys the Agenda 21 conspiracy nonsense. The John Birch Society and their fellow travelers (sic) come to mind, as do some of the more extreme religious right wingers out there. The Antiplanner, Wendell Cox and similar libertarians are not wackos, though many adherents of stuff like “Austrian Economics,” Ayn Rand or “Bitcoin” are (the latter, who actually believe Bitcoin isn’t the most sophisticated pyramid scheme yet, automated with computers no less).
You forgot Mayor de Blasio, as you wandered off the path.
I’m with Paul, CP and Sandy on this one. I was going to bite and cherry pick horrible policies attempted/implemented by conservative politicians and say “but that’s a right winger for you.” I’ll refrain. I’ll also join the no name calling pledge as long as y’all know I will break it eventually. I’ll do my best though, I promise.
By all means, keep on labeling and calling names. Keep ridiculing. It’s worked so far, but we’re not out yet!
People cite sources of percentages where generation comes from. Do not confuse electricity for energy. Only 39% of the energy used in the US ends up as electricity.
craig:
You forgot Mayor de Blasio, as you wandered off the path.
We’ll see. There is a good chance de Blasio just made a rhetorical payoff to the animal rights types; why didn’t he propose an outright ban on horse-drawn carriages in the entire city, not just Central Park? My guess he’s a political triangulator like Bill Clinton; bringing back Giuliani-era fixtures like Bill Bratton for NYC police commissioner doesn’t fit easily into de Blasio’s “leftist” image.
I’m not much of a conspiracy buff, In fact I wrote a lengthy paragraph on Youtube detracting these stupid conspiracy videos publish online and conspiracy theory in general. But you don’t need to be to look at De Blasio. Anyone young enough to witness the 70’s New York City, the drug, rape, murder capital of America. The city had nightmarish policies and a string of incompetent mayors until Rudy Guiliani who actually did something, he brought the crime rate down, way down, he cleaned the city up. That’s the difference between liberals, progressives and conservatives. Guiliani went after thugs and organized crime; Bloomberg thought our biggest enemy was 32oz soda.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIRdonFjGCg
LazyReader:
…Anyone young enough to witness the 70?s New York City, the drug, rape, murder capital of America. The city had nightmarish policies and a string of incompetent mayors until Rudy Guiliani who actually did something, he brought the crime rate down, way down, he cleaned the city up. That’s the difference between liberals, progressives and conservatives.
My educated guess is that Bratton will still allow the “stop and frisk” program, but it will be toned way down to suit de Blasio’s rhetoric.
As for the “difference between liberals, progressives and conservatives” (sic), it’s been a long time since Reagan and other “conservatives” (sic) cleared out the mental hospitals and created the modern homeless problem, much supplemented these days with the “new generation of homeless” created by “conservative” policies that has locked up many millions of people over the past few decades (with the highest incarceration rate in the world) and basically ignores former inmates after they get out of the “joint.” No wonder there’s a strong nexus between crime and homelessness.
The “homeless” rhetoric is not monolithic. And most of them are not mentally ill, they’re either unfortunate, lazy, drugged out or drunk. Crime does not follow poverty, if that were the case then the Depression era 1930’s should have had the highest murder/robbery/rape rates ever which is not the case. There is another cause or link. Crime doesn’t follow poverty, it follows dense concentrations of poverty. And government is good at concentrating poorer people together.
I agree that “dense concentrations of poverty” contributes to crime. Like where there are large concentrations of homeless people, which is concentrated poverty by definition. This is old news to people in downtown Sacramento, for example, a place I visit once per week for business reasons, and an area with the region’s main concentration of homeless, and petty crime that isn’t the gangbanger variety (that’s South Sacramento and North Sacramento).
msetty
As for the “difference between liberals, progressives and conservatives” (sic), it’s been a long time since Reagan and other “conservatives” (sic) cleared out the mental hospitals and created the modern homeless problem
————————
I always thought the mental hospitals were emptied, because of law suits , to allow the mentally ill to leave and be on their own, because the lawyers thought it was more humane, to live outside of the institutions.
In the early 1970’s when Reagan was California’s governor, several state mental hospitals were closed to reduce the budget. There were some court rulings that hampered committing people, but the Legislature also passed laws making it much harder to do so. By the time Reagan left the governorship, more than half of state mental patients had been “deinstitutionalized” (sic).
An anti-Reagan article on the topic: http://www.salon.com/2013/09/29/ronald_reagans_shameful_legacy_violence_the_homeless_mental_illness/.
Just in case somebody doesn’t realize how crazy the UN Agenda 21 is by itself, here is just the start of 40 pages of unintelligible bureaucrateez. I really can’t call people who object to this less sane than the thousands of government people who actually got paid to write this.
I. Principles
1. Cultural diversity is the main heritage of humanity. It is the product of thousands of years of history,
the fruit of the collective contribution of all peoples through their languages, imaginations, technologies,
practices and creations. Culture takes on different forms, responding to dynamic models of
relationship between societies and territories. Cultural diversity is “a means to achieve a more
satisfactory intellectual, emotional, moral and spiritual existence” (UNESCO Universal Declaration
on Cultural Diversity, article 3), and is one of the essential elements in the transformation of urban
and social reality.
2. Clear political analogies exist between cultural and ecological questions, as both culture and the
environment are common assets of all humanity. The current economic development models,
which prey excessively on natural resources and common goods of humanity, are the cause of
increasing concern for the environment. Rio de Janeiro 1992, Aalborg 1994, and Johannesburg 2002,
have been the milestones in a process of answering one of the most important challenges facing
humanity: environmental sustainability. The current situation also provides sufficient evidence that
cultural diversity in the world is in danger due to a globalization that standardizes and excludes.
UNESCO says: “A source of exchange, innovation and creativity, cultural diversity is as necessary
for humankind as biodiversity is for nature” (UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity,
article 1).
3. Local governments recognize that cultural rights are an integral part of human rights, taking as their
reference the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the International Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights (1966) and the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity
(2001). They recognize that the cultural freedom of individuals and communities is an essential condition
for democracy. No one may invoke cultural diversity to infringe upon the human rights guaranteed
by international law, nor to limit their scope.
4. Local governments are worldwide agents of prime importance as defenders and promoters of the
advance of human rights. They also represent the citizens of the world and speak out in favour of
international democratic systems and institutions. Local governments work together in networks,
exchanging practices and experiences and coordinating their actions.
Me loves me some Ginder twinny-WUN!
DS
LazyReader wrote:
People cite sources of percentages where generation comes from. Do not confuse electricity for energy. Only 39% of the energy used in the US ends up as electricity.
Agreed. Plenty of that energy goes into fuel tanks and is “directly” used, and then there is electric power that gets “lost” between the generating station and the end user of the power.
But in the context that Randal posted (far) above, I think fuel used to generate electric power (and shares for each type of fuel) are a very important part of the discussion.
Especially when electric-powered transportation (usually modes of transportation that run on steel rails – though in the case above it was rechargeable electric motor vehicles) is promoted as using “clean electric” power.
well to planners, out of sight is out of mind.
I’m starting to hear rumors that there is a developer that wants the property that the horses are housed in.
This may be a political pay off to that developer.
As undersecretary of transportation for policy, Trottenberg is probably the source of most of Ray LaHood’s crazy ideas about streetcars, livability (=living without cars), high-speed rail, and other transportation issues.
I doubt it. Secretaries and undersecretaries of transportation are typically political appointees, and as such are rarely a source of new (much less good) ideas. In other words, they don’t make the kool-aid, they just pass it around and consume it in large quantities.