Is New York's New Mayor, Bill de Blasio, Shoveling More Manure Than Snow?

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.