Many people, including the New York Times' editorial page editor, found it puzzling that one of New York's leftist mayor Bill De Blasio's first priorities was ridding the city of one of its iconic diversions, the horse-drawn carriages at Central Park. They are simply not cynical enough. No matter how closely a politician may cleave to left wing (even communist) doctrines and personnel, follow the money.

Robert Stacy McCain writes in The American Spectator:

The bad guy in this drama, according to the carriage drivers, is  Steve Nislick, chief executive officer of a New Jersey-based real-estate development company, Edison Properties. The company "employs legions of lobbyists to influence city decisions on real estate and zoning in its favor," journalist Michael Gross reported in 2009, pointing out that two of Edison's businesses "have multiple locations in the same Far West Midtown neighborhood as the stables where the Central Park horses are housed." An anti-carriage pamphlet Nislick circulated in 2008 made this interesting observation: "Currently, the stables consist of 64,000 square feet of valuable real estate on lots that could accomodate up to 150,000 square feet of development. These lots could be sold for new development."

Gross asked the obvious question: "What are the odds that good neighbor Nislick, the out-of-state real estate developer, simply covets those valuable, underdeveloped New York lots -- and has teamed up with ambitious pols to use the emotions of animal rights activists as fuel for their own agendas?" Nislick founded a 501(c)4 group called New Yorkers for Clean, Livable and Safe Streets (NYCLASS) that spent big money to elect de Blasio mayor

Mayor De Blasio of New York City is going to provide a case study in the ways of the ideological left. His supporters are in for as much eye-opening as Obama's. Anyone who thinks leftist ideologues are really just idealists has not observed leftist ideologues in power.