Category: Goobermint

Sorting for Stupidity?
Thoughts on the state of the federal government.

Is the federal government sorting for stupidity?

I had this thought when I was out for beers with an old friend, who’s a former Senior Executive Service bureaucrat with the federal government.  He was remarking that in the old days of Washington, say up through the 1960s or maybe the 1970s, being a senior federal bureaucrat was a plum job, and often even paid more than working in the private sector.

That was also a time when Washington, D.C. was a comparatively sleepy town where a senior civil servant’s salary was plenty to allow a nice house in the suburbs and meals at the best restaurants (such as they were) that Washington had to offer.

Now, however, you can make much more money outside the government, trying to influence it, than you can make inside the government, trying to do your job.  The result is a steady movement of the smartest people out of government.  That of course tends to mean that the people who remain are, well, not the smartest. (There are plenty of exceptions on both sides of this, of course, but  the overall impact is as described.)

The reason why it’s so lucrative to influence the federal bureaucracy now is that the federal bureaucracy is sweeping and powerful.  You would be a fool – as Microsoft learned in the 1980s and 1990s when it bragged about not having a DC office – not to try to influence it, if only out of self-protection.  Back when the federal government was much smaller, say in the 1940s, 1950s, and even the 1960s, there was less call to influence it, and so the opportunities for people to earn big salaries by moving from administrating to lobbying were much less.  But that changed.

This happened in the early 1970s, during the Nixon Administration.  Despite (because of?) Nixon’s conservative reputation, his administration saw an explosion of federal regulatory power, to the point where those years are known among scholars of administrative law as the “regulatory explosion.”  New agencies like the EPA and OSHA were created, new statutes  like the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, OSHA Act, etc., were passed, and existing agencies were given – or simply assumed – much farther-reaching powers.

As Jonathan Rauch notes in his classic book, Demosclerosis, in 1929 the federal government made up about three percent of the U.S. economy.  Now it’s closer to twenty-five percent.

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Goobermints and Bureaucraps didn’t listen because there was just too much of an opportunity presented for them to grab whatever power they could to increase their control over the populace.

The Prophets: D.A. Henderson. Years before Covid, the scientist credited with eradicating smallpox warned against shutting down the world to combat an epidemic.

In 2006, ten years before his death at the age of 87, the legendary epidemiologist D.A. Henderson laid out a plan for how public health officials should respond to a major influenza pandemic. It was published in a small journal that focused mainly on bioterrorism—and was quickly forgotten.

As it turns out, that paper, titled “Disease Mitigation Measures in the Control of Pandemic Influenza,” was Henderson’s prescient bequest to the future. If we had followed his advice, our country—indeed, our world—could have avoided its disastrous response to Covid.

This month marks the four-year anniversary of lockdowns on a global scale. And though the pandemic has passed, its consequences live on. The lockdowns embraced by the U.S. public-health establishment meant that millions of young people had their education and social development disrupted, or left school for good. Mental health problems rose substantially. So did incidents of domestic violence and overdose deaths.

It didn’t have to be that way.

Last year, Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health during the pandemic, said at a conference, “If you’re a public health person, you have this narrow view of what the right decision is. . . . you attach infinite value to stopping the disease and saving a life. You attach zero value to whether this actually totally disrupts people’s lives [or] ruins the economy. This is a public health mindset.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to the president during much of the pandemic, was asked in the fall of 2022 whether he regretted his advocacy of lockdowns. He said, “Sometimes when you do draconian things, it has collateral negative consequences. . . on the economy, on the schoolchildren.” But, he added, “the only way to stop something cold in its tracks is to try and shut things down.”

It’s no secret that Fauci’s draconian recommendations did nothing to stop the virus, nor did closing schools save children’s lives. And the idea asserted by Collins and Fauci that public health is about a single metric—stopping a disease, no matter the unintended consequences—was an inversion of the principles espoused by D.A. Henderson. 

Public health, as Henderson knew well, is very much about the entire health of society. A lifetime of watching people react to pandemics had taught him two essential things.

First, there were limits to what can be done to stop one. As Dr. Tara O’Toole, a close colleague and one of his three co-authors on that 2006 paper told me, “D.A. kept saying, ‘You have to be practical, and you have to be humble, about what public health can actually do, especially over sustained periods. Society is complicated, and you don’t get to control it.’ ” (While the paper dealt with influenza, its lessons applied to what we faced with the novel coronavirus.)

Second, Henderson believed in targeted protection for the ill and medically vulnerable, and that overreacting, in the form of shutting down society, would bring enormous harm that could be worse than the virus. 

Biden’s ‘Trojan Pier’ For Gaza

Five Americans are still being held hostage by Hamas, and Biden has sent no troops to help them, but at the State of the Union address, he promised to send troops to build a pier for Gaza.

The estimated over 1,000 troops will spend as long as 2 months laboring to build a floating pier in a war zone under potential attack to help transfer aid to the Hamas supporters living in Gaza.

Nothing about this plan makes sense.

The media has taken to falsely claiming that the Arab Muslims occupying parts of Gaza are starving. Vice President Kamala Harris attacked Israel, claiming that she had “seen reports of families eating leaves or animal feed.” Social media videos however show the locals gorging themselves on shawarma and other foods in preparation for the Islamic period of Ramadan.

But if the Biden administration really believed that Gazans were starving right now, what would be the purpose of spending two months building a pier to deliver aid? A program with a two month lead time will not help people who are starving right now. It would be a grim joke.

And the pier plan only gets stranger from there.

According to the administration, there will be no ‘boots on the ground’ constructing the pier and according to a Pentagon spokesman, “it will not be U.S. military personnel that are transporting the aid off of the causeway into Gaza.” So who has the trucks and capability to actually do it?

The United States will build a pier for smaller ships to transfer to a temporary causeway. According to the spokesman, the administration is “coordinating with other nations to assist with operating the causeway and distributing aid into Gaza.”

Who are those nations? They’re clearly not Israel or the United States. While the Pentagon spokesman mentions Israel as a partner nation, the Israelis are already able to deliver aid.

The Pentagon spokesman mentioned the UN and nameless “ally and partner nations”.

“Why not just use those existing ports and have Israel look at what’s going through and bring it in? It seems like this is a lot of work for 60 days out when there are people starving, frankly,” a reporter asked.

And the spokesman responded with a confusing word salad because he had no good answer.

The actual answer is that the Biden administration does not actually believe that the Arab Muslim occupiers in Gaza are starving, let alone starving to death, otherwise it would be doing more than air dropping 11,000 meals and promising to have meal delivery running in 60 days.

The temporary pier setup is about bypassing Israel to provide long term access to Gaza.

While administration officials describe the pier as “temporary”, a senior official also admitted that “we look forward to the port transitioning to a commercially operated facility over time.”

That means it’s not actually meant to be temporary, but a permanent port for the terrorists.

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Undaunted By Court Losses, Cali Lawmakers Push More Anti-Gun Measures

As California’s restrictive anti-gun laws continue to be deemed unconstitutional in the courtroom—the latest being a district court earlier this week striking down the law restricting purchase of handguns and semi-auto rifles to one every 30 days—the state legislature is pushing on, considering even more measures curtailing the rights of lawful citizens.

In recent weeks, courts have struck down a law that permanently denied Second Amendment rights to people who have had felony convictions vacated, set aside or dismissed, and their rights to possess firearms fully restored, a law allowing frivolous lawsuits against the firearms industry and the state’s on-again, off-again ammo background check law. You might think anti-gun legislators in the Golden State would finally back down, but alas they refuse to do so.

Now, California lawmakers are pushing a handful of restrictive measures that would further infringe on citizens’ Second Amendment rights.

Two such measures are scheduled for a hearing in the Senate Public Safety Committee on March 19. SB 1038, by Democrat state Sen. Catherine Blakespear, would cut the amount of time gun owners have to report lost or stolen firearms to 48 hours, down from five days. Such a law would make victims of theft repeat victims if they failed to meet the reporting requirement.

The other measure, SB 902, by Democrat state Sens. Richard Roth and Anthony Portantino, would add “animal mistreatment” to the list of misdemeanors that would result in a 10-year prohibition of firearms possession. Since the measure doesn’t include a clear definition of what is considered “animal mistreatment,” such a law could place California’s lawful gun owners at risk of losing their right to keep and bear arms.

Two other measures are scheduled to be heard by the same committee on April 2. SB 1160, by Sen. Portantino, would require gun owners to re-register their firearms each year and pay a yet-undetermined fee each time they re-register their guns. And SB 1253, introduced by Democrat Senate Majority Leader Lena Gonzalez, would prohibit Californians from possessing a firearm without a valid Firearm Safety Card, with the requirement to renew the card every five years.

But wait, there’s more!

Two other measures are also under consideration, but have yet to be assigned to a committee. AB 3067, by Democrat state Assemblyman Mike Gipson, would force homeowner and rental insurance companies to ask applicants how many firearms they have in their home, along with how and where they are stored. And lastly, SB 53, again by Sen. Portantino, would ban firearm possession in the home unless the firearms are stored in a DOJ-approved locked box or safe that would deny access to anyone other than the owner.

If these measures are passed by lawmakers and sent to the desk of gun-ban advocate and still-presidential hopeful Gov. Gavin Newsom, it’s nearly certain that they will be signed into law. And if they become law, it’s likely we will hear about some of them again when pro-gun advocacy groups take the state to court over these unconstitutional restrictions.

Biden Tries to Take Questions but Staff Cuts Him Off in Bizarre, Troubling Video

That’s when the person on the porch says that they’re going to take some questions. But the Biden staff cut that off very quickly, telling the press that’s it and telling them they have to go back to the bus.

They didn’t want the press there to hear anything or ask anything. That’s crazy.

If he wants to take questions, how can lowly staff shut him down? I think we all know the answer to that question and that’s incredibly troubling when they are controlling things and not supposedly the “leader of the free world.”

This is also on the press, too. They need to do their job and push back against this and report fully on this problem. They did do a little of that on Thursday, pointing out how it appeared the staff was keeping them from hearing everything Biden was saying during the stop.

 

Bidenflation Is Even Worse Than You Think.

It doesn’t take a master’s degree in economics to understand that prices are up in every sector of the economy. The economy under Joe Biden is nickel-and-diming us at every turn, and Americans can see past the smoke and mirrors that the White House is using to try to convince us that everything is fine.

The federal government’s measure of price increases, the Consumer Price Index (CPI), has consistently shown that inflation isn’t going away. The most recent CPI report indicates a 3.2% increase in prices from Feb. 2023 to Feb. 2024. That’s a significant increase, but it only shows the increase over a rolling 12 months.

To get a clearer picture of what Bidenflation looks like, we need to compare prices between now and when Biden took office. That’s what TIPPinsights did, and the results show you that Bidenflation isn’t just worse than the White House wants you to believe — it’s worse than you might have realized.

“We developed the TIPP CPI, a metric that uses February 2021, the month after President Biden’s inauguration, as its base to measure the rate of change,” TIPPinsights explains. “All TIPP CPI measures are anchored to the base month of February 2021, making it exclusive to the economy under President Biden’s watch.”

The rationale is that a year-over-year comparison looks at current prices next to already inflated prices, which masks the effect of inflation over time. The TIPP CPI measures Bidenflation as a whopping 18%. TIPPinsights broke down various sectors of the economy in a similar way that the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) does in its CPI.

Related: Welcome to Nickel-and-Dime Nation

Here’s a sample (emphasis in the original):

Food prices increased by 20.6% under Biden compared to only 2.2% as per BLS CPI, a difference of 18.5 points.

TIPP CPI data show that Energy prices increased by 29.6%. But, according to the BLS CPI, energy prices improved by 1.9%. The difference between the two is a whopping 31.5 points.

The Core CPI measures the price increase for all items, excluding food and energy. In the year-over-year measure, the Core TIPP CPI is 16.5% compared to 3.8% BLS CPI, a 12.8-point difference.

Further, gasoline prices have increased by 29.9% since President Biden took office, whereas the BLS CPI shows that gasoline prices have improved by 3.9%, a difference of 33.8 points.

Americans have noticed these differences in prices. Two recent TIPP polls have shown this phenomenon. One shows that 84% of American adults are concerned about inflation — 51% “very concerned” and 33% “somewhat concerned.” It’s the 25th consecutive month that over 80% of people surveyed have expressed concerns about inflation.

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‘The Purge’ Comes to Pittsburgh

“The Purge” is coming to Pittsburgh between the hours of 3 a.m. and 7 a.m., and if that works out well enough for the city’s criminal class, maybe they’ll expand those hours.

For those not in the know, “The Purge” is a series of dystopian thrillers — the first was decent, but the four sequels proved increasingly unnecessary — set in a near-future United States where, for one night each year, all crime is legal. Whatever it is you want to do, from shoplifting to killing your mother-in-law, it’s all good.

Maybe the changes being made to the Pittsburgh Police Department’s rules and hours aren’t quite that extreme. But from my vantage point, it looks like city officials saw how organized crime rings had taken shoplifting to entirely new levels in under-policed cities like San Francisco and said, “Hold my donut!”

Under the new rules that went into effect at the end of February and were just given nationwide attention by End Wokeness on Twitter/X, there will be no Pittsburgh police at the city’s six police stations between the hours of 3 a.m. and 7 a.m. More ominously, police will no longer respond to calls “that aren’t considered in-progress emergencies,” according to WPXI-11 News. “That means calls like criminal mischief, theft, harassment, and most burglary alarms will all be handled by an ‘enhanced’ telephone reporting unit.”

Just not, you know, by an actual police officer. I don’t care how “enhanced” a telephone reporting unit might be, it’s still just a fancy answering service.

Police Chief Larry Scirotto explained, “We don’t have very many crimes of violence in those periods of time.” Maybe not. But announcing a four-hour window with minimal policing certainly incentivizes criminals to work the overnight shift that police won’t.

“To tell people that you’re not going be protected at certain hours of the day, that doesn’t make any sense to me when I heard it. I don’t know what the rationale of that is, and I think that’s something the chief has to explain,” District Attorney Stephen Zappala told WPXI.

“We are nimble and fluid enough that when one of those emergencies occurs that we respond with rapid deployment with the right amount of personnel to keep the community safe and officers safe,” Scirotto claimed.

While police say they will respond to ongoing emergencies without any cops on call late during late night hours, they also request that you schedule your emergencies during regular business hours from 7 a.m. through 3 a.m.

I’m kidding about the scheduling request. Everything else is true.

On the other hand, it isn’t like anyone has ever depended on the police to respond instantly to an ongoing break-in or violent crime. “When seconds count, the police are minutes away” is an old adage for good reason. What should be only seconds away is whatever weapon you keep (and train with) for home defense.

So maybe the best that can happen is that the worst won’t quite happen. Still, I miss the days when “The Purge” didn’t feel quite so much like non-fiction.

¡Grupos de Autodefensas Comunitaria Para Mi y Tu!

And when the Police won’t, or can’t do their job……

Armed citizen patrols start in Hartford amid violence concerns.

A new controversial armed citizen patrol has launched in Hartford.

Organizers say the people will be legally carrying as they walk around parts of the city where violence has taken a toll.

Though some – including the city’s mayor – are raising concerns about the effort.

In Hartford’s North End on Saturday, a group of people looked to patrol and clean up Garden Street.

“It was important  to come out here because we believe that we have to keep the community safe, keep the community clean. And we’re doing this by being out here for a few hours, clean up the community, pick up the trash,” said Marcus Long, of Hartford.

Garden Street has seen its share of gun violence including a double homicide in February, which is what prompted the push for civilian armed patrols.

“We are legally armed and we are patrolling,” said Cornell Lewis, the founder of the Self-Defense Brigade. “The people on Garden Street came to us and asked us for help.”

While there did not appear to be open carry – which is banned in Connecticut – organizers previously told us those armed would be licensed and have concealed weapons.

They were part of Minister Cornell Lewis’ Self-Defense Brigade.

“We are not vigilantes. We are a group of people that are disciplined and trained. We go to the shooting range,” said Lewis.

The effort faces opposition including from an anti-violence group and the Hartford mayor.

Mayor Arunan Arulampalam wrote in part:
“Our community has seen so much pain and trauma, and what we need is for those who love this city to do the hard work of healing that pain.”

The mayor added that the city did not need people being trained to walk the streets with guns and trying to take the law into their own hands.

Earlier, there was a talk about gun rights including how to get a permit, safe storage and carry and personal use.

The founder of the brigade says they plan to do the patrols a few times a week. “We’ll be patrolling at night. So it’s not just a one-time thing. It’s going to be on a consistent basis,” said Lewis.

Organizers argue the patrols are needed and they have plans to expand them to other parts of the city.

 

Joe Biden Slammed for Evacuating ‘Four Embassies’ During Presidency.

Representative Mary Miller, an Illinois Republican, slammed President Joe Biden on Sunday for evacuating “four embassies” since he took office.

Miller specifically referred to the U.S. embassy evacuation in Sudan that happened on Saturday when the Biden administration decided to suspend operations at its embassy amid the ongoing fight between rival Sudanese leaders on the ground.

The ongoing conflict has broken out between two military forces, including one led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the other led by his former deputy, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the leader of a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The dispute centers around a proposed move to a civilian-led government and how the RSF would integrate into the national army. The RSF wants to delay the integration for 10 years, but the army said it should take place in 2 years.

Sudan has been controlled by generals since both military factions participated in a joint effort to oust President Omar Hassan al-Bashir in 2019.

“Joe Biden has had to evacuate FOUR embassies in less than 3 years. The media said Biden & Blinken were ‘experts’ and ‘the adults are back in charge.’ The world has been on FIRE since their disaster in Afghanistan. Pray for our country & the 16,000 Americans Biden left in Sudan,” Miller wrote on Twitter on Sunday.

In addition to Sudan, the United States has also suspended embassy operations in Afghanistan after withdrawing its troops in August 2021 and in Ukraine when Russia invaded the Eastern European country last February. However, the embassy in Ukraine reopened last May. The U.S. has also suspended operations in Belarus—whose President Alexander Lukashenko is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin—due to “security and safety issues stemming from the unprovoked and unjustified attack.”

Meanwhile, Undersecretary of State for Management John Bass said on Saturday that temporarily shutting down the embassy in Sudan was “the only really feasible option for us in this case,” according to CNN.

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Why Will Daniel Penny Still Stand Trial When Hochul Has to Send in Natl Guard?

Daniel Penny’s attorney, Thomas Kenniff, said it was past time to address New York City’s crime problem on its subways after Gov. Kathy Hochul deployed the National Guard to NYC subways this week.

“It’s about time,” Kenniff said on “Fox & Friends” Friday. “I just wish it didn’t take this long for there to be a realization, a recognition among our elected leaders that there’s a crisis that’s going on in the subways of New York City.”

Kenniff’s client, U.S. Marine veteran Daniel Penny, is facing charges in the chokehold death of a homeless, mentally ill man, Jordan Neely, who was yelling violent threats at riders on a New York City subway last year. Penny said he did not intend to kill Neely but was trying to protect women and children who were “terrified” of Neely.

“I don’t know if ‘too little too late’ is the right expression but, ‘better late than never,’ perhaps,” he continued.

This is such a miscarriage of justice.

U.S. Prepares to Take a Long Walk Off Biden’s Short Gaza Pier.

“Embrace the suck” became the NCO’s unofficial motto during the Iraq War and Operation Enduring Freedom as a reminder to enlisted men and women that just because a job was unpleasant, didn’t mean they didn’t have to do it. As our men and women speed towards the Eastern Mediterranean on Presidentish Joe Biden’s hamfisted mission to provide aid and comfort to Hamas, they’ll have to learn to “embrace the stupid.”

How it is stupid? Let us count the ways…

The first and most obvious is that any food or other aid will not go to any starving Arab residents of Gaza. It will go to Hamas. That is how siege warfare has always worked and will always work. If the White House doesn’t know this ancient truth, the Pentagon surely does. Nevertheless, this country will deliver supplies to terrorists.

I can’t think about that too long without wanting to pour myself a coffee mug full of bourbon, so let’s move on to the next bit of stupid we must embrace.

U.S. Central Command announced that, on Saturday, “U.S. Army Vessel (USAV) General Frank S. Besson (LSV-1) from the 7th Transportation Brigade (Expeditionary), 3rd Expeditionary Sustainment Command, XVIII Airborne Corps, departed Joint Base Langley-Eustis en route to the Eastern Mediterranean less than 36 hours after President Biden announced the U.S. would provide humanitarian assistance to Gaza by sea. Besson, a logistics support vessel, is carrying the first equipment to establish a temporary pier to deliver vital humanitarian supplies.”

While that all sounds very impressive on TwitterX, CENTCOM left out one tiny detail: it will take the Besson about 60 days to arrive in the Eastern Med and begin assembling the pier.

That’s two months, for those keeping score at home, and by that time I wouldn’t be surprised if Israel were finishing up operations at Rafah in the south of Gaza.

Also, if you’re a member of Israeli’s war cabinet, you’re looking at likely sites for Biden’s stupid pier, and seriously considering ordering the IDF to take and hold them in the next few weeks. The Gaza coast is only 20 miles long, and the IDF already controls nearly half of it. Taking troops away from the main fighting in the cities to protect the coast will prolong the war — but Biden’s stupid pier will do that anyway.

“What happens if the IDF controls the entire coast by the time we get there?” doesn’t seem to be a question anyone at the White House bothered to ask, even as vital as it is.

Then there are all the practical things that can go wrong with three different armed groups with different goals and methods, all operating in close proximity. The best we can hope is the worst predictions don’t come true.

So maybe Biden’s Operation WTF (or whatever they’re calling it) promises to be a ginormous clusterfark from top to bottom, but hey, at least the White House will have protected its left flank against accusations of supporting Israeli genocide, right?

Wrong.

The White House will quickly learn that there’s no appeasing the cultural Marxists who hate the Jews and call Israel a colonial-settler state.

On second thought, I take that last part back. The White House already knows there’s no appeasing the party’s hardcore lefties. But they’re making an obscenely stupid attempt, regardless, because they lack the imagination and guts to do something intelligent.

And so when faced with doing nothing or doing the stupid thing, these people will pick the stupid thing every time.

Welcome Back Daylight Saving Time

Daylight Saving Time was first implemented in the U.S. with the Standard Time Act of 1918, a wartime measure for seven months during World War I in the interest of adding more daylight hours to conserve energy resources.

“War Time”, full time DST was implemented again during World War II.
After the war, local jurisdictions were free to choose if and when to observe DST until the Uniform Time Act which standardized DST in 1966.

Permanent DST was enacted for the winter of 1974, but there were complaints of children going to school in the dark and working people commuting and starting their work day in pitch darkness during the winter, and it was repealed a year later.

The goobermint isn’t letting all these foreigners in for the good of the nation

Americans Not Buying Gun Control. Instead, They’re Buying Guns.

President Joe Biden is still pushing gun control onto the American people. He’s absolutely convinced the public wants restrictions on our right to keep and bear arms. At least, he’s convinced of that when he can remember what a gun actually is.

Regardless, the president has been pushing it since he started campaigning in 2019, so it’s no surprise that it’s been a point of consistency.

What is surprising is that despite all the studies and polls that try to tell us that the public wants restrictions, they truth is that they’re buying guns like crazy.

The nation’s gun-buying binge remained robust last month amid the Biden administration’s latest plans to cut sales and intimidate customers.

The FBI said it conducted 2,336,390 checks through its National Instant Criminal Background Check System. The National Shooting Sports Foundation, the industry trade group, said that included an estimated 1,343,478 specifically for gun sales.

February was the 55th consecutive month that gun sales approved by the FBI exceeded 1 million. NSSF said the number was likely higher since the FBI count does not include all other legal pathways to obtaining a firearm.

The NSSF’s Mark Oliva said this was likely a reaction to Biden’s efforts to tighten gun control, which isn’t overly surprising.

During the Obama administration, the president was the gun salesman of the year for eight straight years. Biden has been no different.

I’ve long maintained that a lot of people want guns but because these aren’t inexpensive items nor higher ticket goods the whole family will enjoy day in, day out, firearm purchases get put on the back burner. Folks figure there’s always time to get them.

But when someone like Biden comes along and starts to rattle the saber about restricting things, “there’s always time” becomes “I’d better do something while I can.”

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You know what would have been more helpful? Not letting crime get so out of control that you have to deploy the military to keep order in Manhattan on an ordinary Wednesday.

New York Gov Hochul calls in National Guard, state police to help curb crime in NYC subways

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is sending in the state National Guard to New York City to help police curb a surge in crime in the city’s subways.

Announcing a five-point plan on Wednesday, the Democratic governor said she was deploying 750 members of the National Guard to the subways to assist the New York Police Department with bag searches at entrances to busy train stations.

“For people who are thinking about bringing a gun or knife on the subway, at least this creates a deterrent effect. They might be thinking, ‘You know what, it just may just not be worth it because I listened to the mayor and I listened to the governor and they have a lot more people who are going to be checking my bags,'” Hochul said at a news conference in New York City.

The move came as part of a larger effort by the governor’s office to address crime in the subway, which included a legislative proposal to ban people from trains for three years if they are convicted of assaulting a subway passenger and the installation of cameras in conductor cabins to protect transit workers.

The governor’s plan also includes better coordination with district attorneys to help prevent repeat offenders and an additional $20 million for expanding subway outreach programs.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced plans on Tuesday to have more police patrolling the subways as the city attempts to curb a near 20% increase in crime levels during the first two months of 2024 compared to the same period last year, according to NYPD data cited by the New York Post.

There were three homicides in the underground system over January and February, while incidents such as grand larcenies, felony assaults and robberies have also skyrocketed.

On Sunday, a 64-year-old postal worker was kicked onto the tracks at Penn Station in Manhattan, while a 20-year-old woman fought off a man who punched her in the face and tried to rape her in Queens. Last week, a subway conductor was slashed in the neck when he stuck his head out of the cabin window during a stop at a station in Brooklyn.