Also media, welcome jac and appen here.
The podcast We're Getting Medication takes like four fucking hours because of a bunch of unbelievable bureaucratic bullshit. I your host Neo Wong, who was asked by by pharmacists today and I quote, have you been pregnant or have there been pregnancies?
So I like, have that being pregnancies? Yeah? That was when I was like, what shooting of human life?
She like, she walks up to the thing, right, and she she she puts the like she puts the meds like like she's about to ring them up right, and then she stops and then turns and walks with other person, starts talking to her boss, and then comes back and then.
Asks me if their pregnancies. I'm like what it's like, I am not passing.
I'm just wearing I'm just wearing like jeans, like a mask.
It's like a random coat. It is. So it's been a it's been a time, yeah, achievement in the world of healthcare where they can simultaneously like ask you for being pregnant and then make you fucking labor unpaid for half a day to obtain your like basic hormone therapy or whatever it is that you need. Like, my favorite is when the health insurance makes me this just existing podcast about health insurance and now we hate it. Have you enjoying it? When they're they're like, hey, we need
a doctor to confirm you still need to instantly? What the fuck do you think has happened? You would have heard about it. I didn't at home. Pancreas transplant didn't bill you guys for it. You're welcome.
Yeah. With with me is James who is from a country that is more normal about healthcare.
But yeah, the right word, but.
It's less ship is the correct word, unless you're trans in which case it's about as.
I was gonna say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, country which has a different approach at least at least like has accepted the fact that if we're going to have the state pay for like sending bombs to kill little children in Palestine, it should also pay for my incident, which I think is a good a good place to start. I guess, yeah, there's an ideal combination there. No we no one has yet reached.
This is this is this is the task of international socialism, et cetera, et cetera.
Yeah. Yeah, I will accept the necessity of the state only when it funds incident, not bonds.
Yeah, but we we are here to talk about another incredibly violent state bureaucracy and the people who run it. We're gonna be talking about a series of very bizarre and incredibly authoritarian crackdown so that democratic well governors, city councils, many many such cases, yeah, have have been have been invoking two nominally cracked down on crime, a thing that is down everywhere and has been down everywhere for a long time.
Yeah, I in many such cases. It's great that the Democrat like local politicians are now doing everything that we were warned that Republican president would do four years ago.
Yeah, it's really fun and I mean this is one of these things. So the place we're going to start is New York governor cultural I think houtral Yeah, I don't know. New York keeps going through politicians faster, and I can learn how to pronounce their names. So with what they're gonna have, like Andrew Clobo, the fourth in power, by the time this episode goes out, there'll be like two There have been two new Kings of England.
The secret sibling. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're not making a podcast about the royal family. Nonsense, we don't care, no, no, this is.
This is this is the best that you're getting out of that. But yeah, so Houtral has deployed seven hundred and fifty National guardsmen to stand outside of some subway stations. That's a tone wister. Try saying that one five times the beast in the mirror to like do bag checks and generally just sort of stand around and be intimidating.
Yeah, it's great. I'm sure it's what those people signed up to do. I'm sure they feel fulfilled, and I'm sure everyone in New York feels safer and happier as a result of random people in camouflage being standing around a subway. Yeah, and we're going to get into this sort.
Of emotional effective aspect of this, because that is ultimately what this is about. But I think, okay, there's a lot of sort of interesting aspects of this. So okay, there's been a lot of talk about what the sort of precursors to this are, and I'm gonna ask you about because there's a lot of national there's a lot of very weird, absolutely dog shit National Guard deployments that have happened.
Yes, yeah, yes there are I have Yeah, yeah, we can get onto that.
Yeah, but I think I think the most immediate predecessor to this that that leaps to mind. This is on thing I talk about on the show all the time, because everyone else seems to have completely forgotten it. I refused to let this be memory hold. Which is the time that my previous shitty mayor ordered a bunch of in twenty twenty, ordered a bunch This is in February twenty twenty. This is this is pre uprising. Put just
started putting swat teams on subways. Oh great, They immediately did the thing that swat team does, which is they started putting swat teams on the fucking red line. The immediately shot a guy for no reason, like I think I if I'm remembering correctly, the thing that originally they said it was fairrivation, And it wasn't fairrivation. It was the guy walked from one train car to another train car, a thing that like millions of people do every day.
Yeah, and capital punishment for ferrivation is also wrong. I'm bad.
Yeah, Well, look this guy somehow survived. They shot him back, but yeah, they also tasted him a bunch of times and then shot him, so right, good, yeah bad. However, thankfully this guy survived. But yeah, but this is something
that that happens. This is only that you know, with the current crop of right wing mayors have been doing and you know, the twenty twenty one end, it was such a fiasco that even even like Chicago's machine well it wasn't really quite rechea, but like even Chicago's right wing Democrats were like, Okay, we probably shouldn't do this lest the swat teams have their like start the killing moment.
But you know, so that that's like one sort of predecessor to this, And the second one is I wanted to actually ask you specifically about the Federal National Guard deployments on the border because I think, yes, that's the part of this has just been like disappeared.
Yes, exactly. Again, those have been like completely overlooked and kind of memory hold by most apparently like since since Biden came to power. Like there's there's a Texas state deployment right which we're very familiar with. They get cheated out of their their benefits. They tend to die from suicide from bringing their own firearms on deployment or getting drunk and driving around. They've had like higher casualties, and they've had deployments to a rock in their the Texas deployment, right,
the federal one is different. I see these dudes often. It'sneely always dudes. Of course women could be deployed in the capacity, but I haven't seen them, and they are for the most part, like scared kids with firearms guarding prison camps full of children. Like I had one of these guys go to drawers pistol on me the other day
because I was trying to alert him. Yeah, I mean, like I guess, like it's it better in that situation that, like it's not my first time having someone draw a pistol on me, and I can tell them to sit down and stop being a dick. But this in this case where someone had was experiencing cardiac distress and I'd gone to the nearest person who I can do, right, Like I can't call an ambults and having to come in there. I have to go to either get BP
to radio or in this case National Guide. But what they're doing is in addition to like guarding these open air attention sites on and off. Is they are conducting kind of surveillance along the border. So often see them with like surveillance arraysed cameras, I assume also like listening to radios and stuff like that. They're not actually like interdicting or resting vigrants. They're not supposed to be anyway.
But what they's supposed to be doing is that that kind of having that surveillance capacity and I guess protection when it comes to the to the o ADS. But yeah, they are everywhere, Like I see these people all the time down here in you know, certainly on their eastern San Diego County border, and and they're all in rented vehicles as well, which is weird that they haven't got their humvees or whatever. It must be a significant expense.
And obviously border crossings are not decreasing thanks to them being there, right they you know, they mostly like cruiser. I was out doing a water drop on Sunday and you'll see them cruising around the dirt roads and then obviously people therefore just avoid the road. It doesn't make it doesn't reduce migration like everything else. It just makes it more dangerous. But yeah, they've been here for a while.
It's one of these things where you know they're they're doing okay. So like the guys in New York just basically seem to be standing around and doing bag checks, whereas those guys are doing a lot more. But I think there's one of the things that's been happening here and this has been this is you know, this is not just the focus has been on on the like the Republican textas deployments, right, but this is something that both the Republicans and the Democrats. This is from what
we're seeking to ease. Yes, and the federal government have decided that, you know, the thing that we are going to be doing is what are what are and I mean active militia deployments Like that's insane like that that is a
level of that is a level of authoritarianism. That is you know that that has become effectively normal, right, Like there was there wasn't I mean, there was kind of an outcry against the subway stuff, but like it hasn't stopped, like as best I could tell, like they're still out like yeah, like it not that all of it stopped.
It that we've been you know what the thing that we've been forced to accept is not even not just you know, because we've already been forced to accept the sort of the militarization of the police, right, but now it's just straight up the total militarization of society to the extent that like, yeah, we just have a bunch of soldiers wandering around doing like random security checks and doing surveillance and like holding people in these open air prisons.
Yeah, exactly, and like deployed way outside their stay often, right, Like I think some of the people hear from Missouri or Illinois, like some of them the less kind of insane are you, You know, the people who mistake me if I guess for a member of the cartel, judging by that guy's actions or like some ridiculous somehow a threat to him. You know that we can talk to them, and yeah, it's it's a very bullshit mission. And I
think most of them would agree. Like further east, they're just like standing around by the border wall and the baking sun in the desert, just just yea doing security theater, but with as you said, real consequences.
Yeah, And it's like the thing that is happening is these people have realized that the National Guard, if you are a senior enough state official, is just your private army. You could do whatever the fuck you want with it. And this is the thing that they're doing with it, and I think you should. You know, it's worth looking at what the sort of justification for this is.
Which are probably also I neglected to mention that there are a dozen Republican governments governors who have deployed their National Guard to the border, right like not as part of the federal deployment, like to your private army thing. And I believe that North Dakota it's funded by a private individual, Like a private individual is covering the state's costs to deploy them to the border. Like this is nuts, yeah, fully insane, like serving as a fucking PMC.
Yeah, but I mean we're seeing, you know, very explicitly, we're seeing this fusion of like personal state and corporate power and that's being used to just deploy a bunch of guys with guns to a bunch of random places. And you know, like it's worth mentioning that, Like crime rates are down, they're down year on year, they're down, like the broad trend is down. They're down, like like outrageous like I think it's not like almost like fifty percent or something from the nineties, right.
Yeah, And likewise, the ratio of people crossing the border to agents to process and is it's much lower than it was in the nineties. You know, we have more border patrol agents, we have a more militarized board patrol. They have all these assets that were previously seen only like see a black Hawk all the fucking time. So like we call it a scrap hawk. It's like it's like several several black Hawks. It's like it's not any particular submodel of black Hawk. It's like the surviving pieces
of several black Hawks. But yeah, they have a lot of kit that you would think would be military kit.
Yeah, And you know, so I was I so when I was really good about this, I was like, Okay, so try how many crimes are actually happy on New York subway system. But I'm going to read this paragraph
from Reuters because it is it is outrageous. There were thirty eight robberies and seventy thefts, including pickpocketing, on the subway system in February, compared to forty robberies and ninety eight thefts in the same month last year, according to police data, there were thirty five assaults, the same number as for February twenty twenty three. About ninety million trips
were taken on the subway over the month. Now that is nuts the subway, including pickpocketing, right, you're at about one hundred.
Yeah, yeah, reveal a trivial number of incidents.
Ninety million trips, right, This means that like per trip, your odds of being pickpocketed are almost literally one in a million. This is this is about the same odds you have of being struck by lightning. You are seventeen times more likely to get killed by a b or bopsting than you are like pickpock, like pickpock, not even robbed, pickpocketed on the subway. Right, So there's I from what I can do, I think there was three killings on the New York Subway in February.
Yeah, that was a shooting. I think today yesterday wasn't that.
Yeah, yeah, but this is the thing, So these things gonna get a lot of attention.
Right.
But again, thirty million trips, we're talking like maybe three maybe four people getting killed a month, So that's like one in thirty million rides. Yeah, someone gets shot. That's outrageously safe, Like that is bafflingly startlingly safe. But this, this sort of brings us to Wow. Okay, the thing, the thing that this immediately brings us to is an ad break.
But it will be a second thing.
Yeah, great, I it's a good one.
All right, we're back for the ads. We're bringing you actually amazingly advertisements. Part of what part of the whole thing's happening here, because you know, one of the one of the big drivers of what's happening in New York and the reason everyone thinks the subway is unsafe is New York's media market and very this is a like you know, so like the media market in the US is not good, right, but very specifically, the New York
media market is absolutely batshit. They are nuts. And this is one of these things where you know, you may have like a one in thirty million chance of getting killed on a subway, but every single one of those thirty million like incidents, like why all those one thirty million is every single one of those is like front page news, right, because this is you know, this, this is both part of the part of the actual sort
of conservative politics of these media organizations. They are you know, New York media market is dominated by a bunch of right wing tabloids and a bunch of newspapers that are normally not right wing but are. Yeah, and so you know, there's this sort of breathless coverage of every single time one of these attacks happened. And this is one of one of the things that Hutu very much like literally
says about this. And you know, like we're at a point in this sort of crime cycle where enough journalists have been screamed at by people who are like the crime rates are all down, that the journalists have to include in the article a thing that's like the crime rates are down. This took like four years of just screaming at them. Eventually it worked. But you know, like Kuhl's like asked about this and she goes, yeah, well,
it's it's about people feeling. It's about that, like the feeling that people have because they don't they don't seem to this n yeah, yeah, And you know, and this is one of these things where like this is like how insane the New York media market is over this stuff has had like an actual substance of political impact, and this is something that you know, the Democrats embrace of this sort of like, especially in New York, this like tough on crime thing has gotten to the point
we're literally Eric Adams has to be the guy who's like, no, no, no, actually hold on, like it's the New York is safe.
Please stop panicking. I got my bag, got.
My police funding already, Please stop like fleeing the city in terror.
Yeah, it's amusing though. That's similar to what's happening in San Diego, another city Democrat councilor mayor. Right, so we have this Gloria terrible mayor, serial bullshitter, and Gloria in the State of the City speech was saying we should be locking up criminals, not laundry detergent. This was his big line. He was very proud of I have successfully purchased laundry detergent that was not incarcerated since then. But I think he was talking about target. I guess apparently
he's legislating for the interest of target. But you have then his opponent in the Maora race, who's a former marine cop Republican guy, being like, yo, I think we fucked up on our homelessness policy. We're just like criminalizing. This is not just the answer. And we've got Gloria to being like, no, lock him up, you know, like they're trying to push this. Is this continued, like this California bill that will force incarcerate people with mental illness
right against their will. Yeah, it's yeah, it's it's fucking I mean, it's not bizarre because, like I think, so many Democrats and like certainly publications here have really leaned into like suburban grievance politics and you know, like fixed the potholes and make it so I don't have to see poor people is their entire ideology. But it's still I know, it's just kind of I don't I'm struggling for the words here. It makes me really fucking pissed off.
The people who showed up to one or two BLM marches are now out there like barking for a second border wall and machine gunning the unhoused.
Yeah, and you know, and this has had a especially in New York, this has had an actual This has been having a substantive, like electoral impact. One of the stories that kind of got buried in twenty twenty two is that you can actually if you look at the electoral map in twenty twenty two, you can actually literally see where the New York media market ends, because all of the districts in the New York media market became significantly more conservative. And this is this is and this
is not a joke. This is literally this whole tough on crime shit is literally the thing like and in this New York media market, this this is what caused the Democrats the House because basically everywhere else in the country there was okay, so like like red districts shifted red. Every single district that was contested, like all of the sort of like purple blah blahh like the districts they all went, they all shifted to the left because of
abortion stuff. But then specifically a bunch of the like what are supposed to be like very safe blue districts went red because they were all because all of them were doing this insane tough on crime stuff.
And those seats, like the seats they.
Lost in New York are the reason the Republicans have control of the House. So like, you know, this isn't working for them electorally, but they're still doing it because it's their ideology and we're gonna get into a bit more about why about that that part a second, But before we do that, I want to talk about I think another one of these things that has gotten kind of lost in the shuffle, which is do you do you do you You heard about the giant like DC crime Omnibus bill.
About this? Yeah? Yeah, Like I will say, I'm not familiar with it other than like herring that it's bad. Yeah, so okay.
So so in DC, the City Council passed this enormous sort of like giant set of like omnibus set of like policies are supposed to be there, like keep DC safe crime omnibus thing.
Okay.
There's a couple of things to note about this. One is that it's actually not as bad as it was originally going to be because there was so much like uproar, because I mean, the original one like had provisions that was like banning masks at protests and ship and it was like it was really bad and it got like nuked.
But it's still really bad, and there's a lot of it's a lot of really weird kind of grievance stuff, Like there's this provision specifically that's supposed to be about like like targeting quote quote organized retail theft, which is one of the insane.
This is yeah, this is one of the most like storm in a teacups that has been going for a while now.
Yeah, But I mean there's also kind of like there's just a standard police stuff, which is it They're they're trying to expand pre trial attention on which they did. One of the the absolutely insane ones that have been declared unconstitutional, but apparently they're just back now is allowing police chiefs to designate certain areas quote drug free zones.
Where yeah see, I'm I'm I'm confused.
But basically what it lets it basically, what it lets you do is it lets the cops just harass a bunch of people even more than they already do, like mostly mostly what it does is just when you declare one of these areas it's where all the black people are, and then the cops just have cops in like an incredible like incredibly increased ability to just randomly stop people and search them.
Right and yeah, ship stop and frisk law. Yeah, there's there.
So there there is a thing that like part of the Mask provision stayed in force, which is that they're making it. Basically, it's like like wearing a mask with the intent to commit a crime is a crime, right, the cops like determine, right, your intent, So like, yeah, it's one of those laws.
Like they do this a lot with gun laws, right, they passed gun laws. It don't make anything that wasn't already illegal illegal. They just make it so that if they if you, if you, if you're caught, you're going to prison for longer.
Now, yeah, this this is actually there are there are provisions like that in this too. There's also a bunch of random like gun provisions. There's all the like more nuts ones, like there's there's one where cops can arrest you. So if if they're trying to cite you for not paying a toll, if they they they claim that you didn't pay a you didn't like pay a transit fare, you have to give them your full name and address and if they don't, and if you don't, they can arrest you.
Which is nuts. This is like don't disrespect me on the train in front of everyone, nor, isn't it? That's what that is. It gets There's another one. There's another one which is like I I don't I don't.
Have another way to describe it other than this is the this is the how to get Away with Murder bill, which is this is so one of the things that they're doing is letting cops review their own helmet footage before police inquiries.
Right, ah, this is.
This is the get the narrative straight bill?
Do you also get to edit it? I don't.
Well, okay, so here's here's the thing about that quote unquote No, however come these things mysteriously vanish time serious?
He disappears.
Yeah, there's also like a whole thing about like there are certain groups of people who the cops can just like force DNA collections from.
Oh wow, which is.
It's a lot less broad than it used to be. But yeah, it's still a provision in there.
But yeah, this is a.
Nightmare's bill that they've been able to pass. And you know, I think it's worth thinking about why this is actually happening, which is that all of this stuff, all of these
are are sort of long range reaction to twenty twenty. Right, this is this, This was the sort of strategy after twenty twenty for rebuilding legitimacy of the police, and you know, and and and also now rebuilding sort of rebuilding the I don't know, psychological capacity, I guess to you know, I mean, just deploy a bunch of troops on US soil, right right.
Yeah, sort of building up that tolerant Yeah.
And you know, like this is all of this stuff is sort of born on you know, on on on protest crackdowns on one of the things that's also sort of worth noting about. This is all of this stuff. I mean, the DC crime build but in the works for a long time. But the subway stuff is all stuff that happened like pretty quickly after they air ambush
and all self in Malaysian. So a big part of this has been the sort of the democratic ruling class kind of losing their minds after watching how widespread twenty twenty was, watching the extent to which they were forced to like you know, like like there are democratic politicians in twenty twenty like talking about like I mean, there
are like elected people talking about defunding the police. There are like they're all remember the weird like like that whole like kneeling thing in Congress they all do oh yeah, yeah.
The pitch of the morning Ken take with yeah, yeah, ooh yeah. Powerful in sense of cringe.
Yeah, but there's a lot of like, you know, there's there's just the sort of memory of that has been has been sort of drilled deep into into the Democratic Party.
And so what has been.
Happening like like you know, and that what's been happening, and this has been happening in blue states very explicitly is this is this strategy of hypermilitarization with the explicit like not explicit, sorry, with the implicit but not very well concealed goal of putting everyone back in their place
after twenty twenty. And that is extremely grim. I mean, I think, I don't know, I'm glad the DC stuff isn't as bad as it was original because the original one we're just like straight up a bunch of fascist shit. This is also fascist shit, but like not as unhinged
as the original bills were. So you know, it's like like the tide of this stuff isn't inevitable, right, but also very very powerful factions of the Democratic Party have decided that this is the thing that they want to do, and it absolutely sucks, and you know, and and and and this is you know, and this is in a similar way to sort of the stuff on the border
being bipartists. I mean, at some point I'm going to do an episode about the absolute shit show that's been happening in Chicago where yeah, they're like a a kid got fucking measles in one of these and one of the micro shelters and Pilsen in Chicago, and now the mayor's like evicting a bunch of a bunch of people from the bigrant shelters. Jesus, you know, so like there's a bi I mean, this is the thing like in Chicago.
I mean there's just outside of like you know, we're like outside of just like basically every like Walgreens or just on street corners, there's a bunch of refugee families like just sitting out there in the cold, trying to get some money because there's fucking nothing for them here. And this is a bipartisan you know, this is this is a bipartisan political project.
Yeah.
Of you know, just sort of terror inflicted on most at people in society.
Yeah, it's it's really depressing to hear that, just because I know that, like, you know, I see people here and then they get out and my friends see them, and we turn into the airport and my friends feed them and look after them there, and they get on their planes and we hope for the best for them, you know, and then then yeah, they just go to some other city where some other dog shit democrats who lied four years ago is gonna do everything they can to make life as hard for them as possible.
Yeah.
The good thing is you have to vote for them while you're voting for fascismo oray. How sad?
Yeah that that that That's what I got today. We'll be back tomorrow with something.
What are we back there? Yeah, it will be a podcast. It's with tomorrow Friday. Oh yeah, tomorrow's Gaza day. So it's not getting anty better for you. Yeah, lucky you, lucky you. Tomorrow we'll be hearing from our friends at park or Gaza.
It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen here, updated monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening,