NYC subways are too dangerous to slap commuters with congestion toll now, labor boss says

 It’s a lose-lose for Big Apple commuters.

A top labor boss slammed the Manhattan congestion toll on drivers set to start Sunday, saying the subways are too dangerous to give commuters another option.

“To put congestion pricing in now is atrocious, disgusting — a real slap in the face,” Phil Valenti, head of the 1,600 member Transport Workers Union Local 106, told The Post Thursday. “The subway system is unsafe right now. Give me a break.

“New Yorkers have been forced into a terrible and unfair position,” said Valenti, whose union represents bus and subway supervisors. “You can pay $9 to enter the congestion pricing zone or take the subway, where violent crime is soaring. At least some drivers will be afraid to take the subway, undermining the entire purpose of congestion pricing. MTA Chairman Janno Lieber and Gov. Kathy Hochul are to blame for this absolute mess.”

4

The NYC subway has experienced numerous violent crimes over the past two weeks.

00:01

04:39

The Big Apple subway system has been wracked by five straight days of violence amid a spike in transit crime — despite the NYPD, National Guard and even the crime-crusading Guardian Angels on patrol, The Post reported earlier Thursday.

The horrifying Dec. 22 torching death of a New Jersey straphanger on a Brooklyn F train was only the beginning of the latest underground crime spree, which has seen five people stabbed or slashed and a 45-year-old straphanger thrown under a Manhattan subway train since Sunday.

Valenti rattled off NYPD stats, showing that the 10 subway murders in 2024 was double 2023’s totals. It was also a 233% increase from the pre-COVID period five years ago and the highest in a generation.

There were 573 felony assaults last year through Sunday, Dec. 29, 2024 – a 51% increase from five years ago.

4

The 10 subway murders in 2024 mark the highest in a generation.Obtained by the NY Post

The MTA loses $700 million a year from subway and bus fare cheaters, which should be more of a priority that soaking drivers with another toll, he said.

“With Governor Hochul’s policies of New York State being a wide-open sanctuary state, we now have the mentality ill from all over the world, who are homeless, walking our streets, taking our subways and killing people randomly,” Valenti said.

“Riders and workers are not safe.”

4

A $9 fee will apply to all passenger vehicles going into Manhattan under 60th street.New York Post

The MTA defended subway safety.

“The NYPD has reported the attached full-year crime numbers for 2024, reflecting serious crime down 5.4% for the full year and down 12.6% over 2019, prepandemic,” MTA spokesman Aaron Donovan said. “The numbers speak for themselves.”

MTA Chief Security Officer Michael Kemper said in a statement to The Post, “Thousands of NYPD Transit officers are working every hour of the day and night to make the subway safe, and the record reflects they are making an impact. 

4

The MTA loses $700 million annually from fare evaders.Robert Miller

“I know firsthand that to suggest otherwise disrespects the commitment to transit workers and riders, and real results delivered by those officers.”

Hochul’s office said the governor is focusing on affordability and subway crime.

“Governor Hochul cut the congestion pricing toll by 40%, squashed a potential 25% surge fee, and is fighting every single day to make the subways safer for commuters and transit workers,” a Hochul spokesman said.

“The Governor deployed an additional 1,250 uniformed law enforcement personnel to support NYPD’s efforts to protect subway passengers, and she’ll continue working to fight crime and improve public safety.”

https://nypost.com/2025/01/02/us-news/nyc-subways-are-too-dangerous-to-slap-commuters-with-congestion-toll-labor-boss-says/

Memo to terrorists: Elon's got you on candid camera

 By Monica Showalter

Yesterday's car-bomb in Las Vegas explosion seemed to be a dual hit against both President Trump and his tech-bro ally, Elon Musk, as the perpetrator used a Tesla Cybertruck -- Musk's pride and joy -- to set off explosives in front of the Trump Tower in the city. What a joy that idea must have been to a terrorist-minded clown.

Just one problem: Elon Musk is onto them.

According to ABC News:

Musk, a close ally of Trump, said on Wednesday afternoon that the "whole Tesla senior team is investigating this matter right now."

"Will post more information as soon as we learn anything," Musk wrote on X, which he also owns. "We’ve never seen anything like this."

... and ...

The sheriff said Tesla CEO Elon Musk helped the investigation by having the truck unlocked after it auto-locked in the blast and by giving investigators video of the suspect at charging stations along its route from Colorado to Las Vegas.

So unlike tech-bro Apple, which once refused to unlock the cell phone of terrorists after a mass-casualty spray-shooting attack in San Bernardino a few years earlier, Musk's Tesla is right there on the job, handing over data about every place the terrorist charged his vehicle while on the road. That's bad news for terrorists.

One after another, Musk had movies of the perp and handed them over. That kind of information-sharing might just give the next terrorist pause on the idea of using a Tesla for the next attack, since the first one was perfectly identifiable to cops. 

My niece is a chef who works about a mile from there at a very prestigious restaurant, and she told me the traffic and other disruption from the explosion was minimal. 

That's because the main thing that happened in this attack seems to be that the driver blew himself up.

Musk noted earlier that picking a Cybertruck was a very bad idea from a terrorist perspective because the armored surface of the vehicle tended to keep the explosion inside the carrier, not outside where it could damage something or someone else.

Musk said that further evidence suggests the explosion actually went upward, so that not even the tower's glassy exterior doors were destroyed.

 

There were injuries among about seven bystanders, but the only guy who really got it was the driver inside.

We still don't know if this was an accident or an intentional message to Trump and Musk, but the preponderance of the evidence so far suggests the latter.

Cops have traced the vehicle to a rental run on the Turo app, which by coincidence, was the same rental app used by the maniac who ran down revelers in New Orleans the night earlier. Funny how they're using cars now, and using the same app.

But that isn't proof the incidents were related -- out on the web, there's a report that both men served at the same military base at the same time, which could indicate either a wokester culture gone off the rails, a new bid by federal authorities to pin military members as "extremists," or nothing. Whatever it was, the lawmen have plenty to investigate now.

That's because in the wake of all the security failures that have happened surrounded President Trump, including this one, Trump has an unexpected ally on the tech front -- Musk -- who like all the tech bros has vast trawlings of information about his customers -- but unlike the others uses it to do Trump some good.

Terrorists are going to think twice before messing around with another Tesla. The fact that the Cybertruck sort of survived the big blast, and better still, that Musk is willing to help lawmen is bound to make Tesla cars an even more popular choice than it already is among consumers.

The press tried to pin the problem on Tesla, but actually, it was a great thing from civilization's point of view that the terrorist chose a Tesla.

Oh, and it's American-made, too:

As a result, Trump is safer than he was before, and Elon may have new customers.

Terrorists: 0; Trump and Musk: 1.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/01/memo_to_terrorists_elon_s_got_you_on_candid_camera.html

Reserves at Fed Sink Below $3 Trillion to the Lowest Since 2020

 

• The $326 billion drop in week to Jan. 1 was biggest since 2022
• Officials have been shrinking balance sheet since June 2022

The US banking system’s reserves, a key factor in the Federal Reserve’s decision to keep shrinking its balance sheet, tumbled below $3 trillion to the lowest since October 2020.

Bank reserves fell by about $326 billion in the week through Jan. 1 to $2.89 trillion, according to Fed data released on Thursday. That’s the largest weekly slide in over two-and—a-half years.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-03/reserves-at-fed-sink-below-3-trillion-to-the-lowest-since-2020

'Suspected Las Vegas Cybertruck Bomber Was a ‘Big’ Trump Supporter: Source'

The man suspected of being behind Tesla Cybertruck explosion in Las Vegas was a “big” supporter of Donald Trump and voted for him in November, a senior law enforcement official tells the Daily Beast.

That revelation came from an interview between Matthew Livelsberger’s loved ones and investigators, the source said. His family added that they believed the 37-year-old Green Beret, who died in Wednesday’s blast outside Trump International Hotel, had Republican leanings.

“He loved Trump, and he was always a very, very patriotic soldier, a patriotic American,” Dean said. “It’s one of the reasons he was in Special Forces for so many years.”

Records in El Paso County, Colo., indicate that he registered in 2020 with the No Labels party, which supports centrist “commonsense” candidates, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. The same email Livelsberger used to sign up for LinkedIn was listed in a data breach last year that revealed he had an account on the far-right news website The Post Millennial.

Much remains unknown about what allegedly drove Livelsberger to rent a Cybertruck in his hometown of Colorado Springs and drive it to Trump’s Las Vegas property.

The truck was filled with explosives and, perhaps miraculously, only injured seven when it burst into flames just steps from the hotel’s front lobby. Livelsberger was the only fatality in the blast.

The remains of a Tesla Cybertruck that burned at the entrance of Trump Tower, are inspected in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.Ronda Churchill/REUTERS

Livelsberger was a highly trained Special Operations soldier, multiple reports revealed Thursday. He was stationed in Germany, but was back stateside on approved leave.

He enlisted in the U.S. Army when he was still a teenager and was just one year away from receiving his full military benefits, having served 19 years.

CNN’s John Miller, the network’s chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst, gave telling insight into the blast suspect on Thursday. He told viewers the suspect was “highly trained in communications and electronic measures for bomb detections and intelligence operations.”

Miller noted that there remains no “clear motive” for the explosion, which some have speculated was meant to be a political statement against Trump.

That theory emerged largely because of the explosion’s symbolics. The vehicle used, a Cybertruck, is Tesla owner Elon Musk’s crown jewel of a vehicle. Musk has been a top Trump ally since the summer, making the explosion’s location—at the Trump property nearest to Livelsberger’s hometown—all the more suspicious.

Miller theorized that the Cybertruck’s driver wanted to make sure that his charred vehicle would appear in close proximity to the massive “TRUMP” signage at the front of the hotel.

“Is he saying it’s 7 something in the morning and there’s not a lot of people here, I’m going to come back in an hour and see if there’s a bigger crowd,” Miller said. “Or is he doing his reconnaissance as a military operator would, which is, who stops you where, where am I going to place this, so the Elon Musk vehicle is going to be right under the Trump sign.

“We don’t know the symbolism that they were going for in this attack was, but they are looking at all of that.”

Matthew Livelsberger was named in local reports as the suspect in the Las Vegas incident.LinkedIn

A LinkedIn profile for Livelsberger included a profile photo of him posing in winter gear and holding an assault rifle. That page listed his most recent role as a Remote and Autonomous Systems Manager, which meant was responsible for the “operations, maintenance and integration” of drones in the Army. He began that role in November.

His uncle told The Independent that Livelsberger was a “super soldier.” If he were to create an exploding Cybertruck, Dean said he believed his nephew had the skills to create one that was “more sophisticated” than what was used on Wednesday.

The LinkedIn page listed Norwich University in Vermont as his alma mater. He graduated from there in 2019 with a degree in Strategic Studies and Defense Analysis.

Livelsberger occasionally commented on LinkedIn, mostly on posts related to the military and service members.

Matthew Livelsberger indicated in a comment last fall that he knew someone who was a good fit for a military role in Ukraine.LinkedIn

His oldest comment, from five years ago, was to assert that he’d prefer to be gifted a rifle instead of a cash bonus for referring people to an “armed counterintelligence role.” More recently, he commented three months ago that he knew somebody who would be a good fit as a “Tactical Combat Casualty Care Instructor” in Ukraine.

In other comments, Livelsberger appeared to show conservative leanings when disparaging a White House memoir penned by John Bolton.

“Bet Bolton got a hefty chunk from the DNC and other slimy donors to put the book out,” he commented on a news station’s article posted to Facebook.

Matthew Livelsberger’s comments on Facebook.Facebook

“Oh boy another conspiracy theorist,” someone commented back. “Lol. What a joke.”

Livelsberger responded: “It’s not conspiracy when it’s pretty obvious guy made money from the dems.”

Livelsberger appears to have at one point been married to Sara Livelsberger, a 38-year-old who lives in Delray Beach, Florida. Dean told The Independent that they’ve since divorced and each have new partners. She did not respond to requests for comment from the Daily Beast on Thursday.

Facebook

A Facebook page for Sara has been dormant since 2016, but makes multiple references to Livelsberger as her husband. That included one post from 2015, which lines up with Livelsberger’s age, that read: “It is my old a-- husbands’s 28th birthday!”

She does not appear to have the same politics that Livelsberger supposedly has. She posted during the 2016 election cycle that she was a registered Democrat and shared images that were critical of Donald Trump. She once commented that she follows Trump’s Twitter page “just to get my morning motivation to to (sic) kill someone.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/las-vegas-cybertruck-bomber-matthew-livelsberger-was-a-trump-supporter-source/