Yesterday, New York City experienced a city-wide shut-down based on a “historic” blizzard that would be hitting the Northeast. This morning many New Yorker’s woke up expecting to find at least three feet of snow. To their surprise it was a mere 4-6 inches. Glenn discussed the shut-down this morning on-air, was it really due to concern or control?
"Welcome to the program from the epicenter of snowpocalypse, which really turned out to be about 3 inches of snow," Glenn said. "But they closed the subways. They closed all of the roads. They banned pedestrians about midnight last night. You weren't allowed to go anywhere. It's insane what happened here in New York City."
"It was almost military rule in New York City. It's the dumbest thing I've ever seen. If this was Houston, Texas, or Los Angeles, California, you might understand it. It's New York City. It snows five times a year here," Pat chimed in.
"It's crazy. Literally 4 inches of snow on the streets. No cars on the streets. Up until about an hour ago, they lifted the driving ban. So you could not drive. There were no subways. They shut the entire city down. This is the largest city in North America. They shut it down. It's insanity," Glenn said.
Pat wondered just how much of a financial impact the shutdown had on the city.
"How many billions of dollars is that going to cost New York City and the country today? Here you have the financial capital of the world. People can't get to work, unless all of Wall Street stayed within walking distance of their firms last night," Pat said. "Because I wanted to have breakfast at a place that's always opened really early here, and it, of course, was always closed because their employees weren't in yet. I mean, that had to happen all over the city. Restaurants, cabdrivers, no one is making any money today."
Stu suggested this could be an overreaction to all the times mayors and governors failed to take the necessary precautions.
"This seems like a more and more common thing too. Maybe it stems from Katrina, where not everyone evacuated. You know, I know obviously the Boston bombing thing. There was a controversy over that to some degree. It's like, all of a sudden now, because there is a political downside to not doing it if it gets really bad. Like, if they keep everything open and it gets really bad, there's a political downside. So these guys are closing things more and more often," he said.
Glenn said he didn't mind the shutdown, but felt that things should have been more closely monitored and the travel ban lifted once it was clear New York City wasn't going to have anywhere close to the "historic" snowfall predicted.
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