Well There‘s Your Problem - Episode 60: Andrew Cuomo

Episode Date: March 17, 2021

new york baybee number 1 in the world Ironweeds Podcast: https://ironweeds.podbean.com/ Slides: https://youtu.be/-_XFArcUtrA Our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/wtyppod​ Our Merch: https://www.solidaritysuperstore.com/wtypp we are working on international shipping Send us stuff! our address: Well There's Your Podcasting Company PO Box 40178 Philadelphia, PA 19106 DO NOT SEND US ANTHRAX thanks in advance

I have a powered point. Displaced Howard Point. Yes. Well, who was the man? Access. Thank God you weren't in a frat circuit 2015. I prefer a good old analog. Yeah, the power point where someone squats and then points right at the camera like an asshole, and I fucked up this Guinness poor and everything sucks. I like to use a real authentic.

What's going on drinking in that? Is that like a is that a wine bottle? Like, I can't tell. It looks like a pepper shaker almost. But like, it looks to me like a Saratoga Spring sparkling water. I thought for a second that was a harp on there. I thought maybe it's got a bottle of balls. He's a gamer.

I thought maybe he had a Guinness, too, and was about to fuck it up. Thank you, Rose. Yeah. All this is good. Would you like us to would you like us to turn off our cameras? Yeah, will that help? Do whatever you want. Yeah, I was about to say I can't see you. So I have a power point in the way.

I don't even know we got to get you a third monitor, man. We just have a wall of monitors right here. You know, those people out there who don't even have the one monitor. OK, well, I can't help them. Four hundred dollars. I actually could literally help them. I have several excess monitors and computer cases in my basement. You sent me a monitor starving.

You're starving children in India who don't even have a second monitor. Alice, do you want one? Not with the price you would have to pay to ship it. No, are you sure? I'll go houses with it. No, that's all right. Thank you. All right, you're welcome. OK, well, let's do the podcast.

OK, well, welcome to Well, there's your ironweeds problem. Yeah, that works. That works. Very special episode. Yeah, the most moderately ambitious. It's a podcast where Philadelphians and Trojans complain about New York City. We are united in our distaste for New York City and the governor of New York.

How does it feel, New York City, when someone else talks about you? Huh? Uh, uh-huh. Oh, Philly's the sixth borough. Kiss my ass. You're extreme Northeastern Philadelphia. Only non Brooklyn podcasters on the show right now. There are several

newspaper articles that call Troy the New Brooklyn, but it's wrong. So so don't worry. It's fine. Oh, God. Sorry. Yeah. Fuck each and every person who's ever said that. That's what's called Lancaster, the New Brooklyn. They did.

Yeah, gloss goes the New Brooklyn. Ever think of that? That's a good point. Well, it's got his old Brooklyn. No, it's the new the new London. That's the new Queens. Yeah, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I fucking love when people move there and are just like,

oh, cute little small town. Oh, look at this coffee shop. I'm like, I see you managed to duck the heroin epidemic that ripped through there circa 2008 to right now. And they're just like, no, it's so cute. What are you talking about? I'm just like, no, I'm from there. It's cow shit all the way down, baby.

Glasgow is the new Soho, but not that Soho, the other Soho. All right. We got to do introduction so we can keep going. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, I keep going. All right. I will be taking over for Alice.

Thank you. Got you. I'm Justin Rosnick. I'm the person who's talking right now. My pronouns are he and him. Go. I mean, me, yes. Well, Kelly, my pronouns are she, her.

I'm Liam Anderson. My pronouns are he, him. Thanks, Liam. Got you. I'm David Banks. I am Brittany Gill. My pronouns are she, her. David's pronouns have been taken from him.

Sorry. I said so well. This is exactly the energy that I was kind of trying to. Oh, Chris Kelly. He, him. OK. All right. We're good.

We're going with our group of between. Five and six people who have pronouns personally. What those pronouns are, who we are. This is not your concern. We're here to record a podcast about Andrew Cuomo. You may have heard of him. He sucks. Let's figure out why.

Yeah. I just want to put it on a record. We are recording this podcast now, but we have hated Andrew Cuomo for a long time. Yeah, it's true. We were on it before it was called. It just became cool to hate him. But we're over this for a long time.

Please ignore my homosexual tattoo. My homosexual drink, Coosie. My homosexual like poster that I have in the background of my webcam. All of those. I bought them ironically. Yes. I am not drinking this out of a Muller.

She wrote branded pint glass either. Just leafing through my copy of leadership lessons from the COVID pandemic by Andrew Cuomo. But I'm doing it as a bit. As a bit. As a bit. Yes. I got a nipple piercing just for him.

And that says Cuomo sexual on it. You know, it's like one of those necklaces that has a name on it, you know, in cursive, but it's a dangling nipple piercing. And I do like that one better than the one with his like little face that dangles and I pay money to go to a jeweler and just get like a get a chain when my rap career takes off. That'll just be a pendant of Andrew Cuomo's face. Getting a portrait of, you know, like the portrait of Biggie

with the crown, but it's Andrew Cuomo and it just like irritates and confuses the shit out of everyone who sees it. No, they'll love it. Dude, it'll be right up there with my notorious RGB poster. It hangs on a macaroni neck. So Andrew Cuomo is the governor of New York at time of going to press. Yes. Yeah.

Unless he's resigned in shame as we record, which doesn't seem likely. No, no, not likely. He might get engaged though. One could hope. So first step, what is New York? A garbage state for garbage people. It's the one that's kind of shaped kind of like a triangle, right?

It's a very wide. Yes. The Empire State. Yeah. And the man in charge of this triangle is seen here with his poncho and a bottle of what we determined was Saratoga Springs sparkling water. Possibly. Possibly.

I think it looks like that's kind of a thing. I think you're right. People are weird up here about the Saratoga Springs. Yeah. I suspect he poured fireball into that bottle, though. I used to use a Jameson bottle as a water bottle in college. Oh, so just the most on brand thing I've ever heard. Yeah.

It was great until it shattered in my bag and broke my laptop screen. For ironweeds listeners, we should say a laptop screen. Did you not have it closed? No, it was partially open and it just ripped the screen apart. Oh, Jesus. That's rough. Oh, yeah. Sorry to hear that for iron.

If you don't listen to a leisure problem. Yeah, I'm sorry. We are always like this. We should say for ironweeds listeners, we are looking at a several images as well. And if you want to follow along with those images, you can go to the, well, there's your problem YouTube account and follow that. But I swear if it's, if you just have this as an audio experience, it will be an experience and a full one.

It will work. Yeah, it will work just as well. Just imagine Andrew Cuomo in a poncho in your head and then just like rotate that image. Yeah, we'll put the link in the show notes. Yeah, yeah. And he's on it and he's on a phone that he swears he can't use. Okay, someone who wrote these notes for this slide take over. Yeah, David, do you want to do the slide since you wrote the notes?

Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah, I could do the slides. Uh, uh, David is leaving on a motorbike. We're facing a problem where Justin is slightly quieter than everyone else. And so I think Justin is getting talked over some, but, but he did say, I'll just, I'll take over by saying so Andrew Cuomo, the king of the triangle state in New York is in trouble.

And the reason why he's in trouble is for being a fucking gross pervert towards women, right? Among many other things. A number of different women. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's kind of what everyone's focusing on really, because this is so often how it works, right? Is that like these, um, very like salacious and titillating accusations come out and yet

he's been just like a corrupt piece of shit for so many years and now finally everybody's paying attention to it. Yeah. We've been titillated. Yes. Yeah. We have a list here. Uh, a woman named Lindsay Boylan, who is the borough president of Manhattan, who used

to work for him, uh, who was accused of being very abusive and very gross when she worked for him. A woman named Charlotte Bennett, who was his health policy advisor. Uh, he, he asked her if she was sensitive to intimacy when they work together. What? What kind of fucking question is that? And I just want to know, are you sensitive to intimacy? Don't do that.

Don't do the voice. That he wanted a girlfriend. He is married, right? I believe. Um, and was open to dating a woman. He's gone married and unmarried a bunch of times. Okay. Was open to dating a woman older than 22.

So standards. Okay. Uh, at the time she was 25. And Andrew Cuomo is 65. Third woman, Anna Rooch, told, yep, yep, told the times that Cuomo had asked her if he could kiss her when she first met him at a wedding reception. There's a photo of it, which, uh, for some reason we decided not to put on the screen despite having an audio visual medium, but it's, you've seen the tweet.

Like she looks the most uncomfortable I've ever seen a woman look in and like a dude's presence when they're like at arm's length of each other. Oh yeah. And Cuomo looks like he's about to like drain her blood. Like he, he's like just hungry. Yes. So hungry. Oh God.

Uh, the fourth woman, Karen Hinton, who was another one of his aides, uh, they were at a hotel in California. I stood up to leave. He walked across from his couch and embraced me intimately. It was not just a hug. It was an intimate embrace. Um, another aide who said that she felt reduced to just a skirt by his behavior. He asked her if she had a boyfriend.

He called a sweetheart. He touched her lower back, kissed her hand, just creepy old guy shit. Creepy old Italian man over the age of 50 feels completely entitled to just like touching all of your body with their body. I have yet to meet an old Italian man who didn't want to do that to every like woman under 30. It's really disturbing, but it's just their culture. So, you know, I think, and I mean, by this point, uh, uh, governor

Cuomo could reasonably be described as embattled, uh, with the number of people calling for his resignation at this point. Yes. It's such a good list of New York senators, uh, the national organization for women, the New York state young Democrats, uh, the times union editorial board, vocal and why the working families party, uh, two state senators, one, two, three, four, five state representatives, the state Senate majority leader, uh, at least one city council candidate and NYC DSA. Damn.

That's everyone. You can't try DSA to come out, uh, repudiating Cuomo. We need to get on that. Well, we should, we should, uh, uh, everybody listens to what Troy DSA says. It's true. We should support decapitating him. I feel like. Whoa, whoa.

Yeah. Go one. I was trying not to, I was trying not to speak over women and so I, I just cut to a dead stop as soon as anyone said anything. I was so, I thought my, my, I just, no, no, I was trying to, I was trying to get up. No, it's fine. Okay. So what I was going to say was that like by this point, anyone who hasn't issued a statement

is because they like, oh, we should get on calling Andrew, Andrew Cuomo to resign or is trying to like weather it and stay out of it. But like. I haven't heard, I haven't heard anyone issue a fatwa against him. This is it. This is me assuring a fatwa demanding the resignation of probably. I am not authorized to do that demanding the resignation of this gross, quilted perverse. Just looking at him just pisses me off so much, man.

It sucks so hard that just everyone in the position of power is just this gross. And they're all Italian, which sucks. Now, Justin, what, what's this that we have on the slide here now? No, so this is, this is baked Ziti. Because we're referring to a New York Daily Times piece, Daily News, a former, a former top aide to Governor Cuomo was sentenced Thursday to six years in prison for accepting over $300,000 in bribes, which he referred to as Ziti. Again, old Italian guy shit.

It rules. Fucking why it's from two businesses seeking favorable action from state government. This is a reference to the fucking Sopranos. Time is a flat circle and corrupt Italian guys are now getting their jokes about corruption from shows about corrupt Italian guys. I told him I was going to bake him some Ziti. I hope this is your only contribution to the podcast. But yeah, this is from from 2018, the second half.

This is from 2018. And it is just, yeah, it's just one of many, many corruption schemes that that Cuomo has been embroiled in. And he has that like, you know, that Teflon coating or I guess like it's like olive oil. It's a well-seasoned cast iron with olive oil. And well, you can't use Teflon because it has to be Italian. So it's got to be someone to run him through the dishwasher. That's not going to work if he's making a lot of red sauces, though.

That's true. Yeah, but Ziti just slides right off of him. Yeah. Can I just point out that there is definitely a hair in this Z. 100 percent. Look at that. Yeah, disgusting. Yeah, I don't like close ups of food.

I just learned right now. Also, the fucking lime green melamine plate that it's on. I kind of like that. Really, though? Yeah, that's nice. Alice, Alice, it looks like the worst Mexican restaurant you would ever go to would serve you food on those plates. Listen, you do not talk that way about me, Puebla number two.

Springfield, Kentucky, the best Mexican restaurant I've ever been to in my life. Also, I am my father's son, which means tacky green shit is basically my Disney world is yelling in my house all the time. Is it you? It's Andrew Cuomo. Yeah, you got the fucking state troopers out. I just open back headphones, man. I feel like I'm fucking possessed.

All right. What else we got here? We got a building. Justin, what do you think this building? All right, it looks like a car. Von a lot. It's OK. All right, it's OK.

What happened to this building? So this is the I also hope someone's being murdered in my fucking house. This is the SUNY Polytechnic building. It's it's it's a it's a college and it was in in constructing it. There was a bunch of scandals and where they price fixed the all the the request for proposals for the for building the thing. So there's a a physicist. Yeah, the foundation's a 90 percent ZC.

Yeah. In September 2013, Calieros, a physicist who is president of the ZD building, allowed developers to have advanced copies of requests for proposals that were to be officially sent out the next month seeking bidders. So it's basically a fixed bid so that a a engineering company named L.P. Siminelli, so, of course, another Italian company, would get the building.

It's all the way down. Yeah. Yeah. So they did a little, you know, you got develop down by the New Jersey Hava, you know, going to do a redevelopment with some ZD. Now, I have a question for the New Yorkers on this, which is how much of this this is sound stupid when I phrase it like this. How much of this corruption and contract procurement between elderly Italian men is mob affiliated?

A lot. I mean, I don't know about when it comes to the governor, but like here in Troy, like there are literally bars that are allowed to operate just in flagrant violation of lots of like state health department codes and state liquor authority laws solely because like they're married into like I won't name names, but like I have worked in a bar that had mob affiliations and it was fascinating to just like watch state officials come in and do their quote unquote inspection, which included just like, you know, never looking at anything that would have gotten our liquor license revoked.

So that's that's my favorite part of corruption is like I do nothing job. I want one of those like not even like podcaster. I want a job where I just show up. What level below that? Yeah, yeah, this one hour of work a week I do is already too much for me. I want to be like a beverage control commission inspector and I want to be like, yeah, no, it's fine. Probably as they're just backing up a huge truck full of stolen fucking TVs.

I always thought it'd be really funny to have one of those do nothing jobs. But as opposed to doing nothing, you go wildly out of your way to make it as difficult as possible to everybody else. Like you like, you know, you're the beverage control inspector. You're supposed to be like checking for liquor violations and you never find liquor violations, which you do find all sorts of unspeakable OSHA violations. And like tip off your OSHA inspector, but it's afraid of stolen TVs is blocking a fire exit, so I'm going to have to write you up for that.

Well, and what's great is if you get that kind of gig in an area like in an area like New York, where there is a lot of corruption, you get to do both. You just get to choose your enemies and, you know, who slides under the radar and who gets a fire hazard violation. Man, sounding pretty good to be a corrupt like inspector in New York State. This is just a recruitment thing for me. This is cool. All right, for your number two, let's do this.

I should say that the the the the guy that called all this guy. This is this went to jail, right? Yes. Well, no, he's like under house arrest or something now, I think. You know, like none of these people actually go to jail jail. Oh, of course he is. Yeah, yeah. But also the guy that that did the ZD thing, like a low show job for his wife, where like.

You know, there are different levels of corruption, right? There's no show jobs, but there's also low show jobs where like you show up and like his wife was like tasked with like doing a couple of classes for kids on like clean energy and got paid like seventy five thousand dollars a year or something to like teach one class. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So like that, you're not good enough for a no show job. We're going to do the low show job.

No, we are going to need you to do some work. Imagine getting fired from your low show job for not showing up. See, I imagine it is like you mentioned your friend. I really wish or your husband or whoever. I'd love to get out of the house a little more. And it's like, would you like to make seventy thousand dollars a year for getting out of the house a little more? So it's just mainly a hobby that pays very, very well.

And they give you seventy thousand dollars a year, but you have to do ten thousand steps a day. You have to fill the circles. You have to close the circles. OK, so we've got the ZC. We've got this this corruption in this this university. What else we got in there? The case against Andrew Cuomo.

We got a big wall of masks at the big wall of masks. Yeah, I don't know if this is people made these people made these masks out of like gene asses. I don't know why they made much out of the asses of pairs of genes. But they did. Yeah. And like it made them out of like old denim and stuff and like cloth. And people made all of these masks by hand and Andrew Cuomo

in his like lust for for daily press conferences to show leadership in the covid pandemic. I wanted to thank the people for sending in these masks. So I stapled them to the wall. It's worth mentioning that this was in late April and at this time in New York and much of the country, you could not find a fucking mask.

You couldn't. And so that's one of the reasons that people were so outraged because you could buy like a $40 mask on Amazon. But like you couldn't find them in any stores. It took maybe like it wasn't until like May or June when like bodega started carrying them and stuff. But it was so like not even just tone deaf, but like so on its face, on its face, absurdly wasteful. Like people were furious about it.

Yeah, people mail these in and being like, please get this to a front line worker or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like during these daily press conferences, he had another one right because he announced that he was going to make the state prison population make hand sanitizer and they didn't even make it. No, just bottled it. Yeah, they bottled it and they put their own sort of like it's like NYS clean or whatever.

Labels on there. And this was like and the funny thing was I saw a lot of Libs, not New York ones, but like certainly the Americans who love this shit who are like, yeah, this is this is epic, actually. Is he's getting things done? Capital G, capital T, capital D. Yeah, fuck yeah. Yeah, but America really just wanted to watch government functioning on TV

like so badly that when they, you know, when Trump was just like, one day it'll be a miracle, just speak on maybe by Easter. Easter sounds good, right? You know, and like at this time, you know, Cuomo was like taking his job of like overseeing the worst per capita death rate of this pandemic, like in the entire world. And he was taking it very seriously in terms of presentation. Yeah, that's what gets me.

Of America through this situation that he was like personally responsible for making even worse than it would have been otherwise. This is what gets me the most right is like the naked ambition of it is to be like, OK, there's this power vacuum in Washington, right? States are fucking around trying all kinds of different things. Like Massachusetts is using the New England Patriots plain as part of a bizarre scheme to fly in masks undercover and stuff. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to be the parallel president.

I'm going to give press conferences every day. I'm going to be very serious as opposed to Trump. People are going to listen to me and yet at every turn he fucks it up by stapling a bunch of masks to a board. It's just an epic television battle between two dumb ass New Yorkers. We think about how the Soviet Union was like devolved, devolved into like petty feuds between like 70 year old men who hated each other for no reason and how like your politics was entirely

dependent on which one of those old men died first. And you're just like, yeah, no, it's like that, but it's worse because they never die for some reason. They just never they just get older and older and older and browner and orange. They kept Trump alive. I don't know what they shut him up with, but they kept him alive. Yes, we know because it's what his wife has worked on. It's the Regeneron.

Yeah, Chris's wife is singlehandedly responsible for ensuring that we'll never let her get it. She took an oath, OK, and, you know, she's going to keep that oath to save the president. Yeah. Are you mad enough to save the president? Yeah, you just take a breather. You could just take a smoke break. There were many nights when, you know, in a quiet moment of over dinner, I just smuddered, you're so close.

Almost had him. But like, no, Cuomo was doing like he was doing daily press conferences, right? And he had he had the book out to the like fucking dreams from my father. But yeah, yeah, he went between like chart, chartmaster, which actually like fans of this podcast would probably appreciate where he would go over all the charts and explain what they meant and like, you know, where we would be. And he like he like explained flattening the curve visually to America.

And then he'd interspersed it with like really bad standup about his like daughter's like romantic relationship. We don't even have the map on here. We don't even have the Cuomo mountain coronavirus mountain that he made where he's kicking his daughter's boyfriend off a cliff. Yeah. He's doing fucking what? He's at the time when like everyone's grandparents are dying

and everyone's trapped in their shitty apartment. What they really want is like folksy down home comedy from their elected officials. Yeah, kill his his daughter's boyfriend. Yeah, it was it was what we really need to like, you know, bring back a sense of normalcy. If you go to the people bought that thing. Yeah, I did Cuomo coronavirus mountain. Hell, yeah, they paid for that poster.

Oh, my God. I hate New Yorkers. I'll do it. I think he even had Chris Rock on once. Like as like a feature is pressed. Yes, yes. And Chris Rock went on to like explain he's a gentleman the weekend. Yeah, he was like personally comforted by Cuomo's daily briefings.

He's like, you know, like I just every morning I'd be like, what the fuck is going on? I turn on Cuomo and I'd feel better. And like, I have to point out that like that fucking role needed to be filled by somebody. And the fact that it didn't like get done by the government or, you know, fucking. Yeah, not with a fence, but like this fucking old Italian guy got to do Hello, Presidente. Yeah, I'm trying to cultivate. Stop.

Boy, God damn it. I love it. I love it. Keep it up. This slide we have here. This is Andrew Cuomo killing a bunch of people in nursing homes in New York. Yeah. How does how does he do this? Well, this is an April like April 23rd slide. But back in March, like a month earlier, he had started saying that he put out a directive that said nursing homes

couldn't deny patients from readmission from hospitals, regardless of COVID diagnosis. So if like you have someone who is like they're kicking them out of the hospital because they don't have enough beds and the only place for them to go is back to the nursing home and they're like on death's door full of coronavirus. There's like, you got to take them. Just got to take them. And and a lot of these nursing homes

weren't they weren't able to properly quarantine patients. Like there just wasn't there wasn't the beds or the living set up. And so what you basically had was nursing homes being forced to accept residents who were sick, who could not be kept apart from the rest of the population. They didn't even have masks for the stuff because he had stapled them all to this board. They stapled them all to this board. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, like a genius. We also had like no hand sanitizer at this point either because, you know, they were still like like beating prisoners into submission to make them bottle what we actually, I think later, found out was less effective hand sanitizer than the average hand sanitizer. Oh, my God, it was just like rubbing alcohol in this wouldn't be a story about. Yeah, but this wouldn't be a story about gubernatorial corruption without fudging the numbers on something.

And so like the number the like the official tally of New Yorkers who died of covid in nursing homes is like 15,000 probably. Holy shit. Yeah. Like that's after the governor's office did everything in its power to stop you from learning what that number was. Yeah, we'll never know what the real number was. Like it is. It's so awash in there.

Yeah. And and even according to the official numbers, I think it's one out of four hundred and 18 last time I checked New Yorkers that were alive one year ago today are now dead because of getting covid-19. So you should. Yeah. Highest per capita death rate in the world, as far as I'm aware. And yeah, the audacity of like in the middle of that writing a book about fucking getting an Emmy. Didn't get an Emmy.

Yo, all my losses was less. God, I'd like to thank the Academy for working with this Emmy. I know where you live, man. OK, so if you if you lived in a nursing home, then Andrew Cuomo gave you the novel coronavirus and killed you. And then you're dead now. Sorry, you are dead now and you can't listen to this podcast. It's unfortunate.

However, you could subscribe to our Patreon from beyond the grave. Just talk to the talk to the executors of your estate. You also stopped you from being able to sue a nursing home or a hospital. Yes. What? Yeah. It was a provision put in the state budget. There's like, yeah, you know, you can't do that, which was very clearly advocated for by the owners of said nursing home. Right. Yeah.

And that was that was actually so popular that Mitch McConnell took that and used it for Kentucky also. Super cool. Huh. Yeah. There was a lot of ziti exchanged over the hush numbers. Yeah. Now, I mean, I made the all my losses was lessons joke already, but we've just put that on the next slide.

I discover was Andrew Cuomo's mayor culper here. If we could do it all over again. In a rare admission of error, if I could do it all over again from in a rare admission of error, Cuomo says the months long secrecy by his administration over the number of nursing home residents who died of the virus created a void. He says, in a toxic political environment, which you created dipshit that void became filled with confusion,

misinformation and conspiracy theories. And he told the families of the 15,000 long term care residents who died of COVID that he's sorry that it created so much anxiety for them. Love to fill my voice with confusion. Shit, apology, too. That's not even an apology. Yeah, I'm sorry. I hurt your feelings.

Yeah, right. I'm sorry that you felt confused and anxious. I'm sorry that you felt killed. But it's not an apology for what he did. Like what he did was kill a bunch of old people, a bunch of grandmas and grandpas. Yeah, he's apologizing for the existence of a void, which he created. Yes. Look, I don't think we're apologizing.

Well, he's not apologizing at all, definitely. But like like he's attributing it to like a toxic political environment, which is like what? Like no one's no one's like it's not a toxic political environment. When you lie about like death counts, that's just you being an asshole. I'm sorry. Thank you. Grandparents were killed by this toxic political environment.

The toxic as in it contains the the coronavirus. Yeah, yeah, it's a bad ex boyfriend or something. That environment was just so toxic. We had to get out of that. Yes, I don't I don't. What do you mean? I'm gaslighting you. That gaslighting is not even real.

Stop talking to your friends. We we we got to talk about the bridge. We got to do some engineering now. We got to do some well, there's your problem. We got to talk about the Mario Cuomo bridge. The fuck is the Mario Cuomo bridge? The fucking tap and see the fucking tap and see bridge. It's the Mario Cuomo bridge.

I was about his feelings on the old tap and see bridge. It's really speaking. It's the governor Mario M Cuomo bridge. Oh, fuck off. He should have just named it after himself. He should have just got with it. Just caught my fucking bridge plays at 130 decibels. What do you what do you cross it?

It's Andrew Cuomo. Welcome to my bridge. It's got like a waving Cuomo on it, like the Marlboro man, like 30 feet tall. That means you drive through his mouth. So just drive through his mouth. That'd be cool. Yeah, I don't want to go

on the Andrew Cuomo tunnel of love. Are you sensitive to intimacy? It's driving up the Cuomo stone. No, thank you. So original tap and see bridge. You can sort of see it being dismantled back here. This is your favorite. This was actually built as sort of a grift to start out with.

They decided, well, this is the widest part of the Hudson, the tap and see, which means it's an ideal place for a bridge. So that's where they built it. That's good strategizing. I like that bridge, biggest bridge we could build. That's all due respect to Alice. That's some Alice engineering right there. 100 percent, make it more rigid.

Well, it was a it was a candle lever span. But when they started building it, we decided to go to war in Korea. No. And so there were steel shortages because that was the last war that like caused actual shortages. So they built it like shit. And they were like, well, this is a temporary bridge. We'll build a better one in like 30 years or so. And then 60 years passed.

You know, we name it off the Italian kids. So I remember when we'd go visit my my my grandparents up in Connecticut, we'd cross this bridge all the time and it just looked worse and worse every year. They're like bits of concrete falling out. You know, I was always like, dad, we should take the we should probably take the George Washington. We should not we should not drive over the tap and sea because we might die. You and I have been over the tap and sea dozens of times

and did not die once, you little baby. Yeah, that was the new tap and sea. Mothman is showing up in Queens, just like, please stop taking the tap and sea. Mothman, what are you doing here? So they finally decide to replace this this aging, ailing, shizzy bridge. Yes. And of course, this is conducted in a in a fair and transparent open bidding process with no cost overruns, no ZD on time, under budget.

And from this, you get the Governor Mario M Cuomo Bridge. Yes. Seen here. The dad, please love me. The Governor Mario M Cuomo Bridge. Yeah. The Faleson Bridge. Well, it just came out that a whole bunch of bolts being used in the bridge are defective. Yeah. Yeah. Not good. You kind of need those to hold the bridge together.

Due to hydrogen embrittlement. I mean, they used they used our favorite material, I believe here, which was like high strength steel of some kind. But I didn't actually read this article. These are David's notes. So I was reading this a little bit and I found it pretty interesting. I didn't I don't know much about the science of hydrogen embrittlement and it's something as a mechanical engineer.

I haven't like had to design around, but apparently like, you know, hydrogen under if you have like a piece of steel, like it's not coated right and it's under like continuous stress, like hydrogen atoms will just like diffuse into the lattice structure and like cause slip dislocations like over time and basically make the thing like way more brittle. But I did. Were you able to find out what they should have done? Like I couldn't get through the article and make it more rigid. Yeah. Like should they have used stainless bolts or like I have.

I'm going to be honest. I have no idea. It was a coating that was missing properly coated. Yeah, because it can be it. Yeah, because it can be accelerated by like a whole number of things, including temperature, but also red sauce exposure to red sauce. A corrosion of being placed in a pile of big ziti. Yeah, it's all the work on the back. It was all the work.

But yeah, they found out about these. I told you not to put that in the bridge. They found out about this ball problem. I actually cast iron in the dishwasher. They actually found out. Yeah, somebody got fucked up. Yeah, like yeah, it snapped a bolt while he was working on a cable and it just right in his head.

Did not die to the best of my knowledge. No, he did. Yeah, it busses lip open. Yeah, you got like knocked down. Yeah, yeah. But that's fine, that's fine. But the governor Mario M Cuomo bridge is still up. So, you know, hasn't fallen down yet. It's the best review you can give a bridge, really. I think it's still about as safe as the previous one.

Not not not subject to the world. There's your problem episode yet. Yes. But now we're going to talk about it right now. This slide of the hero. Oh, I'm so angry at this picture. Lane discipline, fuckface. Lane discipline.

This is beautiful. What we have here is our special boy, Andrew Cuomo, with his ex-wife, TV's Sandra Lee. Yeah, her of table scapes and of two shots of vodka and of other memes, you may remember, in a 1932 Packard bearing the state flag, being the first one to cross the. Packard. Packard. Packard being the first car

to cross the dad, please love me bridge. And it did not fall down in this process. I believe this was actually FDR state limousine. It was. I'm so angry at this picture. So wait, did he drive this with this? Like, did he operate all the controls with his hands? Yeah, I mean, no, it's probably got pedals. It's probably got pedals.

That's that's that's a new enough car. It's got pedals. Well, yeah. But I'm saying, look at those door panels. Do you think FDR didn't drive his own car? He did have a car made for him custom. I remember some documentary. This probably wouldn't have been it, though, right?

No, but Cuomo owns this car, right? It's not a state of New York car. He just owns this. He has classic cars because he's an old Italian man with too much money. Yes. You know, I'm fine with that. It does look sick. I mean, it does look pretty sick.

Also, FDR had some function in his legs prior to becoming president. So it may not have been too heavily disabled. The way that that phrase makes it sound like becoming president removed that function in his legs. I mean, frankly, it kind of did. Like being president really took it out of FDR. Three terms, you know.

Franklin D Roosevelt. Everyone who does that job looks 20 years older after four years, except Trump. It's because they can't have any Adrenochrome while in office. Yeah, I mean, say if there was a general having a child molestation cabal if you don't get to reap the benefits.

Yes, right. Now we go to our stations. We're going to talk about trains. Trains. Yes. Trains. Trains. One thing that both of our podcasts. Yeah.

Well, so one of Cuomo's signature projects has been completing the Daniel Patrick Moynihan train hall, which is the idea is we're going to take Penn Station. And what we're going to do is we're going to build something slightly nicer next to it that can be accessed by some rail users from some platforms. Yeah, yeah. You're going to use the the Farley Post Office for that.

Yeah. Yeah, it's finished. It opened in January, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's the Post Office from like Miracle on 34th Street. The mental map of Manhattan from the division here. Huh. That game never got the love I thought it deserved.

No, no. Oh, well, she was stuck to making single-player games. Anyway, this station, this train hall, how is it? How is it? Is it good? Is it good? People like it. You know, I haven't been there yet. Yeah, I haven't either. I'm going to have to reserve my full and complete judgment

for when I go there. But it doesn't seem like it solves any of the problems in Penn Station to me, which we're going to discuss more extensively later. I wrote a whole bunch about that. But you know, this is this is just like a room at the end of the platforms, which you can use to get on M-Track

and sometimes the Long Island Railroad. But now you're in transit. The Governor Mario M Cuomo train hall. OK, I was going to say, to give you a sense of like the priorities here, it's a 1.1 million square foot building and 637,000 square feet is least office-based of Facebook. Oh, my God.

It's mostly a Facebook office. And then like it was like 475,000 square feet is actually for this train hall, where they inexplicably made like a bunch of escalator like single person escalators. So you still have the exact same fucking problem of like making this nice long snaking line to get to the train.

Yeah. Yeah, it hasn't it hasn't really improved any of the circulation problems. Plus, these these escalators go down to the very end of the platform, as opposed to the ones in the main Penn Station, which go to the middle of the platform. Both of them are bad, but these are bad in additional ways.

Now, I imagine both of them put together. It's a slightly better boarding experience. But, you know, if everyone if everyone were trying to cram into this train hall, as opposed to using the the main one, I imagine it might not be such a great experience. No, and like they were supposed to. I mean, it's it's it's expected to like you host

like two hundred and twenty five thousand people a day and has seating for three hundred and twenty people. So what the fuck? That's not a lot. Why is the city such a mess? Why? Oh, God. Well, you know, there's this guy. People sitting down doesn't make you money.

One thing I think we're learning about Andrew Cuomo is that Andrew Cuomo likes to get things done. Let's have his name on the side of the building basically. Yeah, we got some examples of some getting things done or other awesome things that have gotten done by I wrote. That's right. So these are things which are in the process of getting done. Well, I Governor Cuomo's vanity projects.

We did Gulf State vanity projects and mentioned this. But now we're going to talk about Andrew Cuomo. The United New York Emirates. Yes, he's going to murder David Brooks and like dismember him. David Brooks getting fucking coughed up with a tuffy cough. I'm Andrew Cuomo and David, you're about to meet your demise. All right.

So I think maybe a good good example of one of Andrew Cuomo's vanity projects, which is starting up now, this is not strictly his because also the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is involved is the Port Authority bus terminal replacement. Now, sometimes, you know, if the Germans have a saying. Yeah, this is always good. Organization hold on. Organization before electronics, before concrete, right?

You know, which is if you can fix a problem with organization, do that first, then add electronics, then then that's when you start building, you know, bridges and tunnels and ramps and stuff like that. So, you know, a lot of the problems which Cuomo is currently trying to solve, he's doing by building fancy things as opposed to solving the problems. I think the Port Authority bus terminal replacement is a good example. So we should start with, you know, what is the Port Authority bus terminal, right? Where fun goes to die.

Yeah, I was surprised to find this old photograph of it. I didn't realize there was actually some nice architecture there behind the giant. There was once. Yeah, yeah. So there was the bus, you know, you take a bus in the New York City. The bus goes in the Lincoln Tunnel. It goes through what's called the exclusive bus lane. If it's the morning or evening, it comes out on a ramp right here. So it spins around.

Yeah, it looks like a tub drain full of buses. Yes. So this is like this is old bus terminal was open in 1950. It was renovated in the 70s. It's basically a heavy duty parking garage with a waiting room in the middle. Right. It's got two hundred and twenty three bus platforms. It's the busiest bus terminal in the world. Eight thousand buses each day and two hundred and twenty five thousand people use the terminal each day. Damn.

So there's some problems with it, which, you know, we're still dealing, which, which the city is dealing with. One of the problems is most of the buses that come in the terminal are commuter buses, right? So they drive in from New Jersey in the morning. They drop off the passengers and then they have to find somewhere to wait for, you know, eight hours until the evening rush, right? And there's no layover facility in the terminal. These buses have to go out on the street and find somewhere to park.

Hmm. That's problem in New York. Yes. There's there's like a couple of private layover lots in the area, which some buses pay for. Why does the bus, the largest street traffic, not simply shoulder the other traffic out of the way? It's a good point. You've got to put a big cow catcher in the front of the bus. Start blasting the horn, smashing the taxes out of the way. I would be an MTA bus driver if they offered me that.

They're just like, yeah. Probably get a cool uniform, right? We also can't really take double decker or articulated buses. Hmm. Yeah. Probably got some cool patches. Yeah. That plus you get to drive what is essentially the war rig. Yeah, I'm all for this. The war bus. All right. MTA.gov. I'm going to fucking see.

The thing is, if they went and tried to procure a war bus, it would just wind up as the Bradley fighting vehicle. That's a problem. Rolling one of those over on that big fucking roundabout there. So, you know, the terminal is at capacity right now. And you got to, if you look at this problem like holistically, you know, the fact that you have 8000 buses coming in every morning and leaving, you know, maybe you should start to consider

you could move people away from this tunnel by linking some of those buses together into trains and running them into a train station, right? Now, you would need a lot of like rail service expansion to make this work. And, you know, in other circumstances, I would say, maybe that would be too expensive. We'll get to why I think maybe rail service would be a better option here in a minute. You know, but you would maybe you sort of make your rail fairs competitive with buses, more bus computers switch the train, you know,

you could improve operations here, especially with commuter buses. If you have layover problems where the buses have to wait all day, one of the things you could actually do to improve efficiency is instead of having the bus run once a day, is have it run all day back and forth. Right. Yeah. Rather than just sitting out of service all day. Yeah, Justin, do they ever try to just like take a commuter bus during its idle period and just turn it into like why if the buses were all the same?

Wouldn't it be able to just like hypothetically just become another bus route like immediately afterward for, you know, constant uptime? Well, but then you'd have to like change the numbers on the front, which means you've got to press a bunch of buttons. So there is a problem. There is a problem with using a commuter bus for city transit. And that's that most commuter buses are like big, you know, highway going buses, they have one door at the front.

You know, you got to climb steps to get in. You got to you. They're not really set up for like being able to just pull up to a corner and then five people get on, ten people get off, you know. No ADA accessibility. That's a good explanation. Yeah. Yeah, I think there's a way to get a wheelchair onto a coach bus. But since it doesn't make many stops, it's not like low floor or anything. It's got a little wheelchair lift, right?

You can do it, but it's not optimized for it. It's going to be very slow. Right. You know, these are designed to make one they start two stops. Yeah, they make two stops in total. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, but if you ran that bus all day, you know, back and forth, you wouldn't need to lay over, right? You know, this is the other thing about like commuter buses. They're not very they don't they're they're they're they're not in service

a lot of the time. You know, if you want to make seven commuter bus trips in the morning and seven in the evening, you might need seven buses to do that. Hmm. So if you sort of switch that operational mentality around, you might you might be able to use more space in the terminal more efficiently. The other thing is if you're trying to do improvements here, you got to think like regionally, as opposed to like a fiefdom of New York versus New Jersey, but you also have a port authority there,

which already managed is that. And, you know, I'm talking about switching to rail service. The port authority owns its own subway. Like maybe you could do some extensions there. And then if it's still overcrowded, then maybe you think about rebuilding the terminal then, you know, and doing this in a sort of sane and sensible way would result in a lot of ribbon cuttings in New Jersey, but not a lot for Andrew Cuomo.

So we decided to find a different way to do it. Yeah, what's the point if Andrew Cuomo can't come out and like talk about how big and beautiful it is, name it after that. So here's a here's a rendering that came out a couple of days ago of the new and improved Port Authority bus terminal coming to a New York city near you. Right. The Governor Mario M Cuomo Port Authority bus terminal. Dad, please love me. I am better than Chris Cuomo bus terminal.

So it's going to be a huge building, right? You know, there's lots. There's a whole garage for laying over these commuter buses they're building just from scratch with this giant ramp structure. It's going to have many interesting materials, as you can see in this render, such as glass and white and wood. Right. Really determined to look Scandinavian, I guess. Hell, yeah. I'm all about it.

You know what the price tag is going to be? How much? Ten billion dollars. That's a lot. This is ten million dollars. That's a lot of ziti. Yeah, a million dollars for a bus terminal. I want to give an idea of

what can ten billion dollars buy you in places other than New York City? Several. Well, several. Many Xboxes. Yes. All right. So down here, I have a diagram of what Montreal is building right now. The the REM, the Regional Express Metro, right?

This is 42 miles of automated metro. And they are building that for six and a half six and a half billion Canadian pesos, right? That is one half of a Port Authority bus terminal. Yeah, right. It's also about 20 million Xbox. If you're curious. I think in Paris,

in Paris, they are building 124 miles of new metro and commuter rail for thirty five billion dollars. That's mostly all new tunnels underground. And that's about three Port Authority bus terminals. Here's the Goddard base tunnel, which is the longest railroad tunnel in the world. It's a base to seven kilometers. Board straight at the bottom of the Swiss Alps.

Epic problem. This was. This was. This was built for nine point five six billion Swiss francs, which is just over one Port Authority bus terminal. Wow. How many cuckoo clocks is that?

A lot. It's actually like a cuckoo clocks are expensive as fuck. Oh, that's true. Yeah, Madrid Metro. I don't have a picture of that. That they've they've been building a lot since the 1990s and they've averaged around 100 million euros per kilometer. Right.

So which is very, very cheap by international standards. And so at those prices, you could build just under 60 miles of subway tunnel for one Port Authority's bus terminal. Right. Wow. So is it just real estate costs that are driving this all up so much or like, you know, to the is the standard of living for for people in Madrid,

like significantly lower than New York City? Like what accounts for this? Is it all just a bunch of political ZD? I. So this is an interesting one because discussing American construction costs is difficult because no one seems to actually know what the problem is. I think the problem is my ideas.

Yeah, I know, right? The government accountability office did a big study on this, I think a couple of years ago. Yeah, but unfortunately, all the witnesses came up missing. They were baked into the ZD. Yeah, that ramp that you see there, that's going to be like 90 percent snitch. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, the thing is, they did this study for a couple of million dollars and the conclusion they came up with after spending several years and a couple of million dollars was, we don't know. They're no mafia. Yeah. Very convenient. You know, a lot of people like to blame unions and the fact that Europe is obviously very poor, right?

You know, low rates of unionization. And that's why it costs less to build infrastructure there, right? Yeah. I also just realized that cuckoo clocks are for the Dutch. I fuck that up. I always loved the Justin Rosnick rhetorical, right? Right. Oh, I fucking love the Dutch.

No, no, no. There's Swiss, right? Cuckoo clocks are Swiss. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't matter. They all they. Right. OK. So I wish I was playing any of them. We didn't marshal plan Switzerland. Oh, they did not need our help with all the stolen gold

from the ancestors. No, they did not. I know about your secret Nazi gold trains. You Swiss chocolate fucks. What do you think they make the fucking gold foil wrappers for lint out of? Yeah, no, Toblerone. No, it's only going to be started. Alice, I'm thinking of you right now.

I'm drinking up the prickly pear of Europe. The Yuzu raspberry sherbet beer. Oh, that sounds delicious. It's not a lime guy. And there's a little too much lime for my taste. But I will say it's this beautiful pink color. I feel very fancy right now. Next to my dead slurpy cup.

Very nice drinking an award winning Papst Blue Ribbon beer. Oh, yeah. Yes. So. Yeah, as we're doing can checks, I've got a Miller high life. Nice champagne champagne of beers champagne of biz. The champagne of beers. You one of the things is these these projects are frighteningly close.

I mean, they were trying to advance these for the past four years. Now that Donnie from Queens is out of office and we got Delaware Joe. Yeah, Delaware Joe, Delaware Joe, the feds are a little bit more willing to start, you know, printing the funny money to get these projects going. But, you know, there's a lot better ways you could use ten billion dollars to improve public transportation than building rebuilding a bus terminal.

Which is used on, you know, masks not made of gene asses. I'm curious about this new green space, though. Like, what's what's the deal with that? I mean, there's two of them. That's going to suck. They're covering over some of the ramps that go into the basement of the old bus terminal. I see. OK. Yeah.

Nice perennial food for us. It was some very expensive grass. I I mean, yeah, they probably have to install like a ventilation system, too, because there's going to be a bunch of buses going through there. Yeah, it's going to be as that's going to cover up freeways like that is always more expensive than people think it is. Everything's more expensive than it should be here in America. But, you know, yeah. Yeah.

Is this blue zone for the solving the commuter problem? Is that the whole idea? That's the whole idea for that. Yeah. That's a lot of bus space. How many buses are they going to be able to store in there? I have no idea. It's going to be outputs of a dozen. Up up for the listening audience.

This is a a facility that runs from 11th Avenue to 8th Avenue and is just like there's a big red part that says ramp. And there's a middle part that says staging slash storage and intercity terminal. And then the main terminal stretches from like the middle of 9th and 10th to 8th Avenue and is. Yes, I I it's yeah, it's enormous.

It's just an enormous facility designed to let buses idle for six out of six to eight hours a day. Yes, it looks a little bit like a circle. Smart idea from the sky. That's what I'm seeing message. Well, this is not the only major construction project that Andrew Cuomo wants to build in New York City. He's got some plans for Penn Station

beyond the Moynihan train hall, right? So, you know, he wants a nice new train station, right? Penn Station right now is at capacity. I'm putting scare quotes there at capacity mostly because of the tunnels underneath the Hudson River, right? But also for other reasons. So some of the problems are that the operations are not, you know, optimized, right?

You have New Jersey transit coming in on one end. You have the Long Island Railroad comes in on the other end, right? And they both terminate as opposed to a more optimal arrangement where those two services would be combined and they would just run through. You know, I mean, they do run through since there's a yard on either end. So the Long Island Railroad trains are stored at Hudson Yard. And the Jersey Transit trains are stored at Sunnyside Yard. So, you know, the real capacity constrained part

doesn't have empty trains running through it. But the East River tunnels have a lot of empty trains running through them. You know, you have really narrow platforms at track level, right? This causes problems where, you know, if you come in on a packed double deck or New Jersey Transit train, it takes like five minutes for everyone to get off the train because they're all trying to squeeze onto this narrow platform, then go up a tiny escalator, right? You know, and then there's there's some intercity trains

that run through the station, but some of them terminate here, right? So then they're idling on the track there, right? And the Hudson tubes themselves are at capacity. You can't run any more trains through there. There are about 24 trains per hour at the peak. And you can't do much better than that if you have mixed operations, you know, with local trains and intercity trains, right? And of course, the design of Penn Station at the concourse level

is confusing, to say the least, right? I remember being confused something to be desired leaves a little to be desired. Yeah. And there's some there's some solutions that could be pursued here through like organization, right? And a lot of people put a lot more thought into these than what I'm about to say, because I put this together this morning, as opposed to thinking this through. But, you know, there's there's solutions like regional rail, where you through run, you know, New Jersey Transit and the Long Island Railroad.

Both of those railroads have dual mode locomotives. You could, you know, start that tomorrow if with the equipment they already had, if you really needed to, right? And that reduces some of the some of the empty moves by trains, right? But that's not necessarily useful without platform extensions. You know, the narrow platforms are a big source of delays. And this is, you know, this is a situation where actually reducing the number of tracks could increase capacity, right?

If you just widen the platforms really quickly and easily. I mean, you could have a shorter, like, residency times per train and thus be able to process more trains per hour, right? Yes. And this is something if you saw that Ameristar rail, Northeast Corridor privatization proposal that came out recently, this is didn't this. I should have put it in here, but it says intellectual property. I read that every day.

So the the one of the ideas they put forth in that proposal was they were going to do platform widening really, really cheaply, which was they were just going to park a bunch of flat cars on one track and use those as the platform extension. Oh, OK. Yeah, just hop over them. No, I looked at that and I was like, yeah, that would work. Would they just have like an automated like audio thing? She says, mind the several gaps.

Oh, no, you'd put like a nicer floor over the flat flat cars. I don't think you should bother. Just put up a sign that says that from this point on parkour. So this is actually, Amtrak's doing that same thing, too. They've been doing a Hamilton station in New Jersey for a while as they have. They just parked a flat car and they had a platform bridge extension when they were doing some track work so the trains could stop a one track away from the platform.

Yeah, it makes sense. So, you know, this is something where some some capacity improvements could be done really quickly and cheaply while more permanent solutions are looked for. Then you got less cheap solutions like really simplifying operations since a lot of trains conflict with each other as they come in and out of the station, right? Some of them terminate, some of them run through if you just ran everything through. I mean, at the peak hours, this sees 24 trains an hour that can easily be handled by just a couple platforms.

And there are, you know, 11 platforms in the station, right? You run the system more like a subway rather than like a, you know, mixed operation, right? And, you know, you have rolling terminal. Yeah, I have a feeling we're going to discuss the subway some more in a bit though. Oh, yeah. Yeah, rolling stuff. If you got rolling stock that was more suited for this high capacity job right now, there's lots of double decker trains, double decker trains because they take so long to load and unload it because all the loading

and unloading happens at one station. They they cause capacity problems that they don't need to cause. If you had single level trains with big doors, you move people in and out quicker, right? Yeah, just make the whole make the whole carriage out of the door. Yes, no, but honestly, yeah. So everyone back to flat wagons. No, we'll go back to slam door trains.

Well, it's like the. Yeah, there you go. What slam door train is that? Is that like the the troll car? Everybody gets a door. You can open and close it yourself. Yeah, there's a door next to every seat. They were pretty cool for a long time. Um, you know, and he went a long term effort where you sort of merge

New Jersey, transit, Long Island Railroad and Metro North together. And then, you know, the hard problem is you do actually need to build the extra two tunnels on the Hudson side and, you know, figure out additional regional rail links. You know, I think a good idea in the long term, build a tunnel from Hoboken to Atlantic terminal via Lower Manhattan or something like that. You know, that that would help alleviate congestion at Penn real good. But, um, you know, that's those are that's long term stuff.

But, you know, there's some quick fixes that that would increase capacity in the short term, but, um, from the governor's own presentation. Sometimes there is no little fix that works. Hate those times, which is why. Because all the little fixes don't have something that you can cut a ribbon on. Yeah, exactly. Thousands of tiny ribbons. So we got to build a new terminal one block south and demolish the whole block

of buildings. Of course, there's no other way. Governor Cuomo is he wanted to he decided what the solution is to build Penn Station South, right? The idea is we have four new platforms with seven new tracks, right? And this is the best way I could describe this is it's a brand new 1920s railroad terminal, um, you know, I said, Stubb ended, so you'd have trains from New Jersey, they would come in, they would stop on the platforms.

And then, and then I don't know. This ends in a hole, honestly, profit. Well, if they wanted to go store the trains for the day in Sunnyside, they'd have to back out and then go through the main Penn Station in order to get there. Oh, my God. You know, so it's really trying to actually have a train gantry that they're going to build, just like pick the train up and just slide it right over to the next track.

And oh, God, I'm giving him ideas. They're going to have like one of the Elon Musk hyper loops that they lowered the train onto a sled and then the. I actually like that a lot of ground in the tunnel. Great. At 60 to 65 miles per hour. The sled will be on top of a pile of segues. Yeah. So I could see this sort of working. If they were going to operate New Jersey transit, less like commuter rail

and more like regional rail where the train would pull in, stop, let passengers off, take them back on and then go back out to New Jersey in service as like, you know, maybe running once every 15 minutes on every line. Where they belong. Yeah. But I don't I don't understand how how this is supposed to work operationally, because this is such a it's it's it's a bad arrangement. Right. Now, this is the good news is this only costs eight billion dollars. I mean, yeah, okay.

Only four fifths of a Port Authority bus terminal. They also want to demolish a full block of buildings to build this. Include in including the Penn Station Powered Station, which is the only part of the original Penn Station complex still standing. Is that currently used to generate the one that got away? It's it's used mostly for ventilation, I think right now. You know, supposedly this would be built alongside the Hudson twos, but I don't need that.

Proposal, I think they were they were actually just going to build these platforms and not build the new Hudson tubes. In which case, I have no idea what this is for. We're going to put. OK. So, you know, if New Jersey Transit starts to in reverse peak service, I guess it was work, maybe the maybe the Keystone could use these platforms. M track really can't because they only got locomotives on one side of the train, at least for the regionals, maybe the Ocellos could use them.

You know, the only argument I've heard that makes sense is these platforms are a stop gap while they try and fix the real station. But it's a mystery to me how this is going to improve capacity in any way. Right. I feel like maybe maybe you can get an eight billion dollar stock. And I feel like it's going to serve like 10 trains a day. Oh, my God. This is this is a very because you got to you got to bring the train in, right? It goes out of service.

You got to go through and clean it and stuff like that. And then you can put it back in service, then you can go back out, right? Unless you want to do that in the yard, in which case, you got to go in, discharge passengers, go back out, then go to sunny side, right? And then to bring it back into service, you have to come back, turn around again, go back into the platform. It's a very, very strange arrangement. I it is more onical.

I don't understand why why they're doing this. This is why, like, to me, the ribbon cutting explanation is like insufficient. Somebody is making just a disgusting amount of money off of this. And I just don't have the time to research it or the wherewithal. Well, don't worry, somebody who, like, like, that's the only explanation that you can have, really, is that there is just such a level of political corruption that this is how huge instruction firms make their make their bread. Yeah. And if you don't have the time right now to research it, don't worry.

Be be be culturally sensitive. It's ziti. Garlic bread, but yeah, like, you don't have to worry about it, because you can just like look this up in a decade when they replace it with, like, you know, a 30 billion dollar project, that it'll be the same people. Yeah, or cousins. The way the way I always look at these projects is, you know, they are expensive and bad and they're expensive because they're bad

and they're bad because they're expensive. It's like there's there's there's a difference between, like, you know, austerity on one hand and just paying huge amounts of money for shit on the other hand. So I don't think we should be paying this much money for garbage. Agreed. Yeah. And we got to look at what Cuomo do to the subway. This is again, this is a slide from an actual Cuomo presentation.

I would like you to look at the position of the subway lines versus the position of Manhattan. Lexington Avenue line seems to be in the East River. Oh, yeah, they shifted that a bit. Yeah. I'd love to take a U-boat. Yes. So listeners, it is. Yeah. So you get like Manhattan, like kind of its Central Park and South and yeah, all everything

all the the the lines for the subway are are shifted East. A unreasonable degree where like the the A, C and E lines are like under Central Park. And then it says five fifty two billion dollars, largest capital plan in MTA history. That seems like a lot of money just to move all of the subway lines like two blocks over for no particular game whatsoever. Well, I had to rebuild the Fulton Street terminal under water, it seems. Oh, Brooklyn, Brooklyn Brewery is going to be no more after that. I don't even know what's going to happen.

He loves to brag about how expensive his. Yeah, Brittany, you're exactly right. It's a pretty ridiculous thing to brag about. This is not fit. I'm going to spend money. Guess how much I spent on electrical last week. It was six hundred dollars last month for our electric bill. Like, why are you bragging about fifty two billion dollars of like nonsense

track changes? It would be worth it. That's the thing is like because it's the biggest one. That's the biggest spend some money. These things. No one get attacked for like costing too much money and runaway construction costs. And then you're just sort of saying the quiet part out loud where you're just like, we're just going to throw money at the problem. Despite the fact that we don't have any actual solutions.

There's just such a fucking like, I don't know. I hate to say it, but coastal liberal approach to the solution in that you're just like bragging about how much money you can spend on infrastructure because I think you think it makes you more metropolitan and European, I think. Without actually getting very much infrastructure, you don't get me disputing that. I just. All right. Back in about twenty seventeen.

The New York City subway was in shambles, right? Everything was slow. It was broken. Cuomo declared a state of emergency and managed to poach Andy Biford from the Toronto Transit Commission, right? And Biford is a. Yes, he's a genius. Yes, he's a good guy.

And Biford come on this podcast. You know, a long reputation for bringing large, complex transit systems back from the brink of ruin. The London Underground owes a lot to him. Toronto owes a lot to him. He takes office as the president of the New York City subway. And he sets about trying to first off, change the culture, right? One of the things he did.

He's the first president of the subway who didn't own a car. He point blank, refused to use the MTA car to get to and from meetings. He only used the subway. Kingship. Yeah. Oh, yeah. He put he put together the Fast Forward Report, recommending all kinds of fixes. Some of them were easy and cheap. Some of them were not so much. There were not a lot of huge, big, visible projects, right?

There was stuff like replacing signal systems, more frequent trains, adjusting signal timers so the trains could run faster. There were lots of ADA improvements. A lot of the organization and electronics before the concrete. Yes. And so boring and unglamorous. Right, exactly. You got the bus network improved really quickly. I think overall, this was a fairly expensive project.

I think it was forty three billion dollars over ten years was the recommendation. But it had really quick and early results. You know, the train started running on time again real quick. And you know, one of the things about Byford is everyone loved him, right? The riders loved him. The employees loved him. The unions loved him. Management loved him.

The city government loved him. Even the transit cops liked him, you know? All right, well, dig one. Well, yeah, ding one. Yeah. He's a regular Ferris Bueller. Yeah, exactly. Byford was out there. He's getting stuff done. So, of course, Cuomo tried to undermine him constantly.

That's just it's it's sociopathic like it genuinely is. Yeah, there were a lot of incidences of this. The big one was the L train shut down, right? The L train has a tunnel under the East River. You can see the L train here. Probably twenty or thirty blocks south of where it should be. Yeah, because because this right here should actually be up at Central Park.

So, you know, this is the 14th Street tunnel. It carries the L train under the East River is damaged in 2012 in Hurricane Sandy. The MTA had planned an 18 month closure of the tunnel to completely rebuild it, right? And they had planned a lot of mitigation efforts. There were going to be bus lanes everywhere. There was going to be extra service on other lines in order to compensate for the fact this one train was going to be out of service for 18 months.

You know, and they had to and people were going to have to find ways around that. They planned this for years. Three months before the project was going to be executed, Governor Cuomo toured the tunnels and then declared that he and some engineering professors at Columbia University had come up with a better plan. And they weren't going to close the tunnel. Awesome. That fucking genius. He did exactly what he did for excellence.

Yeah, exactly. He said, yeah. He also said he called up Tesla. It's what it's what he did for the vaccine roll out where all of the county. He got shit. Yeah, damn it. Me and the boys. Yeah, we we we did a whole bunch of ZD. And we got some great fucking ideas. Let me tell you.

And so all these years of planning were just thrown into garbage. The mitigation efforts were canceled. You know, it's just like, all right, I guess we got to do the governor's thing. And, you know, whether or not this plan was good or not, because it seems like the old train, the old trains, it didn't shut down. They seemed to whatever the governor came up with seems to have worked. But the other thing he did was he used this as an excuse to restructure the MTA because he had clearly demonstrated it was full of incompetent boobs, right?

Yeah, so he put in a whole bunch of his own people and reduced a lot of Andy Biford's authority. Just classic shit. So fucking that's so fucking. No one can be popular who works for the state government. Yeah, exactly. Only me. Only me. And when and when they see the Andy Biford's a hero, they won't remember Andy Cuomo.

Fuck whatever. And Cuomo is the fucking joke. There could only be one Andy. I just really is diva shit. Like anybody. Yeah, absolutely. It's so fucking. But you're a grown ass man. Fucking just accept that other people have other jobs. You don't need because he wants to be present.

So fucking bad. That's how he thinks that everyone should be under it. And I don't I'm fine. And he also has to be an expert in everything. He has to be an expert in health policy. He has to be an expert in vaccinations. You know, it's so funny that New York State keeps producing these guys and electing them.

Donald Trump's the exact same way. Because Donald Trump's the same way. But so was Giuliani. And this is the thing. He keeps producing these pre-Madonna's who like get lucky standing over the scene of a disaster and then inevitably massive fall from grace. So, you know, great.

This is the life cycle of the New York Green. We love it. Ironweights for your own good. Ironweights. Sorry, my bad. We are absorbing you. You are now part of Pennsylvania. It's ridiculous. It's worth noting actually that David and I are from Florida and Chris is from Massachusetts.

Yeah, you are all New Yorkers now for being absorbed. They have Wawas in Florida. One of us. One of us. They do. They do. They're not good. They're not good.

I ate at a Florida Wawa and like this this embassy of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is not the same because once they change the bread, that's what happens. Yeah, it's a damn shame. Amorosas. If you if you bake anything in Florida with Florida water, it tastes like water because the water is yeah, it's swamp water with fish.

It's literally sulfuric water. It's just like everything that you yeah, it's disgusting. I just that's that's the thing is that is that Cuomo is so fucking sociopathic and just the like that you're right that he has to be an expert in everything. And he has to always be right. And it's just this is our world brand of New Yorkerism where you have to be the leading authority on any and you can't

like delegate responsibilities because you have to be the star. It's that weird mix of like narcissism and like not just narcissism, but like egotism, too. Like megalomania. Like, yeah, he's definitely a word. Absolutely. Yeah. All right, let's blaze through the rest. That's what I was going to say.

Well, Biford, Biford, to his credit, held on for a while until about October 2019. I think when Cuomo decided to redirect a lot of funding from transit to transit police, he tendered his first resignation then was convinced to retract it. And then finally resigned in frustration properly in January of 2020. There's a mass exodus of like competent people and institutional knowledge since then.

Because, of course, the pandemic is a fucking hopeless. Yeah, this guy who like fixed London and fixed Toronto and stuff was defeated by New York City and Andy. Well, exactly. I don't mean London and Toronto are real cities. It's not like you're going from managing, you know, Phoenix's light rail. No, to the subway. These are legitimate. Like the London Underground is a massively complex system.

And the fact that just like Andy Biford had to leave New York because Cuomo couldn't get out of his own way. And now he wants to be fucking president. It's just embarrassing. Yes. Sorry, everybody. I've been drinking. Also, when he worked in London, who was mad? Because it was either going to be Sadiq Khan, who's fine, I guess.

Or Boris Johnson. It was Boris. It was Boris Johnson was a better boss than fucking Andrew Cuomo. What does that tell you? He's actually back in London now. He's working under Sadiq Khan now. So there we are, Andrew Cuomo, worse than Boris Johnson. Oh, I was going to say, you know, it's like in the vaccine rollout, like is county governments all over New York were planning on

like managing the vaccine rollout. They had plans they had done like years of studies and done like, I don't know, whatever the health equivalent of war games are. Right. And then it was like, I think like two weeks before they were supposed to come out, he's like, No, state's going to do it. And just like me and some guys from Columbia and Tesla have gotten together. Yeah, my friend.

From Columbia, yeah. It's better if what Dwayne Reed distributed the vaccines. He just calls somebody like Mickey, we know some room from Columbia. All right. I need a couple of guys. Yeah. No. No. Send him over. They're in religious studies, religious studies.

That's perfect. Do they have lab coats? Oh, no, it's all right. We got lab coats over here. They're making sure that they wear our lab coats. OK, so here's a fun one. This is an ongoing one as well. So here's LaGuardia Airport, right?

LaGuardia Airport has no rail transit to it, right? Yeah, this has been a problem. It fucking sucks. Yeah, it's not so good as it should be. So, you know, but have no fear. Well, Governor Cuomo is coming to the rescue. All right. Just thinking about it.

Cuomo, the Wario to Fiorello LaGuardia's Mario. So there's an obvious way to link this airport up to public transportation. You have the end train here in Astoria. You extend it out into this industrial area. You come around the corner, you go up to the terminal, right? Easy. It's like a mile and a half of subway, right? And one of the... Maybe too easy.

Maybe too. Yeah. Well, you know, the. One of the things is this would be a little annoying to build because, you know, you'd be building a new L through a residential area. You'd have to go through some environmental studies, which is why Governor Cuomo came up with LaGuardia air train. Rather than have a direct subway link into Manhattan. The governor's proposal builds an air train backwards

down the Grand Central Parkway to Metz Willett's Point. Why do this? No, I have to imagine. I imagine part of that is because air trains have a different fee schedule. So you can just like rake in money from tourists flying into LaGuardia. Except it's charging eight dollars to ride the airport train, which should be a subway, but isn't. Yes. Well, and until recently, airports could only there's a special fund

for airport access, which only lets you build like fancy air trains that serve nothing except airports. Is that an FAA thing? Is that a thing? OK, OK. But that has recently been changed. OK. They could now easily fund the end train extension. But no, they're building this backwards air train. And this is fine if you can pay the Long Island Railroad fare

to get the Penn Station. And if you if you say it's not in your daily budget, you're stuck on the seven train all the way back and then meandering through Long Island City. And then you finally get there, right? You know, done it. It is a miserable ride. Yeah. Yeah. And but this is the one that's getting built.

But that's how he's done for New York City. How has he done for the rest of New York State? There's a rest of New York State. Look, New York is huge. It's not very populated, though. So. And I moved to Corning to start a new life. Yes. And and and the rest of New York States infrastructure package from Andrew Cuomo has been.

I guess they fixed up a couple of airports with a word. Suck it on it. Yes. Now, we got a new exit ramp to the Albany International Airport. I know that you've shit on it, but I've had to use it a couple of times and I think it's pretty convenient. The governor, Mario M Cuomo, exit ramp.

This fuck just says daddy, please don't tempt us. He did. Is that the one that became a meme? It was just Andrew. He did drive that same. This is standing in front of one of the off ramp sides. Yeah, he drove that car over the new. By somebody who was crying.

But he did. He drove that same fucking car over this new exit ramp. To Albany Airport, which has like three and a half gates or so. It's like this. It's such a small airport. It's very cute. I love using it. But yeah, he did drive his car over the ramp. So anyway, it's great airport free Wi-Fi.

It's perfect. There you go. So anyway, Governor Cuomo has completed sixty five billion dollars in construction, more than any state in the nation with less to show for it than any state in the nation. Yeah. Hey, you see that wall of masks? That's a lot of ziti. So number one, Corona deaths.

Number one. Maybe. Yeah. Everything's bigger in New York. Number one. But I think California. I think California passed us. So we're going to have to kill more old people. Oh, shit. You have to do a crossover with some Californians.

But go and use them. Don't tell Cuomo. Oh, God. All right. So true and on, get at us. Well, we'll fight over which state can kill most people. All right. Well, that's why. Governor Cuomo, bad at managing a state

might get brought down by some of the more personally objectionable things he's done. We'll absolutely never be brought down by any of the structurally objectionable things he's done. Yeah. The next guy is going to come in and just do all the same shit, I'm sure. It's going to be worse.

I'll get his brother off a CNN and into the governor. Oh, but I'll also still work with CNN. I'm Andrew Cuomo. He'll be reporting on himself. God damn it. Chris Cuomo. Yeah. He's going to weekend at Bernie's and they're going to replace him with his brother and not tell anyone.

It's just going to like the man in the iron mask. Yeah, it's going to be Chris Cuomo, like the face with the thing from Family Guy, where Joe, where Quagmire is operating Joe's legs. That's what it's going to be like. Chris suits up. We're going to have to get you the nipple piercings. You're governor now. I mean, you can say what you want about Andrew Cuomo,

but in a time when America needed intimacy, he was not a little sensitive. That's right. The America's most sensual governor. Oh, God. I am proud to be honest. America's most sensual governor. And I'm going to be your most sensual president.

I mean, I have to say, it's not. Dick out on stage, like, I don't know. Jesus. We're sorry about it. I mean, I have to like it is, I don't know, I have very conflicted feelings about it because like he has been a horrible governor in so many ways. And the fact that it seems like what's going to bring him down are these,

you know, charges of like inappropriate workplace behavior and sexual harassment. And in some places, even sexual like assault, essentially. I mean, he's been accused of like groping a woman up her blouse. But it's like it continues to be incredibly frustrating to me that it's like often these sort of optics or these things that like, oh, well, this makes us very uncomfortable. And so now we have to bring him down versus like the gross corruption. I mean, New York passed a law recently that like people who are,

who you're directly responsible for appointing can't donate to your campaign. And so what Cuomo did is have like the children and spouses of government appointees that he has directly appointed donate to his campaigns. So I don't like what does that mean for our politics going forward? If like, so what? If you can be like an incredibly corrupt political leader who's just raking in money, but, you know, as long as you don't grab, like slap anybody's ass, you're good to go.

Like, is that the standard that we're setting for ourselves? It's insane that it is, right? Like, oh, go ahead, Alas, go ahead. I feel like as, as with Trump, right? It's insane that Cuomo has managed to kill this many people. And I'm still left thinking, man, how much worse would it be if he was competent? Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. I think a lot of it is just like, yeah, you see these like the fucking

the fucking whatever Brooklyn dad defying out here is who's just like, we, you know, we hold our politicians accountable, blah, blah, blah, blah, but you haven't for fucking whatever, like six years now. And that's the insane thing is that, like, just because a person vaguely lines up with the apology, you have to hold that person. I don't want to say more accountable, but like more accountable, right? Like if they're on ostensibly, my fucking team, like that I should be more willing to call them out and Andrew Cuomo was a corrupt bastard and like,

whatever else Jim Kenny sucks ass. And, you know, you have to be, it sucks so much to like push back on these people for the left and hear like, oh, well, like, no, we sweep that under the rug because like it's, it's bad optics. And it's just like, no, like this isn't the best we can do. And if it is, we should just fucking throw in the towel. But like, you know, I never say that, like, oh, well, you don't go this hard after Republicans.

It's like, well, they don't even pretend to represent me. Like there's no, of course I don't. I've written them off, right? Because there's no fucking hope for them. It would be like being mad at somebody else's mom for being a bitch. When it like my like, no, of course, I'm going to be more pissed off at my mom's great, but like, you understand what I'm saying. Like, of course, I'm not going to go after somebody who doesn't even pretend

to represent my interests and serve me. Right. I mean, a lot more pissed off at like a Democratic governor who's shitting the bed than a Republican one who shit, because I expect I expect the absolute worst out of a Republican at all times. Yeah, at least nominally, a Democrat should be sort of more on my side. And then you get these the corruption and you get the absolute grotesque sexual behavior and you get these people who are just like, well, this is a hit

job and it's just like, you can't fucking say believe women and then turn around and pull that stunt. Like, that's so fucking embarrassing. I'm so fucking tired of it. Like, I'm just a sexual weaponized, but only sort of for the right people is so fucking grotesque. Yeah. I mean, you saw how Joe Biden after the terror read, you know, a story and how

she came forward and told her story of being like, you know, essentially sexually assaulted, raped by Joe Biden. How that just, you know, slid right off of him because of like a wall of people being like, I don't know, it's kind of, kind of fishy, kind of sketch, kind of sketch, I don't know. She did declare bankruptcy. So I don't know. Yeah.

And we didn't even like, I know we should probably wrap up, but like, we didn't even talk about all these liberals who now have like Q and on level conspiracies about Donald Trump personally bringing down Andrew Cuomo. So they will be prosecuted for like, seek help people. Like, it's incredible, absolutely. Sincerely seek help. Someone who sees this like, I addressed you and I can split the bill on our shared delusions.

Like, I just, I'm, I think that's it. Is it like listening? And what's so bizarre is like, Al Franken should have resigned and did resign basically in record time. But like the fucking, the weird wall around Governor Cuomo, where A, he should resign in shame, but B, these people who like spent years and years going on about believe women and me too, like, which is very noble. And I'm not saying like, I want to say I'm a straight white man who's

never been sexually assaulted or I don't want to like talk about shit. I don't know about, but like, you got to be consistent. And like, yeah, if a Democrat or whoever, someone again, ostensibly on your team is accused of that shit, believe the women first. We don't need the fucking, especially when they're also straight white men who to all intents and purposes and like by all accounts have never been sexually assaulted, like fucking Brooklyn dad or whatever is not going to teach anyone any lessons about feminism.

And yeah, has been content to be out here being like, you know, you, you got to believe women until it's politically inconvenient. Well, the one thing I will say about that, and then I'm, I'm done again. I'm sorry I've been drinking, but I'm not really sorry. Is that your like Andrew Cuomo is not going to see Brooklyn dad's Brooklyn dad defiance tweet about like, which rape victims to believe in any politically convenient hour, but like your friends who have been raped and sexually assaulted and your family who's been raped and sexually

assaulted, they're going to see that shit. So like, if you, if you're ever, I don't think any of our listeners are God willing, if you're ever on the fence, you're like, well, I don't believe her because like it's politically inconvenient to what I believe. Don't, don't tweet that B shut the fuck up. Seeds to see a therapist and like your friends and family who have been ready to have been sexually assaulted, absolutely will see that shit. Absolutely will know you're not in their fucking corner and they have no

reason to believe you or Governor Cuomo is in their fucking corner. And there's also like so many of these stories are so bizarre that like, could you really imagine someone making this up? There is a story where Cuomo brings in a woman. Well, first, like his whole office has to look like an Aaron Sorkin flick. Right. Like everyone's in tents and skirts and high heels and shit. And that that is like required, especially when he's in the office.

And he brings someone in to help him win an eBay auction for car parts. And like and like touches them and like has them like and like looks at them as they bend over while they help him like bid on car parts on eBay in his office. I mean, like imagine making that up for the sake of steering the governor. Like, what the fuck? That's a good lord. Like, so, yeah, no, this this definitely happened. It's disgusting.

This is who your governor is. He he's baked in the ZD of sexual harassment and corruption. Like there's no defending the guy. Like, come on. And ultimately, like, you know, corruption. Yeah, it used to a future Ironweeds episode that we already recorded. We had a vlogger on that that talked about how America's corruption has gotten so bad in that like other, you know, other animals out there in the world.

Governments need to shit. They need to eat. They need to shit. And the fact that America cannot shit, we cannot get rid of our corrupted, fucking, malfeasent, fucking decrepit, like self appointed king ass fucking politicians is a serious wake up call. It's like this is like the shit that happens literally right before you die, like not being able to like process your waste.

Like the hopefully Andrew Cuomo actually goes down for his many crimes and it stops him from the crimes that he's about to do. But like, I don't know, like this that dog don't shit like as a US, you know. Well, that was a cheerful episode. Good job. Thanks for joining us. And well, there's your ironweeds. The podcast of engineering disasters and Troy New York with slides.

The next episode will be on the Diploma Narrows Bridge disaster. I love you very much. I absolutely love you the next time I see this now. I'm all about it. All right, I think that. Was a podcast. OK, I'm done. I'm done doing Andrew Cuomo.

I don't want to do it anymore. I really enjoyed it. I like the Andrew Cuomo. Bye, everybody. Bye, everyone. I'm back. Bye, everybody.