
The Power Broker

A politician or public official could accept a legal fee or an insurance premium from Triborough with assurance that no reporter or reformer would ever be able to discover that he had done so.
Robert A. Caro • The Power Broker
The rewards involved in creating vest-pocket parks were, moreover, not at all commensurate with the effort required. If the reward was a sense of achievement, what—to the creator of Jones Beach—was the achievement in creating a tiny bit of green space or a few benches or a seesaw or two?
Robert A. Caro • The Power Broker
But thereafter he treated La Guardia not as his superior but as an equal. In the areas of transportation and recreation, Robert Moses, who had never been elected by the people of the city to any office, was henceforth to have at least as much of a voice in determining the city’s future as any official the people had elected—including the Mayor.
Robert A. Caro • The Power Broker
Moses’ proposal was a fiscal codification of his philosophy and his lust for personal power. Since a greater proportion of the poorer classes rather than upper rode the subways, doubling the fare was a financial burden that would fall heaviest on those of the city’s people least able to bear it. Moses’ taxing proposals left real estate taxes
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His disdain of the poorer parts of NYC is clear
Upstate New York in 1925 was a stronghold of Prohibitionism, of Protestantism, of prejudice, of Ku Klux Klannism—and of Republicanism.
Robert A. Caro • The Power Broker
The weight of the rheumy-eyed drunks who served as lifeguards at Jacob Riis Park, Rockaway Beach and Coney Island was as excessive for their job as were their ages. “The first time I saw those guys lined up in their swimming costumes, I could hardly believe it,” recalls Samuel M. White, who was later put in charge of them. “Some of them ran 225 or
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Great structuring of the sentences. He ends with this unexpected punch of irony - a lifeguard who can’t swim!
To the men of the machine, the end of the La Guardia administration, cleanest in the city’s history, meant only one thing: the twelve lean years were over. Now was the time for the fat. E finita la cuccagna! the Little Flower had promised—and he had kept his promise. But now he was gone. The party was on again.
Robert A. Caro • The Power Broker
There was a reason for the size of their fiefs, for their willingness to buy—and, year after year, to pay taxes on—hundreds of acres that they kept in woods and never used. There was a reason for the height and thickness of the walls around those fiefs. There was a reason for their private police forces and armed guards. They needed vast acreage in
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lugubriously