Posted on 09/21/2014 6:18:40 AM PDT by Kaslin
If you live in New York you may have heard of him, but outside the area his name may be a mystery. Robert Caro, famed author of four books on Lyndon Johnson, wrote his first book about him for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. The book was later named one of the one hundred greatest non-fiction books of the 20th century. The man is Robert Moses and the book is The Power Broker.
The book was written in 1974 (celebrating its 40th anniversary.) I have owned it for about ten years and finally tackled it on my recent vacation. Tackle it you must as it comes in at 1,162 pages not including notes and index. It chronicles the life of Moses who, from 1924 through 1968, became the most powerful man in New York though he never held public office and only ran once (for Governor in 1934 and was creamed). This was when New York was not only the center of the United States, but the world.
Moses was a floundering Ph.D. when Al Smith provided his first significant appointment. To remind you of who Al Smith was, at the time of the appointment of Moses he was the Governor of New York and became the 1928 Democratic nominee who may have mercifully lost to Herbert Hoover. He was also the first Catholic to run for President from a major party.
Moses’ initial foray into controlling a state agency was based on a law he wrote and was signed by Smith which allowed Moses to carve up Long Island and establish public parks for New Yorkers who needed open spaces. His most well-known park, Jones Beach, is known to all New Yorkers, who have used its facilities for almost 90 years.
From that point Moses amassed power through his control of 12 state and New York City commissions. To give you a taste of how powerful he became he stared down Franklin Roosevelt -- and FDR backed down. When FDR served as Governor of New York from 1929-1932, he found Moses useful, but the two men hated each other. While President and at the height of his popularity, FDR wrote a federal order aimed at forcing Moses from his powerful state appointments. The uproar from Albany, New York City, and the New York Congressional delegation was so immense FDR had to withdraw the order. Moses went on doing his thing for 34 years thereafter, long after the required retirement age.
So what did he do that made him so important? To give you a taste, I quote Caro: “The transportation network he built after World War II ranks with the greatest feats of urban construction in recorded history.” He built the longest tunnel in the Western Hemisphere and the longest suspension bridge in the world. He built or started 899 miles of highways around New York, which is almost twice as much as what exists in Los Angeles. All those parkways and expressways with those quirky names New Yorkers rattle off, like the Van Wyck, Major Deegan and Throgs Neck, were built by Moses under his auspices.
He also was responsible for approval of 148,000 units of public housing in NYC between 1945 and 1948. He built 658 playgrounds and virtually every park New Yorkers and Long Islanders know, not to mention others throughout the state. He did not build Central Park, but it was a shambles until it was rebuilt under his auspices as it is known today including the Zoo.
If you live in Duluth or Portland he affected your life. Your public parks are based on the work he did. Your highways are based on the work he did. City planners from all over the U.S. and the world came to review his accomplishments.
He was given a free reign because he got things done. Also the press rarely questioned him. In 1925 during a controversy caused by Moses pushing his vision, the New York Times wrote this: “It seems not unlikely that Chairman Moses has exceeded his legal authority. But he is acting in the interest of the people and of all future generations….” It seems like the Times was warming up for treatment of some other favored politicians.
The principle reason he garnered such power was the wide-spread perception of his lack of self-interest. It was 14 years working for the state and NYC before he received any salary (his mother supported him). To quote Caro: “In terms of money in which corruption is usually measured, Moses was not corrupt. He was, in fact, as uninterested in obtaining payoffs for himself as any public servant who ever lived. But in terms of power, Moses was corrupt. Coveting it, he used money to get it.”
Most fascinating was the chapter on how he controlled people though his use of public funds. He had control of public funds through the creation of public authorities, of which he was the first in America to establish. He had complete control over monies coming in from the Triborough Bridge and other facilities that collected fees. In current times, an example of this is the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. Prior to her election to the U.S. Senate, Elizabeth Warren, in her unofficial capacity as advisor to President Obama, conceived the agency which is not responsible to Congress as it is funded through fees collected by the Federal Reserve.
Moses used commissions and fees to control people and banks. He built Marine Theater in Jones Beach Park which seated 8,200 people. Through his unregulated funds, he used it as his own personal place to entertain the rich and important. For his “house band” there, he had Guy Lombardo and his orchestra. For those of you too young to remember Lombardo, think of Jimmy Fallon getting the Roots as his house band. Moses threw lavish parties paid for from the dimes collected from people using the bridges under his authority.
For over 30 years, there was not a Mayor of NYC or Governor of NY who would even begin to challenge Moses. He accomplished things that leaders marveled at and they just stood aside then lauded at Moses-arranged ceremonies. The United Nations building might have been built in San Francisco without Moses. Lincoln Center would not exist without Moses; neither would Shea Stadium or Flushing Meadows where the U.S. Open Tennis Championship is played.
Moses was a dictatorial megalomaniac who actually obtained and controlled power that was unfettered. The story told with a critical eye by Caro is required reading for anyone who wants to understand how power politics is played, and Moses was the Master. His legacy affects us all.
Did some good things; did some bad things. A lot of people lost their homes due to his various endeavors.
I’ve always been fascinated by Robert Moses. A couple of years ago I ATTEMPTED to read Caro’s book.....I say “attempted”, because, less than 50 pages in, Caro’s leftist indoctrinated claptrap nearly made me throw the book across the room. I believe the part that set me off was Caro’s accusations regarding the HORRORS of the architecturally sterile, cold designs of the new NYC Housing Projects. Exactly as brainwashed to do, he designated the first tenants of these developments as “victims”......I have some PERSONAL knowledge of the original inhabitants of these facilities. They were Honest, Hard Working, Clean Living people raising families and glad for the opportunity to live in clean, safe, fireproof buildings which were completely surrounded by manicured lawns, shrubs, paths, benches, playgrounds, etc. All that was UNTIL liberal scum like Caro designated everyone a “victim” and turned the places into the hellholes they are today. Again, I’d love to find a quality biography of Moses, but Caro’s verbal diarrhea isn’t what I’m looking for.
If Kelo had been decided 100 years earlier, Moses would have had NYC named after himself.
Robert Caro is a participant in the cover-up of LBJ’s murder of JFK.
The fact that, fifty years later, it is possible for historians and journalists to be intimidated into concealing crimes of such magnitude explains how all “respectable” people—even those we are inclined to think of as having “integrity”—have been intimidated into ignoring the fact that we have a “President” who is a Muslim terrorist and almost certainly an illegal alien.
For supposedly being a leftist, he sure cut LBJ down to size. In the first volume he shows the poor beginnings but by the second volume he shows LBJ for the cheating pol he was and what a crappy human being he was to his wife and everyone around him.
I absolutely refuse to call it the "RFK Bridge".
Perhaps I overreached a bit branding him a “leftist”. I have not researched Caro enough for that. Just wanted to get that rant off my chest.....I personally won’t read any more Caro works, not after seeing him (a “biographer”) insert that opinionated garbage, which tends to make me question every subsequent assertion in the book.
In part due to Caro's biography, we had no illusions that we were in for a long, hard fight that required us to not only make the case against the project, but to also expose wrong doing, file law suits, win the public over, and to wreck enough political careers to make the project toxic to local and state power brokers. The fight lasted years but we won, based on the strategy that we developed in the first few weeks -- with Robert Caro's help, so to speak.
Caro’s biographies are a long, hard slog but always worth reading. As to his biography of Moses, I nearly quit for similar reasons but was glad to have persevered to the end.
Thanks....maybe I’ll try again one day.
Biographers have a hard path. They are a type of historian. For historians, they can chose to be scholarly historians, following every rule of citation and technical accuracy, and end up dry and difficult, or they can chose to write a narrative history easily consumed by an interested reader.
Biographers almost always have to chose the narrative form which forces them to add interpretative vignettes to paint in the details. I know that I will hit that sort of item and assume I see the author’s bias and it can turn me off. Philbrick did that for me in his book on the history of the Battle of Bunker Hill.
I also believe that LBJ murdered JFK. He had the motive, the connections, and (most importantly) he had the most to gain from his death. It’s really painfully obvious to anyone who steps back and looks at the big picture. The cherry-on-top is that is happened in Texas.
I’ll go one step further. I think that Oswald was put up to do it by his Leftist handlers. And what was their motivation? I think LBJ promised them the Great Society and other legislation (like the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965). In short, he gave them an infant welfare state and the hooks to eliminate the White majority & replace Capitalism with Socialism.
By 1968, Karma had kicked LBJ in the a$$ so hard that even he wanted out.
Read Caro’s multivolume biography of LBJ. Caro definitively proves that LBJ and his allies stole the 1948 Senate election and details much corruption and rotten behavior by LBJ. Caro is a liberal, but even more than that, he is an old style reporter and a determined digger of facts.
“Prior to her election to the U.S. Senate, Elizabeth Warren, in her unofficial capacity as advisor to President Obama, conceived the agency which is not responsible to Congress as it is funded through fees collected by the Federal Reserve. “
Thank you Congress.
Oswald didn't shoot anybody.
It was LBJ, J. Edgar Hoover, Texas oil men, and the CIA who killed Kennedy. There were shots from the sixth-floor window and from--yes!--the Grassy Knoll.
JFK was Johnson's ninth (at least) murder. Among his previous murders was his own sister, Josefa.
Jackie and Bobby knew the truth. Jackie asked French intelligence to tell her the truth. LBJ did it. Bobby and Jackie were silenced. Both knew the FBI had a mountain of dirt on them both. Jackie was a tramp, and Bobby was the male equivalent.
There is a photo of Bobby with LBJ in the Rose Garden. Johnson's mouth is hanging open. The White House photographer swore that Bobby had just said: "Why did you kill my brother?"
In speeches, Bobby was promising to re-open the investigation when he was shot.
The Warren Commission was a hoax, run by Gerald Ford.
Since JFK stole the 1960 election, one could argue that we have not had a legitimate government since January 20, 1961.
I don’t know that Johnson was an ideological Leftist, aside from being a murderer and crook, which is the essence of Leftism.
His thinking was more on the intellectual level of his famous statement about the Great Society: “We’ll have those n*ggers voting Democrat for the next 200 years.”
Bump
I don’t think Johnson himself was a Communist. A Communist would not have prosecuted the Vietnam war as he did. However, I DO think he made promises to the Leftists for cover. We can debate whether Oswald pulled the trigger or not, but I think he a weak link and was offered up by his fellow Leftists as the perfect patsy. In exchange, Johnson gave them much of what they wanted.
That’s my theory anyway.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.