“The trouble that public unions could potentially cause for citizens was one reason that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, hero of Democrats and union organizers alike, opposed them for government workers. Republican Fiorello La Guardia, a great mayor of New York, opposed them, too. Unlike in the private sector, where unions were a needed counterweight to strong management, in the public sector unions had a big say in selecting management through the election process. As a result, they had a lot of power on both sides of the labor-management negotiating process. Roosevelt and La Guardia thus feared that, when government officials and unions battled over power, citizens could lose out.”
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“Nuclear weapons made global warfare of the twentieth century variety too costly to conduct. But cyber weapons make far more likely an era of nearly permanent or persistent conflict that seeks to degrade rather than destroy enemies, and to do so at a distance, behind cover of anonymity, with few if any human assets at risk. In a hundred years we may have gone from the war to end all wars to the war that never ends.”
― National Insecurity: American Leadership in an Age of Fear
― National Insecurity: American Leadership in an Age of Fear
“There is an old saying: "If appearance and essence were the same thing, there would be no need for science”
― The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind
― The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind
“When police arrested a New York bus driver for running down a schoolgirl in a crosswalk… the New York Daily News decried what it saw as mistreatment of one of the city’s bus drivers. The head of the transit union protested this enforcement of the city’s new Right of Way Law as “outrageous, illogical and anti-worker” while branding the head of a city street safety advocacy group “a progressive intellectual jackass.” The same union previously launched a work slowdown when another bus driver faced sanctions for killing a seventy-eight-year-old woman in a crosswalk in December 2014. All this occurred because police sought to enforce _misdemeanor_ charges in cases of pedestrians who were run over in crosswalks where they had the clear right of way.”
― Door to Door: The Magnificent, Maddening, Mysterious World of Transportation
― Door to Door: The Magnificent, Maddening, Mysterious World of Transportation
“during a hearing on the proposed expansion of a port terminal, a member of the public objected on the grounds that the project would generate more truck trips on already crowded freeways.
"Why do I need a port? the woman asked. "I have Walmart."
There were murmurs of agreement from an audience who felt that these trucks were indeed deplorable, their presence a barrier on the travels and commerce of "real people.”
― Door to Door: The Magnificent, Maddening, Mysterious World of Transportation
"Why do I need a port? the woman asked. "I have Walmart."
There were murmurs of agreement from an audience who felt that these trucks were indeed deplorable, their presence a barrier on the travels and commerce of "real people.”
― Door to Door: The Magnificent, Maddening, Mysterious World of Transportation
Thomas’s 2025 Year in Books
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