Quotes About Political machines

Advocates of the Social Gospel worked hand in hand with political progressives on behalf of child-labor laws, housing reform, and the six-day work week. They battled against alcohol abuse and corrupt political machines.

the continuous and systematic onslaught against political machines and insiders by progressivism, populism, and libertarianism—three very different political reform movements which nonetheless all regard transactional politics as at best a necessary evil and more often as corrupt and illegitimate. This attack, though well intentioned, has badly damaged the country's governability, a predictable result (and one accurately predicted more than fifty years ago).

The fact that La Follette had to use machine tactics to beat the machine suggests that machines themselves are in some way intrinsic to politics—that is, all political leaders must assemble coalitions whose members do not always share the same goals, and must often be brought along with bribery, inducements, threats, and argument.

Very few towns, and rivers mostly dry beds; a land of which vast tracts were kept for grazing by wealthy owners who didn't want settlers and money so much as they wanted space and fresh air. Only a land-values tax could have reached them, and there could be no such tax because they owned the newspapers and controlled both political machines

The Democratic Party is made up of trial lawyers, labor unions, government employees, big city political machines, the coercive utopians, the radical environmentalists, feminists, and others who want to restructure society with tax dollars and government fiat.