While Wilson eventually came around to supporting universal suffrage, he entered the presidency opposed to giving women the right to vote.

He was also generally a bigot, particularly on the issue of immigration. He thought of Italians and Poles as "of the lowest class of human being," and characterized them as "men out of the ranks where there was neither skill nor energy nor any initiative of quick intelligence; and they came in the numbers ... sordid and hapless elements of their population, the men whose standards of life and work are such as American workmen had never dreamed of hitherto." (A. Scott Berg, "Wilson," 2013).

Wilson certainly disdained overt displays of racism, and once wrote of the 1915 film Birth of a Nation, "I have always felt that this was a very unfortunate production and I wish most sincerely that its production might be avoided, particularly in communities where there are so many colored people."

But as president of Princeton University, Wilson both supported and kept in place a ban which precluded African Americans from applying for admission. And as U.S. president, he allowed Congress to enact legislation implementing Jim Crow-era segregation in Washington, D.C. establishments.

By 1912, TR was considered something of a radical by Republicans, which precluded his nomination as the GOP candidate. But he retained more than enough political capital throughout the country to thwart Taft's re-election. In a three-way race, Taft finished dead last, well behind Wilson and TR.

In many respects, TR was an accidental president, coming to office as he did in Sept. 1901 upon William McKinley's assassination. He was chosen by Republicans as McKinley's running mate in the 1900 presidential election because he was a very popular national figure, thanks to his role two years earlier at the Battle of San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War. Most Republicans were so bedazzled by the prospects of a war hero on the ticket that they didn't pay too much heed to TR's reformist record as governor of New York.

By the end of Roosevelt's presidency in March 1909, GOP leaders and the American corporate class were no longer under any such illusions as to what TR was all about. While he left office as a popular figure nationally, his political standing amongst the GOP elite was actually very low.

To Wilson's credit, he refused to buck the progressive tide upon attaining office and evolved accordingly to meet the times in which he lived. He ran for re-election in 1916 in the midst of the First World War as an isolationist, promising to uphold U.S. neutrality and not send American boys to fight in Europe. When circumstances proved otherwise in 1917, he rose to the occasion to become a rather remarkable international statesman. It is to the GOP's eternal dishonor that Republican Senate leaders refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, which Wilson helped to broker.

US West became Qwest which became Century Link.

The Qwest deal, valued at more than $20 billion with the assumption of nearly $12 billion debt, will more than double CenturyLink's landlines to roughly 15 million in 37 states. The combined company will employ 47,500.

Link

Note the 37 states. US West was in 13 states with a much smaller population base. So the "RIF's" have been devastating and huge.

Included in the 47,500 is also the remains of other companies. e.g. Pacific Telecom had around 8,000 which was purchased around 2000. Since I retired I haven't kept up with all the mergers but my guess is that the run down was from around 90,000 to the 47,500.

Link

Of course much of the reduction was the result of technology. Digital and fiber require a lot less maintenance than mechanical and copper cable. US West combined its planning and engineering centers starting in 90's and lots of people took early outs. Others were forced to move and wound up making a lot less with fewer benefits.

Its been often been stated that health insurance is a layer of the healthcare delivery system that serves only one function, "rent collecting," by the Power Brokers, from the working class. One of the most obvious, and, common sense reasons for wanting a "single payer" health care system is that, by eliminating the "middle man," and the huge costs involved, the health care customer would get better actual "care" at a much lower cost.  

So, naturally, eliminating insurance companies from the health care delivery system would entail some, up-front costs......especially for the employees who would lose their jobs. But, is maintaining obsolete, unnecessary positions the right way to go? If so, we should have outlawed the internal combustion engine, or, continued implementing the death penalty in States that have outlawed it because....... "think of the 'plunger-pushing' jobs wiped out."

Naturally, society should try to be as humane as possible whenever new inventions/techniques, processes supersede existing ones causing job dislocations. But, that's always been the case.

The notion that economies of scale isn't isn't going to apply to this or that situation is inaccurate.  Nor am I saying there aren't other factors either.

And as far as you other comment.

No one is stating that each bank will be separately run, that is just you making stuff up.  But let's say they break one company up into five.  Now you have 5 HR departments, 5 tax departments, 5 legal departments, and on & on.  Or, if the fuction is so specialized, like International Compliance that each group doesn't have one, then it sourced x5.  No matter how you roll it up, if they perform the same services, the more hours will be needed to perform those services the less centralized a company is/companies are.

This is like week 5 of Econ 101.

If you want to argue that the cost to the end user will be higher, that would make sense, or since it's a very competitive market, I would argue their bottom lines will shrink before consumers pay more.  It's why they are consolidated to begin with, to increase profits, no other reason.

The notion that HR function can be better performed at each location is just silly, no large company has decentralized, what I would call, corporate functions.  

If you think Ma Bell was intricate, wait to you get a load of the complexities involved the the modern banking system. A little turmoil in the job market is would probably be the least of the worries in a whole galaxy of possible problems.

From Wednesday:

2015, Earth's Hottest Year by a Wide Margin

WASHINGTON -- Last year wasn't just the Earth's hottest on record. It left a century of high temperature marks in the dust.

The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration and NASA announced Wednesday (Jan. 20) that 2015 was by far the hottest year in 136 years of record keeping. For the most part, scientists at the agencies and elsewhere blamed human-caused global warming, with a boost from El Nino.

I know, Big Oil scientists know more than NASA & NOAA. you don't have to keep posting the same links, I get it, the Earth is cooling and 95% of the scientist are buying into the liberal myth about GW.

Although 2015 is now the hottest on record, it was the fourth time in 11 years that Earth broke annual marks for high temperature. "It's getting to the point where breaking record is the norm," Texas Tech climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe said. "It's almost unusual when we're not breaking a record."

In December, the globe was 2 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal, beating the old record set in 2014 by more than a half a degree, the weather agency calculated. Earth has broken monthly heat records 34 times since 2000. The last time a global cold month record was set was December 1916, and the coldest year on record was 1911, according to the weather agency.

I can't speak for Seth, but he is an arrogant Bostonian, like no one else I know ;)

As a general rule, talking $hit about universities in places like Arizona is a northeast-elitist pasttime.

And even then it's an unwritten rule that one must be in tree at least fifty feet off the ground or high up on a cliff face when you do it.