Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress—and How to Bring It Back

by Marc J. Dunkelman

As conceived in the final draft of the Economic Opportunity Act, community action programs (CAPs) would help communities advocate for themselves against bureaucracies that, as Hackett’s old friend Senator Robert Kennedy complained, “plan programs for the poor, not with them.” The whole scheme would be run out of the newly created Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), led, as it happened, by Kennedy’s brother-in-law, Sargent Shriver. Through the OEO, CAPs would fund local community action agencies (CAAs), which would “provide stimulation and incentive for urban and rural communities to mobilize their resources… to combat poverty.”

Doomed. Funding programs to disrupt local gov and establishments.