I don't mean to shock the list, but my reading of the history has Dems, especially urban, ethnic machines deeply complicit in the transformation of social spending from 'empowerment' directed stuff to bureaucratized forms. There was the Edith Green amendment in Congress which was a key blow to community action programs. -----
You'll have to detail this out a little more. Since the war on poverty programs covered everything from community development, legal aid, to education. Different pieces were up and running (under funded), attacked, dismantled or re-worked, some died off, were co-oped, or lingered forever in slow death. The specific program I was referring to was called the Trio Programs, Head Start, Upward Bound, and Special Services, in the Dept of Education when there as still an HEW. The period was about '72-3.
Your reference to urban ethnic machines probably refers to the take over of the Model Cities projects by city bureaucracies run by either the white demos or the then newly elected black mayors and their staffs. My memory is a little foggy, but it also seems to me, some of black establishment machines got their start within these projects.
I've never read a history of this stuff, so you'll have to explain what the Edith Green amendment was. These projects caused such a nightmare of street level activism that almost the minute they started up, states and cities started pushing to kill them off or reign them in, by any means necessary. So it is true, that Nixon was a little late in this game.
Then:
"Now I'm confused. I've learned here and on PEN-L that the liberals and progressives are the real problem . . ." (mbs)
My apologies. I must have had a senior moment, there. I was using that old fashion terminology. Remember when the rightwing were considered neo-nazis; a democrat was what we now call a liberal; liberal was what we now call a progressive; and the word progressive was a polite term for a re-constructed communist, turned socialist?
Chuck Grimes