Max Sawicky wrote,
   
> Among assorted pungent insights, TW:

>> In turn, the Ford [for the MfY program]
>> Foundation model became the template for the "maximum feasible
>> participation" clause of the War on Poverty.

> I recently finished reading "Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding"
> by Daniel Moynihan.  IF there is anything to it as history,
> the author's ideology aside, the above assertion is totally off-base.

Since Max recently finished the book, I took the liberty of going back and
checking my fuzzy recollections. On page 56 Moynihan wrote:

"A striking quality about the MFY proposal is the degree to which its
Program for Action corresponds in structure and detail to the Economic
Opportunity Act [war on poverty] that was presented to Congress two and a
quarter years later, even, indeed, to the martial spirit of their popular
designations, and the actual terminology in many instances."

Ideology aside, Moynihan's account doesn't seem to contradict my
assertion. Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward's Regulating the
Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare (1971) is contemporaneous with both
Moynihan's and Wolfe's.


Tom Walker

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