Talk:Community Action Agencies

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Importance - Underrated

The Community Action Program (CAP) / Community Action Agency (CAA) system is an extremely important force in the lives of a sizeable minority of Amercans, and has been -- for decades -- one of the most significant (and controversial) federal efforts at power-redistribution in American society. (See the extensive references I've added to the article, from sources left and right).

Presently, over 1,000 Community Action Agencies operate across the United States, providing a main conduit of federal funds to localities, and a main conduit of federal aid to the poor and disadvantaged minorities. (see: A History of Community Action on the website of the Illinois Association of Community Action Agencies)

Whether you agree or disagree with the CAA system, it remains a major part of the fiscal governance of the United States.

It can be inconspicuous to those with limited experience in the interplay between federal and local jurisdictions, and the complex "nobody's in charge, nobody's responsible" mess of federal/local revenue-sharing.

That most CAAs are officialy corporations -- not government agencies -- obscures their role as official extensions of the federal government. The quasi-autonomous identity of CAAs can make it hard to see them clearly as a major element of the federal government (or of local governments, for that matter, with which they are also affiliated).

This is further complicated by the profusion of vague names and acronyms that various local CAAs give themselves.

And the CAAs focus, officially, on the needs of the least-visible elements of the population: poor and minority citizens.

Further, local power elites -- backed by some in Congress -- try to use the CAA as a conduit to funnel money "discreetly" away from the federal coffers into the hands unintended beneficiaries -- through some of the many loopholes that Members of Congress create for their colleagues and donors back home. Accordingly, no one on either end wants to draw attention to their CAAs.

With all these factors obscuring the presence, the functioning and the activity of CAAs, it can be easy, then, to be unaware of them altogether.

However...

Community Action Agencies (CAAs) remain the core system of federal anti-poverty program spending in the United States, and -- as such -- merit an importance rating of at least "Medium"

Can we get this fixed?

~ Penlite (talk) 09:03, 8 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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