WP: U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Closings, Cuts Decried

[DeepModem Mom]

Civil Rights Agency Closings, Cuts Decried
By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 26, 2005; Page A03


....The government officials who (Carlette) Jones said came to her rescue will soon be gone. Mired in a deep budget crisis, the (U.S. Commission on Civil Rights) will shutter the Denver office and another in Kansas City, Kan., in October, laying off six people.

The move will force anyone with a federal civil rights complaint in those districts to seek help in the commission's Chicago office. The Denver office covers Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Utah and Colorado, while the Kansas City office oversees complaints in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Iowa, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri.

There are few state and local civil rights commissions with adequate staff, and lawsuits are expensive, civil rights advocates say....

***

Some say the office closings are a harbinger of the slow death of the civil rights agency, which, riven by partisan politics, long ago strayed from being the "conscience of the federal government," as President Dwight D. Eisenhower intended when he created it as part of the 1957 Civil Rights Act....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/25/AR2005052501866.html

[sinkingfeeling]

1. Oh goodie, another important 'arm' of our government being reduced

to nothingness!

[G_j]

2. been hearing that the Civil Rights Agency was being

starved to death. Anyone who thinks the Bush Rs are not racists and bigots should think again. Condi and other African Americans in the Bush admin are not a sign of inclusion, but exclusion of anyone who doesn't share the Imperial view which is rooted in manifest destiny/dominance and racism.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

4. Whether you are talking the CoCR or the EPA this is a pretty typical

Repub behavior....don't like a program or an agency? Keep it but starve it...then claim it is ineffective.

[Triana]

3. As we know... Repukes and particularly the current cabal

doesn't give a damn about civil rights or women's rights. The first thing the beady-eyed moron did when selected was close the office of women's initiatives. They intend to starve to death the Civil Rights Commission, the EEOC, and they gutted Title IX. The EEOC has been un or underfunded for decades and I have no reason to believe that has changed (it's no doubt gotten worse) under this mysogenist, racist, bigoted regime.