You may have heard that the latest go-around between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama revolves around Clinton's comment about Martin Luther King Jr. and President Lydon B. Johnson over civil rights leadership. I'm not going to get into the details of their argument because I am not interested in getting mixed up in the muck.
My issue is this. These two senators are having the wrong conversation. Of course I know they are running to become President of the USA, but they are still senators with jobs to do, yes? So, I wonder what they have to say about the fact that Congress just gave the United States Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) a significant budget cut. If they are really interested in civil rights protections that have a current and direct impact on today's society, their outrage should be focused here, not on pointless conversations about the past. I don't know if they ever got to vote on the budget which slashed funding for the USCCR, but if they did, I wonder how their votes went. Anyone up for some research? I do know this much. The hearings for the budget went before the Senate Judiciary Committee in September, and although neither Clinton or Obama are on that committee, both their colleagues from their party (Schumer from NY and Durbin from Il) are.
The conversation they are having is really ridiculous in light of all this. The USCCR was specifically set up after the 1957 US Civil Rights Act to ensure that the various state and municipal institutions throughout the nation adhere to federal civil rights standards. They conduct inquiries, hold hearings, write reports, and submit them to Congress. It's the USCCR that will investigate a police department for abusive behavior, or a university for lack of equal access, etc. Each state has its own advisory committee, made up of civilian experts in the field of civil rights. They inform their regional director -- a federal employee -- of any problems they know of, and hold public hearings; and the regional directors and civil rights analysts conduct the investigations, interview pretty much whomever they want, and create a public record. Overall, it's a pretty good system based upon public-private partnerships.
What frustrates me is that while two senators point their fingers at each other over who played what role in the development of the American civil rights movement decades ago, the very commission set up to oversee it currently has no regional director for the western or central regions, which means that the following states are not adequately regarded in terms of how their civil rights standards are upheld: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, and Washington. Is anybody in goverment having a conversation about this?
It gets worse. Not only is the western region lacking a regional director, it also has no civil rights analyst, which means the advisory committees for that entire district are basically stagnant with nobody to whom to report abuses in their states (and you'll notice several border states there). Therefore, with no regional director, no civil rights analyst, and, hence, no ability for advisory committees appropriately to function, there is really no activity going on for the US Commission on Civil Rights in the states of: Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Texas, and Washington. Just think of the issues regarding immigration and law enforcement, prisons, etc. that are going unchecked.
Wait? You think that's bad? You know I'm not done and that it gets even worse.
The Director for the whole USCCR just resigned. This is his last week. So now the entire commission is without a director.
This is not about partisan politics, it's about governmental hypocrisy found on both sides of the aisle. In this case, perhaps instead of providing us all with lessons in ego and posturing by arguing over what happened in the 1960s, these two bickering SENATORS (and not merely presidential candidates) can get to work by trying to get the United States Commission on Civil Rights back on track, starting with some adequate funding by Congress, so that real social change can occur for our grassroots stakeholders. Ya think?