Every Government Entity Has a Civil Rights Office That Costs Millions!

How Ridiculous is This?

I've been doing some research into the activities of the Department of State, and discovered that they have an Office of Civil Rights.

This seemed kind of stupid for me. Doesn't the Government have an actual Office of Civil Rights that scopes out what every other government and civilian department does regarding Civil Rights?

Why, no. There are over 50 Government entities, and every single damn one of them has an Office of Civil Rights, to ensure that no one in the department is discriminated against and that every department has a 50/50 mixture of majority/minorities.

Of course, each one of these Office of Civil Rights doesn't cost $300 Mil a year!  Some of them only cost $9 mil.

It's just ridiculous. Establish one overarcing Office of Civil Rights - not that I think it's necessary in 2012, but apparently the Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s says there has to be one and God forbid the laws of 1960 be changed in 2012 when we have a black President... (and women in his cabinet who are not paid as much as the men doing the same job... hmmmm)

Anyway, here's the article from The Daily Caller that got me started on this rant:

http://dailycaller.com/2011/04/29/federal-civil-rights-offices-criticized-for-amount-of-spending-redundancy/#ixzz2CjXbGBzB

As leaders look for more ways to cut government expenditures and reduce the budget, some have pointed out the duplicative nature of a number of the government’s overlapping bureaucracies. The prodigious amount of federal offices devoted to diversity and civil rights is one example.
Based on The Daily Caller’s analysis, there are at least 55 offices, departments and commissions devoted to civil rights and diversity throughout the federal government. And their budgets don’t amount to petty cash.
In FY 2010, the last complete budget year, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights cost taxpayers $46.7 million; the Department of Agriculture’s Office of Civil Rights cost $24 million; the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division cost $145.4 million; Department of Transportation’s Office of Civil Rights cost $9.66 million; the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights cost $102 Million; the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission cost $367 million and so on. Those numbers, however, are just the tip of the iceberg.

In addition to the aforementioned six offices, TheDC contacted each of the other offices devoted to civil rights and diversity to ascertain their total budgets for FY 2010. During that fiscal year, the Department of Commerce spent $4.1 million, the Department of Defense’s spent $8.9 million, the Department of Homeland Security spent $22.1 million, the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s spent $72 million, the Department of Labor spent $7 million, the Commission on Civil Rights spent $9.4 million, the Department of Veterans Affairs spent $2.27 million, the Defense Security Service spent $45,000, and the Export-Import Bank of the United States spent $137,000 on their respective diversity or civil rights offices. The vast majority of other offices either did not respond to TheDC or said that the funding was contained within larger administrative costs.
While these offices work for equity, fairness and justice, some see the high expenditures as just a lot of waste. Former attorney for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, J. Christian Adams, pointed out that pursuing the goals of these offices could easily be done for much less.
“If you worked inside the Civil Rights Division you’d know the same work could be accomplished for half the cost,” Adams told TheDC. “The idle time among employees staggers the imagination.”
Others point out that enforcing civil rights remains an essential good and that the existence of these offices are mandated by law. According to Charles Abernathy, Georgetown professor of civil rights and comparative, each agency receives grants, as required by Title IV of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, in order to enforce laws preventing discrimination.
“Since 1964 Congress has added many other civil rights laws that add other non-discrimination commands (such as the prohibition on discrimination against disabled persons), and these are also enforced through such civil rights sections or divisions, as well as some other specialized offices and programs,” Abernathy wrote in an email.
Nevertheless, the high cost of seemingly overlapping bureaucracies has many frustrated.
“I think having these offices in all these executive agencies is an enormous waste of taxpayer funds,” Hans Von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow and manager of the Civil Justice Reform Initiative at The Heritage Foundation, told TheDC. “Worse, instead of working to stop discriminatory treatment by the federal government, almost all of these civil rights offices spend their time implementing discriminatory rules and quotas on hiring and contracting.

Ward Connerly, founder and president of the American Civil Rights Institute, said that forcing diversity is an antiquated idea and not something the government should spend precious funds on.
“Although these ‘diversity’ offices are often viewed in the context of ‘civil rights,’ their fiscal impact is considerable,” Connerly told TheDC. “As the nation becomes naturally more ‘diverse,’ as evidenced by the 2010 Census, the federal government need not expend precious dollars manufacturing ‘diversity,’ which is an amorphous concept in and of itself, and often engaging in discrimination in the process. Clearly, virtually all of these offices of ‘affirmative action,’ diversity, ‘inclusion’ or civil rights have become superfluous and a relic from America’s past. They owe their survival to political correctness, timidity on the part of Congressional oversight committees to confront any issue of race, and blatant appeals to racial politics on the part of many elected officials.”
Joe Hicks, vice president of Community Advocates Inc., said that while enforcing civil rights law is important and admirable, having superfluous offices is foolish, especially at a time when the government is looking for ways to cut back.
“These agencies, all based on the premise that racism or work-place race/gender discrimination remains a massive problem, are completely and utterly useless,” Hicks told TheDC. “Obviously, there is a compelling national interest in making sure civil rights laws observed, but this is something that hardly requires overlapping layers of governmental bureaucracy to achieve.”
Abernathy points out that there is definitely a fine line between enforcement and funding, but that in the end, he is a supporter of these mechanisms.
“I would be a supporter of Title VI, though….there is a price to be paid for accomplishing Congress’ civil rights goals,” he said. “The costs these days are probably mostly on the compliance and enforcement side (–most of the early effort was in writing the original regulations, with some later interpretive guidelines added). My guess is that whether this money is wisely spent is probably in the eyes of the beholder, and the truth is somewhere between the extremes, as usual.”

For those keeping score, all these offices are currently considered an adequate use of taxpayer money, regardless of redundancy:
-Department of Agriculture’s Office of Civil Rights
-Department of Commerce’s Civil Rights Office
-Department of Defense’s Diversity Management Equal Opportunity Office
-Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights
-Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights
-Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties
-Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity
-The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
-Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division
-Department of Labor’s Civil Rights program
-U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
-Department of Transportation’s Office of Civil Rights
-Department of Veterans Affairs’ Office of Diversity and Inclusion
-Department of Energy’s Office of Civil Rights and Office of Diversity
-Department of the Treasury’s Office of Civil Rights and Diversity
-Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Civil Rights
-NASA’s Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity
-Department of the Interior’s Office of Civil Rights
-Department of State’s Office of Civil Rights
-Federal Communications Commission’s Office of Workplace Diversity
-Transportation Security Administration’s Office of Civil Rights and Liberties
-Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Office of Equal Rights
-General Services Administration’s Office of Civil Rights
-Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Office of Diversity Management and Equal Employment Opportunity
-U.S. Army’s Office of Diversity and Leadership
-U.S. Coast Guard’s Office of Diversity
-National Institutes of Standards and Technology’s Civil Rights and Diversity Office
-Office of Personnel Management’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion
-Patent and Trademark Office’s Office of Equal Employment Opportunity and Diversity
-United States Secret Service’s Office of Equal Opportunity
-Broadcasting Board of Governors’ Office of Civil Rights
-Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Office of Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights
-Food and Drug Administration’s Office of EEO and Diversity Management
-National Institutes of Health’s Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity Management
- United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Office of Small Business and Civil Rights
- Smithsonian Institution’s Office of Equal Employment and Minority Affairs
- Office of Thrift Supervision’s Office of Equality and Workplace Principles
-Defense Commissary Agency’s Equal Employment Opportunity Office
- Defense Finance and Accounting Service’s Office of Equal Opportunity Programs
- Defense Information Systems Agency’s EEO and Cultural Diversity Office
- Defense Intelligence Agency’s Equal Opportunity Office
- National Science Foundation’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion
- Space and Missile Defense Command’s Equal Employment Opportunity Office
- Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s Office of Minority and Women Inclusion
- U.S. Federal Maritime Commission’s Office of Equal Employment Opportunity
- National Archives Equal Employment Opportunity and Diversity Programs
- National Endowment for the Arts’ Civil Rights Office
- Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation and Enforcement’s Equal Employment and Opportunity Division
-Defense Security Service’s Office of Equal Employment Opportunity
-Export-Import Bank of the United States’ Equal Opportunity and Diversity Programs
-Office of Personnel Management’s Federal Equal Opportunity Recruitment Program
-Securities and Exchange Commission’s Equal Opportunity Office
-Peace Corps’ American Diversity Program
-Social Security Administration’s Office of Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity