A few items on the 2010 Census

The Better Business Bureau has some Census safety tips. They're from last May but I think they're still valid:

The big question is - how do you tell the difference between a U.S. Census worker and a con artist? [That's assuming they're mutually exclusive.] BBB offers the following advice:

• If a U.S. Census worker knocks on your door, they will have a badge, a handheld device, a Census Bureau canvas bag and a confidentiality notice. Ask to see their identification and their badge before answering their questions. However, you should never invite anyone you don’t know into your home.

• Census workers are currently only knocking on doors to verify address information. Do not give your Social Security number, credit card or banking information to anyone, even if they claim they need it for the U.S. Census. While the Census Bureau might ask for basic financial information, such as a salary range [why?], it will not ask for Social Security, bank account or credit card numbers nor will employees solicit donations.

• Eventually, Census workers may contact you by telephone, mail or in person at home. However, they will not contact you by e-mail, so be on the look out for e-mail scams impersonating the Census. Never click on a link or open any attachments in an e-mail that are supposedly from the U.S. Census Bureau.

The government has made a lamer-than-lame ad to show us how non-threatening the Census address canvassers are, and it features citizens opening their doors widely to these strangers. I don't think so.

As far as I can tell, ACORN will not be used to implement the Census. And convicted felons will be screened out in the hiring process. Lesser criminals "will have to explain themselves."

When it comes to getting people to fill out and mail back the forms, bureaucrats are hoping that public school kids will be useful tools. Most Americans view indoctrination as an acceptable role for public schools, and even some conservatives think it's a little crazy to object to it. The Census propaganda being disseminated in schools may not rise to the standard of teaching children to sing praises to their leader or expelling a child for drawing a picture of Christ on the cross. But feeding kids talking points and sending them home to put the screws to their parents really isn't education.

Anyway, they held a Census "rally" at this school in Florida:

At the kickoff Wednesday, students performed a skit in which they pretended to be a family uncertain about the census. During the skit, a child encourages his parents to open the door to a census worker, despite their apprehension. Beside a prop bowl of spaghetti, the worker helps the hesitant parents fill out the form.

It’s a scenario that could play out many times next spring when the forms arrive. Households can expect census forms in March and they should be returned by April. An army of census takers will follow up between April and July with those who do not return the forms in the mail.

No offense intended to conscientious parents or excellent teachers, but how do conservatives justify entrusting the formation of their kids' minds and characters to government schools? A Conservative Teacher wrote this a couple of months ago:

Oh, I know, I am really venting and some of this is unfair or unreasonable, but you really should know that because education is a government-run business, it does not respond at all to your child's concerns, it does not use time or money or resources in an economical manner, and the goal is not to leave no child behind and drive to the top, but to drag every child behind and drive towards the bottom. Moving kids through the system is our goal, just as it is in every government program.

Back to the Census, here's some interesting data and commentary from Michael Barone on where we are choosing to live:

There may be lessons for public policy here. Texas over the decades has had low taxes (and no state income tax), low public spending and regulations that encourage job growth. It didn’t have much of a housing bubble or a housing price bust.

Under Govs. George W. Bush and Rick Perry, it has placed tight limits on tort lawsuits, and has seen an influx of both corporate headquarters and medical doctors.

Bush’s late job ratings may have been low, and Perry may be a wine that doesn’t travel. But their approach to governing may not be lost even in Washington.

Polidata Inc. projects from the 2009 estimates that the reapportionment following the 2010 Census will give four new House seats to Texas, one to Florida, Arizona, Utah and Nevada, and none to California for the first time since 1850.

Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Illinois are projected to lose one each, and Ohio two. Americans have been moving, even in recession, away from Democratic strongholds and toward GOP turf.

What I get from that is that the Census is the conservative's friend. We really don't mind being counted; it's just those extraneous invasive questions we don't like, as well as the politicization and corruption of the process.

From Sunday's Washington Post, a well-reinforced army hopes to count every last liberal voter:

Locally, for example, recruiters have landed representatives of a gay basketball team, immigrants from a chiefdom in Sierra Leone and a Chinese acupuncturist. They have appealed to liquor stores and hardware stores, pizzerias and patisseries, the Nationals and the Mystics, Shakespearean scholars, the Woodrow Wilson House and even the CIA, asking each to display posters or a stack of brochures.

"My sense was they were talking to everyone, no matter how remote the connection to the census," said Gail Kern Paster, director of the Folger Shakespeare Library, where visitors can pick up a census flier.

This is not the first time the Census Bureau has reached out to groups considered hard to count: the poor, minorities and recent immigrants. But for 2010, the bureau has 3,000 employees, five times as many as 10 years ago, assigned to find "partners" to champion census participation. They have formed alliances with 136,000 groups, houses of worship and businesses. States, counties and municipalities eager to secure a share of almost $480 billion in federal funds allotted on census statistics are linking up with thousands more.

Your tax dollars are hard at work here:

Census officials, who spend as much as $3,000 to supply each group with trinkets and banners, are pleased with the program.

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