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Politics : I Will Continue to Continue, to Pretend.... -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (29198)	2/6/2009 5:01:11 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Under-covered Story, Overwhelmed by Pork Bill News Kevin D. Williamson NRO's Media Blog Greg points this out: <<< Congressional Quarterly is reporting that the director of the Census Bureau will report directly to the White House and not to Commerce Secretary-designate Judd Gregg. My sense from the story is that this is mostly about political optics. Black and Latino advocacy groups aren't fond of Gregg period, and they're not happy about the fact that he pushed back against emergency funding for the 2000 Census. >>> Now, why would the president want to take the census out of the hands of the people who have traditionally handled it and into the heart of his political apparatus? "Political optics," indeed. Obama accused the Bush administration of "politicizing" everything—science, the Justice Department, &c.—but there's no way he's putting one of his token Republicans in charge of the census, because the census plays a huge role in drawing up congressional districts and the like. This fact has not been lost on the Left: <<< Judd Gregg To Control 2010 Census. And, Why Not Trade Lieberman for a New Hampshire Democrat? ... ...Did we work so hard, raise so much money, spend so much time sleeping on floors and couches, trudge through the snows of Iowa, toil in the barrios, to give a rightwing conservative Republican control over the 2010 Census when history has shown that Republicans consider the Census just another dataset that can be altered to suit their political needs? >>> We can be sure that if the census is to be altered to suit anybody's political needs, Obama is taking steps to ensure that things go his way. CQ coverage here. cqpolitics.com media.nationalreview.com

To: Sully- who wrote (29198)	2/8/2009 4:10:30 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Is a White House take over of the census constitutional? Midwesterner Samizdata blog MSNBC reports that: <<< The Capitol Hill publication Congressional Quarterly yesterday reported that the White House, responding to minority groups' concerns about Gregg's commitment to funding the census, has decided to have the director of the Census Bureau report directly to the White House. >>> Why am I expecting ACORN to get the census contract? In Article I, Section 2 the US Constitution orders that "The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct." The Congress, by law directed that: <<< "The Secretary [of Commerce] shall perform the functions and duties imposed upon him by this title, may issue such rules and regulations as he deems necessary to carry out such functions and duties, and may delegate the performance of such functions and duties and the authority to issue such rules and regulations to such officers and employees of the Department of Commerce as he may designate." >>> As I read it, the Director of the Census must, by law, be within the Department of Commerce and under the direction of the (Senate approved) Secretary of Commerce who then reports to the president. Am I missing something? Correction: From reading through Title 13, Chapter 1 it appears obvious to me that the POTUS has no role in the census whatsoever beyond, with Senate approval, selecting the Secretary of Commerce and, also with Senate approval, selecting the Director of the Census who " shall perform such duties as may be imposed upon him by law, regulations, or orders of the Secretary." Hhmmm... No president mentioned. The Secretary of Commerce is the only authority the law recognizes. Since as commenter Laird points out, the Constitution did not place the census function in Article II - the Executive branch but in Article I - the Legislative branch, it is not at all within the President's reach unless the legislature places it there. I think that interpretation is supported by phrasing such as this taken from Subchapter 1 section 9 "No department, bureau, agency, officer, or employee of the Government, except the Secretary in carrying out the purposes of this title, shall ..." The Secretary of Commerce does not even report his findings to the President, but rather is instructed to 'publish' them. It looks quite clear to me that any incursion by the White House after those two Senate approved appointments is clearly against the law. samizdata.net

To: Sully- who wrote (29198)	2/8/2009 4:46:07 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Only Fox News Concerned With Obama's Census Bureau Coup By Noel Sheppard on On the Record NewsBusters.org newsbusters.org

To: Sully- who wrote (29198)	2/9/2009 3:55:18 AM
From: Sully-	1 Recommendation Respond to of 35834

I Wonder... Jonah Goldberg The Corner I know it was discussed here earlier, but I have question: What would the lefty blogosphere say about Bush moving the census into the White House's domestic policy shop (AKA Karl Rove's office)? In particular, what if they did it at the behest of members of Bush's coalition? corner.nationalreview.com

To: Sully- who wrote (29198)	2/10/2009 10:03:02 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Head-Count Case By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Monday, February 09, 2009 4:20 PM PT Census: Naming Republican Judd Gregg as Commerce secretary was a real act of bipartisanship. Now the Obama administration is trying to undo that good deed with a power grab We're beginning to see a recurring problem with this new White House team: It makes appointments with half its brain disengaged. Its vetting process is supposed to be the most thorough in history, but it misses basic stuff, like massive bills for back taxes. Blinded by its own brilliance, it trips over something obvious and falls flat on its face. The naming of Judd Gregg to be commerce secretary may be another case of this, though here the appointee is not the problem. Just the opposite. The senior senator from New Hampshire is a fiscal conservative apparently untouched by scandal. Like any good Republican, he opposes high taxes but does pay them. In fact, appointing him was a truly bipartisan act. It showed the Obama administration walking its talk. After all, Gregg as commerce secretary would oversee the Census Bureau. He would balance the influence of a Democratic White House and Democratic Congress, which otherwise would have the whole game to themselves. One of the first to note the significance of the Gregg appointment was conservative columnist Michael Barone, who said Gregg's supervision might prevent the abuse of sampling to cook the numbers. (Sampling, rather than a straight head count, is preferred by the Democrats because it tends to produce higher census numbers in areas where the poor and minorities predominate). If Gregg can keep statisticians straight, Barone said, "maybe it's worth his leaving the Senate." The Democratic base could see what was going on, and it didn't take the news as well. The Congressional Black Caucus voiced its "troubling concerns." The National Association of Latino Elected & Appointed Officials questioned Gregg's "willingness to ensure that the 2010 census produces the most accurate possible count of the nation's population." At that point the administration could have stuck to its guns and said something like, "We named Judd Gregg because he's a man of integrity. We trust him to oversee an honest, transparent census." Instead, it said it would be cutting Gregg out of the loop. A "senior White House official" told Congressional Quarterly last Wednesday that the director of the Census Bureau (in CQ's words) "will report directly to the White House and not the secretary of commerce." The administration later stepped back a bit, saying it wanted the census chief "to work closely with White House senior management" while apparently still reporting to the commerce secretary. But the import was much the same: The White House was not going to let this census get away. Now it's the right's turn for outrage, and with good reason. Even in the watered-down version of the story, the census director would be nominally working under Gregg but, in reality, answering to Obama's hyperpartisan Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. Emanuel will have a role that Karl Rove could only dream of. So much for bipartisanship, transparency and a credible census. At this point in the story (which we're sure is not over), the Obama administration has generated distrust of its motives in both parties. Also, and not for the first time, it seems not to have thought things through. Had it remembered that a census was coming up and that Gregg would oversee it? If it had, it should have had the spine to insist that Gregg would exercise the full power of his office. But maybe it missed the census angle — that half-a-brain thing again. Is this what on-the-job training looks like at the White House? ibdeditorials.com

To: Sully- who wrote (29198)	2/10/2009 11:33:42 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Why Obama Wants Control of the Census Counting citizens is a powerful political tool. John Fund Wall Street Journal President Obama said in his inaugural address that he planned to "restore science to its rightful place" in government. That's a worthy goal. But statisticians at the Commerce Department didn't think it would mean having the director of next year's Census report directly to the White House rather than to the Commerce secretary, as is customary. "There's only one reason to have that high level of White House involvement," a career professional at the Census Bureau tells me. "And it's called politics, not science." The decision was made last week after California Rep. Barbara Lee, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, and Hispanic groups complained to the White House that Judd Gregg, the Republican senator from New Hampshire slated to head Commerce, couldn't be trusted to conduct a complete Census. The National Association of Latino Officials said it had "serious questions about his willingness to ensure that the 2010 Census produces the most accurate possible count." Anything that threatens the integrity of the Census has profound implications. Not only is it the basis for congressional redistricting, it provides the raw data by which government spending is allocated on everything from roads to schools. The Bureau of Labor Statistics also uses the Census to prepare the economic data that so much of business relies upon. "If the original numbers aren't as hard as possible, the uses they're put to get fuzzier and fuzzier," says Bruce Chapman, who was director of the Census in the 1980s. Mr. Chapman worries about a revival of the effort led by minority groups after the 2000 Census to adjust the totals for states and cities using statistical sampling and computer models. In 1999, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Department of Commerce v. U.S. House that sampling could not be used to reapportion congressional seats. But it left open the possibility that sampling could be used to redraw political boundaries within the states. Such a move would prove controversial. "Sampling potentially has the kind of margin of error an opinion poll has and the same subjectivity a voter-intent standard in a recount has," says Mr. Chapman. Starting in 2000, the Census Bureau conducted three years of studies with the help of many outside statistical experts. According to then Census director Louis Kincannon, the Bureau concluded that "adjustment based on sampling didn't produce improved figures" and could damage Census credibility. The reason? In theory, statisticians can identify general numbers of people missed in a head count. But it cannot then place those abstract "missing people" into specific neighborhoods, let alone blocks. And anyone could go door to door and find out such people don't exist. There can be other anomalies. "The adjusted numbers told us the head count had overcounted the number of Indians on reservations," Mr. Kincannon told me. "That made no sense." The problem of counting minorities and the homeless has long been known. Census Bureau statisticians believe that a vigorous hard count, supplemented by adding in the names of actual people missed by head counters but still found in public records, is likely to lead to a far more defensible count than sampling-based adjustment. The larger debate prompted seven former Census directors -- serving every president from Nixon to George W. Bush -- to sign a letter last year supporting a bill to turn the Census Bureau into an independent agency after the 2010 Census. "It is vitally important that the American public have confidence that the census results have been produced by an independent, non-partisan, apolitical, and scientific Census Bureau," it read. The directors also noted that "each of us experienced times when we could have made much more timely and thorough responses to Congressional requests and oversight if we had dealt directly with Congress." The bill's chief sponsor is New York Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney, who represents Manhattan's Upper East Side. "The real issue is who directs the Census, the pros or the pols," says Mr. Chapman. "You would think an administration that's thumping its chest about respecting science would show a little respect for scientists in the statistical field." He worries that a Census director reporting to a hyperpartisan such as White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel increases the chances of a presidential order that would override the consensus of statisticians. The Obama administration is downplaying how closely the White House will oversee the Census Bureau. But Press Secretary Robert Gibbs insists there is "historical precedent" for the Census director to be "working closely with the White House." It would be nice to know what Sen. Gregg thinks about all this, but he's refusing comment. And that, says Mr. Chapman, the former Census director, is damaging his credibility. "He will look neutered with oversight of the most important function of his department over the next two years shipped over to the West Wing," he says. "If I were him, I wouldn't take the job unless I had that changed." Mr. Fund is a columnist for WSJ.com. online.wsj.com

To: Sully- who wrote (29198)	2/13/2009 6:20:14 AM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 35834

Gregg withdraws as commerce secretary nominee Liz Sidoti And David Espo Associated Press Thu Feb 12, 11:23 pm ET WASHINGTON – Saying "I made a mistake," Republican Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire abruptly withdrew as commerce secretary nominee on Thursday and left the fledgling White House suddenly coping with Barack Obama's third Cabinet withdrawal. Gregg cited "irresolvable conflicts" with Obama's policies, specifically mentioning the $790 billion economic stimulus bill and 2010 census in a statement released without warning by his Senate office...... news.yahoo.com

To: Sully- who wrote (29198)	2/13/2009 9:18:51 AM
From: Sully-	1 Recommendation Respond to of 35834

Political Cartoons of Michael Ramirez Editorial Cartoonist for Investor's Business Daily ibdeditorials.com

To: Sully- who wrote (29198)	2/21/2009 4:32:54 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Count On The Constitution By MICHAEL BARONE Investor's Business Daily Editorials Posted Friday, February 20, 2009 4:30 PM PT All of America was watching Barack Obama on Jan. 20 as he promised to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." But few thought that, within a month, controversy would arise over the Constitution's census clause. "Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers," reads Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution. "The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct." This was a revolutionary step. Censuses had been conducted since ancient times, as readers of the Gospels know. But the United States was the first nation to conduct a census at regular intervals. And it was the first nation to base legislative representation on population. Not many federal agencies perform functions specifically set out in the Constitution. The Bureau of the Census does. Today, the census determines more than representation. It also determines the amount of federal funding for a vast array of programs. As a result, politicians have an incentive to try to maximize the numbers of their constituencies. On occasion, they have rejected results they have found distasteful. After the 1920 census showed an increasing proportion of urban dwellers, Congress refused to reapportion seats in the House of Representatives among the states. But under prodding from President Herbert Hoover, a law was passed setting a formula for automatic reapportionment based on the census numbers starting in 1930 and continuing to this day. You didn't hear much about the census on the campaign trail. But controversy flared when Obama nominated Republican Sen. Judd Gregg to head the Department of Commerce, which has housed the Census Bureau since 1903. Almost immediately, there were protests from Congressional Black Caucus Chairwoman Barbara Lee (who cast the lone vote against military action in Afghanistan in 2001) and Hispanic groups. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs declared that the Census Bureau would report directly to the West Wing of the White House. Gregg, perhaps miffed that a major function of the office for which he had been nominated would be taken over by Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, withdrew his name from consideration to be secretary. No new nominee has been named, but the issue remains: Will the politicians cook the numbers? The black and Hispanic groups are concerned that blacks and Hispanics will not be fully counted. This is not a new issue. Census statisticians have known since the 1970s that there have been undercounts of people in neighborhoods with high crime rates or large numbers of illegal immigrants. Census Bureau professionals have worked to measure these undercounts and to minimize them by using official records and enlisting local volunteers to locate residents. Their efforts have had some success, as the undercount was lower in 2000 than in 1990. Nonetheless, there have been demands that the Census numbers be adjusted by statistical sampling. The Supreme Court ruled in 1999 that sampling could not be used to apportion House districts among the states, but left open whether it could be used for other purposes. But after an intensive three-year study, Census professionals in 2003 said they could not guarantee that sampling would produce a more accurate count than the enumeration decreed by the Constitution. As then-Census Director Louis Kincannon said, "Adjustment based on sampling didn't produce improved figures." Sampling might produce a more accurate number for large units but not for smaller units — just as the sampling error in public opinion polls is small for the total population but much larger for small subgroups. At the block level, sampling would result in imputing people who aren't actually there. The potential for political mischief, political overrepresentation and greater federal funding for favored groups is obvious, just as Congress' refusal to reapportion after the 1920 Census resulted in political overrepresentation of low-growth rural areas and under-representation of then-booming big cities. The better procedure is to trust the professionals at the Census Bureau. "I found the Census personnel to be among the most conscientious of any group I'd encountered in government service," Bruce Chapman, census director in the Reagan administration, recently wrote. "Whatever their personal political views (I suspect that most voted for Obama), their allegiance is to the integrity of the positions of public trust they hold." This comports with my own observations of Census personnel over the years. Like other federal statistical agencies, the Census Bureau has a proud culture, developed and nurtured over many years and in many administrations, of independence from political manipulation and dedication to statistical rigor. So it's dismaying that the Obama White House, in response to political pressure, would consider overseeing the 2010 census. A better approach, endorsed by seven former Census directors and embodied in a bill sponsored by Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a New York Democrat, would be to set the Census Bureau apart as an independent agency. That would preserve, protect and defend the census that the framers of the Constitution took pains to establish. Copyright 2008 Creators Syndicate, Inc ibdeditorials.com

To: Sully- who wrote (29198)	4/16/2009 4:39:38 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

The nation depends on an accurate count of who and where we are. But it shouldn't be used to create a permanent class dependent on government and the drawing of lines to create a permanent Democratic majority. Counting On Illegal Aliens By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted Monday, April 13, 2009 4:20 PM PT Who Counts?: The next U.S. census chief wants to count people who aren't there. The acting director wants to count people who shouldn't be here. And Acorn will help do the counting. Back when he was the Census Bureau's associate director of statistical design, Robert M. Groves, nominated to be the next director of the bureau, recommended that the 1990 census be statistically adjusted to correct an alleged undercount of minorities in urban areas — areas that tend to vote heavily Democratic. Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher overruled him, saying the use of "statistical sampling," as it's known, was a form of "political tampering." The Supreme Court later ruled in 1999 that statistical sampling couldn't be used to apportion House seats among the states, but didn't rule out using estimates to redraw district lines within a state. Statistical sampling is a technique akin to polling. You select what you consider a representative sample and extrapolate your findings over the general population. The problem is that Article 1, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution forbids it. It requires an "actual enumeration" of all Americans every 10 years, not a guess based on statistical sampling. That means counting real, live, breathing people. The Founding Fathers weren't fools. Sampling techniques have changed, but human nature has not. If the Census Bureau were allowed to use sampling, it would have to develop formulas for its samples. How you structure the formula affects the results. It's possible a party in power might determine the desired result first, then determine the sampling formula needed to achieve it. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke says there are no plans to use statistical sampling in the 2010 census, but there will be enormous pressure to do so. Remember that Judd Gregg withdrew his nomination to be Commerce Secretary when plans to run the census out of the White House under Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel were revealed. On April 1, Secretary Locke joined several activist groups, including the National Council of La Raza and the League of United Latin American Citizens, at a press conference to talk about efforts to ensure a full count of Latinos in the 2010 census. After the press conference, acting director Thomas Mesenbourg said the Census Bureau intended to reach out to illegal aliens through "trusted" community organizations. "It's more than just the Census Bureau telling them that it's safe," said Mesenbourg. "We need somebody that they view as a trusted voice — somebody in a community organization that can assure them it's safe." One of those trusted organizations, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, infamous for its documented participation in vote fraud, signed on as a national partner with the Census Bureau in February. It will help recruit the 1.4 million temporary workers needed to go door to door. Acorn has helped ensure "people" like Mary Poppins and Jive Turkey were registered to vote. We wouldn't want the census to miss them. Groves has spent decades researching how to improve response rates, and apparently one of the ways being considered is to remind people of the federal goodies that come along with being counted. Page 24 of the Census Bureau's 351-page 2010 plan for the census advises that "messages that increase knowledge of the benefits of filling out the Census improve motivation and favorability towards Census participation." People should be reminded that the "Census determines how over $300 billion per year in federal funds get divided among states and local areas of the country." This is even if the people are illegally here or are just estimated to be here. The nation depends on an accurate count of who and where we are. But it shouldn't be used to create a permanent class dependent on government and the drawing of lines to create a permanent Democratic majority. ibdeditorials.com

To: Sully- who wrote (29198)	4/17/2009 4:57:29 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Bring It On! Mark Krikorian Th Corner I almost didn't link to this story, because I don't want to jinx it, but it was in USA Today, so I guess the cat's out of the bag: <<< Hispanic groups call for Census boycott Some Hispanic advocacy groups are calling for illegal immigrants to boycott the 2010 Census unless immigration laws are changed. The move puts them at odds with leading immigrant rights advocates and creates another hurdle in the Census Bureau's quest to count everyone in the USA. The National Coalition of Latino Clergy & Christian Leaders, a group that says it represents 20,000 evangelical churches in 34 states, issued a statement this week urging undocumented immigrants not to fill out Census forms unless Congress passes "genuine immigration reform." Similar grass-roots campaigns are unfolding in Arizona and New Mexico to protest state and local crackdowns on illegal immigrants. Asking immigrants to be counted without giving them a chance to become legal residents counters church teachings, says the Rev. Miguel Rivera, president of the Latino religious coalition. >>> I don't know that the Fathers of the Church taught anything about the subject, but in any case, this is fine with me. It's like Cleavon Little holding a gun to his own head in Blazing Saddles, except the joke's on them. The exclusion of illegal aliens is something FAIR unsuccessfully sued to prevent in 1980 and 1990 (the courts said they lacked standing, if I remember correctly), because their inclusion distorts the apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives and the state legislatures. The inclusion of illegals in the count is a large part of the reason Democrats control the California legislature, for instance, because their districts have few voters but lots of illegals. Which is the reason for this quote: <<< The call for a boycott "may be well-intended but misguided and ultimately irresponsible," says Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected Officials and a member of a Census advisory panel. >>> And then there's this, which would have fired up Jim Boulet, may he rest in peace: <<< Nationally, efforts to have the Census reach Hispanics get backing from major Spanish-speaking media and organizations. For the first time, the Census will send forms in English and Spanish to about 13 million households in areas that have a high concentration of Hispanics. >>> corner.nationalreview.com

To: Sully- who wrote (29198)	3/18/2010 9:45:00 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Census 2010 Plagued By Technical Difficulties FOXNews.com Conducting a national head count isn't easy or cheap. It gets even more complicated -- and expensive -- when efforts to modernize the decennial census fall short. The idea for 2010 was that half a million census workers, for the first time, would use handheld computers to verify addresses, follow up with people who didn't return their questionnaires and perform other tasks. "It would enable them to enter answers from the household as they stood there, and to send that information either immediately or overnight back directly to the processing center," said Louis Kincannon, former director of the U.S. Census Bureau. But certain "delete" operations malfunctioned, causing some major glitches. And after the successful completion of the address verification phase, the devices were phased out for any further use. The total cost, meanwhile, grew from an original $600 million computer contract to up to $3 billion. Add to that the $14.7 billion bill that taxpayers are already footing for the 10 years of census counting -- a price tag that supports 500 local offices and a peak staff of 1.4 million workers. Politics hover over the results of the census -- required by the U.S. Constitution to be conducted every 10 years -- because they control how many seats each state is allotted in the House of Representatives, and also the allocation of some $400 billion a year in federal funding to state, local, and tribal governments. The Census Bureau has already faced criticism for planning to count residents without asking about citizenship, and for teaming up with ACORN before cutting ties with the community activist group amid allegations of corruption. Now the failure to modernize the census has led the bureau to rely on old-fashioned tactics. "I think there are some well-publicized difficulties they had with some automation of the census," said John Thompson, former associate director of the Census Bureau. "And so now, they have prepared to do the follow-up using pencil and paper, and they're very good at that." But the handheld computer fiasco increased exponentially the importance of the Census Bureau's paper-based operations control system – or "p-bocs," as census insiders call it. And federal auditors have also found major problems with that system. "PBOCS testing is revealing more and more critical defects as it progresses," the Commerce Department's inspector general warned in a report last month. "Critical software errors are increasing; system performance is still lagging and testing continues to be compressed… [A] shortfall in testing portends potentially significant technical problems in the field." "This is clearly one of the highest internal risks," Grove said. "This is something that I saw early on. The I.G. is right on this. So we're making trade-off decisions right now to make sure that the core functions of the system are set up… I'm not saying we're out of the woods yet. I'm saying that we're on this problem, we're worried about it, we're studying it, we're trying to manage it well, and we're trying to make sure that the core functions are preserved." In December, the Census Bureau staged a mock test of its IT infrastructure with 8,000 workers across the country entering data on scripted cues to see if the system could handle its peak projected volume. The answer was no. Auditors found "significant problems," adding, "software errors are increasing and system performance is not meeting operational needs." Fox News' James Rosen contributed to this report. foxnews.com

To: Sully- who wrote (29198)	3/31/2010 4:21:43 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

E-mail of the day: Confessions of a Census worker By Michelle Malkin on census If even half of what this anonymous reader who e-mailed about his experience as a Census worker is true, imagine the squandering of tax dollars taking place on a mass scale. Crikey. Hi, Michelle: I would first like to apologize for stealing your tax dollars, but if it wasn’t me, it would be someone else. I am an underemployed 20-something Tea Partier, and after reading about how much government waste was going to the 2010 census, I figured that I might as well “git me some of dat Obama money” until I find something more solid. …I’m currently in my second tour of “temporary employment” with the Bureau….I’m not participating in or approving of what the census data I collect could likely be used for, but all I am is data entry at the moment. Last summer I participated in the ‘address canvassing’ (AC) project. What this entailed was walking around a neighborhood, literally door to door, with a little hand held computer. My job was not to enter addresses so that these people could receive their form, but to make sure that the addresses that the first wave of people put into the system and appeared on the computer was actually there. 99% were. Sure there were a few missing that you did have to manually enter, but out of the thousands of address that I checked, we’re talking 20 or less that had to be manually entered. I didn’t have to knock on any doors or ask any questions, unless someone came out and was angry that I was walking around the neighborhood looking at pretty address numbers on door frames. If they were mad, I gave them a little sheet that explained the confidentiality of the census. But mostly, it was me getting paid $15.25/hour plus mileage to take my dog for a walk and pushing a few buttons. In an average suburban neighborhood where the houses are somewhat close to each other, it was no problem to do about 35-40 addresses per hour once you learned how to quickly enter data into the computer. The census said that I should be doing about 12-15 per hour. My direct bosses told me that I should NOT be doing 35-40 because it was making them and other people look bad. So instead of walking at a snails pace, I just did my 35-40/hour and doubled my time when I submitted my hours. Again, sorry for the tax dollar grab, but I was told not to be so darned efficient or else I’d be cut! To recap: A first wave of people spent god knows how many hours finding the addresses on every street in America. I’m in the second wave, making sure they did their jobs. Then there were people (Quality Control), who were the third wave, making sure I did my job! I was not fortunate enough to get a QC position. Let me get into another area. Training. To do the above job, I could have been trained in a single morning learning computer functions and mapping, maybe a little bit of recap after a lunch break. No way it should have gone longer than 5 or 6 hours, being generous. Turn on the computer, find your area that you were assigned, learn how to enter the different kinds of dwellings, and how to use a stylus. But no. We were subjected to a 5 day, 40 hour training period that made me want to tear my hair out. Because what I, a college educated non-moron, could have learned in 5 hours, 80% of my class of trainees were aggravatingly slow and confused by the process. Old people, high school dropouts, flat-out idiots. The census takes all comers. Oh and the stupid questions they ask! Thinking back gives me nightmares. I’m really not turning my nose up at these people, but it just saddened me to see good people struggling with such a menial task. So much time was wasted on the first day, for the rest of the days, I just sat in the back reading the paper, books, staring at the ceiling. At the end of the training, you are given a written test. You have one hour to complete the exam and only need to get 60%. I flew through it in 15 minutes, missed one question, and was a full-fledged graduate of Census university. For $15.25/hour, plus my mileage at 50 cents per mile to a facility which was round trip about 80 miles. So training alone wasted about 35 hours and 320 miles. That’s about $700 right there. Thanks, taxpayers! Now to my second wave, which is something called Group Quarters Enumeration. This is something I could have learned to do over breakfast. We got a 3 day training. This one is going to places considered group quarters, i.e. nursing homes, soup kitchens, churches where priests live, and the like. Not apartment buildings or anything like that. And of course homeless, people, let’s not forget that. This one is about to start. My first assignment is a [redacted] in which I have just learned there are no inhabitants who live there full-time or the majority of the time. After talking this over with my boss and feeling cheated that I’m losing hours since there’s nobody to distribute census forms to, I have been told to drive to this [place] (25 minutes from my house), confirm in person, and drive back. Credit me with half an hour there, half an hour back, and half an hour confirming, and I’m getting an 1.5 hours plus the mileage. What a wonderful use of funds! .

To: Sully- who wrote (29198)	5/5/2010 10:54:19 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Audit: Computer Glitches to Drive Up Census Costs Associated Press WASHINGTON— A new audit questions whether the 2010 census can stick to its $15 billion budget because of computer problems that are forcing substantial overtime work. The report from the Commerce Department inspector general's office was obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press. It says glitches with the computer system used to manage the door-to-door count caused a 40-hour backlog of work over two weeks. The report notes that the Census Bureau has already notched more than $1.6 million in overtime costs, and says continuing shutdowns could put the count's accuracy at risk if census data can't be put into the system immediately. Census Bureau director Robert Groves says he believes the agency will stay within its budget. .

To: Sully- who wrote (29198)	5/6/2010 12:08:07 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Your Census boondoggle story of the week By Michelle Malkin on census Add this one to the mountainous, taxpayer-subsidized pile — from my home state of Colorado, via 9News: <<< The U.S. Census Bureau spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on promotional items used to convince more people to mail back their census forms, but a '9Wants to Know' investigation found thousands of the items were dropped off, unused, at a local high school. The leftover items, such as backpacks, cloth grocery bags, hats, pins, magnets and business card holders, were dropped off at Lakewood High School last month. “We probably had, between the backpack style [bags] and the shopping bag style [bags], over 1,000 dropped off,” Lakewood High School Principal Ron Castagna told 9Wants to Know. He estimates more than 1,000 posters printed in different languages were also dropped off at the school. An unknown Census worker walked into the school in mid-April and asked the principal if she could leave the items. She did not ask the school to distribute them. “[She] said, ‘We have extra stuff. We’re wrapping up the Census and we just want to distribute the materials,’” Castagna said. It did not sit well with him. “Wait a minute, times are tough and I’m sitting in a position where we’ve got a school district that’s done everything the right way and yet we’re still going to face budget cuts,” he said. Among the many boxes of posters the Census worker left at the school, were more than 300 promotional posters printed in Farsi. Farsi is the language spoken in Iran, Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan. >>>

To: Sully- who wrote (29198)	5/26/2010 8:41:07 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Sen. Shelby Slams Census Bureau for Allowing Sex Offenders to Go Door-to-Door FOXNews.com After two cases of alleged criminals going door-to-door to take surveys, Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby said Monday that the U.S. Census Bureau must do more to prevent hiring census takers with a criminal background. In a letter to Commerce Secretary Gary Locke sent Monday, Shelby wrote that when he asked Locke during a Senate hearing last year about guidelines to disqualify applicants, including sex offenders and people who've committed crimes against children, he was told the measures would ensure "each applicant is an acceptable risk to collect census information from residents of a community as a representative of our government." "It is inconceivable that the Census Bureau could be so poorly managed as to hire a convicted sex offender to go door-to-door to collect personal information," Shelby said. "Clearly, Mr. Secretary, your guidelines are not working." The letter followed news last week that a sex offender in New Jersey had spent two weeks in May interviewing residents while carrying around an official Census badge, bag and list of residents who hadn't returned their surveys. Frank Kuni reportedly had used fake documents under the name Jamie Shephard to pass an initial name check and receive four days of training. But an alert resident recognized the 47-year-old from the state's Internet sex offender registry. Kuni, who was charged with using a fraudulent document to get government ID, was fingerprinted during his first day of training but when Census officials learned on the last day of training that Kuni had been flagged for a previous arrest, he was already out the door with his assignment, Fernando E. Armstrong, director of the U.S. Census Bureau's Philadelphia region, told the Courier News. He was arrested four days later. "From our perspective, the process that was put in place and has been used across the country worked in this case," Armstrong told the newspaper, acknowledging that an earlier return of the background check would've prevented Kuni from reaching the street. In a separate case in Indiana, a volunteer census worker named Daniel Miller allegedly raped and beat a 21-year-old physically handicapped woman after returning to her home in the middle of the night following an interview earlier in the day. Shelby said that during the 2000 Census, one in four of the 930,000 applicants for the temporary jobs were flagged by the FBI and prevented from working. "The Census Bureau spent $2.5 million on a Super Bowl advertisement to encourage participation in the Census and has gone to great lengths to assure Americans that they should open their doors to Census workers. The lack of adequate oversight is unacceptable," Shelby wrote. "What is even more objectionable is that it does not appear from public statements on the incident that the Census Bureau admits fault or even acknowledges that their screening procedures are not working," he wrote. .

To: Sully- who wrote (29198)	6/4/2010 2:46:04 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

The 2010 Census and Our Fair Share By Brenton Stransky American Thinker Earlier this week, an undercover journalist in New Jersey and one in Louisiana worked together to expose the embarrassingly erroneous method by which the Census Bureau pays its workers, thrusting the 2010 census into the headlines once again. Using hidden cameras, the two revealed Census Bureau managers who encouraged their newly hired employees to submit timesheets exaggerated with hours they did not work. The undercover journalist's thesis is that, when multiplied by the thousands of temporary Census employees, this exaggeration becomes a significant amount. The team's hidden camera/YouTube style of exposing the Census Bureau might seem familiar to you. In fact, James O'Keefe, the young journalist who impersonated a pimp last year and nearly single handedly ruined ACORN and Shaughn Adeleye both work with Andrew Breitbart. The Census Bureau's indifferent procedure for compensating their employees has reignited the concerns voiced by many over the past several months about the exorbitant cost of the 2010 Census. These concerns are valid. The cost of running the Census has grown exponentially over the decades and according to the Census Bureau, the 2010 decennial census cycle will cost $13.7-$14.5B. Consider the progression of the decennial cost; from 1970 - 2010 the cost to run the census has increased by 1350% while the population has increased by about 51% over the same time. Despite the obvious concern of wasteful spending there is another concern to address and it is the Bureau's vaguely veiled agenda to propagate the mentality of government dependence. The major outlet that the Census Bureau has used to inform citizens (and non-citizens) of the Census has been TV commercials (including a $2.5M Super Bowl Spot). Largely these commercials are well done, entertaining, and have a catchy beat or message. The concern, though, is the message. In one of the more popular Census commercials NASCAR star Greg Biffle lays rubber in a neighborhood cul-de-sac, and while pulling off perfect tire melting donuts calmly delivers a message about the census: <<< Some people wonder why they should bother with the Census. Well, the Census creates a snap shot of who we are as a community. So it helps us get our fair share of funding. >>> "Our fair share" is a common expression but when used by a government bureau conveys the notion that the government is here to provide for us and owes us something. This mentality has spread to from FDR's "New Deal" programs that included retirement income and unemployment compensation to include retirement healthcare, health care for all citizens, payments for buying a new car or house and even a free cell phone. Nearly 70% of the Federal Government's $3,518B 2009 budget went toward paying for existing entitlement programs. Not discussed in the star studded Census commercials: "Our fair share" also refers to each citizen's share of the debt burden that this reliance on government has created. The total debt that the Federal government has taken out in our names, largely to pay for entitlements, now amounts to $12.8 T (or $87K per worker) and the interest owed each year on the debt by every working man and woman alone amounts to $1820. But, "our fair share" of federal debt obligations is significantly higher than the reported federal deficit. Our two largest entitlement programs (Medicare and Social Security) are "off budget items" meaning that their underfunding is not counted in the federal deficit. The National Center for Policy Analysis (using the 2009 Social Security Administration's Trustees Report) estimates that the total level of underfunding for Social Security and Medicare in 2009 was $106.8T. When added to the reported federal deficit of $12.3T, the total debt obligation becomes a mind numbing and heart stopping $119.1T. Our fair share of debt for our fair share of government funding is roughly $881K for every working person in the country. This type of government entitlement and distribution of "our fair share" may have already allowed a poverty of ambition to seep it to our society. According to data collected from the Office of the White House and Census Bureau, from 1970 - 2006 while government outlays to individuals increased 64% faster than during the previous 23 years, the rate of median income growth slowed by 64% over the same period. The progressive ideal of a paternalistic government is a significant danger to our nation because the burden of such programs has eroded our nation's fiscal strength. But, instead of acknowledging the concern of burdensome debt, the government, through the guise of the 2010 Census, has propagated the idea that they will provide and that we deserve our fair share of funding. "Our fair share" has a dangerous double meaning and the value isn't worth the cost. Brenton Stransky is a co- author of "The Young Conservative's Field Guide" which is recently available. The author can be contacted through their website at www.aHardRight.com. .

To: Sully- who wrote (29198)	6/10/2010 9:16:25 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Is 2010 Census Counting Homeless People Twice? Terence P. Jeffrey On the last three days of March, teams of temporary Census Bureau workers visited the types of places, including what the bureau calls "targeted non-sheltered outdoor locations" (TNSOL), where homeless people are known to congregate. These workers were carrying out the "Service-Based Enumeration" (SBE) phase of the Census, which counts the nation's homeless population. The bureau gave these workers two instructions that seemed peculiar: When they counted a homeless person, the workers did not need to take the person's name or date of birth, and if a presumed homeless person insisted he or she had already been counted by the Census, the workers were supposed to count that person anyway. These orders raise an obvious question: Is the 2010 Census counting some homeless people twice? The issue has not escaped the notice of the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Commerce, which oversees the Census Bureau. During the effort to count the homeless, officials from the IG's office visited 13 local Census offices to observe first-hand how the count was conducted. On May 5, the IG published a report for Congress on Census operations during the first quarter (January-March). It included the IG's observations on the homeless count. The report indicated that the Census manual for Group Quarters Enumeration (GQE) — of which the SBE count of the homeless is a part — specifically instructed workers to recount people who said they had already been counted. The IG report also said the workers counting the homeless were not required to collect the names and birth dates of these people. "Unique to this operation, enumerators were allowed to create an individual Census record based on their direct observation of the race, gender and ethnicity of the respondent," the IG reported. "Enumerators were not required to obtain names or dates of birth from such respondents. Additionally, the Census Bureau's GQE manual indicates that enumerators should recount any individual who asserts that he/she has already been counted." The IG's office reported that some workers were naturally disinclined to follow the bureau's instructions to recount a person who claimed he had already been counted. Sometimes a person who said he had been counted already was counted again, sometimes not. The same happened with people who said they had an address. "We identified concerns with ... inconsistent handling of individuals who either (1) stated that they had already been counted, or (2) stated that they had an address," the IG reported. "We observed 83 enumerations — at shelters, soup kitchens, food vans and TNSOL sites — carried out by 13 local offices. In over half of our observations, enumerators were inconsistent in deciding whether or not to recount individuals who stated that they had already been counted. We also identified inconsistent practices when respondents indicated that they had an actual residential address. In particular, some of these individuals were counted during SBE, while other individuals were told that they could not be counted because they were not homeless. The enumerators' natural inclination to avoid duplication often contradicted the procedures in the Census GQE manual." The IG's report concluded there is a great risk that Census created duplicate records of some homeless. It also revealed that the IG's office had not examined how the bureau planned to correct its results to remove people it had counted twice. "When deviating from established procedures, enumerators appeared to follow a more common-sense approach to reducing the risk of duplicate records," said the IG report. "However, this risk remains great for individual records created during SBE. We have not reviewed the process Census will use to remove duplicate records for enumerations that were simply based on direct observation of race, gender, age or ethnicity, and in which no birth date or name was provided." In written testimony presented in February to the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on the Census, Robert Goldenkoff of the Government Accountability Office explained why Census accuracy is important. "Data from the census — a constitutionally mandated effort — are used to apportion seats in the Congress, redraw congressional districts, help allocate more than $400 billion in federal aid to state and local governments, and redraw local political boundaries," he said. "Precision is critical," he said, "because, in some cases, small differences in population totals could potentially impact apportionment, redistricting decisions or both." On Wednesday, I asked the Census Bureau why it told enumerators to count homeless people who said they had already been counted, why did it not record the names and dates of birth for the homeless people it counted, and what process it is using "to remove duplicate records for enumerations that were simply based on direct observation of race, gender, age or ethnicity, and in which no birth date or name was provided?" Census spokesman Michael G. Cook responded by email. "We have a process for dealing with duplicate responses to the 2010 Census to which the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and Inspector General (IG) are very familiar," he said. Terence P. Jeffrey is the editor in chief of CNSnews.com. To find out more about him, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com. . .

To: Sully- who wrote (29198)	7/6/2010 6:45:07 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Suspected Fraud Forces Census Bureau to Review 10,000 Questionnaires FoxNews.com Published July 01, 2010 The U.S. Census Bureau is reviewing 10,000 questionnaires after two managers in a New York field office allegedly forged household interviews in an attempt to meet a deadline -- the latest incident of alleged census fraud that has prompted at least two federal lawmakers to call for an investigation. The two managers, who allegedly cheated by copying information from phone books and Internet directories, were turned in by colleagues and fired last week. The alleged fraud occurred in a census office in Brooklyn, N.Y., that oversees 165,000 housing units. "They were essentially trying to complete forms that were not completed in their entirety by using other sources of data," Census spokesman Stephen Buckner said in an interview Thursday with FoxNews.com. The Brooklyn office is now reviewing the 10,000 forms -- the bulk of the work completed by the office in a two-week period -- but does not know precisely how many questionnaires were forged. "We have no signs that it would be that many," Buckner said. Buckner referred to the latest case of alleged fraud as an "isolated incident" and said various "quality control measures" are in place to ensure accuracy in conducting the nation’s official head count. But the scandal is the latest blow to a Census Bureau already hit by previous allegations of over-billing and mismanagement -- leaving some wondering how the agency plans to prevent such incidents from happening again. According to a government audit released last February, thousands of workers hired in 2009 were trained and paid without ever having worked for the bureau. The Commerce Department's inspector general report also found that several temporary workers overbilled the agency for travel expenses. And on June 2, a temporary worker based in Louisiana used a hidden camera to reveal several cases of alleged wrongdoing by other workers at the bureau, including falsifying the number of hours worked. "I had a payroll supervisor tell me not to worry about having been paid for hours I did not work,” Shaughn Adeleye wrote in an article posted to the conservative website, biggovernment.org. "We were also coached to indicate government phone numbers were in fact our personal cell phone numbers (a blatant lie) in order to prevent people from calling and harassing us," Adeleye claimed. In the wake of last week's scandal, Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., and Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga., ranking members on the House subcommittee that oversees the census, fired off a letter Tuesday to Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., chairman of the House committee on Oversight and Government Reform, demanding a full investigation into the Brooklyn case. "The two managers conspired to turn the local census office ... into a workshop for waste, fraud and abuse," McHenry and Westmoreland wrote to Edolphus, who represents New York's 10th congressional district based in Brooklyn. "As the House Committee with direct oversight responsibility for the Census, we have an obligation to fully investigate this wrongdoing." Buckner said that the bureau is going to extremes to ensure an accurate head count in the 2010 Census. Among the procedures in place are plans to re-interview households at random to ensure accuracy. And Buckner said the bureau is currently planning to re-interview any housing units that have inconsistencies on their forms, which he estimated to be about 7.5 million households. Buckner also stressed that the Census Bureau has implemented "multiple layers of supervision in the field to make sure there is not a systemic problem" in data collection. And he said the bureau is planning to verify that all housing units identified as vacant are uninhabited. "That's a big quality improvement," he said, referring to the last census conducted in 2000. "We're pretty much ahead of schedule when it comes to the door-to-door campaign. We've got good cooperation from the American public -- over 72 percent of the resident population mailed back their census form." "We want to make sure everyone's following the procedures we have in place," he said. .

To: Sully- who wrote (29198)	9/22/2010 11:44:35 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Census Bureau At Odds With Politician Over Vegas Trip FoxNews.com Published September 21, 2010 The U.S. Census Bureau is facing criticism for sending 140 managers to Las Vegas last month for a business trip that cost taxpayers nearly $100,000. The agency told FoxNews.com that the meetings on "lessons learned" from the 2010 census are required by Congress to identify operation improvements and cost efficiencies for the national head count that happens every 10 years. But a Republican lawmaker accused the agency of stealing taxpayer money to bankroll a lavish vacation for its top employees. "It's impossible to argue this without saying these folks took a vacation and they took it at taxpayer expense," Rep. Mike Coffman of Colorado told CBS4 Denver, a local affiliate that first reported the trip. "I mean, I think it's the equivalent of theft." The Census Bureau defended the trip. "We returned $1.6 billion to the taxpayers in part because we do the 'lessons learned' process before and after our operations," bureau spokesman Steve Jost told FoxNews.com, referring to the $1.6 billion the agency says it saved nationwide over the course of the 2010 census – a figure questioned by Republicans who claim the census actually exceeded its budget. Jost said the trip to Sin City Aug. 24 cost $88,767 in airfare, meals and hotel costs – or $634 per person -- a price that would have been "substantially higher" anywhere else in the region. The bureau sent managers from 10 different states in the region to review the training process, as well as detail the agency's good and bad practices. The trip lasted a day and a half, Jost said. "We believe this is a good investment in the next census to figure out how we can do this more efficiently," he said. "I don't know if we'd be having this conversation if we had it in Denver or Albuquerque." Coffman told CBS4Denver that if the agency was serious about saving taxpayer money, it could have gathered the same data by conducting online and written surveys, or via teleconference. "The congressman stands by his comment," spokesman Nathaniel Sillin told FoxNews.com. "The burden is on the Census Bureau to show that this trip was of value to the taxpayers in a time of economic austerity." The agency said it did conduct online and written surveys and that the Vegas trip was the culmination of the process. "At some point, face-to-face meetings are logical and necessary," he said. "Managers have to get together and compare notes on what worked and what didn't work." The controversy comes after President Obama encouraged Americans to visit Vegas following a wave of criticism over his remarks that corporations shouldn't use federal bailout money for trips to Sin City. Jost said he was unaware of the controversy involving Obama and that the business trip to Vegas had nothing to do with that. .