What's wrong with the census?

The more they know, the more they can control you!

There is nothing wrong with the census. Without knowing how many people live in a community, there is no way of knowing how to distribute funding to schools, elderly, emergency services, etc…

Also, the census helps determine the number of representatives.

Out of all the things that the government does, the Census is one of the handful that come directly from the Constitution. It’s not even implied – it’s right there!

Nothing wrong with it. What’s wrong are conspiracy theories that aren’t grounded in anything.

The Constitution actually requires that a census be taken ever ten years.

But Right Wing Nuts like Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann have been carrying on about how the Census is a secret Obama plot to take over America, confiscate all our guns, and force Karl Marx’s thoughts into our brains. Apparently, there is a running competition among right-wing nut jobs to see who can come up with the most insane, utterly ridiculous conspiracy theory.

It’s not my job to educate the federal government as to every detail of my life.

The constitution demands I let you know how many people are under my roof.

That’s all you get.

Let me put it into very simple terms.

Whatever your party…

Do
You
Trust
the
Government?

that guy in the video you linked sounded a tad bit paranoid…. I don’t mind answering a few questions to a census.

@DrMC ; Uhm. Why wouldn’t I? I know that seems naive, but then again… I am naive. xD

I only watched the first 1.5 minutes, because my computer is going to drive me insane. This guy is a little ridiculous, because some of the things he mentions are things that are public record anyway, like how many cars you have, etc. @LunaChick is also correct about representatives, and funding. However, I question if people are listing people who are not permanent residents or citizens, so they should not be represented.

I find it funny that @ETpro mentions the right wing being upset, because I think of liberals as being upset that knowing where everyone is and keeping count gives the government the ability to find you if they want you. Think Hitler; Jews pulled out of their homes at gunpoint.

There is one more element. If we want to stop separating people by race, probably we need it to stop at the top, so it can trickle down.

By the way. I never actually watched the video because I didn’t feel like more conspiracy government theories. If I wanted that, I’d watch FoxNews.

It is total idiocy to say there is a problem with the census. It’s the same paranoid conspiracy theory nut jobs that are worried about health care.

@PacificRimjob ; but it’s not every single detail.

@DrMC Yes, more than I trust bands of thugs, criminal gangs, terrorists and war lords. Tthat seems to be what fills the power vacuum as soon as you dismantle government. If there are legitimate things the Census Bureau needs to know to allocate funds and resources nationwide, I have no fear of answering the innocuous questions they ask.

@troubleinharlem:

I was exaggerating.

Not to diminish the reality of the problem.

@PacificRimjob… you spent ten minutes writing that?

Computer issues.

Let’s just say I can only use the antique iBook to access Fluther..

@ETpro, @JLeslie, @marinelife, @RandomMrdan, @LunaChick ;

Okay, I was talking to the son of the lady, and he said “you dont kno jack about politics if you think that’s a bunch of bs lol. sorry but its true.”

I guess I should let it go?

@troubleinharlem I’d let that one go. Facts have no impact in the ideology-based universe. It’s a different universe althgether than the one where reality has any bearing on things.

@ETpro ; do you think that the bigger it is, the more expensive it is, the more powerful it is, the more restricting and controlling government is?
sorry if it didn’t make sense, i just copied and pasted what he said. xD

I have a habit of joking around and once when we had a census it got me into trouble. This was in the late eighties. The census forms are collected by census officials who door-knock.

Collection day:

Overly officious collection lady.

“Are you sure that you filled out all the questions properly.

Me: “Yes, I am quite sure.”

Collection lady: Did you answer the question about how many wives you have had.

Me: “Yes ” (I had actually answered None of your damned business.)

Census lady: “Did you answer the question about how many illegitimate children you have”?

Me: “Yes.” ( I said that I stopped keeping track of them – there were too many.)

Census lady: “Did you answer the question about how many people were in the house at midnight on census day”?

Me: “Yes, just my wife and three of our daughters” . “You didn’t want me to count the boat people that I have living in the garage did you? I don’t know what language they speak and they keep moving around so much that they are hard to count. They sure eat a lot though. I found them the other day when we were out deep sea fishing. I towed them back in.”

I then closed the door firmly and refused to answer her furious bell ringing.

Next morning, at five thirty AM, a very loud pounding on the front and back doors, two Federal Police cars and a car with immigration officials in it.

Two hours of house searching later with me suggesting that the people involved lacked a sense of humour and I managed to have my breakfast.

Some Census questions in the past have been left blank by me, when I felt it was none of their business, but most of it is good material for understanding the needs of the population.
Right wing nut jobs like the guy in the link will end up with his state receiving fewer funds than they should get because of him, and his ignorant ilk.

i wish he would shut up… now he’s playing the race card.

A census taker once tried to test me.

I ate his liver with some fava beans.

And a nice chianti.

Ftftftftftftftftftf…..

@troubleinharlem What lady, what are you talking about? I’m lost.

@JLeslie ; I was talking to the lady (the one who sent me the video)‘s son, and he was talking about… stuff. And now I’m really pissed off.

Well, it’s intrusive and kind of annoying. And they they know.~
@DarkScribe That reminds me of an amusing rumor that I once heard: something like 10,000 Australians put down “Jedi” in the Religion category, enough so that it is now an officially recognized religion there. Snopes has labeled this as false.

@Nullo 10,000 Australians put down “Jedi” in the Religion category, enough so that it is now an officially recognized religion there..

Do you mean to say that there was time when it wasn’t recognised? I mean, surely they can see the resemblance between Yoda and the Koalas.

Does the US census ask what religion we are? I don’t remember that. I think I would be reluctant to answer that question.

@Nullo I wonder if we could convince 10,000 people here to declare themselves Flutherites. I would love to see this site become the newest religion.

@JLeslie Here is a link to the actual questions.

:/ he’s basically calling me stupid…

“The census is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you may get”
There’s an awful lot you can tell about a person by how they answer the census. Momma said the census will take you anywhere. It is magic!

Seriously, the government already knows all about you. They know. Live your life. Sheesh.

Jedi not an Australian religion indeed. Here is proof.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2736/4390789443_0fa59353d7_o.jpg

@DarkScribe – I LOVE your census story!

The Jedi Church web site shows 20,000 people telling their census they were Jedi in New Zealand. It’s hard to know how much that is people being indignant about the question, and how many are actually considering Jediism their religion.

Hmmm… now I’m wondering if Flying Spaghetti Monsterism is a recognized religion. I can’t wait for the census guy to get here now.

I have never had a census person show up at my door.

@JLeslie – Did you actually fill out the questionair and mail it in? The only time census workers knock at the door is when someone fails to mail back the census.

Yes, I always fill it in and mail it back. I was sort of responding to what @CyanoticWasp said.

In the past I thought some of the questions were too personal. I think it is way too long. That they have your race, age, gender and income should be all that is required and maybe some long term health issues and maybe if you have health insurance. I sometimes just put N/A or leave an answer blank if it asks anything I don’t see as being of any use to them. Its been a while but I mostly remember it being quite long. I haven’t recieved the form this year yet.

@Pandora – Not all the questions are mandatory. If you’re uncomfortable answering one of the questions, just skip it, as long as it’s not one of the relatively few mandatory questions.

Looking at the questions on this year’s form, I don’t see anything at all controversial. And unfortunately, they don’t ask about religion. There goes the plans to get Flutherite into the US registry.

Here are some things that people forget/ don’t know about the census;

1) There are no names attached, especially if you talk to one of the door-to-door agents instead of doing the mail-in form.

2) Not only do they lack any legal enforcement power, but those with ties to law enforcement are specifically prohibited from working for the US Census! It would be a conflict of interest at best.
If, for example, one of the census takers knocks on your door and sees three dead child prostitutes, two nuclear bombs, and a mountain of cocaine on your coffee table, they cannot report it!
They are there to get numbers, and they want those numbers to be as accurate as possible. They don’t care if you are here illegally, fleeing the law, or whatever; all they want to know is that one of the people at such-and-such address is a 42 year old Mexican male with an income of $x.

3) The more accurate the numbers the census has, the better idea people (including but not limited to the government) have of what sort of people live here and what sort of help we all need. Do you think that Congress would have approved an extension of unemployment benefits if they didn’t know how many people were out of work? Without accurate numbers, there is little/no chance of the government doing the right thing.
Well, far less of a chance anyways…

So don’t be afraid of the Census. They only want numbers.

@ETpro Thank you for the link. I assume you are joking about the religion question. I would guess census only cares about figuring out stats on protected/minority groups since this involves goevernment protections. If our country trully treated everyone as equal, was rid of affirmative action, etc., then I can’t see why any questions about race would be relavant. Although, maybe marketers get their demographic info from the census? Then it is a money maker for government and business.

@jerv thanks for all of that information. You don’t see a problem with illegal aliens being counted? In terms of representation?

~Maybe the Illegals should count as three-fifths of a person for representation? They work pretty hard for very little pay.~

@laureth That is not what I mean. I think you know me better. I am all for giving these people a path to citizenship, I am not trying to ignore them or kick them out of the country. But, they cannot vote, and representation has to do with voting. Maybe it is irrelavant? I am willing to consider your opinion on it if you want to articulate it.

@JLeslie – first off, please note the ~sarcasm tildes~. ;)

Second, the 3/5ths solution was an answer to how to represent slaves in Congress. The South liked the greater say in Congress that having a huge mass of non-voting non-people gave them, but didn’t particularly enjoy having to pony up that much in taxes. The North resented the slave states being represented on the basis of people that were considered property, but were OK with the South counting the slaves if they also paid taxes on their behalf.

The thing here is, we have a bunch of people who can’t vote because they’re not citizens, yet do pay some taxes (if they have to because they used a false SSN to get work) that they’ll never get back. How should they be represented? While I was totally snarky with my answer, one might see a parallel. The Southern border states (where most of the illegal immigrants reside) may enjoy increased representation that comes with counting them as a fraction of a person (and would receive more in the way of federal monies based on that representation, relevant because of how much they see illegals as “sucking up their resources” like health care and education), but the states with less of a population of illegals might (rightly) not want them counted since they’re not really supposed to be here, we just pay them to work and benefit with the lower prices of things like agricultural products and domestic services that are passed on to the consumer.

How anyone doesn’t see the parallels with slavery is a mystery to me.

@laureth I understood your comparison, I just didn’t want you to think that I think of them as less of a person, or am trying to get away with treating them as anything other than human beings. I completely agree that there are illegal workers paying into the system who will never see the money back, but there are many working under the table too. That is why I think acknowledging those people are here and giving them a work status is the best way to go. I think people resist the comparison to slavery, because these immigrants come of their own free will (sort of, I mean many are in desperate situations, but not all) I’ll think about the comparison some more. Thanks.

Side note: that 3/5’s thing is another reason I am against the electoral college.

I agree that they are nothing short of people that hurt, laugh and love just like you or me. To think otherwise is deluded. However, we’re just talking census and government representation, which is notoriously short on human emotion. I think citizens don’t want to acknowledge the de facto slavery issue is because they don’t want to admit that such a thing exists anymore – their strawberries are all picked by well-paid grad students and agricultural interns, their $5 t-shirts are made by Chinese workers with health insurance and two-hour lunch breaks, and their milk all comes from cows that graze peacefully in green, sunshiney fields. People don’t like to admit what it takes to get them the things they buy each day. Personally, I agree with you that work visas are the way to go. They’re going to come here to work anyway, the least we can do is make the strawberries cost what they really cost in terms of dignified human labor. However, the people who profit on the backs of the undocumented workers are often the same ones that push the deportation agenda to keep their workers subservient and afraid and productive. It’s an ugly situation all around. The slavery comparison comes in when you look at how they’re treated, not necessarily why they’re here – because to them, this is still Opportunity – much the same reason my ancestors came to the country a long time ago.

However, 3/5ths hasn’t been in effect since slavery was outlawed – yet it still makes you reject the Electoral College?

@laureth I think there is all sorts of hypocrisy regarding immigrant labor also.

3/5th’s to me is just another reminder of each person not getting representation or having their vote count. My vote counts differently depending on what state I live in, and that is very annoying to me. Since most states have their entire electoral vote go either red or blue, so to speak, if you live in a state that is heavily one direction voting for president means nothing. In FL, a swing state, I felt it mattered if I vote for president. In TN my vote meant nothing. In very blue states my vote would have less meaning also, because it is already heavily blue. Now we are bringing up that illegal aliens get representation when they cannot even vote for the president. Whether we argue they should be legal or not is another issue, but of course related, and even if we gave them papers to work, they still would not be able to vote until citizens. Again I would have to think about the whole thing more, just writing what popes into my mind for discussion, not so much hard opinions of mine.

Ah. But at least you’re still counted as a whole person for representation, not 3/5ths – no matter what state you’re in.

@laureth I’m not sure I agree with that. I feel like I am a zero person living in TN.

I always answer the questions about the number and age of the people living in my house, I never answer the race question. Race is not the government’s business.

Actually, I only answer the mandated question of age and number of people. Everything else is just marketing and I don’t do marketing surveys.

@JLeslie – my point is this. The 3/5 of a person that a slave counted for means that five slaves counted as three people only, when deciding how many seats in the House of Representatives that slave’s state was due. It is only indirectly related to the Electoral College.

The reason some states have more “weight” on their residents’ votes in the electoral college is different. The number of electoral votes a state has is the number of people they have in Congress. (My state, Michigan, has 17 – we have 15 house reps and 2 senators). However, even a very small state (populationwise) has at least three electoral votes: one house member and two senators. The two senators being added will sometimes make the ratio of voters to electoral votes different, so smaller states have greater say in presidential elections.

The only thing that the 3/5ths rule has to do with the electoral college (besides the fact that they both use numbers) is that they have to do with how many people your state had in Congress. You and your neighbors, as free citizens, count as whole people, so you have more of an electoral say than if you were only 3/5ths of a person – and there haven’t been any of those since slavery ended.

I hate to belabor this point, but I hope it’s clear now. There are so many people in the U.S. that any citizen’s vote is very small, whether we have the electoral college or not. However, recent elections have come down to very small swings in important states, so your vote could be very important if you live somewhere like Florida or Ohio. Small does not mean “nonexistent,” so keep voting!

@laureth I appreciate that you took the time to explain, but I did not learn anything new. It does not change my mind, overall we are agreeing on how the system works, I just don’t like it, and you are ok with it. Just to touch on what you said, you are pointing out that some states with very small populations are overrepresented so to speak in congress, because every state gets two senators and at least one representive. But, that does not change that a state will also be overrepresented if it is alloted more representatives because illegal aliens are counted in a state. But, that is the quandry, are we ok with counting the illegal aliens for representation or not? I am not sure of my answer, you are fine with it.

You basically repeated what I said, that swing states are the only ones that votes really count for the presidential election. In my state I already do not have any representatives that really represent me. Not a democrat or a republican, so I want a hand in the presidential election, it would be my way of having some influence on the checks and balances we are supposed to have.

I actually think that probably the electoral college might help my “group” because of how we are distributed, where we live. But, I am not sure about that.

I’m not sure how we got from my ~snarky~ ~comment~ about 3/5ths representation for illegals to you thinking I’m OK with the current system and that I want representation for illegals. And I’m not sure how the 3/5ths solution for representing slaves reminds you of how you are under-represented in Congress. I’m not even sure why you think that my answering your request for me to articulate my position puts us at opposite ends of a dispute. However, I know that I am running out of energy for pursuing this further, and it sounds like you are too. I’m willing to call it a day.

@laureth :). I’ll call it a day if you are inclined.

Speaking as a research scientist who relies on census data I can tell you that they have very good reasons for everything they ask. Not everyone gets an in-person interview. Most people get a mailed questionnaire and the in-person interview is a kind of statistical quality control sample. They compare the answers from the two kinds of sampling methods and use the difference to statistically adjust the less accurate method. So, when you screw with census takers and leave items blank, the only thing you are doing is increasing the the margin of error for all kind of research and, in effect, pouring the nation’s money down the toilet.

Knowing the age, race and sex composition of a society is absolutely essential, for all kinds of health related research. For example, we spend about $14 million a year in California, to collect information about the number of people who get diagnosed or die from cancer. Without accurate population information, we can’t compute the rates at which these things occur, which means we can’t tell if a particular cancer is increasing, or if there is an abnormal cluster of cases in a certain area, or what the prognosis is for certain diagnoses, or five-year survival rates for different kinds of treatment, and other information you would absolutely want to know if you are ever diagnosed with a particular cancer.

Cancer is very age-dependent, but the age structure of a population varies by race and sex. Hispanics, for example, tend to be younger than whites, and men younger than women. So, in order to age-adjust accurately—so you don’t compare the cancer incidence rates of a young group against an older group—you also need to take race into account. The idea that race is none of the government’s business is very short-sighted and very much against your own and the national interest.

Race is often correlated with other variables, like education and income; so in order to determine the independent effect of race, it helps if you can account for these other variables in your statistical models. The reason they ask you about your marital status and number of illegitimate children is so they can build demographic based on what kinds of people have how many children. The more relevant variables they can capture, the more accurate the annual population estimates in between census years.

Why do they ask for names?

And why do they tell you to mail back the form “tomorrow” yet ask you how many people are living at your address weeks in the future?

@Zaku “why do they tell you to mail back the form “tomorrow” yet ask you how many people are living at your address weeks in the future?”

I’m not 100% sure, but there is a statistical sampling technique called “capture, re-capture” where you essentially sample the same population twice, and then you use the difference between two samples to measure the attrition rate, so you can adjust for how many people you miss due to people naturally moving around. The reason you ask people’s names is so you can tell how many times you’ve counted them. (It’s the same reason biologists put bands on the birds they sample.)

@Zaku ~Keep your name secret from them. Don’t let the fact the letter came from them addressed to you fool you. If you wear a tin-foil hat when handling the letter, it will keep the magnetic resonant ink from sensing your fingerprints and tying in to the FBI computer, and the name on their files that they mailed the form to will magically disappear from FEMA headquarters where they are building all the secret prisons to put all the REAL Americans in.~

@ETpro
My census questionnaire was addressed to Resident. It also said that I was REQUIRED BY LAW to return it or they’d cut open my spleen or something.

@Zuma So, I received my census and it asks country seperate from race. This is always interesting to me. So my husband is Mexican, which they have a nice and easy place for me to check a box, and then I guess he is white? Now it does list Asian, but I guess we use Asian for East Asia, People from the Middle East are just white? Because he is Israeli (sephardic), Spanish and French. What I am asking is for censes reasons he is just Mexican Caucasian, right?

@Nullo They wouldn’t cut open your spleen.
Spleens are too fragile. They might cut you open to remove your spleen intact and then sell it on the black market though…

@Nullo You are required by law to return your census form. If you don’t, they have to send somebody around to ring your doorbell to find out what the matter is. For every 1% of people who don’t return their surveys (or answer their doorbell), it costs something like $168 million to send somebody around. So, it no only costs you if your district loses a Congressman or school funding, it costs us all.

@JLeslie The Census considers “Hispanicity” to be an ethnicity, not a race. If you don’t specify Asian (e.g., Philipino) or Black (e.g., Puerto Rican), the default is White, which means the Census distinguishes between Whites and “Non-Hispanic Whites.”

@Zuma
The troublemaker in me wants to get people to not return their census forms now…
Our schools need to lose something. A lot of the kids graduating in my area can barely read or compose marginally-acceptable sentences. I honestly don’t think that money is the problem.

@Nullo Notice that many of the places with failing education systems are places with high poverty to begin with? I think money plays a role, though not as much as some people seem to think it does.

Then again, people my age are stupider than they were ten years ago too. Figure, if my friend with a Masters degree wound up taking a job at Home Depot, a job that pays less than what I make with a mere HS diploma (the highest official education I have) then it doesn’t matter if you learn anything or not since the only way to get ahead nowadays is to have either rich parents or a lot of luck; hard work and education no longer have any appreciable effect on success.

@Nullo What better way to express one’s vague dickish discontents than by undermining the very information needed by the nation’s scientists and other serious people trying to make the country work? I trust the better angels of your nature will prevail.

Step 1. Get people to not send in their Census forms.
Step 2.
Step 3. Schools improve!
...
...how?

I love how people don’t want to give the government to most basic information about their household, yet those same people list amazingly detailed aspects of their personal life on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Fluther, etc.

@filmfann the difference is that between “volunteering” and “coercion”.

@Nullo and @CyanoticWasp So much for right wingers claims to love the constitution. Great plan for improving education. De-fund is.

Was u home skuled?

@ETpro you work really really hard at misunderstanding, don’t you?

I never made a single statement against “the taking of a census”. Not a single one. But I object to what is being done “in the name of a so-called census”. Misunderstand that.

I have my census here. All they ask is for everyone’s name, address, sex, race, if you live anywhere else occasionally, and whether you own the place in which you live, and a phone number if they don’t understand your answers.
Those intrusive bastards!

I always answer the census questions except for the race. I don’t believe that race should be an issue on any government form. People are people, why should any government care about something as superficial as color?

What they should care about is properly funding education and the mischief created when politicians redistrict around party lines instead of the number of voters in a district.

@Ron_C Because race is important in cancer research, and other health-related research where race is a variable, see my remarks above.

@Ron_C @Zuma makes an excellent point. THe Census Bureau doesn’t release data on individuals. All data is available only in statistical aggregate. Racial data is important to knowing what diseases may have a genetic connection tied to race or lifestyle so that can be sorted out. It is important to knowing when Affirmative Action has acheived its goals, or whether it is even tending toward doing so.

@Zuma I agree with your point about race and health, but do they try to draw district lines by race also? My husband’s race is not really captured, as I mentioned above regarding health, Middle Easterns are more likely to get certain genetic diseases, his family has one of them, but he is White Hispanic on the form. I guess maybe they are not studying those diseases or maybe it is not a large enough group for them to care.

@Zuma @ETpro @Zuma the census is constitutionally mandated for the sole purpose of setting up congressional districts and allocating federal resources in proportion to population. The only purpose for asking race was that blacks were counted as 3/5 of a person and women of any race were not permitted to vote.

Those distinctions are no moot as far as the federal census is concerned.

The government has other, more efficient means for collecting medical data.

@JLeslie The billions upon billions of things we count in a complex civilization like ours all depend on the population data we use to put them into perspective. Are 400,000 cancers a little or a lot? It depends on how many are expected which is largely a matter of how many there were last year the age-race-sex-adjusted rate. How do you know how many people there are in each age-race-sex cell in the years in between censuses? Well, this is what demographers do: they keep track of how each cohort changes due to baby booms, baby busts, epidemics, and migrations—and the only chance they get to calibrate their statistical models is once every ten years.

Knowing how the age-race-sex structure of a population differs from place to place allows demographers to model migration, birth and death rate information that greatly increases the inter-census estimates, and that helps to lower the margin of error of any estimate.

When a pollster calls a few thousand people at random and gets 20% of the respondents answering “yes” to a survey question, can he take that finding at face value? Well, no, not exactly. It depends on whether the people at home at the time he survey taker called are representative of the general population. The findings have to be statistically adjusted to discount the overrepresented segments and vice versa—which you cannot do unless you have census data to tell you what a representative sample looks like.

Every once in a while you hear an alarmist story in the news about how illegal immigrants are causing a crime wave as young Mexicans pour across the border, ravaging our white women and filling our prisons with their illegal selves. The problem, however, is that this “crime wave” is a statistical mirage. Once you correct the age difference between the two populations the “crime wave” disappears—and along with it a lot of hot-headed rhetoric and the “need” to build an expense wall to keep out those ravening brown hoards.

Likewise billions upon billions of dollars of decisions depend on opinion polls, sales and marketing data, school enrollments, economic statistics like GDP, to disease incidence counts, and the consumer preferences of demographic groups, all of which only come into focus with accurate “denominator” (Census) data.

@Ron_C The Constitution, by the way, does not say the SOLE purpose of the Census is “to set up congressional districts and allocating federal resources in proportion to the population. Nor does the 14th Amendment render racial questions moot. Gerrymandering still occurs, which is why somebody still needs to collect this information, so it can be proven in cases where it occurs.

The Census is not about collecting “medical” data. It is about interpreting medical data. If you know that Native American ancestry increases your risk of diabetes four-fold, if you run into a case of 2 or 12-fold it is a cause for further investigation.

If you don’t like talking to “the government” once every 10 years; don’t worry, your neighbors don’t have any such inhibition in talking about you. Or, perhaps you would prefer a national ID card that follows you from birth. The odd thing is that you think nothing about blabbering the most damaging and embarrassing information about yourself to complete strangers on the Internet and yet quibble over divulging information can mostly be obtained by taking a good look at you.

The main thing that worries demographers is whether the people who refuse to answer certain questions are just your random dickhead, or whether they have some characteristic in common. If it’s random, no problem. But if it isn’t, it throws their calculations way off. So, they will often go to great lengths to get you to change your mind. The more stubborn a “refusal conversion” you are, the more information you potentially hold about all the people the Census misses, so the more effort they will expend to get you to cooperate.

@Zuma I am all for the census, especially as a basic accounting of who lives in our country and where, don’t get me wrong. I’ve been watching that show “Who Do You Think You Are?” And, the census is a remarkable document for being able to trace the history of a family and how they might tie in with historcial occurances. I was just pointing out the census is not really capturing my husband’s racial ethnicity. When we had genetic testing related to fertility, they asked more pertinent questions. My husband is Hispanic but his surname is far from it. I guess they would figure it out after the fact if there was some sort of epidemic.

It used to be that Hispanic was not really further defined on many forms, not sure about the census years ago, and then people started to realize that a lot of Hispanics fill in white, black, other, as white. Because in their country they are. I knew a Puerto Rican woman who was black, and she would fill in “other” and write Puerto Rican, she was not black in her mind, and I am sure she still does not acknowledge herself as that way. Many countries that migrate here do know divide citizens up by race like we do, so their way of thinking about it is different than how we think about it. Still, probably statistically the census overall does capture what it is looking for, and I am citing some exceptions.

@Zuma I guess I am a minority. I do see some use for government. If we are going to have a country with 300 million or more people we need a government. We also have to tell the government how many people live in a particular area for reasons of representation, allotment of resources, The one thing the government does is to gerrymander districts. I believe that the lines should be as non-partisan and straight as possible. I think answering race and sex questions help with the gerrymandering process and should not be answered to make it as hard as possible to change boundaries for the benefit of sitting representatives.

I want to help the government not aid politicians.

@Ron_C I agree. It also feeds into why I hate the electoral college. First they screw around with districting and then it effects who gets elected as president. At least if the president was elected by popular vote there would be a balance

Oh, do I ever hate the electoral college. It shows that the founding fathers didn’t really trust the “rabble” to make a good decision so they had an elite body very that we did the “right thing”. The electoral college must go if we are ever to have a free election.

@ron You know, I don’t trust the “rabble” either lol. But I am still against the electoral college, because I want MY vote to count no matter where I live. It doesn’t now in my opinion.

I am using rabble as disorganized group not lower class, not sure how you are using it?

@JLeslie hey, I’m one of the rabble! Unless you are a multimillionaire congressman or CEO, you are too.

Considering the candidates offered and the way they “won” the election, I would much rather trust the rabble. Frankly, we would probably get better office holders if we held a lottery rather than election.

Just think, any citizen that is over 35, born in the U.S. or its possessions, and has a valid social security card could become president for the next 4 years. The way I see it if you can qualify to buy a gun, you are qualified to be president.

@Ron_C The Federal Government doesn’t control voting districts, the state government does. They manage to gerrymander just fine without any reference to the census data.

@Ron_C LOL. I guess it depends on how we define rabble. All I meant was I think there is a large portion of the US population that is uninformed and does not use their brains, if they have one. This happens at all class levels from what I can tell. I hear politicians say all of the time, “I trust the America people to make the right decision.” All I can think is, I don’t, and I doubt they do either.

@ETpro Thanks for that info about ow the districts are drawn.

1954, Congress codified earlier census acts and all other statutes authorizing the decennial census as Title 13, U.S. Code. Title 13, U.S. Code, does not specify which subjects or questions are to be included in the decennial census. However, it does require the Census Bureau to notify Congress of general census subjects to be addressed 3 years before the decennial census and the actual questions to be asked 2 years before the decennial census.
@ETpro The constitution’s primary reason for the census was to insure equal representation (for white men anyway). True, they didn’t preclude other questions and data collection, I would rather answer a poll question rather than a government mandated one I guess that comes from my original Republican roots.

I also realize that the federal government does not define congressional districts but also realize that the census gives the party in power cover when they want to “adjust” those boundaries.

@ETpro My contention is that the problem is more philosophical than it is financial. If the philosophy is broken, then adding funding just makes it worse.

Incidentally, I was home-schooled, however briefly. My fourth-grade teacher didn’t like my mom and so would mistreat me in class. So, the folks took me out of school and enrolled me in a school-at-home program. I did that for about two and a half years, and then I was enrolled in the Italian school system.

Which is where I get my philosophy-is-broken idea. The Italian schools require the family to buy everything. They only recently started getting computer labs. The facilities are almost uniformly antiquated, lacking central air conditioning and relying on poorly-placed radiators for warmth. There are no lockers. School runs from 8am until 1pm, and then everybody goes home. The teachers are paid crappy salaries.

But you know what? They turn out darn good students.

Perhaps another useful aspect is the way that secondary education is set up. On the one hand, you have the liceo, which is something like college prep school. On the other, you have a wide range of technical schools ranging from things like plumbing and wiring to business administration. Those who can withstand intensely academic subjects go to the liceo, those who cannot, the technical schools.

@Nullo Interesting observations. To my thinking, if the system is broken, don’t cover up that problem by refusing to measure or fund it, fix it. And public education in America today is broken. But it is one of the stunning advances our Founding Fathers had the foresight to give this new nation. The experiment was the talk of the world at the time. And it made this nation the great nation it became. Of all the things we have in need of repair, public education is as vital as any. Letting it fall into disrepair would be as ridiculous and damaging to our long term interests as a nation as would be letting our roads and bridges crumble and fall into unusable states.

@ETpro Where did you get the idea that I wanted to cover up the problem instead of wanting to fix it? Have you been reading biased blogs and then generalizing me into the conclusions?

@Nullo Forgive me if I read between the lines ideas you did not intend. If all you are saying is public education needs improvement today, I am 100% in agreement.