have i overlooked a thread, or is this topic new to the d&d? so, who's going to fill it out? will you fill it out completely? http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6913308.html
I was going to start a thread on the census, because michael berry on thurs was railing on the gov't spending money on it, shelia jackson lee encouraging people to fill it. he thinks its a big conspiracy by liberals to shift power by having illegals to fill it out. he was all over the place. railing on different marketing initiatives and the money spent on it including a float in the mardis gras parade or something or some census truck traveling around the country. I was like, is the census really now a political issue?
It has been for a while, but not the way you might think - Democrats have long proposed a statistical sampling method of conducting the census, which is cheaper and is less labor intensive, and which is apparently more accurate especially in urban areas. However, Republican opposition (including a supreme court case) has generally made this impossible since it would result in redistricting in favor of urban areas. The result is that our big, door-to-door, mailbox based census program endures, courtesy of the GOP.
I do think it was quite dumb of the Census to mail me a letter telling me that they are mailing me a Census form next week. It seems if I wasn't going to read the census form, I probably wouldn't read the letter either. Perhaps it was a stimulus package for the Post Office...
Yeah, that was just foolish. The news here reported that the government spent 85 million on the letter they sents just to say they were sending another letter next week. Talk about just throwing money away.
I seem to recall reading an interview with a govt official who said the thinking was: some people get so much junk mail nowadays, if someone sees one letter they'll throw it away, but if they see two letters, they might think it's actually important and open it up. I don't necessarily agree with this thinking, but it might explain the two letters.
Prolly the first and one of the few times I will ever be on the same page with this guy. +1 for full and accurate.
The Census is required by the Constitution and is as old as the country... And really, is there a Constitutional passage that better illustrates the struggles of our country? It's all there... slaves, Native-Americans, taxes, Federal/state conflicts, politicians. You can bet I'm filling mine out, just like I always do. The wingnuts who are against the Census and refuse to fill it out not only hurt themselves and their fellow citizens, but also the generations to come who will either find no mention of their ancestor or come to realize they had a wingnut in the family.
Got mine in the mail yesterday and filling it out this morning. I could have swore there were more questions last time. I can't remember I was like 15
I'm shocked at how many don't send it back. Edit: Too bad the US doesn't enforce the $5,000 penalty very often.
And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from [Rahm Emanuel] that all the [United States] should be taxed.
Filled it out last night. My twins were born just in time to pad the numbers for Texas. It was interesting, as always, to see which racial categories they included. They have many options for various kinds of Asians, but some pretty broad categories for other people. All blacks are lumped together, all whites are lumped together, but they differentiate between Koreans and Japanese? They don't even have a category for semitic people. What should a Saudi check? white?
