A crash-and-burn course on the census

[SoCalDem]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/15/EDEM15RFBQ.DTL


A crash-and-burn course on the census



The once-a-decade census is more than a national nose count. It's used to divvy tax dollars for roads and hospitals, spot population trends for schools, business and social programs, and - did we forget? - play high-stakes politics. The task comes loaded with importance, and that's why the Obama team is making a mistake by requiring that the next census director report to the White House instead of the Commerce Department bureaucracy. The decennial count is about information gathering, not partisan score settling.

The political gamesmanship has just produced its first casualty or trophy kill, depending on your vantage point. Late last week New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg bowed out as the nominee for secretary of commerce, citing his opposition to the Democratic stimulus package and also a decision to whisk away the census from his job description. In divorce-court lingo, he cited "irresolvable conflicts" with the president on the two issues in dropping out and returning to the Senate. (A side note: This is the third would-be Cabinet member who's withdrawn under fire, suggesting serious flaws in the Obama vetting process. The other two were New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, mired in a pay-to-play investigation, and former Sen. Tom Daschle, who failed to pay $128,000 in back taxes. Maybe the vetters should be vetted.)

This latest Beltway car crash doesn't help anyone. Gregg was undercut by the notion that he couldn't be trusted to run the census. He was an odd choice for the task because in the distant past he'd voted to cut the census budget. Gregg, a budget hawk who even backed a long-shot bid to abolish the commerce agency, was the wrong fit from the start. He declined to explain his views while awaiting confirmation hearings, which won't happen with his departure. On the census issue, he was brought down by Latino and African American leaders who feared that a half-hearted or bare-bones count would miss their true numbers since minorities generally shy away from government interviewers. These groups were much happier with Richardson, a short-lived nominee for the same post. Putting it in ballot-box terms: An undercount is what the GOP wants since it draws few voters from minority groups. Democrats, in contrast, draw strength from these groups and have always favored an arms-wide census.


SNIP....

[grannie4peace]

1. i'm so glad he changed his mind!

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. Plus the census provides jobs to folks

Temporary, but well paying (relatively).

What is most interesting to me is all the information they collect on a given census. For example, they asked in one census if people owned radios. In others, they have asked not only for the person's place of birth, but the place of birth of their parents. They've also asked marital status, number of years married, number of children the mother has had coupled with the number now living, and of course, occupation. Very helpful for the genealogist, but I wonder why the government was interested in all that stuff?