Posted by
Bert Chapman on Thursday, February 12, 2009 5:02:01 PM
It's just been announced that New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg has decided to withdraw his nomination as Secretary of Commerce. Citing irreconcilable differences on the economic stimulus and the Obama Administration's apparent politicization of the 2010 Census, Gregg wisely decided he could not work with what will become an arrogant, corrupt, and spendthrift Obama Administration. I was somewhat surprised Gregg accepted the nomination in the first place. I guess he was tired of Harry Reid in the Senate and wanted to do his patriotic duty to help the country in its economic travails and give some solid conservative economic advice to the liberal ideologues in the Obama Administration. Gregg's withdrawal shows that Obama's rhetoric about "reaching across the aisle" is as empty as a Bill Clinton promise.
The Obama Adminstration's desire to put direct control of the 2010 Census into the White House demonstrates the power hungry nature of Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. The population census, as mandated by the Constitution, determines congressional representation and helps allocate federal funding for various programs. As a librarian who specializes in government information, it is particularly important that decennial Census data be absolutely objective and not subject to political manipulation. Unfortunately, Democrats have not recognized this and have sought to manipulate Census data to increase the number of ethnic minorities, the homeless, and other individuals dependent on governmental largesse who are counted in the Census. A particularly egregious example of Democratic tampering with the Census has been their insistence that the dubious practice of sampling be used in determining the U.S. population. Sampling allows estimates to made of population in a geographic area based on a partial sampling of the population in that area. For instance, if you determine that 800 people live in a particular section of a city and the city has ten sections, you use sampling to "determine" that the city has 8,000 residents. Of course, each of these ten sections within this city could have far more or fewer than 800 people in these sections. Sampling give you an inherently inaccurate count and you actually need to make a good faith effort to count all individuals residing in these sections. Besides being of dubious statistical quality, sampling is blatantly contrary to the Constitution's provision that an actual enumeration (or counting) be made of the U.S. population.
The Census Bureau and other government agencies make vigorous efforts every 10 years to inform people of the Census and the legal requirement that they fill out their forms. Personally confidential data in the Census cannot be legally released for 72 years after the Census is filled out and Census Bureau personnel are subject to criminal penalties if they illegally disclose this sensitive personal information. In addition, anyone who is reasonably lucid knows they have to fill out Census forms every ten years for years ending in 0 and can fill out the Census questionnaires in a short period of time and turn them in. It would be particularly tragic if the 2010 Census becomes hostages to Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel's rampaging ambitions for absolute political power. The U.S. Census has done a generally effective job of documenting U.S. population trends and developments over 220 years and Americans should stand up to the Obama Administration's desires to pervert the Census for their own partisan advantage.