So here we are in 2010, and the constitutionally mandated census is upon us. After Obama decided that the Commerce Department couldn’t be trusted with it after doing it for 230 some-odd years, as specified by that same constitution, without “oversight” by the Whitehouse, many people are rightfully wary of filling it out, or sending it in at all. Fortunately, the outcry that followed Sen. Judd Gregg’s pushback and subsequent refusal to bow to TheWon’s wishes put the decennial project back where it belongs.
There is still the problem of the over-reach that has slowly stretched the form beyond the original mandate as specified in the constitution. You can tell that they are sensitive to these concerns by the little historical blurb they have after each question. Nevermind the fact that their present “reasons” have little or nothing to do with the original reasons some questions were asked long ago. IE: property ownership, and such. (If you recall, only property owners could vote back then.)
I will give kudo’s for them keeping the form to only 10 questions. (I don’t know about the “long form” some are getting, and from the sound of it, it seems onerous.) I will damn them to hell for spending 14 billion dollars doing it, including the sponsorship of a stock-car, and super-bowl ads.
There is however still some items they have no business asking, and I didn’t answer questions like them 10, 20, or 30 years ago either, so my reasons have nothing to do with Obama. They have NEVER prosecuted anyone for failing to fill it out, or for leaving parts blank. Do fill it out and send it in…it is important.
I have put the 10 questions here, along with my answers.
The Questions on the Form:
How many people were living or staying in this house, apartment, or mobile home on April 1, 2010?
We ask this question to help get an accurate count of the number of people in the household on Census Day, April 1, 2010. The answer should be based on the guidelines in the ‘Start here’ section. We use the information to ensure response accuracy and completeness and to contact respondents whose forms have incomplete or missing information.
Answer: 5
Were there any additional people staying here April 1, 2010 that you did not include in Question 1?
Asked since 1880. We ask this question to help identify people who may have been excluded in the count provided in Question 1. We use the information to ensure response accuracy and completeness and to contact respondents whose forms have incomplete or missing information.
Answer: No
Is this house, apartment, or mobile home: owned with mortgage, owned without mortgage, rented, occupied without rent?
Asked since 1890. Homeownership rates serve as an indicator of the nation’s economy. The data are also used to administer housing programs and to inform planning decisions.
Answer: Left blank
What is your telephone number?
We ask for a phone number in case we need to contact a respondent when a form is returned with incomplete or missing information.
Answer: Left blank
Please provide information for each person living here. Start with a person here who owns or rents this house, apartment, or mobile home. If the owner or renter lives somewhere else, start with any adult living here. This will be Person 1. What is Person 1’s name?
Listing the name of each person in the household helps the respondent to include all members, particularly in large households where a respondent may forget who was counted and who was not. Also, names are needed if additional information about an individual must be obtained to complete the census form. Federal law protects the confidentiality of personal information, including names.
Answer: Person 1 (2,3,4,5)
What is Person 1’s sex?
Asked since 1790. Census data about sex are important because many federal programs must differentiate between males and females for funding, implementing and evaluating their programs. For instance, laws promoting equal employment opportunity for women require census data on sex. Also, sociologists, economists, and other researchers who analyze social and economic trends use the data.
Answer for persons 1 thru 5: Male, female, female, female, male.
What is Person 1’s age and Date of Birth?
Asked since 1800. Federal, state, and local governments need data about age to interpret most social and economic characteristics, such as forecasting the number of people eligible for Social Security or Medicare benefits. The data are widely used in planning and evaluating government programs and policies that provide funds or services for children, working-age adults, women of childbearing age, or the older population.
Answer for persons 1 thru 5: 49, 47, 17, 16, 15. (No dates given)
Is Person 1 of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin?
Asked since 1970. The data collected in this question are needed by federal agencies to monitor compliance with anti-discrimination provisions, such as under the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act. State and local governments may use the data to help plan and administer bilingual programs for people of Hispanic origin.
Answer: Left blank
What is Person 1’s race?
Asked since 1790. Race is key to implementing many federal laws and is needed to monitor compliance with the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act. State governments use the data to determine congressional, state and local voting districts. Race data are also used to assess fairness of employment practices, to monitor racial disparities in characteristics such as health and education and to plan and obtain funds for public services.
Answer: Other/Human
Does Person 1 sometimes live or stay somewhere else?
This is another question we ask in order to ensure response accuracy and completeness and to contact respondents whose forms have incomplete or missing information.
Answer: No
“Decline to state” is also an answer. I suggested some time back, that we follow our President’s example and vote “Present” on all census questions!
These questions really annoy me. When will people let go of their need for group identity, beyond that of “American”? If civil rights advocates want a color-blind society, then they should dissolve the barriers themselves by not keeping the distinctions; by not seeing identity differences drawn along ethnic lines.
It doesn’t bother me if 24% of a certain ethnic group is living below the poverty line. It concerns me though what percentage of AMERICANS might be living in poverty.
Here’s what my Aunt Susan in Wyoming had to say about filling out her census:
In the first place, the only “race” I belong to is the
HUMAN race. And if they can’t figure that one out, I can’t help them.
The various levels of government already know who I am, where I live and
pretty much everything else going on in my life. They have complete
access to my tax, insurance and utility bill information. They know
which organizations I belong to, and what I think and believe – because
I have not been shy about expressing it for the last 50 odd years. They
can and probably do track my purchases, email, snail mail and the
websites I visit. There is very little about me they don’t already know
or have access to, and none of it – NONE OF IT – is anybody else’s
business but my own.
So, just why the hell should I answer their stupid survey at all? Screw
the census – and the horse it rode in on.
I already sent it back, with a nice big 1 where it asked how many lived
here. I crossed off the rest. The next step is usually to send another
person out here to get me to answer the questions. I will not even talk
to them. Historically, nobody has ever been fined or prosecuted for not
answering, only for telling lies.
I don’t really care what they do. Will cross that bridge when I get to
it. Nothing about my life is anybody else’s business. And I don’t have
any problem telling them so. Historically, nobody has been prosecuted
for not answering. A few have been fined for filling out false
information. I’m not worried about it.
Actually, if you think about it, they’d not be spending so much money
and working so hard to sweet talk people into answering the thing if
they had any ironclad teeth to make it happen. The very first court
case/jury trial would blow it wide open as the illegal and
unconstitutional farce it is.
They don’t want that
Psst.
While I hold my-man Skooks in the highest regard, and would LOVE for my words to come out as nicely as his, I am afraid this particular post is not up to his standard.
(Because I submitted it, not him. :-))
Ugh….sorry Pat….my mistake. Fixed it.
We have a PO Box and our physical address is not linked to it, so I expect a visit. When the census person arrives I will be greeting them with my sidearm strapped on, perfectly legal, it will be safely holstered. And I will have my camera. First I will take a picture of the person, and their census ID, and their driver’s license, and their car including the license plate. Then I will take the form & ask them to leave. I only plan on telling them the number of people (enumeration), and that we are Native Americans, since this is where I was born. They can pound sand with the rest of it!
It is so nice to see that others have listed Human as their race. That is how I have answered in every census I have filled out.
When given the opportunity, I put “Unknown” or “Mixed” or “Other” for race.
And if anyone wanted to drag me to court, I can make a damn good defense of that claim. My father was an orphan from infancy and he was killed months before I was born. My mothers family is mixed Scottish and American Native mix. But there is confusion about which tribe and if his family was mixed as well.
There was the time when race was asked to score the ‘Negros’ at 3/5 a person, to lesson the political clout of the democrat slave owner south. Now the race question is being asked to lesson the effects of the whites, and increase the freebies for the ‘other than whites’. Pretty transparent isn’t it.
Why is the federal government so racist?
What is Person 1’s race?
Asked since 1790. Race is key to implementing many federal laws and is needed to monitor compliance with the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act. State governments use the data to determine congressional, state and local voting districts. Race data are also used to assess fairness of employment practices, to monitor racial disparities in characteristics such as health and education and to plan and obtain funds for public services.
Answer: Other/Human
Ace of Spades had something on this question the other day and the push was to get everyone to answer AMERICAN. I think I’m on board with that. I was born here, my parents were born here, so why can’t I be considered AMERICAN?
i was wondering,does the immigrant in waiting have to produce the info to cencus ,and how about the illegal on what information are they counted
All you have to answer according to Article 1 Section 2 of the Constitution is how many live at the residence and how many are of voting age. That all I’m answering.
@ILOVEBEESWARZONE
Citizenship is not asked. So yes, they are being counted. That is why the Hispanic-specific questions were put on in the ’70, and why they tried to use statistical-counting in the 90’s (which got shot down by the Supremo’s.) It is why the Dems are doubling their efforts to get Latinos counted now.
-They will be as “represented” by our government as we are, without the responsibilities that go along with it.
THAT IS WHY NONE OF US SHOULD REFUSE TO FILL OUT THE FORM!!!!!!!!!
If you notice, most of these questions are only there to make it easier for government to do its job… of taking over every aspect of your life and providing you cradle-to-grave handouts and/or taxes. Screw them.
Pat, on the names question, did you actually put “person 1” etc. or did you list names? I’m following your example and being accurate on constitutionally required questions, and refusing the rest. American-Human on race.
On a side note, in my town we have already been hit by fraudulent census takers who are going door to door and asking for much more detailed info than the official form. Remember, no official enumerators will hit the street until after April 1. If they show up tomorrow, call the boys in blue.
@Wisdom
Yes. I specifically used “Person 1” (etc) because that is the term they used.
-My name was on the envelope, and they don’t need the names of Wifey and the kids to represent them. Remember that “American” is not a race. Nor is any other country-specific title.
Yeah, I know that American isn’t a race, but I just wanted a hyphen in there. A hyphenated racial profile makes me hip and cool 😀
LOL!!!!:-)
Good enough reason for me.
I personally am probably the most mixed mutt I know of. Just about all the European nations have given blood to me, and when you throw in an eighth american Indian into the mix, well, let’s just say that I used to be confused at these types of questionnaires in my younger days. Now, I just consider myself an American and nothing else.
As for asking that kind of stuff on questionnaires, the answer given is typically something innocent and innocuous, but the simple fact that it can open the door for discrimination makes it wrong to ask in the first place.
PV, I actually wondered about my sanity, when I noticed I had written an article I couldn’t remember. I sent an email, asking about said sanity. Thank Goodness, I was only mistaken about being nuts.
We must remember that ‘The Won’ wanted his personal political organization, Acorn, to handle the census, with payment of billions.
Anything the man does is now circumspect, anyone who lies with such consistency, over the course of a year, sometimes when the truth would serve him better, has lost the trust ad faith of the electorate.
This has become a test of endurance; we must endure the assaults on the Constitution and our Freedom, while countering his every move, if we are to survive as the Beacon of Freedom for the rest of the world.
He is the most dangerous and despicable enemy America has ever faced. Dangerous, because he is in the White House with his Marxist Agenda and Agents: despicable, because he has deluded millions with his phony and corrupt Pied Piper lament of International Socialism.
Nice combination there PV, you can unleash that overhand right at an time. I must now go to work.
@ Skooks
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.”
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.)
This just seemed relevant, and I’m surprised no one else has mentioned it:
Hannibal Lecter: “A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.”
PATVANN i just wanted to tell you that your dog is very beautifull but i he must have a very smal fraction of pitbull also your quote here is very poetic and dramaticly true,bye
As many on the web have been suggesting, the “race” question must be filled out as AMERICAN.
Am I the only one here who had to take an American History class in high school ? The Commerce Department was formed only about 100 years ago. The Census was done by the Judicial Branch for the first 90 years, not by the Executive Branch. It was done by US marshals assigned to the various judicial districts. “Everybody is entitled to their own opinion, but they are not entitled to make up their own facts” The Census numbers may determine whether you are fully represented Washington, if you do not wish to be fully represented do not fill out the Census form and/or do not vote. No one can force you to do either, and some in fact will be pleased if you do not.
John Ryan.
I am in 100% agreement, and my “230-year” comment in the initial post should have shown that historical fact.
I took a lazy shortcut in the quest for impact, and I implore everyone to fill out the form, even if you omit some questions.
Please. You harm only yourself if you don’t.
The taxpayers also bought a nice “Census 2010” ice sculpture in Fairbanks, AK. I took a photo of it last week standing proudly in front of the Marriott Spring Hills Suites.
Edit: I’m disappointed that nobody here has bothered to look up the penalties for refusing to fill out the Census form vs. the penalties for providing bogus answers.
@John Cooper: If you’ve looked it up, enlighten us 🙂
@John Cooper.
It’s a $500 fine that no one has ever been procecuted for, because the people who DON’t fill it out are a demographic no one cares about.