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Will Your Answers To the Census Stay Private?
Hugh Pickens writes "James Bovard writes in the Christian Science Monitor that Americans are told that information gathered in the census will never be used against them and the House of Representatives, in a Census Awareness Month resolution passed March 3, proclaimed that 'the data obtained from the census are protected under United States privacy laws.' Unfortunately, thousands of Americans who trusted the Census Bureau in the past lost their freedom as a result. In the 1940 Census, the Census Bureau loudly assured people that their responses would be kept confidential. Within four days of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Census Bureau had produced a report listing the Japanese-American population in each county on the West Coast. The Census Bureau's report helped the US Army round up more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans for concentration camps (later renamed 'internment centers'). In 2003-04, the Census Bureau provided the Department of Homeland Security with a massive cache of information on how many Arab Americans lived in each ZIP Code around the nation, and which country they originated from — information that could have made it far easier to carry out the type of mass roundup that some conservatives advocated. 'Instead of viewing census critics as conspiracy theorists, the nation's political leaders should recognize how their policies have undermined public faith in government,' writes Bovard. 'All the census really needs to know is how many people live at each address. Citizens should refuse to answer any census question except for the number of residents.'"
White Male, 30
I don't have anything to worry about right?
And the fact that Glenn Beck has said the same thing makes me feel dirty. Ugh.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
...don't seem to be subject to the laws themselves.
So the answer is they can do whatever they want.
I no longer expect any privacy from my government. I want it, and I think it's fucked up that I don't have it...but I no longer expect it.
What the hell has happend to us as a country? Has it always been this fucked and we just have the means to know about it now? Or were things truly better back int he day?
Living With a Nerd
I got the census papers. Besides the obvious: what's your name, race and address there are no other questions. I can lie about race if I wanted to because it's saying which race you consider yourself to be part of. I'm not a US citizen, yet I consider myself part of one of the races on the list. If you're afraid you're going to be corralled up, you could do the same thing, say you are "Other" or whatever is closest to your skin color (African-American/Negro (yes that's one of the options on there) for anyone not-white and not-native american)
All other questions (SSN, birth date, birth place) are not part of the census so if anyone asks they are not acting on behalf of the census office.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
I don't care how many times pundits from the Census Bureau muck it up with our lord Jon and savior Steven they aren't going to convince me to answer 10 questions on a census. There is only one question I will answer on that stupid form, and if that lumps me in with the "evil" conservatives, so be it.
[ x ] Gun Owner.
If he's smart enough and fast enough.
The real question is, does it matter? Ok, so census data is kept secure. What about every other form you've filled out that asks the same questions, or similar questions. Or just plain ol Google datamining?
What difference does it make if this data over here is locked up tight when this same data over here is plastered all over the interwebs?
Yeah, what a surprise, having the opposition resist anything the other party does.
Of course the government could abuse that information, but what is the record like? Besides 1940, are there any other situations where the data was used to locate an individual? The 2003 situation mentioned is not an abuse. Providing demographic information is standard operating procedure for the Census Bureau, and a lot of good can be done with that information.
So if 1940 is the only case of census information being used to locate individuals, I'd say their record is pretty good.
Compare and contrast these "concentration camps" with the Nazi version of "concentration camps".
Germans were soundly rounded up as well. I think the Italians got a free ride in WWII, and God only knows where the Irish were sent. Dubuque, I heard.
Perhaps in 1790 that's all the census needed to know (that and how may slaves you owned), but it's a far different situation now. Socioeconomic and ethnic data is important in determining the types of services various areas need and plays an important part in know just who an "American" really is. As an aside, the census had nothing to do with the Japanese internment during WWII. At most it made calculating the number of Japanese-Americans easier, allowing the round up to be more accurate. Maybe. Given how easy it is to separate people by obvious ethnic ancestry, the round up would have occurred any way. Besides which, it's not as if either of scenarios mentioned in the OP actually provided anything more than numbers. They didn't provide addresses, names, or any actual personal information. Merely the number who marked a certain ethnicity in a certain county. So yes, these people are still just paranoid.
Hold on. There are two different things here: whether the data will be kept private, and whether the data will ever be used to do "bad" things.
The headline brings up the question of whether privacy will be breached: i.e. whether the census data could ever be de-anonymized and used to identify specific people's answers. This would be a very bad thing, contrary to the ethos of the census.
However, the examples actually given in the summary are cases where the census was just doing what a census does: delivering anonymized demographic data. Specifying how many people of a particular race (or gender, or income level, etc.) live in a particular area is just data. That data can of course be used for either good (addressing social inequality, correctly distributing resources, etc.) or for evil (internment camps). But the fact that data can be used for evil is nothing new. The solution is not to distrust the census, but rather to stop the people who are promoting hateful options and politicians pushing for evil legislation.
I'm not saying that we have to trust the census people, necessarily. If the data is continually doing more harm than good, then we should oppose its collection. But I don't think that you can point to a few examples of data being used in evil ways (or potentially evil ways) and therefore conclude that the entire enterprise of data collection is suspect.
What bullshit. The privacy protections regarding census answers were put in place AFTER the Japanese internment camps as a RESPONSE. This summary reads as is those protections were disregarded in that roundup, and then darkly speculates on what could have been after 9/11, if those privacy protections had been disregarded.
Slashdot isn't far from freerepublic these days, in political leaning or critical thinking.
I didn't answer the census in 2000, won't do it this year.
AC for obvious reasons.
Will your answer to the census stay private?
Will your health-care premium grow extensively and will the new 'reform' get blamed for it?
Will the people make assumptions about you based on your 'political association'?
Will the corporate interest together with the government involvement ensure that the economy finally ends in a total collapse?
Stay tuned to get the answer to these, and other meaningful questions.
You can't handle the truth.
"All the census really needs to know is how many people live at each address. Citizens should refuse to answer any census question except for the number of residents."
yeah, send me that info too, so i can send you the appropriate amount of tin foil hats...
The proper way to do it is to roll a die or flip a coin. If the coin shows "heads" then tell the truth to the question, if the coin is "tails" then lie
Statistically, if everyone were to do this, the results will still be valid, just skewed in a predicatable way
They say that they won't release your information for something like 85 years, but they do release aggregate data. In the 2000 census, there were complaints that it was possible to determine individual answers from the aggregate data because they were releasing data for very small areas. I think it was by Zip+4, which narrows typically narrows it down to fewer than ten houses.
For me, I'm not concerned about the privacy, but I take offense at being asked to identify as being of a specific race. Whatever happened to the Great American Melting Pot?
To give a hypothetical example, it would be like if you were a neilsen family but refused to fill out info about the tv shows that you liked and then complained when they got canceled.
Check out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_13_of_the_United_States_Code
The Census Bureau collects information and creates statistics. The actual answers are hands off.
Title 13 was not around in 1940.
Giving the security agencies statistical information about a particular group of people is no big deal. The information was probably out there already and public.
Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.
-Ayn Rand
What does this say about America? Read this for a good overview of technology's intertwined relationship with the failings of geopolitical advancement of privacy. Basic summary: it isn't technologies fault for privacy lost, its the people who regulate it.
To quote:
"The attacks of 9-11 challenged our country in new ways. But perhaps the biggest challenge was whether we would safeguard both our country and our Constitutional heritage or whether we would have weak leaders who were unable to protect the country without sacrificing our freedoms. Regrettably, we found that our political leaders lacked the ability to uphold our laws. For electronic surveillance, they pushed aside the judiciary and asserted the President's authority to intercept the private communications of American citizens within the United States. Even with the broad powers of the Patriot Act, the White House grew impatient and colluded with the telephone companies to disclose private customer records without legal basis or judicial review."
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
Chalk me up for another person who just listed:
3 Americans live here.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
But:
1) Saying that census data will 'never be used against you' and 'are protected by US privacy laws' is nowhere near the same thing.
2) The NY Times article about Arab Americans in each ZIP code was using publicly available data from the census. As with medical records, the data used by DHS was deidentified.
So in the end, I have faith that the answers I give will stay private, though I understand that information that identify me as a community will be available - that's one of the points of the census!
And I suggest that you do the same.
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
"Conservatives" wanted to round up arabs? Do you have a single shred of proof for this or are you basically a Truther or Birther at heart, with nothing but paranoia to offer us?
No-one wanted to "round up arabs" since that would have been stupid and done nothing.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2010/0324/The-2010-Census-Will-your-answers-stay-private
I didn't give them any information to leak or misuse. The constitutional purpose of the census is to count people, not to figure out who rents vs. who owns their homes, or what their age/race distribution is. So that's what I gave them. A complete and accurate count of the people living in my home.
Per Title 13, they could fine me $100 for failing to complete the form. I don't think that'll happen, but it's worth $100 to me to stand on the principle.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I did not hear about the data being handed over to the Department of Homeland defense, but I do know a bit about the Census Bureau. Federal law prohibits all employees of the Census Bureau from releasing this data. So if the government wants to restore my faith in it and set a good precedent to prevent future abuse, arrest everyone involved in the 2003-2004 data breach, convict them and send them to prison for 5 years.
But the thing about America is that we FIX problems when we realize that we made a mistake.
After World War II, American realized what a horrible thing we did with the Census and we changed the laws.
Now, it is illegal for information from the Census to be given to any other government agency. Specifically:
Immigration is NOT allowed to get the information.
The Internal Revenue Service is NOT allowed to get the information.
FBI and local cops are NOT allowed to get the information.
I myself am always a bit paranoid about giving out information, but the promisses the US government has given are about as extreme as it is possible to get. It is true that governments can ignore their own laws. But if you won't trust the US government after it wewnt that far to fix the problem you are worried about, then you should leave this country.
Because if you are concerned about them rounding you up in the future after they change the laws, then you should be more concerned about them rounding you up TODAY for failing to obey the existing laws
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
So if 1940 is the only case of census information being used to locate individuals, I'd say their record is pretty good.
1940 is a case where census information was used to round up an entire ethnic population and relocate them and strip them of all belongings despite assurances that census information would remain "private", which I'd say pretty much destroys any credibility of such assurances forever.
Of all the people counted by the Census over the last century (not including re-counts of same people), that's a pretty intolerable percentage of lives wrecked by abuse of Census data over the last century.
"Stroke of a pen, law of the land. Pretty cool."
"Power corrupts, absolute power is kind of neat."
- people who actually had such power.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
In 2003-04, the Census Bureau provided the Department of Homeland Security with a massive cache of information on how many Arab Americans lived in each ZIP Code around the nation, and which country they originated from
The Census Bureau provides information on how many Arab Americans live in each zip code to everyone. Go to the census website.
Census data always becomes public... According to this census data becomes public after 72 years. This is an invaluable resource to those tracing their genealogy. I will be filling out my form fully, but then I'm not an illegal immigrant or a terrorist. I could see why someone in those groups would not want to fill it out. But filling them out provides valuable data today for all kinds of things, from predicting how many students will enroll in your public schools to how many representatives you'll have in local, state, and federal elections.
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
I understand privacy concerns, but I also understand the valuable ways this information is used. Things like trying to figure out the best place to locate infrastructure like schools and VA hospitals. I remember this "debate" from 10 years ago. Now, while you're passively rebelling against your evil government think about what answers you choose to omit from the census and how easily available that info already is.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
"The data, from the 2000 census, had already been made public on the agency's Internet site...But the Census Bureau director acknowledged at the meeting that by tabulating and handing over the data...the agency had undermined public trust..."
So let me get this straight. The data was publicly available, and the Bureau was getting in heat for... sorting it?
A six year old story about an eight year old NOTHING.
I routinely waste five minutes of time, but this block I particularly regret.
Not answering the race question is likely to lead to a visit by census staff and your refusal to play their game will come to naught. You'll be marked in their records as a troublemaker and your race determined by a census worker. There's a lot of pressure on them to generate the required data. A much simpler approach is to check your race as Other and in the blank fill in "American." It's true, and it foils attempts to label us racially for whatever the purpose. Keep in mind that this census is, contrary to what the Constitution specifies, very much about race. About six months ago a census worker visited my apartment wanting to know if any Native Americans lived there. He was a nice, elderly gentleman who didn't have any political agendas himself. But it was clear that, if that were true, my living circumstances would have been singled out for special examination.
Census data is akin to medical records. You want your person information to remain confidential generally speaking but aggregated together, it's not hard to argue that such data could be used to benefit research and therefore benefit mankind. However confidentiality to one's family is probably less important. For example if your family has a history of heart conditions, you'd rather like to know that, even if Grandpa so and so never told you.
Having access to census data when trying to even research your family tree is critical. While genealogy isn't as much of a benefit to mankind as medicine, it at least means something to me at a personal level. I'm very very glad that old census records are available.
I completely agree that census data just like medical records is open to abuse. Profiling of any race is just plain wrong and the government should never have allowed that and those that did it should have been caught and prosecuted.
Hey submitter... next time do some research before you go spreading FUD. The 1947 privacy sections of Title 13 was specifically enacted to prevent what happened in WWII. ( or to "close the back door" if you will ) .
Lets remember folks... plenty of Chinese people were interned as well in the Japanese camps. Doesn't make it right, but it shows that people are goingto be racist regardless of whether a database gives them the zip code or not.
Compare and contrast these "concentration camps" with the Nazi version of "concentration camps".
Ah, so we're to compare and contrast "stripped of all worldly possessions and incarcerated for no wrongdoing whatsoever", vs. "stripped of all worldly possessions and incarcerated for no wrongdoing whatsoever, plus torture & death". OK, so one is bad and the other is worse - that does not relieve the former of being bad.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
As an urban planner, I can say in all honesty that eliminating things like race from the census would be devastating to research processes. There is a lot of super valuable information in the census data when it comes to identifying trends and demographics, and types of services required for certain types of residents, etc. It is terrible that personally identifiable census data has been used in the past to round people up, or create "watch" lists of sorts, but understand that many many other groups and agencies use non-personally identifiable information gained from the census forms to actually do some good for communities. A ridiculous amount of stuff that urban planners do in GIS is with census data, and without it, or with significant amounts of errors, it becomes useless and entirely possible that planning decisions will be made with bad information.
German immigrants weren't rounded up during WWII, you would have had to have locked 3/4 people in Wisconsin into camps if you wanted to do that. Incidentally, German POW's were sent to Wisconsin so that they would 'feel at home' during their war time imprisonment and not want to harm the nearby population. And the funny part is that it worked, supposedly the prisoners would sneak out at night and go to barn dances... only to sneak back in the morning because they just didn't have anywhere else to go.
Why does the census need to know birth date? Not just the year, but also month and day? That struck me as really odd and unnecessary.
Table-ized A.I.
It's not entirely clear, but the wording makes it sound like they got a listing of "this many 'Arabic-Americans' in THIS zip code, this many in THAT zip code" (etc.) rather than "Joe al-Schmoe at 123 ProfileMe Lane is one of THEM!". Not really much different than is available to the public from the census bureau, is it?
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
So if he is too slow then what, the central office will report ths? [ x ] Gun user.
That must be the legitimate reason that the census asks for the month, day, and year of resident's birthday, correct?
Yea, take that mailman! Oh shit, Wait! Drop the netflix envelope before you run away! And comeback for it tomorrow!!
Question 7 http://2010.census.gov/2010census/how/interactive-form.php
And remember this when they say the information is "protected by law": Laws can be changed. (Yeah, I know that sounds obvious, but how many foolish people are assuaged by being told "don't worry, your privacy is protected by law.") They're just words on paper, the government changes them all the time, and most of the time it just breaks them without even bothering to change them.
Want to protect your privacy? Don't share information. Once it's out there, it's out there.
Liberty in your lifetime
The privacy protections regarding census answers were put in place AFTER the Japanese internment camps as a RESPONSE.
Somehow, that sounds much more likely to be true than the frankly shocking allegation in the summary. And, as others have pointed out, the insinuation that something untoward happened with regard to Arabs after 9/11 is also bunk - no private date was released, and releasing aggregate data is what the census is for.
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
In the instructions with the census form it says that the information on the form cannot be used in a court of law. However, at the same time it says that completing the form is required by law.
So the obvious question is, if the form cannot be used as evidence, how can they prove that I did not complete it?
Either the law is not enforceable, or they are lying when they say it cannot be used as evidence.
Proverbs 21:19
The whole point is to get pictures of various populations and how they're distributed. TFA is basically saying "They promise it's private but then they announce the US population. How did they count them if they are private!!!!!" These nutjobs think that privacy means as soon as they get your form they put it in a shredder. They're trying to imply that having an estimate on the number of arabs in a given area is the same thing as having each of their addresses on file and ready to go, like they had in WW2. It's also hilarious that all of the "Swear allegiance to the flag, the Federal Government uber alles! Anybody who questions the government deserves death, hang them high, you are a traitor if you question!" have made an instantaneous 180 and are now screaming "Resist, the government is the ultimate evil, don't pay taxes, don't fill out forms, shoot to kill!" FOX news pundits are even saying they hope and pray there's another 9/11 scale terrorist attack to give them an excuse to "eliminate" Obama. After all, he made America unsafe by "brutally neutering" the military by making a "dramatic cut" to the defense budget by increasing by not as much as they wanted. While they simultaniously decry him for being a big budget liberal by increasing military spending...
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
Since we're facing a real possibility of insurrection from the tea party secessionists, let's encourage them to refuse to answer the ethnicity question on the census. Then we can do a sort for all those who've failed to answer that question, and march 'em to the FEMA camps!
Is Beck a double agent?
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
You Americans would freak out about the data collected by the Australian Census . I remember hearing that 98% of the population responded to the last census, and it was a booklet with lots of questions (As you can see from the list of census topics). Not only that we have it every 5 years.
This is the third census I've participated in as an adult, and the fourth for which I was old enough to pay attention to the media/hype around it. And in each and every one, wingnuts from all over the political spectrum have crawled out from under their respective rocks and foamed at the mouth over the government intrusion into private lives.
Give it rest guys. Your claims don't stand up to a moments dispassionate scrutiny. The interment camps were nearly seventy years ago. We've learned since then.
In fact checking the gun box would merely tell the government who to take out first in the event that, according to right wing mythology, FEMA and the president were to declare martian law.
To be serious, and I am no defender of US atrocities, the two cases cited hardly indicate a trend. The first happened in a genuine time of war, and in this case people do go crazy. In the second case, it does not seem that any personal information was released, so while violating the spirit of the promise, it is hard to say if it violated the actual intention. When we talk about releasing personal information, at least in todays terms, we are probably taking about specifics on undocumented people in the US or same sex couples living together, or the like. I can go to the census web site and get a demographic profile of each region if I so wanted, so that is pretty much public information.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Gun clinging Atheists are getting a bad rap here, we need discrimination also.
I always thought of Creationism as the Raving Right's version of the Loony Left's Anthropogenic Global Warming-brightmal
Did anyone actually look at the form?
How exactly would I go about keeping my race private in day-to-day activities?
This is just more right-wing tea party nutjob noise.
Fill out the form people. It takes 30 seconds and there's surprisingly little asked.
I'm a 2000 man.
just mark your race as " Other: American". I didn't know American was a race.
The privacy guarantee means that your identifying data won't be kept in relation to your responses; the Census Bureau doesn't have (at least they're not supposed to have) a database where they can type in your name / address / social security number and pull up your race, age, number of kids, etc. This doesn't mean, of course, that those of calamitous intent can't play around with the aggregate data and make some educated guesses.
I wouldn't advocate lying and/or skipping the census on that basis however. Sure doing that might in theory help keep you one step ahead of the Man when The Hammer Comes Down; but don't start crying if in your neighborhood the classrooms become more crowded, there's less cops on the beat, the potholes seem to never get fixed, and your block always winds up getting plowed out two days after the big snowstorm.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
As an aside, I answered the census last week and I was shocked and appalled that it did not even ask whether the people living at my address are U.S. citizens. How the hell can they determine Congressional representation if they don't even ask who needs to be represented and who doesn't? (And lest my sentiments be misconstrued, I'm not a nativist. I think anyone should be able to come to the U.S. and speak whatever languages they want and work for whoever will hire them. When it comes to determining the relative allocation of representation in the House of Representatives, I just think all non-citizens should be counted out.)
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Let's do a really rough calculation.
Consider the last 100 years - upper end of human lifespan and a convenient period of recent history. That is 10 censuses.
Most people counted are counted in more than one census, actually a lot more. Each person is counted on average maybe 5 times during that period.
We can reasonably ballpark (please feel free to generate more precise numbers) that the US Census process has counted about 600,000,000 individuals in the last century.
Some 110,000 people were "interned" during WWII. In 4 days flat one Census count went from "private" to "list of people declared illegal for no good reason".
Ergo, that "only case of census information being used to locate individuals" works out to an average, over a century, of a roughly better than 1 in 5000 chance of an individual's life being absolutely wrecked by filling out a Census form as requested.
1 in 10 chance of a Census being used for horrific purposes.
1 in 5000 chance of completing a Census form leading to wrongful imprisonment and confiscation of all personal belongings.
I'd say their record is pretty awful.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Happened before == will happen again
Slopes are always slippery
If it *can* be used for evil it *will* be, 100% of the time, always!
The government really cares about *YOU* personally, and is out to get *YOU*
Slashdot... news for paranoid cynics.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
[ x ] Gun Owner.
[ x ] Sharpshooter.
Fixed that for ya.
Ezekiel 23:20
.... of Japanese Americans by county and the number of Arab-Americans by county.
They didn't provide a list of names and addresses I presume. In today's world, you risk your privacy to a much greater extent every day you access the internet.
Yes, I'd say a 1 in 2857 chance of having one's life ruined is a pretty intolerable percentage.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Yeah, we did a lot of crazy things in the 40's. Misuse of census data, treatment of japanese americans, tuskegee airmen.
What the @ssholes who are spouting this propaganda forget is there ARE privacy laws in place to prevent misuse of data.
It IS illegal to do now in ways it WASN'T then.
Yet, we are willing to sacrifice privacy, allow these completely profit motivated companies to collect, collate and organize data with absolutely no limit, no accountability. Go figure.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
What arethe questions in this years census? I used to live in a country that had censuses (or is it censi?) once every 5 years, and the questions included income, race, how many cats and dogs you had etc. Tjh only question we could 'object' to answering was tthe one asking our Religion. I presume that question would not be allowed here (separation of church and state etc. I like the idea of the UK people who reply to such a question with silly answer like "jedi'.
Name: Anonymous Coward .RAR you insensitive clod
Date-Of-Birth : About 12 billion years after the universe was created
Sex: No chance, I'm a geek who posts to slashdot
ZIP: I prefer
adress: ac314159265@hotmail.com
Useful to whom? The racists who care about skin color in Washington?
Skin color is about as much use as eye color or hair color, except to racists.
So much for Martin Luther King's wanting to be judged on the content of the character instead of the color of your skin.
Medical researchers who would like to know the demographics of an area and how they affect various health issues
Demographers who research race/ethnicity and a whole host of things
i could go on, but you've clearly got an axe to grind.
Keep tilting at windmills.
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
"But the thing about America is that we FIX problems when we realize that we made a mistake."
Go on. Say that with a straight face.
http://www.theepochtimes.com/news/4-11-3/24168.html
"that some conservatives advocated."
Bullshit. You got proof, evidence that it was ONLY conservatives?
THIS is the problem we have with opinions these days, such as has been going on /. with the editors for years.
Howard Stern, a self-described independent (and you can view him certainly as having conservative and liberal standpoints), in the days (if not the day) following the 9/11 attacks, didn't have a real problem with Japanese internment camps when the topic came up. This was openly on the radio.
"Conservatives" get the heat for this most of the time, but I've talked with small town registered Democrats and liberals, who didn't really see 'a problem' with the Japanese internment camps.
btw, THE ONLY TIME IT HAPPENED, which party was in power at the time of the Japanese internment camps? I seem to recall FDR and he was a Democrat. What was the Congress? Didn't he threaten SCOTUS with new members, so I'd venture that he had Congressional Dem support as well. To color the political parties broadly as the editor and story poster thought suitable, seems the conservatives might discuss the issue but not carry through, while the Democrats would with little discussion, rights be damned.
Skin color is about as much use as eye color or hair color, except to racists.
The medical community would tend to disagree. Ethnicity is highly correlated to certain distributions of certain diseases within said ethnic group.
But the same people will happily answer as many or more questions on that magazine competition entry or store card application form...
If your representitive needs a national census to know who he is representing, then he should never have been a representative at all. There are many ways to learn this information, including having been involved in the community at different levels before being elected as a representative. There are also many polling organizations that provide all the demographic information that the census provides and more without the potential of tying that information to specific individuals.
I heard about one group of POWs who escaped in Minnesota and rode down the Mississippi river. When they were recaptured they were shocked to discover they not only hadn't escaped America they hadn't even made it out of the state. They were used to Europe which is a lot of fairly small countries right beside each other and a few days travel could get you over a border somewhere.
And locking up 3/4ths of the people in Wisconsin isn't a bad idea in general anyway.
The first question is all I'm answering. I assume, by the fact it is separated from the rest, that this is the only question the census bureau legally requires.
http://www.foitimes.com/ Besides the well known internment camps in California and Nevada for people of Japanese ancestry, she noted that camps were also set up for Germans and Italians throughout the United States and Latin America. No mention of these Irish, though.
Then they can do their own damned study and spend their own money to do it rather than piggyback on a Federally mandated study.
Everything on the form, other than race, that they asked about me is something you can easily find out from a public records search. It's not like where you live is some huge secret, unless you are living in someone's basement "off the grid" so to speak. Extra especially if you own property, there is a record of that, including title and all the documents that can be looked up.
In this day and age you can most certainly have privacy without a ton of effort. You can keep your private life to yourself to a very large degree with pretty minimal effort, unless you are a public figure like a politician or celebrity. What you cannot easily (if at all) have these days is anonymity, where nobody knows or can know who you are or where you live. You simply will be known through all sorts of means out there. That you exist is not going to be a secret.
As such I don't see the census as a big deal. All the questions are around identification, not around looking in to your private life. If you really think the government is going to use that info to toss you in a camp the correct answer isn't to not fill it out, the correct answer is to pack up your shit and get the fuck out because they can find you through other means.
Funny how most of the people who are suddenly concerned about the census invading their privacy by citing examples of WWII Japanese interment camps and Muslim tracking the same people who just a couple years earlier defended WWII Japanese internment camps (see Michelle Malkin) and advocated keeping a closer eye on American Muslims.
Now that a black man is President, they're scared that the government is asking them what race they are.
FEMA and the president were to declare martian law.
When earthly law is not enough.....
And my birthday, race, and address?
The only surprising thing is that they cant do an automatic census for 80% of the population they know for sure already.
I do a lot of genealogy research and census records are invaluable for doing family history. Your grandkids will thank you if you take off the tin foil hat and fill it out completely and accurately.
Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
[x] Gun Owner
[x] Jingoistic internet-tough-guy dipshit
no.. fixed that for you both.
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
Then they can do their own damned study and spend their own money to do it rather than piggyback on a Federally mandated study.
umm...i thought techies hated re-inventing the wheel?
Seriously. To quote a line of Benecio del Toro in Snatch "Just because it's written, doesn't make it so." You can find a quote to say almost anything you like. Notice that I did just that. Doesn't mean that your quote is right, that the argument is over.
Any Rand is not the be-all, end-all of philosophy. In fact, Ayn Rand is not even particularly good philosophy. If you read Atlas Shrugged and it blew your mind, then I suggest you take some time to read some more, better philosophy and broaden your horizons. Any Rand is not the be-all, end-all. You might notice that society doesn't follow how she thinks it should be. Perhaps that tells you something.
Or you can go play Bioshock, a distopia based on the idea of implementing a Randian society and the problems that result. :D
Have you actually read the 10 questions?
Questions 1, 2, 5, and 10 are all simply checks to make sure that the respondent really did, indeed, list all residents of the household (which isn't straightforward in all cases -- think roommates at college, for example).
Questions 6, 7, and 9 have all been asked since either 1790 or 1800 and are basic profiling questions. Don't like it? Complain to the almighty Founding Fathers. Question 8 (are you Hispanic) is necessary to make question 7 (race) make sense in a modern world.
Question 3 (your phone number) is to allow easy follow-up; if you don't include it, I don't think the bureau will care unless there's something they can't understand with your report (illegible handwriting, most likely), in which case they'll have to knock on your door to fix it (which costs far, far more of your tax dollars than a phone call).
Question 4, which has been asked since 1890, is the only one that I agree isn't really necessary.
The ten minutes the Census Bureau says this form will take is a gross exaggeration. Two is more like it -- far more than it took me to write this response or you to complain about it.
"... the nation's political leaders should recognize how their policies have undermined public faith in government ..."
They know.
They don't care.
Especially when their jobs are threatened by a war, terrorist act, economic disaster or election and they have the power to get away with it.
Look at the bad, anti-social, rights-violating behavior of the police which undermines public faith in them, yet they continue to behave in bad ways BECAUSE THEY CAN.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
that lives with his wife in Ponca City, Oklahoma? The one who has a degree in physics? The one who spent several years in Peru working for the Peace Corps? The one who planned to go to Mongolia (aka Red China) in 2009?
http://www.peacecorpswiki.org/Hugh_Pickens
Can you construct some sort of rudimentary lathe?
Hey kids - they already know everything they want about you. Unless you don't have a birth certificate, SSN, and/or drivers license. IMHO, if they want to do another roundup, the census data is only one of about a thousand data points on you.
They only way you can avoid this is if you are living on the lam, and then guess what, they are already looking for you...
I for one will be checking "other" and entering "European American" no offense to other races intended. I just plan on receiving the same recognition for my heritage as you do yours.
Even if they wanted to use the census data for a specific ethnic round-up, at least this helps make it relatively cleaner, rather then busting down door to door and having entire neighbourhoods line up in the streets for profiling. Really though, this is paranoia, nothing less. Of course, saying such things won't placate those people that buy into this. After all, what's worse? Being paranoid, or knowing that you should be? What this fails to account for is all the useful information culled from the census. Signed, 20-year-old white (British ancestry) male college student, working in food service, Atheist, votes either way, owns 1 car he drives a bit too quickly, enjoys alternative music, BBC News, wears no underwear, uses Old Spice deodorant, wears white socks. Let me know if anything else is needed.
There are still some people reading slashdot who are not conservatives, convinced that the government is currently being run by the anti-christ and his army of evil minions (OK, at least one - me). We would appreciate if the editorial board at slashdot would tone down their conservative bend, at least a little bit, and go back to focusing on technology.
Not long ago, there used to be this kind of conservative spank-fest topics posted to the front page only every couple weeks. This is the second or third this week. I'm pretty sure there are plenty of other sources for conservative conspiracy theories; I don't see why slashdot needs to feed into that.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
And in Hawaii, no people of Japanese origin or ancestry were taken to camps. There were too many. Senator Inouye (I read an autobiograhical article of his in the 1960s in Reader's Digest) says their radios were confiscated and the population was told there were things they could not do, but they got to keep their property and stay in their homes.
Seeing the different treatment for the people in Hawaii and for people whose origins went to the European Axis nations, the Sansei and the Nisei of the West Coast are fairly well convinced that at its heart, the internment was initiated by racist opportunists who seized upon a national emergency to convince authorities to expel a successful group of economic competitors. Those who disagree with that assertion claim the internment was strictly motivated by war necessities.
The big picture lesson I learned when back in the 70s when I studied the period and heard from the people who were interned, is that people who want to infringe on individual rights, who want a loosening of privacy or due process safeguards and who want a streamlined granting of public sector contracts (to them or their friends) know that getting the government to declare something a war is the most effective means. Because, in a real war, reasonable people accept those things as temporary necessities.
Returning to our Census Bureau and World War II and the hysteria on the West Coast and what it means today, I say fill out the census. Long after we're gone, the details will become available to researchers and their understanding of who we were and how we lived will be better. Aggregate statistics are helpful for our contemporary understanding of who we are. Plus, don't for a second think that the Census data is the only way for identifying people to round up. At the very least, there are those other tried and true methods, making lists from public sources and paying bounties to informants.
Does anybody still believe ANYTHING the government says ???
We all know that your answers will promptly be sent to your local ObamaCare/GovernmentMotors/ACORN regional office, to ensure that you are signed up for your annual abortion. After all, how else would they be able to feed the insatiable appetite of the army of zombie alien anti-christs at the white house?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The US Census is for and should only be used for Congressional seats (congressional apportionment), electoral votes, and government program funding
There are different census forms for different addresses. I got the short form this time, but I've had the 30+ pg form previously. I guess which address receives which form is statistically selected.
Declaring yourself as a minority on the form has benefits for your community. I don't declare it, since we are all human.
I've seen fairly accurate data that estimated all sorts of things about me based only on my age and address. This was created by a mix of census and market data publicly available. They knew my income, my automobile make, and my education. I can't recall anything else, but the automobile was just scary since I was living in an apartment with 400 other people and most didn't drive that vehicle.
Those "protections" can be reversed.
Your submission of personal data can not.
In 1940, those who responded to the Census as requested felt "protected" by the rule of law prohibiting the government from confiscating personal possessions and incarcerating individuals without cause, trial, and conviction.
In 2010, "protections" which prohibit the government from using Census responses to do something which it is already prohibited from doing - confiscating personal possessions and incarcerating individuals without cause, trial, and conviction - are a small comfort.
"Stroke of a pen, law of the land. Pretty cool."
"Power corrupts, absolute power is kind of neat."
- people who actually had such power.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Then they can do their own damned study and spend their own money to do it rather than piggyback on a Federally mandated study.
Why? That's just a waste of time and money. Since the government is already sending out a census form it's much more efficient to just use the demographics information it collects.
US Law only requires that you enter the amount of people living at your residence. The census does NOT require you to enter anything beyond that. If you are dumb enough to enter your phone number, race or anything else and expect it not to be used against you in some way, then it is your own fault. Seriously, it's like signing up for a website online - they may ask you to enter personal information even though it is not required. You don't see me complaining about those websites asking for my phone number (or anything else that is personal,) and then getting mad when they call me. I deserve the invasion of privacy because I was stupid enough to provide them with my number in the first place. Instead I just don't enter my phone number. Most of the time they don't required that field in the first place; if it is required I would either make it up, or just not sign up.
People that think the government is not going to use this information in some manner are living in a hole. It's the government this is what they do, move on and stop being so naive and think before you blindly fill out anything, because trust me, it is going to be saved and sometime down the road it may, this is not me saying it will happen, but it MAY be used against you.
Be smart, enter the amount of people living at your place, and mail in your census. Problem solved.
After the census laws were put in place so that the misuse of census data would never happen again. It was ruled that the privacy of the census data is more important than the Patriot Act.
From TFA:
Does anyone know the legal and practical implications of following this advice? I've heard talk of a $100 fine and a $5000 fine, but I don't know how those are applied. If I follow this advice, will a census person come to my house to request more information? Can I refuse them without penalty? Please provide citations if possible.
Uncle Sam already knows this and much, much, much more about me.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
I suppose if pointing a weapon at some poor low-paid schlub who's just trying to do his job makes you feel like a big man, go for it. Census takers are not the enemy, even if you have some problem with the census (even though it's one of the clearly stated responsibilities of government in the Constitution). Especially in this economy, your census taker could be anyone, including your next door neighbor. Lots of people are out of work looking for a job, and the census is hiring...don't take out your problems with the federal government on the working stiffs who just want to feed their families.
says who? we collect the information anyway - statistics aren't harming anyone. and I'm sure at some point someone sued over the release of them and it was found constitutional.
What's your issue?
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
What the heck does the NRA have to do with the BATF going cowboy and attacking a giant complex of buildings where every adult had weapons when they could have just arrested Koresh when he went to town?
Don't whine about that NRA in this, its the DoJ and BATF who dropped the ball and got that mess going.
Nobody would argue that your list of bad things weren't bad. That is not what people are talking about when they opine that "things are getting worse".
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
http://www.foitimes.com/ has details on internment, which includes national archives on where many tens of thousands of American-Germans and American-Italians were concentrated, if you will.
Says who? The US Constitution thats who says what the US Census is for.
Article 1, Section 2: "The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct."
You want more data collected and used in different ways? Change the Constitution.
And this too, damn me for not previewing it right
http://factfinder.census.gov/jsp/saff/SAFFInfo.jsp?_pageId=sp4_decennial&_submenuId=
"White" and "black" were not races, they were colors. I couldn't in good conscious lie on a government form, so I filled out my race as "Other."
I LOL'd at how the form kept telling me how important it was for them to know all this stuff about me. Congressional funding that they "get" comes out of our taxes. That funding doesn't help me. It helps local government do whatever they happen to want to do on a given week.
Why does the federal government need to know anyone's race? Think about this next statement really hard. No one (government, corporation, or individual) should be making decisions or forming opinions based on race. Income level and education level maybe but race? Race does not determine your income level or education level. The fact that many decisions are based on race is why we have racial tensions to begin with. No one should care that we have a black president, an irish senator, a woman president (woman being an example, not a race), or a latino cabinet position. It should not matter. For the people that believe it does matter and celebrate a specific race at that position are themselves being racist and giving general acceptance that a persons race actually DOES matter. So which is it, does race matter or not? If you truly believe everyone is equal, why should it matter to you that someone of your same race reached or is holding a specific government position?
I am sick of reading headline like the % of Latino out of jobs, the fact that they are Latino is not the reason they are out of jobs. Simple stating that fact and entertaining the idea that it is related causes racial tensions and is implying that race is the reason. How about, there are % or american citizens out of jobs. Yes they may be a "general trend" in some areas of the country that Latinos may hold a a larger percentage of certain types of jobs, if that job sector takes a hit, sure, more Latinos are affected but the reason is not because they are Latinos, it was that job sector that caused it.
The racial data requested is pretty coarse-grained - they want to know if you're white, black, native American, or one of several Asian or Pacific Islander subgroups (not really sure why the Asian ethnicities are resolved so much more than other major groups, but whatever). They ask if you're hispanic in a separate question. There's no way to know, though, if you're of Arab descent from the census response. I suppose you could still round up individual Asian groups in some sort of detention camp scenario... but how likely is that, really? This is a whole lot of ado over not much of anything - the "controversy" is mostly being driven by a bunch of nutballs who will take absolutely any opportunity to screw with the evil government.
Medical researchers who would like to know the demographics of an area and how they affect various health issues Demographers who research race/ethnicity and a whole host of things
Yes. Yes, they would. And I would like a flying unicorn that farts rainbows.
Too bad Article I, Section 2, Clause 3 of the US Constitution doesn't allow collecting that information - Or anything except for number of residents, and that established legal precedent (since 1894, and never reversed) expressly forbids the government collecting anything else under the guise of the "census".
i could go on, but you've clearly got an axe to grind.
Damned straight we do! The US government has repeatedly shown itself incapable of responsibly carrying out its duty to enumerate (and nothing more) the citizens for the sole purpose of apportioning our representatives.
If the government had historically refrained from abusing its power, we might have a different conversation here; as it stands - I answered question #1 with "2", and left the rest blank.
Oh, and those scaaaaary spooooky fines? They haven't issued a census-related fine since 1970, when a Hawaiian man challenged his $50 fine in court - And won.
The census form doesn't ask if one is a citizen or not.
Constitutionally, isn't the census required only for determining how many and where congressional districts are to be?
I find it odd that they don't ask how many citizens live in each location. Seems to me just counting people would be like giving an extra congressional seat to a city just because they happened to have 100,000 visitors (say, for a super bowl game) on the day you counted...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
This isn't 60 years ago. If we didn't round up all middle Eastern Descent person after 9/11, where not going to open up interment camps again.
As if people wouldn't have recognized someone with Japanese descent just by looking at them~
Census is a good and necessary thing.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Martin Luther King is turning in his grave because of your post. Aknowledging race is not the same as being a racist. Equality is not the same as being colorblind. Its time to move past tolerance and colorblindness and start imbracing the multitude of culutures that make up this country.
You are aware that in this nation one race held another as slaves until the 1860s? And then continued to systematically exploit the same race?
That's two life-times ago. The Stephen-Colbert-color-blindness is cute, but utterly ignorant.
The Black Belt needs help. The slums of the inner-city need help. Some white areas (Appalachia in particular) need help. And at the end of the day, it's a national security issue.
The actual form can be seen online here.
Age = timeless
Race = NASCAR
Sex = YES PLEASE!!!
what's the big deal?
That's a whole lot of middle class, white male privilege I smell there.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
The Constitution doesn't work that way. It doesn't prohibit them asking for more information, and other clauses imply that so long as it isn't prohibited expressly or implicitly then there is no problem as long as it serves a legitimate government purpose.
being able to anticipate how diseases might affect the population certainly falls under a legitimate government purpose.
Just because the American Libertarian Party tells you incorrect information about the constitution doesn't make that information correct.
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
The problem is, due to gun law restrictions, the Branch Davidians didn't have the same firepower as the ATF people raiding the compound and shooting people.
If the Davidians had a tank like the ATF guys, I can assure you that the casualty rate on the ATF side would have been greater.
Imagine if Waco happened under Bush's administration, what the leftwingers would have said about him being a Fascist. Instead it was okay because it was Clinton, go figure.
After all, it is better to kill a bunch of kids trying to get at an accused child molester and gun toting religious nut, than it is to try to do it a different way.
Not to mention Randy Weaver case, where an unarmed woman holding a baby was shot in the head by Federal Agents.
"They have caved in on the right of the average American to keep any kind of real defense. "
Exactly!
I still wonder on what authority the Feds started the siege on. And why the local Sheriff didn't tell them to get the f' out of the county.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
... and other people can EASILY find out. Age, name, race, ethnic background... this crap is nothing. The only thing I did NOT fill out was my phone number, the rest, hell, i'm sure the IRS has it already... if a some sort of investigative body needs to go there for that info, I'm sure they'll find a way to get it, if they didn't already know that basic info already. If they asked for account #s, SSNs (again, something the IRS know too) and stuff like that, I would have protested. Mostly, this form is pretty benign as far as information collection goes.
Will Your Answers To the Census Stay Private?
No.
--- Captain Obvious
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Different skin colors usually mean different race, which usually means minor differences in physiology, which may mean different types of medicine. If you think that's racist, then do so at risk of your own health.
Also, turns out different hair colors are best served by different types of hair products. Don't know about whether eye color makes any physiological difference, but I'd be surprised if it didn't.
Pretty much all external physical traits are related in some way to other physical traits, some of which may even influence the brain. Why is it that when that external physical trait happens to be skin color, people all of a sudden cry "racism"?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Per Article 1, Section 2: "The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct."
In other words, the government already has the power to ask what they want to ask in the Census. You people who want the Constitution to spell out in detail every activity the government might need to do crack me up. The Constitution is supposed to be an overall guide for running the government, not a detailed "here's how you do this" manual. If that was the case, nothing would ever get done because of the difficulty of passing amendments. Just as an example: the constitution only says that Congress shall "raise an Army". It doesn't say how big the Army should be, what can be done with the Army, how it can be equipped/armed, etc, etc. All that is (quite properly) left up to actual legislation. If we had to do figure all that out by passing constitutional amendments, the process of establishing the Army would take decades, would require the Constitution to balloon to millions of pages, and we'd have long ago been invaded by some other country with a form of government that actually works.
The idea that you can't do anything not explicitly spelled out in the Constitution is just dumb, and this was settled in law in like the freaking Jefferson administration (read about the Louisiana Purchase).
"5". That's what I put on my census form before mailing it back. The other questions were left unanswered.
The US Constitution calls for a census every 10 years to take a count of the people which is crucial for getting the right number of congressmen allocated. The US Constitution further reserves everything to the states or to the people that is not enumerated in the constitution for the federal government.
There are 5 people in my house. That's all I'm volunteering. They don't need to know my name, how old I am, what color I am, what religion I practice, my sexual orientation, etc. The rest is none of the census department's business.
Has no one ever heard of affirmative action? I've heard many of the arguments I'm reading here come from the lips of freshman college students, but really, I'd expect more informed views from /. readers. I know, stupid of me to do that...
Among many other uses, the government needs to know racial demographics so that they can try to make sure the government isn't discriminating. If we don't know how many blacks, whites, asians, native americans, etc. there are or where they're located (generally, not necessarily down to the address level) it makes it difficult to appropriate resources and make sure that things are distributed fairly. The sad part is that the paranoia surrounding the census generally tends to make those who need the services most less likely to fill out the census, thus skewing the picture even further.
Do you not understand the trickle down effect of this data? It's used to move funds around and to make decisions about who gets what out of the gov't coffers, or what's left over after all of the corporate payouts and military contracts anyway. Is there potential for abuse? Hells yes! Has it been abused? Of course! Is the census the answer to life, the universe and everything? No. But how can we have any hope of the government operating by and for the people if it has no clue who these people are?
Saying "just fill out the number of people, nothing else" is just bullshit and ignorance and it saddens me to see that posted on here as if it's something that should be taken as a serious and informed opinion. There are real problems to be discussed regarding the census and there are vast improvements to be made to it, but spreading FUD about what it is and what it's used for just takes as further away from discussing the real issues and does more harm than good.
You're reading it wrong.
No where in the Constitution does it state that the government can do whatever it wants as long as it serves some nebulous "government purpose.".
What it does state, quite clearly, is that power belongs in the hands of the people, and they have granted the government a few, limited, enumerated duties. Anything else they want to do, they have to ask the People first, and an overwhelming majority of them have to agree to it.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
I wonder how the Founding Father's interpreted that? Well, let's see the questions that Thomas Jefferson asked on his 1790 census.
From here: http://www.gengateway.com/census/1790_census.htm. Hmm. I suspect Thomas Jefferson may have had a better idea of what the Constitution meant than the libertarian fanatics who suggest breaking the law (it is illegal not to answer every question on the Census, and wastes taxpayer money as they to hire more people to come to people's doors and find stuff out).
Just for comparison purposes, let's take a look at the 2010 short-form census that the vast majority of people are receiving.
, like the age and DoB one, are from the 1800 census. Others, like the naming question, are a later addition because it was found that asking for names helped people list the correct number of people. But all in all, it's pretty much the same census the Founding Father's took. You're also missing the "in such manner as they shall by law direct" clause. Sure sounds to me like Congress can direct the Census people to ask more and different questions according to the Constitution.
Look like someone needs to actually read the section again:
Article 1, Section 2: "The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct."
This end part of the section explicitly gives them the power to ask for other information as it is directed by law.
The census data is absolutely useless to medical researchers. "Black" doesn't describe anything about an individuals genetic code other than melanin content. The genetic variation among "black" people is as great or even greater than the genetic variation between any given black person and white people. "Asian" is used by the census generally to describe anybody from about Pakistan eastward, lumping Indians with Koreans, Japanese, and Chinese, all of which are very distinct from each other. And what constitutes "black" and "white" today, anyway? Is Tiger Woods black, asian, or what? Are his kids black or white? Do you want to bring back the old "one drop" test, so if any of your ancestors are black, you are deemed black? Demographers are among those who continue to insist that we define our society by skin color, so I don't feel much need to help them out. I also put American for race.
My biggest problem with the census is that the government is actively trying to include illegal immigrants in the process. My issue with that is that I don't want them counted. They have no right to vote and thus should have no influence on the number of congresscritters each state gets.
This means that the congressman in California have a disproportionately small number of legal constituents whom they represent. It's pretty basic math.
I don't care if the illegal immigrants don't have representation. They are illegal and don't deserve it. Is it racism to say that all permanent residents of the country should be here legally? I don't think so.
I want to go to Canada but am restricted from doing so because of my criminal record. Hence, I don't go to Canada. I expect the same of everyone else in my own country.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Except that the constitution has this clause that you seem to miss that says they conduct the census "in such Manner as they shall by Law direct." And Title 13 allows them to collect such statistics. So basically you're wrong.
Martin Luther King is turning in his grave because of your post. Aknowledging race is not the same as being a racist. Equality is not the same as being colorblind. Its time to move past tolerance and colorblindness and start imbracing the multitude of culutures that make up this country.
Sounds to me like you just want to call it something else.
"Racism does not have a good track record. It has been tried for a long time. You would think by now we would want to put an end to it instead of putting it under new management." - Thomas Sowell
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Wisconsin is a state with an awfully small population to use as a guideline for "we can't lock up that many people by throwing them into a giant fenced area and posting guards in towers with guns". Especially since, if you took every single person in Wisconsin and did that today, it's less than the number of Jews alone killed by the Germans.
*** "All the census really needs to know is how many people live at each address. Citizens should refuse to answer any census question except for the number of residents."" ***
The govt should refuse them any and all govt sponsored services (education, medicaid, medicare, food stamps, etc, etc) unless they provide more info.
IMO, they should use the Census to get rid of all the fucking illegals in this country that are leeching.
Can you point me to where it says you can't do that? In fact, I'm going to go ahead and bold a sentence I don't think you read.
According to you, every Census taken since 1790 was illegal. See my other post for the original 1790 census.
Greetings and salutations...
Research is a good thing...
http://www.foitimes.com/
http://www.gaic.info/
One of the reasons that you MIGHT well not know about this is that the interned German-Americans were required to sign an Official Secrets form, that obligated them to NEVER speak of their experiences on pain of being deported. If YOU were in the situation where government agents swooped in, without warning, bundled you off to a prison camp for years and let you go ONLY if you would sign this paper, would you say anything about your experiences? Especially if you had a family that would be caught up in the sweep and deported with you? I suspect not.
YAB - http://blog.beemandave.com/
We have a census to apportion our representation. I don't see anything even tangentially related to CDC in there. There's no reason you need to know race for apportionment, unless you want to do something like, say, make sure negroes don't have too much say in politics.
I have lots of "good ideas" for things the government could do if only we were to give it more power. You might not like all those ideas, though. We have a constitution so that you don't have to worry about all the crackpot ideas du jour.
I'm not saying CDC is a crackpot idea, but if it's a good one, then why have we abstained from passing an amendment to legalize it yet? Just what is America's hang up, indeed?
The Voting Rights Act of 1965, which happens to be the most important and effective civil rights legislation in our nation's history uses the Census Bureau and the census data it collects to help enforce it's provisions.
The last person I talked to that held your "paying attention to race is racist" attitude also held the attitude that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a racist policy.
But surely you don't think that.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Yeah, being rounded up and interned is a "windmill". What a historical idiot, and poor reader you are.
Could you please show me where in the US Constitution it says that the government is to collect this information as part of the census. This is what so many liberals have a hard time understanding. If the power isn't expressly given to the federal government in the Constitution, then the power lies with the states. That way, if my state starts acting twitchy, I can at least try to move elsewhere. What am I to do when my federal government starts acting twitchy? Leave the country? Not exactly a viable option.
They can ask, you don't have to answer - by the 4th and 5th amendments. The only authority is for an enumeration. Look it up, you will find it means counting.
I believe you don't know how to read the Constitution. 10th amendment and article 1 section 8. It's a limited government with enumerated powers. If it were unlimited, god help us all.
>>What it does state, quite clearly, is that power belongs in the hands of the people, and they have granted the government a few, limited, enumerated duties. Anything else they want to do, they have to ask the People first, and an overwhelming majority of them have to agree to it.
---
that went out the window a long time ago. Look at obamacare. that's now a law and the senate had no say in the matter. It's supposed to require a 2/3 majority in the senate according to the constitution. Right or wrong, it's wasn't passed by constitutionally mandated process.
The constitution is dead and the government cannot be trusted with anything. The only goal of government is to make itself bigger and gain more power over us so they can collect more taxes. Detailed information gives them more power.
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
The Founding Fathers counted slaves (well, parts of them) and women in 1790. They didn't have the right to vote. We still count children. They don't have the right to vote. Of course, in the Founding Fathers' time, there was no such thing as s legal vs illegal immigrant yet, but immigrants were counted the same as citizens. The Census was intended to count everyone, whether they could vote or not.
The article makes it seem like the Census Bureau passed this information to the US Army and the DHS under the table and behind everybody's back without us knowing. In truth, this information is public. The Census Bureau didn't give anything to the other organizations that the rest of the public of the United States doesn't already know. The Census Bureau didn't release anybody's addresses with their specific information, just the ZIP Code. You give them this information with the knowledge that they are going to make the information public (less your name, address, etc), and you have full rights to check the box that says "Decline to State". You, yes YOU, a member of the general public can access all this information -- by ZIP code -- at The American FactFinder. You don't need a fancy job with a fancy title at a fancy government organization.
There has been no violation of trust at any point in time. This is just sensationalist media bullshit.
Link:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/uscode13/usc_sup_01_13_10_7_20_II.html
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/uscode13/usc_sup_01_13.html
The are many good reasons to answer the census.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Where in the Constitution does it say that it would have required a 2/3rds vote?
I'll give you a hint: it doesn't.
The Senate has arbitrary rules, decided by the Senate at the beginning of each term, that it takes 60 votes to cut off debate in the event of a filibuster. Here's a tip: the health care bill passed the Senate with 60 votes. The House then passed the Senate bill verbatim. Now they're passing a reconciliation bill, under Senate rules, that cannot be filibustered.
The constitution authorizes the Federal government to conduct a decennial enumeration of the people, but it also forbids racial classification of the American People. The Census Bureau has allocated one-quarter of the space on this year's census form to questions about race and ethnicity, which if not unconstitutional, are clearly contrary to its spirit.
Question 9 on the census form asks "What is Person 1's race?" (and so on, for other members of the household).
I will answer Question 9 by checking the last option -- "Some other race" -- and writing in "American." It is a truthful answer but at the same time is a way for me as an ordinary citizens to object to unconstitutional racial classification schemes.
"American," was counted by the Census Bureau when it reported the results of the 2000 census. In fact, the number of people answering "American" grew from 12.4 million in the 1990 census to 20.2 million in 2000, "the largest numerical growth of any ancestry group," according to Wikipedia. "American" was the most common answer to that question on the 2000 census in four states and several hundred counties.
It is a violation of the law to lie or to not answer a question on the census form, that is why I will answer question 9 with "American". Some people maybe tempted to check an inapplicable box. But lying in this constitutionally mandated process is wrong. Really -- don't do it.
If you are not a member of an enrolled tribe, don't check Native American -- they won't count it.
Cutesy answers such as "human" or 100 Yard Dash will not be counted by the Census Bureau.
So remember: Question 9 -- "Some other race" -- "American". Pass it on.
If you are hassled about answering American by the census bureaucrats or the ACORN minion who comes to your door, you have legal support for your answer:
"In the eyes of government, we are just one race here. It is American."
Justice Scalia, concurring in Adarand Constructors v. Pena, 515 U.S. 200 (1995).
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
I am white middle class and I got where I am at because of my hard work, work ethic, and personality, not because of my skin color. Middle class did was not given to me because of my skin color. That is the point. I have a coworker that is classified as a minority. He is here and middle class because of the same reasons. We had the same chances and worked our way up through the company in the same manner at about the same time frames. We both also have a similar past experiences both being from the military. He is here and so am I. Our hurdles were the same.
I am sick and tired of people not taking responsibity for their own actions and thinking that I did not work hard and that I am only where I am because of my skin color. I've actually had a guy tell me "You white guys get all the breaks". Please dude. You mean to tell me you find it hard to believe that someone can work hard and progress up the chain? I'm not putting my head in the sand either but don;t think there is a golden ticket handed to certain races to proceed to the next checkpoint.
Of course simply stating these points makes me a racist huh?
Except that the constitution has this clause that you seem to miss that says they conduct the census "in such Manner as they shall by Law direct." And Title 13 allows them to collect such statistics. So basically you're wrong.
On your second point - Constitution trumps Title 13.
On your first point, we'll have to leave the interpretation of that up to the courts. Oh, wait - Already done, in response to this exact issue:
"Neither branch of the legislative department, still less any merely administrative body, established by congress, possesses, or can be invested with, a general power of making inquiry into the private affairs of the citizen." (05/26/1894, Interstate Commerce Commission v. Brimson, 154 U.S. 447, 479)
"So basically you're wrong."
Everybody should this garbage out with bullshit. I am a 13 feet tall blue skinned Navy chick, I make $500 a year and most of it I spend on crack cocaine. There you go, government.
You can't handle the truth.
They asked for number of slaves in that census only because slaves were counted as 3/5 population for representative reasons.
Fortunately, since we no long have the institution of slavery, there should be less questions on it now than back then.
Let the medical researchers pay for their own damn research.
And demographers work for commercial advertisers, or political advertisers; either way, they just want to manipulate the populace, so screw 'em.
Next?
You seem to have missed the fourth and fifth amendments.
They can't demand an answer to every question other than related to the headcount. Otherwise they could ask you all time of self-incriminating questions.
You sound like yet another "10th Amendment says what i want it to person".
I've seen far too much
Person A: "Where does the constitution say that?"
Person B: "10th Amendment!"
Person A: "Um... no, the 10th doesn't say that"
the section of the constitution pertaining to the census specifically allows for other information as pointed out by a poster above who quoted the section that was conveniently left out by the Wyatt
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
Says something about where we feel comfortable placing our trust, doesn't it?
sorry, but you simply don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Legislation requires a simple majority. Only constitutional amendments require a supermajority per the constitution. Cloture and Filibusters are merely a senate rule, and can be changed if the senate so wishes it - in fact they need to be changed as the "filibuster without consequences" we have today is being abused.
The Health Insurance Reform act is entirely constitutional as set out by standing caselaw, as is the "individual mandate" (the item most claimed to be supposedly unconstitutional) as it is merely enforced by tax code - tax code is something the federal government has broad and explicit authority on.
The entire idea that "the only goal of government is to make itself bigger" shows a warped view of the world.
The only goal of government is to serve it's protect - to protect them from threats both foreign and domestic, to help them secure the fruits of liberty and prosperity.
Sometimes the best way for the government to do some of those things is to do nothing, some times it is to enforce regulation, sometime it is to raise an army and defend against an aggressor, and sometimes it requires removing the greet motive from interfering with security the fruits of prosperity for the most people.
The idea that "the smaller the government the better" means that the best form of government is no government. Guess what happens then? warlords.
Stop thinking about politics in macros and soundbytes and start actually thinking.
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
When I said there was one question I would answer, I wasn't being specific enough I guess. I will answer how many residents in the household. That's one question. If they want to ask it over the course of 4 questions then fine. Anything else is a no-go.
Yes, because then you can complain about wastes money.
You derive all your pleasure from whining and now it's to the point where you are just making things up to complain about it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The Constitution explicitly says that the census is conducted in a manner determined by law, i.e., Title 13. What part of this do you not understand?
And how about instead of quoting irrelevant court cases willy-nilly, we actually look at Census-related court cases?
The census does not violate the Fourth Amendment. Morales v. Daley, 116 F. Supp. 2d 801, 820 (S.D. Tex. 2000).
The Supreme Court has said this radical libertarianism is wrong for hundreds of years. Thomas Jefferson said this radical libertiarianism is wrong by including questions related to sex, age, and race (not just slaves!) implicitly. The Constitution makes it clear with the "law directs" clause. Basically, it's as simple as you are totally wrong.
white male, age 30? I can't even get a doctors appointment because I don't have insurance (self employed), they act like I am an alien. white males age 25-40, average height and weight: most discriminated and stereotyped of all. Look at the ads depicting them on TV!
6.8SPC TR of 550, l xwind at 6, drift rt at 26" drops 77". AT has 503 ft-lbs at 1403 fps. FT 0.86
"Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons."
That is how Section 2 of the Constitution originally read. Amendment 14 removed the slavery-related parts, but that's not relevant. What is relevant is that the census was created to COUNT CITIZENS FOR THE PURPOSES OF REPRESENTATION IN THE HOUSE. In fact, recording race could be argued as a DIRECT violation of the 14th amendment.
The Constitution trumps U.S. Code and is the true law of the land.
Don't give them the power.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Then why do researchers routinely find a link between race and various health conditions?
Race may be a social construct with no genetic basis, but social constructs are real, and often have medical consequences.
...and, surprise surprise, this is why question #9 in the 2010 Census form doesn't have a checkbox for "Asian" (contrary to what you imply); it has separate checkboxes for Asian Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Other Asian--with a write-in box for people to write in their ethnicity in the latter, complete with a list of examples (Hmong, Laotian, Thai, Pakistani, Cambodian).
So you're very much wrong about the Census lumping "asians" together.
It has been absolutely clear for decades now that the answers to the census questions about race and ethnicity are about the respondent's self-identification and their identification of the other people in their household, not some objective adjudication of their "real" race. The upsides and downsides of this, its (un)reliability and its problems are very much a matter of public discussion.
Again, race is today understood as a social construct, and race is very much a matter of personal identity. What race people identify themselves as is a significant fact about the population. Nobody who's not constructing a strawman is pretending that this data is to be treated as any more than what it is.
I'm sorry, but the American society is very much defined by skin color. Native-born and raised black people, whose ancestors have been in this country no shorter than the majority, overwhelmingly live in different neighborhoods, speak a distinctive dialect, have different artistic expressions, have different naming customs for their children, have worse health, are discriminated against in housing, health and employment, and a host of other differences that would not be possible if the nation's culture did not see them as a different race in the first place.
Thank you for completing and submitting your Census form. Your answer will be routinely adjudicated as "Non-Hispanic White," perhaps after some minor statistical controls to estimate the very small number of non-whites who fill out "American."
Are you adequate?
A census is a counting, found in any dictionary.
If they could ask you any question, they could demand answers to self-incriminating questions. But the 4th and 5th amendment prevents that.
Also, the quoted sections only talks about the government's responsibilities, the Constitution as a whole, generally doesn't place demands on the American people, like answering questions. It's a document that directs and also binds the government, not others.
I can't wait until the day racial jokes are funny, as in how did we ever take that shit seriously.
every anarchist is a baffled dictator. Benito_Mussolini
point of information: if the House had passed the Senate bill verbatim there would be no need for a reconcilliation bill. there are differences between the two bills.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
The Senate certainly did have a say in the matter. A majority is all that is required to pass a bill through either house. Because of filibuster abuse, that's increased to a need of 60 votes in the Senate, but that is not constitutionally required. But the health bill did get its 60 votes and passed.
I'm pretty sure AT&T already gave all our information over to the Feds already.
Of course, if he is faster and similarly minded:
[ x ] Former gun owner
The Constitution doesn't work that way. It doesn't prohibit them asking for more information, and other clauses imply that so long as it isn't prohibited expressly or implicitly then there is no problem as long as it serves a legitimate government purpose.
No, the Constitution DOES work that way, regardless of what the Progressives have taught you in school. The *limited* powers granted to the government in the Constitution are just that; limited to what the Constitution says. The Rights of the people enumerated however are not limited, as it plainly states.
The difference in how governments' powers and citizens' rights are enumerated is to assure that citizens are not limited in their Freedoms, and that government *is* limited in its' powers & scope.
Although, more and more in recent decades, Progressives have attempted to reverse this so as to empower government and weaken individual rights. Progressives need a strong centralized government and a powerless citizenry to promote and enforce their Dystopian dreams.
Oh, and a pro-tip; if it's something that requires a third party like the government or another citizen to do something or pay something in order to exercise, it's not a "right".
Governments do not grant rights. Governments can only *at best* defend those rights with which every human is born.
"WHAAARGARBL"?
My lawn, off you will get!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
[citation needed]
Yes it does. It doesn't need to prohibit them. In the 10th Amendment, it clearly states that all rights not enumerated for the federal government belong to the states and the people. Your state (depending on its OWN constitution) could have its own comprehensive census, but not the USA.
Remember, if you start claiming that the people only have the rights given to them by the government, and not the other way around, then they can do the things everyone complains about on Slashdot:
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I don't think you read the questions. The 1790 includes a question on slaves and then questions on sex and race. Jefferson explicitly asked what race the free members of the household were. And we do, functionally, not have a whole lot of new questions. The new ones fall into two categories: 1) checking to make sure you gave the right number of people and 2) providing information the Census Bureau can use to contact you if they discover irregularities in your census form. Not that there's any reason we shouldn't have more questions, if we have a perfectly good use for them.
lolwut? channeling your inner Cheney?
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
I think what matters is what is done with the data. Just from the summary we can see a huge difference--similar data, but very different results between what happened to Japanese Americans and what didn't happen to Arab Americans.
Government has data on us. That could be bad, but it could also be good because data can help government work better. By analogy: the government has terribly powerful weapons. That could be bad if they were used against the citizenry, but it's good that they are available to be used in our defense.
Like weapons, data are just tools. What is needed are great and clear controls on what actions can arise from that data. After all without the census data, the government could have just as easily rounded up everyone who *looks* Japanese, or everyone who was reported by their neighbor to be Japanese. Not any better IMO.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
BZZZT! Wrong answer!
Try reading the Constitution...
Article I Section 2.
"Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to chuse three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New-York six, New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North Carolina five, South Carolina five, and Georgia three."
The Census was SPECIFICALLY for figuring taxation and number of representatives - period - nothing else! They can ask what ever the hell they want but I don't have to answer ANYTHING except HOW MANY PEOPLE live in my house - period.
The Truth is a Virus!!!
They asked about race and sex because, at the time, women did not have universal suffrage and slaves were counted as 3/5 of a person for the purpose of representation. Two amendments to the Constitution ended any possibility for argument of this, and the remaining questions (like, "Do you own or rent") have never been constitutional.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
No, it says "in such manner", which means they can go door-to-door, send a letter, use email, ask you to visit your polling place, etc. It doesn't redefine the word "enumerate", which means "count".
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
It gives them power to do the Enumeration. It's not a catch-all to include non-Enumeration-related questions.
Benford's Corollary to Clarke's Law: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
No, the bills were identical, but the House didn't like the Senate bill so they passed the Senate bill plus a reconciliation bill making changes. The Senate bill has been passed and signed into law. The reconciliation bill is still making it's way through Congress -- the Senate kicked it back to the House today because of some student loan provisions. Reconciliation doesn't actually have anything to do with bringing two different bills into line. The Wikipedia page describes it pretty well.
Don't need to. See the 10th amendment.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
The Constitution says that all bills must originate in the House. This bill actually originated in the Senate; therefore, it is unconstitutional. A silly technicality, I know.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Sorry, but the Founding Fathers (you know, the guys who actually wrote the silly thing) and the Supreme Court disagree with your interpretation of the clause. I think they have slightly more authority on the subject than Slashdot commenters. Jefferson asked one question about slaves and then asked for a listing of the sex and color of all free persons in a household. The Supreme Court ruled time and again that the census did indeed have the power to ask more questions than "how many people are here."
There's a fine for misleading info, and it's bigger than the fine for not answering.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
http://www.palantirtech.com/government/videos/mortgage-fraud
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
My biggest problem with the census is that the government is actively trying to include illegal immigrants in the process. My issue with that is that I don't want them counted. They have no right to vote and thus should have no influence on the number of congresscritters each state gets.
This sounds like Lou xenophobia (which is a strange in a country created by immigrants). Should we not count children under 18 then? They sure can't vote. Convicted felons? Maybe we can count every 3/5 of an illegal immigrant. That seemed to be how the Framers of the Constitution wanted to treat adults without the right to vote. http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=three+fifths+compromise
Members of Congress (should) represent their constituents regardless of whether they have the right to vote.
Take off every 'sig' for great justice.
I had the exact same complaint when "my team" controlled the government.
Doesn't matter whose "team" is in power, the point is that it's none of their business, and the Constitution (4th Amendment) prohibits them from demanding such information without a warrant.
You want to make it about teams? Your "team" just raised the fine for not answering from $100 (which was never levied) to $5000. Now, pray tell, why is it so important to your "team" to get that information that they upped the non-compliance fine 50x to FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS?
People are "stupid" for getting suspicious when faced with a $5000 fine for not reporting name, race, and number of toilets? Ya know, I'd like very much for Uncle Sam to just leave me the he11 alone - but no, your "team" just got more in-my-face about it to the tune of $5000 if I don't obey.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
First of all, no, the Constitution doesn't say that. It says all bills raising revenue must begin in the House -- which, in this case, is true. Second of all, the bill originated in the House, passed the House, was basically rewritten by the Senate, passed by the Senate with a supermajority, and then passed by the House again, and then signed by Obama.
If the power isn't expressly given to the federal government in the Constitution, then the power lies with the states.
Unless the states start violating the constitution, as they did by denying African Americans the right to vote in FEDERAL elections until the 1960's.
The voting rights act of 1965 uses "race" data from the census to enforce it's provisions.
Are you claiming that the federal government does not have the power to enforce the constitution?
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
There is no explicit Constitutional right to privacy; it's one of the rights that the courts have found to be implied, and that fairly recently.
The courts are correct in concluding that the Constitution implies the right to privacy, and I don't believe an implied right (in general), or this implied right (in particular), should be considered the lessor of an explicit right in any way.
I don't think it's reasonable to expect the Constitution to specify an explicit right to privacy. In 1789, privacy was the default. You could converse in low voices in the middle of a grassy meadow, or sit in your home, and have a high expectation of privacy. Nowadays we have privacy-violating tools like satellite photos, audio bugs, thermal imaging scanners, and large-scale data mining algorithms that are sufficiently advanced as to be indistinguishable from magic. These technologies would have been utterly inconceivable to anyone who wrote the Constitution. The authors of the Constitution could not and did not attempt to anticipate and counter every conceivable technological improvement in the text of the Constitution (let alone the inconceivable ones), because that would have made the document too long. Indeed, many people admire the brevity and adaptability of the US Constitution and consider these attributes to be its greatest strength.
In the context in which it was drafted, it is clear that the Constitution relies on an expectation of privacy. The fact that this right was never explicitly stated must be regarded as an understandable reflection of the technology available at the time rather than a meaningful omission.
Everyone should select other and either enter:
- Enter N/A
- Make up your own race name, in fact recruit all your friends to
- Enter your favorite Sci-Fi reference (Mon Calamari, Klingon, Peacekeeper, Replicator, Troll, Kobold, Half-Elf, Member of the MacLeod cloud, Freman, etc.)
A quick look at the other censuses brought up the 1860 census form ( http://www.ancestry.com/save/charts/1860.pdf?cj=1&o_xid=0002530104&o_lid=0002530104 ).
Note the last column. It's too bad that they dropped the "# of Idiotic" people from the form. Maybe the numbers were approaching 100%...
The Constitution explicitly says that the census is conducted in a manner determined by law, i.e., Title 13. What part of this do you not understand?
... in such Manner as they shall by Law direct."
"The actual Enumeration shall be made
Let's start with the definition of the word "enumeration" - "to ascertain the number of : count". That part about "determined by law" doesn't say what they will collect, the sentence explicitly specifies that by the word "enumeration".
So yes, I.2.3 allows later discretion in how to conduct this COUNT. The government might send people door to door, it might delegate the task to individual towns, it might do it by mail, it might do it over the internet. But "it", in all those cases, has the same meaning, "count the people".
The constitution doesn't allow discretion in what to collect, only how.
I do have to admit, you have better legal cites than I do (IANAL, obviously). Regardless, I answered "2", and if they send someone around (and can actually find my house - Really quite difficult to see from the road, and amusingly enough, TomToms put my address about a mile away from its actual location), they'll get no more information from me (though I suppose they could guess my age and race, meeting in person). And if I get the first fine to stick in 40 years, well then, so it goes.
And why ASSert that?
Again, I don't see a race question, on my sources, such as this:
http://www.censusfinder.com/1790-census.htm
Other than the indian question.
Now, the Indian and Slavery are ugly blotches in this nation's history, so why make the 1790 census the golden standard? I can point to John Adam's Alien & Sedition Acts as evidence that the founders blatantly violated the Constitution.
I don't know why everyone wants to paint them as perfect in this regard.
They could, or the Federally mandated study could help. Either way would be fine. Actually, gosh, it seems a lot easier and nicer to just get the extra data while we are asking other questions. So, I'll go with that option, but either would be okay I suppose.
I would hate everyone to know that according to my Census questionnaire I have a 30 member strong tribe of Bantu speaking Inuit whalers living in my home.
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
No, it says that the ENUMERATION shall be conducted "in such manner as they shall by law direct". Once you've asked "how many", you've reached the end of your Constitutionally mandated directive. "In such manner" means "this year, we'll have people come to your door and ask", or "return a postcard with the answer", or whatever means of conducting the ENUMERATION has been directed by law. This opens the door to using the web to conduct the enumeration, at least part of it.
"In such manner" does not mean "and anything else you want to ask about, no matter how personal or ridiculous".
If the bill changed, then it wasn't the same bill. This has been tried in the courts; they have to make sure there are no differences other than trivial misspellings. Also, it's a revenue bill, because it includes a tax-- and shucks, I guess that's what their argument is for attempting reconciliation!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I am not at all seeing your point. How does A1S2 of the Constitution prohibit asking demographic information?
Did you forget to quote an extra clause which says "and don't ask about race, because that doesn't jive with my preconceived notions of what the Constitution should say, even though it doesn't"?
Once one government agency has some piece of information, you can never absolutely say that no other government agency will ever see it. Ignoring rule breaking, emergency orders, etc. a general "rule of thumb" about census data is that for a certain time period (roughly the average human lifetime) no individually identifiable information will ever be released. The government can and will release aggregate info about the country as a whole, and about individual regions. After the delay period (currently 72 years?) full census data can be released. These releases are where genealogy websites, such as ancestry.com, get their census data. Ancestry.com currently has the full 1930 census. I assume it will get the 1940 census sometime this decade.
Actually, one version originated in the House, and one in the Senate. The Senate didn't start with the House bill, as required by the Constitution.
Note that that particular Constitutional requirement has been generally ignored by everyone for better than a century, since it's a colossal waste of time to do a bill in the House, then redo it in the Senate, then back to the House, then back to the Senate, etc, etc.
In general, this is not a problem. Hell, it's not even a problem in this specific bill.
Though it will be funny as hell if the Senate decides not to pass the Reconciliation Bill. Which will leave the original Senate Bill as the law....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
So much anti libertarian backlash on slashdot these days...
Is it because of the Constitutional challenges to the new 'health insurance regulation' law?
Why the FUCK do they need my phone number? So they can secure some warrentless wiretaps?
Trust, once broken, can NOT be mended. This government broke our trust in this respect when they kidnapped American citizens off to concentration camps.
If this census had come out under Bush, you people would be screaming from the rooftops, but apparently civil liberties don't matter when a Democrat is in office. Let's ask this question: Do you really trust the next REPUBLICAN administration with this information?
good catch. pretty arcane and misnamed process.
and wtf do student loans have to do with health care?
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
Acknowledging race is easy. There's one - 'human'. Many, if not all, of the people interested in more detail than that have an agenda. Your doctor's agenda is predicting your health needs. Your government's is...
Concentration camps, from our history.
No, it doesn't. All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.
According to you, practically every bill passed in the last 200 years would be unconstitutional. Unless you're misunderstanding me -- what I am saying is that the House introduced a bill and passed it, the Senate took up the bill, amended it, and passed it, and then the House passed the amended bill because the House and the Senate must of course pass identical versions of the bill. Usually this is dealt with in a conference between the House and the Senate, but the Republicans blocked this route. Reconciliation, at any rate, is not a new or nefarious tactic -- both parties have done it all the time. There is also very strict limitations on what can be changed with reconciliation; only things exactly relating to the budget may be added or remove, as determined by the parliamentarian (neither Democrats nor Republicans get to decide all by themselves what is allowed under the Senate rules). There's nothing nefarious going on here. Indeed, the opposition to reconciliation completely baffles me. Don't you want the Cornhusker kickback removed?
The House *did* pass the Senate bill verbatim. And that bill is now law. However, there were things in the Senate bill that both the House and the Senate had come to agree after the Senate's passage were a bad idea (such as the Cornhusker kickback). They couldn't be (successfully) renegotiated, because the composition of the Senate changed in the meantime, and any attempt to fix those points would have been fillibustered. So they are passing a much smaller bill of budget-related fixes to particular provisions of the Senate bill under different, budget-specific Senate procedures. In the very unlikely event that the reconciliation bill does not pass, though, the Senate bill as it has already been passed by the Senate and the House and signed by the President stands unmodified as the law of the land.
He does deserve it, as he and his kind prevent others from executing first class mail delivery (thus further denigrating our "free" society). They claim that no-one else can deliver first class mail because it isn't profitable, but if that is the case, why do they enforce the government monopoly with jack booted thugs wearing body armor and carrying submachine guns and automatic rifles? They have used them on children too, when they opened local mail delivery services.
"A census is a counting, found in any dictionary."
Indeed. They are counting people, men, women, children, blacks, whites, hispanics, asians, etc. And obviously the government can't ask you questions that are illegal for them to ask.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
Tangently related: my sister works as a census taker. They're explicitly told to not report any wrongdoing they may encounter. She still does. I hate her for it.
You call it privilege, I call it slavery. We are all slaves to our government. Don't think you are? Stop paying your taxes and see what happens.
We are nothing but modern day sharecroppers on massa's plantation.
You think you own your home? Try not paying your property taxes and see what happens. You are a RENTER.
You think we have free markets in this country? Try opening a business and don't tell anyone from the government, and see what happens.
I could go on and on and on. This country is not free, and hasn't been for a hundred years. This is why our economy is falling into shambles.
These were times that affected SOCIETY at large. What it will not be used for is SIMPLE issues, like murder, theft, illegal aliens, etc.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
when joe public stop making race an issue (or reacting to those that do - and that means any color) then you will stop getting questions asked about it.
While race is still a problem for people those that are in power will want to know why and this is just one way to find out by collecting statistics like this.
I'm hoping against hope, but still have my fingers crossed that this obamacare passage might be a blessing in disguise. Maybe it will open up a REAL debate in the SCOTUS over the 10th amendment and other issues, and could reset some of the Federal powers to where it should be.
I'm not holding my breath, mind you..but trying to think optimistically. I mean, pretty much only something like this could cause a serious challenge and definition by SCOTUS, right?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
In Canada, Statistics Canada is an independent government branch. What this means is that there are rules governing Statistics Canada so that they cannot release data to politicians if that data in any way identifies a particular group or company (many regions have very sparse industry or large monopolies so they are easily identifiable even in aggregate data). So, even if I am the Prime Minister, I cannot ask for and receive information from the Census (or any other of the surveys StatsCan produces) and get the data. I can get aggregated data about trends, etc but nothing that will identify an individual. That is unless the Statistics Act is changed... but then it at least needs to go through the House of Commons for a public vote.
Now for the bad news. Canada is a first-world country with tin-pot colonial laws. All data is technically owned by the "crown". As a citizen I cannot get access to very much of the data StatsCan produces without paying. As an academic researcher I can get somewhat more, but for a lot of surveys I have to submit to a security clearance check and do most of my data analysis in a locked-down RDC (research data centre). Keep in mind that these secure offices only contain the data from surveys with the identifiers removed, and are also often aggregated into larger categories. All government departments have to go through the same process that academic researchers do. In fact, even academic researchers have to sign a contract to become "deemed employees" to gain access because technically the Statistics Act in Canada precludes all data access outside of StatsCan. (Yes, this is a kludge but changing the Statistics Act couldn't be lower on the priority of ANY governing party.)
So there are trade-offs. I suspect a middle-road is the best. You can lock down the data and protect people's privacy but you also risk locking down aggregate data unnecessarily which makes government program development nearly impossible. I think the social sciences in Canada are 3rd rate mainly because peer review of Canadian data is such a pain few researchers bother... How do citizens evaluate their government without good data? You don't. And apparently that's the way the government has always liked it here.
FWIW I'm a Canadian academic. I've also worked at StatsCan.
Medical researchers who would like to know the demographics of an area and how they affect various health issues Demographers who research race/ethnicity and a whole host of things
i could go on, but you've clearly got an axe to grind.
Keep tilting at windmills.
From what I have read and learned over the years, there's no scientific definition of race. Genetically there's no identifiable or significant genetic difference between humans of one so-called "race" and another. As the poster above noted, it's about as useful as eye color or shoe size in terms of classifying human beings for the purposes of real scientific research, although race continues to be widely used in such research. There are plenty of scientists who consider racial categorization to actually be detrimental to getting at real root causes rather than superficial categories of people.
Scientific American had a whole issue about this question a few years ago. From the online summary of "Does Race Exist?" (December, 2003 issue) they note: "Does Race Exist? If races are defined as genetically discrete groups, no. But researchers can use some genetic information to group individuals into clusters with medical relevance."
That is very different from saying that race itself (i.e. parentage or skin color) is useful, except as shorthand for culture or geographic background of a person, and even that is dubious, at best.
That sentence does not actually forbid using census data for other purposes. All it does is say that a census must be conducted every 10 years, and that the method for conducting the census shall follow the laws of the land. It goes on to spell out how that data will be used to determine the number of representatives a state is allocated. However, there is no clause in the constitution that says, "The aforementioned cases encompass all of the uses of the US census data." As such, I invite you to point out specifically what part would you like to change to allow such use of data, since I cannot find a part that disallows it.
When it comes to law, if it is not explicitly stated, there is always some wiggle room.
In context of Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3, the census is only to count free people (perhaps citizens) to allot representatives.
Wake me up when representatives are allotted by race or sex.
The greatest chance the US got to give each citizen a digital cert and should have conducted the census online this would have catapulted this country in technology acceptance way way far from any other country, but alas.. billions spent on paper chase.
Irrelevant. As Madison said, "As a guide in expounding and applying the provisions of the Constitution, the debates and incidental decisions of the Convention can have no authoritative character...the legitimate meaning of the Instrument must be derived from the text itself; or if a key is to be sought elsewhere, it must be not in the opinions or intentions of the Body which planned & proposed the Constitution, but in the sense attached to it by the people in their respective State Conventions where it recd. all the authority which it possesses."
The doctrine that the Constitution should be interpreted according to the "original intent" of the framers is nonsense, since the "original intent" of the framers was that their intent not be used to interpret the Constitution.
Like the other Founders, Jefferson was a criminal, a terrorist insurgent who fought the lawful rule of the British crown. He was also a slave rapist, but that was legal at the time. Law ain't no guide to the right thing to do.
The feds are authorized to conduct an enumeration, not an interrogation. I will be filling in the number of people who live here, and crossing out all other questions; I'd like to see everyone else do the same. If the feds want other data, they can get it by anonymous surveys that give much more privacy protection than their assurances to "trust us."
When government or big business wants your info, it's always best to ask what's it's being collected for, and give only that which is needed to accomplish the legitimate goal. The checkout clerk at the market doesn't need my zipcode to complete our "I give you cash, you give me stuff" transaction, and so he doesn't get it. The feds don't need my family information or home ownership status to do the headcount to divy up Congresscritters, and so they don't get it.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Then I will use TJ's form: 1 slave, 0 free men.
Shades of the Hogwallop boy in Oh Brother, Where art Thou?
"I nicked the census taker."
"Now there's a good boy."
Have gnu, will travel.
I don't see mention of this but I hear you can be fined for NOT filling one out. The other day I got a post card asking me why I haven't filled mine out yet. We'll I haven't seen it to start with.
Yes, damn those Progressives, weakening individual rights by pressing for civil rights, women's rights, and for the Feds to use their Constitutional powers to regulate interstate and international commerce and to impose taxes to provide for the common defense and general welfare in a way that protects American from exploitation.
Here's a hint for you: one can be a progressive and still believe that "citizens are not limited in their freedoms but that government is limited in its powers & scope".
Government is a vector quantity, it has both magnitude and direction; and while fans of unrestrained capitalism would like to see a government that pushes entirely in the direction of making the rich richer and better able to exploit the working classes, progressives want the government to use its power to promote social and economic justice.
That doesn't necessarily mean a bigger government, it means a government that pushes in a different direction.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
In response to the abuse of the census in WWII, the laws were changed to prevent that from ever happening again. What the hell is this anti-census propaganda doing on a tech site?
The reason most of the stuff that has happened since Clinton is that Janet Reno was a kick-ass take no bullshit AG. Ashcroft, on the other hand, was a wimpy ideologue who hide behind lawyers and ran away from anything that was the least bit dangerous. Where Reno is public school educated a chemist, Ashcroft is the son a minister and a lawyer, hiding behind his teaching to avoid military service. Reno was used to getting work done. Ashcroft was used to avoiding work. It is not wonder that New York was attacked six months and 9 days into his tenure, and then ran away when the kitchen got too hot.
The relevant question, rather, is how does it permit it? It authorizes an enumeration. That's a counting. It does not authorize more than that.
I'm willing to grant the feds a lot of leeway to tax, spend, and regulate commerce, under their Constitutional authority. But I don't see Constitutional authority, or a need, to interrogate people about their family or their lives under color of an enumeration to apportion Congressional representation. (If the feds want more demographic information, it can be gathered via anonymous surveys.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
You call it a waste of time, the rest of us call it "due process, preventing knee-jerk reactionism and requiring a collaboration and deliberation of both parts of the legislative branch, giving each power and giving each oversite of the other."
The legislative branch is supposed to deliberate over legislation, not come up with 4000 pages one day and vote it the next. This was a deliberate decision of the founders. Make the process slow, because there are few, if any, real emergencies that couldn't have been dealt with before they became such.
Yes, that means that someone's real bright idea for how to do things better can't be implemented tomorrow, and that's good. It usually turns out that someone's "really bright idea" has problems that need to be solved before it becomes a production system.
It's bad because people who demand "change" will demand "any change" and denounce those who seek the right change because the "right change" will take time. "Good enough becomes the enemy of the right." Or something like that.
The Privacy Act of 2013: the Imperial Government of the American Empire hereby declares the Privacy Act of 1974 invalid. All minorities are to report to death camp. All white males are to report for re education and military training. All women are to report to the nearest white baby farm where they are to serve the dual purpose of pleasing our Christian soldiers and ensuring the next generation.
A lot of crazy shit can happen in a very short time. Germany went from a functioning democracy to Hell on earth in just a few short years. There is no good reason for the government to have this much information about it's citizens. The opportunities for misuse are endless.
At least for the next census he will only have to ask the warden how many inmates are in that wing. They will probably have better information then...
Wasn't there was a necessity to know the count of free vs slave and male vs female due to how those people were counted for votes. Why is it still necessary for the Feds to know anyone's race in the US if it is not to perpetuate racism?
Uncle Sugar knows more about my history than my own family. They don't even care if the form is "lost" every ten years.
In GOD we trust, all others we monitor.
The Census isn't exactly an open source library you can just add the header to and compile into your code. It costs a lot of money (and is not generated by those who pay for it), and the information requested is given to an organization with a record of abuses of privacy. I would much rather answer the questions for X_medical_researcher than for Uncle Sam.
SSC
No where in the Constitution does it state that the government can do whatever it wants as long as it serves some nebulous "government purpose.".
There is over 100 years of case law that says otherwise. I recommend to stop commenting on a subject you know little to nothing about.
Slashdot - The great and glorious cluster fuck of Internet wisdom.
I must say, without census records, I would have had a damned awful time trying to research my own ancestors. The records were instrumental to creating a point from which I could jump and get much more information. Individual records for genealogical purposes aren't released until 80 years after the census, but from 1930 back, I get a great start. There should be better control on what information is released, but remember, what the Census provided (1940/2000's referenced above) was statistical data, i.e. data in the aggregate rather than lists of individuals, which is what it is designed to provide. Perhaps we should have a discussion about what type of data is recorded, maybe race isn't important, but today's census obtains much less data than censuses in the early 1900's. Back then, census takers recorded birth state/nation, parents' birth state/nation, occupation, even records of how many children women had borne and how many were still living. I even found out about deceased baby 3rd-great uncles this way. From a warehousing point-of-view, data needs to be better secured, but from a posterity point-of-view, I want my great-great-grandchildren to have the opportunity to find out a little more about me the same way I was able to find out a little more about my ancestors in the 1870's.
Yes, damn those Progressives, weakening individual rights by pressing for civil rights, women's rights
BZZZT! Fail!
Republicans passed the Civil Rights Act. Democrats were for continued segregation. Please insert another quarter and try again!
Here's a hint for you: one can be a progressive and still believe that "citizens are not limited in their freedoms but that government is limited in its powers & scope".
If you mean "progressive" (small "p") as in describing an individuals' attitude or outlook, then yes. If you mean Progressives, as in the movement that's been around since the '20s and counts Socialists and Communists as ideological brothers then you, sir, are incorrect.
The rest of your post is a class-warfare mini-rant along with the "social justice" and "economic justice" buzzwords that Progressives use as cover for the fact that what they propose is socialist/communist/fascist-style redistribution of wealth by a powerful central government. Which is a type of system that has been tried again and again throughout history without ever once being successful, and in every case has restricted/removed/impeded peoples' freedom.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
I havent mailed mine out as yet, but I put that the host of the house was first, and slashed through everything else, adult spouse for the second, slashed through everything else, a dependent third and fourth, and slashed through everything.
Will mail it Monday....
fine me $100... well worth telling the government to phuck off and get out of my personal life.
If Ashcroft acted like Reno, the leftwing would have called him a fascist. They would have been right too. The double standard is mind boggling.
It is all part of the (R) bad (D) good (or visa versa - Hanity types) mentality.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
This is prohibitively expensive. Many studies in sociology and economics rely on demographic data, which is usually best provided by the census.
I just wish we had yearly data :(
Ha, everything I wrote is the truth.
You can't handle the truth.
Skin color is useful for the evil socialists who look at the average income of a community, the number of tax dollars spent on school and police, the crime rate, the abortion rate, the amount of fast food purchased, or any other piece of information that may be useful to someone, and try to find a correlation between that and race.
But do you think Martin Luther King would have supported turning a blind eye to race? I'm pretty sure that when some people were prohibited from drinking at certain fountains, he noticed what color they were.
Epidemiologists care, but from what I've seen, clinicians are quite divided about that. It's true that race alters one's risk for many diseases. But family history is far more important, and IMHO a person's race isn't going to make any big differences in a differential diagnosis.
Patients don't seem to like being treated differently based on race either. The drug BiDil was a drug approved for black patients specifically, but it wasn't that successful for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the typical patient response of: "That's great doctor, but I'd really prefer the same medication that you give your white patients."
IMHO it's all a moot point. Race isn't biological, it's cultural. Sexual selection and isolation has historically kept certain genetic traits confined within certain races, but increased cultural interaction is rapidly changing how doctors use epidemiology information. It used to be that a US doctor would never see malaria, but with easy travel it's become something that they have to look for. Sickle cell anemia has been found in white patients, and it'd be quite rare to find someone with a "pure" race anywhere in the US (self reported races are getting more and more subjective).
What can we really do with racial information? Say we have a disease that is very rare in blacks. Can doctors be lazy and not even consider looking for it in that population? Can an insurance company say "we'll pay for the diagnostic test in whites, but not in blacks"? And diseases that are considerably more likely in a specific race are quite rare, the difference is usually uselessly minor. It's not like clinicians use Bayesian analysis to diagnose patients and, historically, medical software that uses that approach doesn't work.
Wow. I want whatever census form you got.
I remember doing the census in 2000. It was a small booklet taking about a week of evenings to complete. I don't remember the questions off hand, but I do remember having to do a lot of research. There was a lot more there than the obvious questions of how many people at this address, how old are they, what are their ethnic origins.
And after taking the time to complete and return the census form, I still got a phone call to answer all the questions a second time.
I haven't opened the form for 2010 yet, but I'll make this wager.
When I get home tonight, I'll open my census form. If contains only the 10 questions you list above, I'll post a link to youtube for the video of me eating my census form.
No it doesn't say anything about serving government purposes. It does however say something about the general welfare of the people.
I am white middle class and I got where I am at because of my hard work, work ethic, and personality, not because of my skin color
You keep telling yourself that.
Pull a "Black Like Me", darken your skin, and change your name to "Spike Jenkins" and let's see how well this goes.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
the census didn't have ask whether or not you're a teabagger, so you're probably not going to be rounded up and placed in a FEMA camp.
No, our country is falling into shambles because people believe that we shouldn't have any checks on our Id.
Yes, if I want to be protected by the military, the fire department, the police, take advantage of public parks, schools, public utilities, roads, libraries and other public services, I have to pay taxes. If I don't like it, I will move somewhere where I don't have to pay taxes for roads, schools, fire, police or water and let free enterprise take care of that.
If I want to participate in the market, and sell goods, GASP, I have to show that I'm paying taxes that pay for the roads that deliver my raw supplies or my goods for resell and police to handle crimes that may happen to my place of business. I may also have to prove what I'm selling isn't going to hurt someone through normal use. I may also have to prove that I'm not polluting my neighbor's water supply.
GASP THE FUCKING HORROR.
Move to Somalia you libertard. If you want a "free" market, there you go. It's so free, you're free to get shot in the face for a bag of rice. I hope you enjoy a constant warzone! :D
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
We also prefer encapsulation.
Damn, you shouldn't have your gun registered to the government already. All you're doing is ruining the surprise for the census taker.
The constitution, as written:
The fourteenth amendment:
In other words, it's a constitutional requirement that we count everyone, regardless of citizenship status. (there's no such thing as an Indian not taxed.)
Take a remedial English class, you confuse the word progressive with the word Democrat.
Slashdot - The great and glorious cluster fuck of Internet wisdom.
Failpost is fail.
manner
n.
1. A way of doing something or the way in which a thing is done or happens.
Government may write laws describing HOW the people will be counted. I have no idea how you get that government can ask all kinds of other information.
You seem to have missed the fourth and fifth amendments.
You seem to have missed the first year of law school.
Slashdot - The great and glorious cluster fuck of Internet wisdom.
You know that things would be different for me if I was a minority? I would not be where I am today if I was minority? You are basically directly implying that everyone that is not a minority is a racist or more directly that all whites are racists. Who is the racist in this conversation? Some minorities are brought up being told they will be a victim of racism and that it is a fact of life they must deal with on a daily basis. I am not a minority and I've been in groups of people that made comments about minorities but I have NEVER heard of a decision being made because of race, they were nothing but ignorant comments the same as a group of men make a comment about some good looking secretary or make fun of a POS car someone drives or the fact that some loser is still wearing a members only jacket in 2010. If there is some type of inside secret meetings where racism is discussed at a higher level, I have never been a part of it or witnessed it and I'm 40 years old and have been around. Everyone single co worker I have ever worked with that was fired or let go around me I personally feel was justified because of job performance or because they were the last one in and the first one let go. I KNOW racism happens but it happens both ways people and it is no where near as prevalent as some minorities think it happens.
My first insurance agent office had 10 people working in it, they were all black. The same insurance company but a different agent I have now 20 years later in a completely different part of the county happens to be all white people. They both treat me exactly the same and handle my all of my insurance needs in a professional manner. Is neither, one of them, or both of them being racist and only hiring their own kind? Are you willing to leave a defacto statement that if the opposite race entered each of those agents looking for a job, they would have an equal chance of being hired regardless of race or are you going to assume one of the two is racist and the other is not?
I mentioned neither Republicans nor Democrats. Progressivism, both big- and -small p versions, cuts across party lines: Theodore Roosevelt was a Republican, Woodrow Wilson was a Democrat.
However, you're simply wrong about the major parties and the Civil Rights Act. Democrat LBJ pushed the 1964 Civil Rights act through Congress, after Democrat JFK introduced it, and a majority of both Democratic and Republican Representatives and Senators voted for it. The split was strictly a North-South one. ("South", here, being states once under the control of the terrorist group that styled itself the "Confederate States of America".)
Both Southern Democrats and Southern Republicans were opposed to it, and Northern Democrats and Northern Republicans, in favor. (Though a slightly greater percentage of Southern Republicans opposed the bill, and a slightly smaller percentage of Northern Republicans supported it, than geographically comparable Democrats.)
I invite you to check your facts before you accuse someone of "Fail!" Because now you look like a total ass.
You need to stop getting your history from Glen Beck, friend. The Progressive Era -- big P -- was from the 1890s to the 1920s, it didn't come into being in the '20s. And if you want to label Theodore Roosevelt a commie, well, good luck with that.
I just love the way that right-wing loons have started lumping communists and fascists together, despite the fact that one of the primary attributes of fascism was anti-communism -- fascism was the right's counter-move to the Russian Revolution. It's almost as much fun as the way they complain about people talking about class warfare, while promoting the actual practice of that warfare.
And if you think socialism necessarily implies a powerful central government, you need to read this. (And also have a look at this.) State socialism is not the only form of socialism.
It's capitalism that requires a strong government, to create and defend artificial property rights. Many socialists believe in a small government -- Marx himself, wrong as he was about so much, believed that under his philosophy the state would eventually wither away, unneeded.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
The entire idea that "the only goal of government is to make itself bigger" shows a warped view of the world.
The only goal of government is to serve it's protect - to protect them from threats both foreign and domestic, to help them secure the fruits of liberty and prosperity.
Your "only goal" is just as ridiculous as the first one.
Government has an indefinite number of goals - as dictated by each individual within the government.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I realize there are tradeoffs. But I think filling out the census forms and getting an actual representative for your group is worth more than not filling them out and having no representative in the bad times.
No where in the Constitution does it state that the government can do whatever it wants as long as it serves some nebulous "government purpose.".
There is over 100 years of case law that says otherwise. I recommend to stop commenting on a subject you know little to nothing about.
Wow. The "it says whatever we say it says" big government despots are really out in full force today.
I suggest you read up a little bit on some of that case law. While the SCOTUS has supported some of the power grabs of the federal government over the years, it has also invalidated quite a few of them. Maybe it's wishful thinking, but I'm hoping that they will allow the people to keep enough of their freedoms to keep tyranny from becoming more prevalent.
That said, there is certainly never been a case before the SCOTUS where they claimed that the Feds could create new powers for itself that weren't granted by the Constitution. They may have stretched some of the powers way beyond the original intention, but that's a far cry from claiming that any so-called "government purpose" is completely withing the bounds of the Federal government's authority.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
No it doesn't say anything about serving government purposes. It does however say something about the general welfare of the people.
It doesn't say that, either. The phrase you're referring to talks about spending powers to provide for the "General Welfare of the United States". Nowhere does it provide for welfare for the people.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
In the end, the first U.S. Congress decided on one central principal of that first census: VERIFIABILITY. Each household would be associated with a specific district or ward. Each household would be identified by the name of its head of household. Each household would be thus be able to be visited by Census Bureau verifiers who could verify that the census as reported by the local judicial district was actually accurate. If the roster you got back from the 3rd Ward of Virginia said there was a Howard Mathers in district 3 who had one male, one female, and two children living in his household, you could go to district 3, ask around for Howard Mathers, and verify that he actually had four people living in his household.
The 1850 Census occurred at a time when representation was especially important because the South had already made secession threats and was threatening to inflate their Census counts in order to gain more representation in Congress. In addition, the population had grown such that it was possible for there to be two heads of households with the same name in a judicial district. So the 1850 Census was the first to require not only the name of the head of household, but the names and ages of all members of a household too, which allowed Census workers to uniquely identify which of the households headed by Howard Mathers that they were actually talking to. Census Bureau checkers could then come behind and not only locate the Howard Mathers who had five children listed below his name (as vs. the childless Howard Mathers), but if Howard replied that he only had four children, they could verify which of the children was missing and ask, "What about Jeffie?" At which point Howard says, "Never heard of him", or Howard says, "Oh, yeah, I forgot, he hadn't moved out yet then," or Howard says, "He was living with Aunt Mahoney over in the 5th ward at the time" and the verifier can then update the count accordingly.
So that, in a nutshell, is why the Census has asked for at least the name of the head of household ever since the very first census in 1790 -- it's all about verifiability.
Disclaimer: I worked for the Census Bureau as a contract verifier in 1995 during the Census Test that was validating the forms and procedures to be used during the 2000 Census. And yes, I did find inaccurate data in places, generally from people the original census takers could not find or the original census takers misread an address and put one family at an address they didn't live at while missing the family who actually lived in that address. Verifiability allowed us to correct these errors. Without verifiability, you're stuck with the same nonsense that is computerized electronic voting, where you can never validate that the data actually corresponds to real physical people rather than just being an artifact of computer bugs or hacking...
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
They state several times that your responses will not be shared with law enforcement or any other entity, yet it's illegal to not give a reply. How could they prosecute you if none of the information is shared? OK, maybe they could claim that you shared NO information, so what if you put Mickey Mouse as your name? They'd have to share some aspect of the information in order to fine you ("gave fictitious name"), in which case they break their claim.
Also, why do they need to count every person? Surely they could use sampling techniques to get a count within 1% accuracy but at a tenth or less of the cost. Along with my current utility bill it said something about how over the last 10 years, $X funding was lost for the local county due to an undercount of 16000. How did they calculate this undercount in the first place, and why didn't they just use that method in the first place?
And finally, it's very offensive how on the one hand they are asking for your help in counting, saying it will help you get your "fair" share of government funds (who took them from you in the first place), but then they have these strongly worded "BY LAW YOU MUST REPLY". It's like someone holding you up and pretending that he's politely asking you for a donation. It's extremely offensive; they should just come right out with it, "give us your details or we'll put you in jail" (sure, they fine you, but try refusing to pay the fine).
BTW, to anyone suggesting that you give false answers, that's punishable by an even larger fine than not giving any answer.
Says who?
Says the Supreme Court:
"The Constitution orders an enumeration of free persons in the different states every ten years. The direction extends no further. Yet Congress has repeatedly directed an enumeration not only of free persons in the states but of free persons in the territories, and not only an enumeration of persons but the collection of statistics respecting age, sex, and production. Who questions the power to do this?"
LEGAL TENDER CASES, 79 U. S. 457 (1870)
Well, okay I agree, except that the "working stiffs who just want to feed their families" *ARE* the federal government. If you beef the feds, those are the actual humans who you beef.
You know that things would be different for me if I was a minority?
Yes, because I am one. I'm half Filipino.
I would not be where I am today if I was minority? You are basically directly implying that everyone that is not a minority is a racist or more directly that all whites are racists.
No, I'm saying that the fact that you're white gives you an advantage in the job market where they may prefer to hire whites.
Who is the racist in this conversation?
You are, you've got a problem with identifying the problems your race created.
Some minorities are brought up being told they will be a victim of racism and that it is a fact of life they must deal with on a daily basis.
Because they do.
http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2009/10/05/your-race-affects-whether-people-write-you-back/
Sure, this is dating, but this is just one hell of an example.
I am not a minority and I've been in groups of people that made comments about minorities but I have NEVER heard of a decision being made because of race, they were nothing but ignorant comments the same as a group of men make a comment about some good looking secretary or make fun of a POS car someone drives or the fact that some loser is still wearing a members only jacket in 2010.
Like you're doing? You know nothing about white privilege. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_privilege Yes, it's wikipedia, but it's a good start on the subject.
If there is some type of inside secret meetings where racism is discussed at a higher level, I have never been a part of it or witnessed it and I'm 40 years old and have been around.
Did you go to College? Did you happen to stop by the humanities department and check out the racial studies classes? Sociology perhaps?
Everyone single co worker I have ever worked with that was fired or let go around me I personally feel was justified because of job performance or because they were the last one in and the first one let go. I KNOW racism happens but it happens both ways people and it is no where near as prevalent as some minorities think it happens.
Great. You've got one datapoint but there are millions out there. Look at the data.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
I mentioned neither Republicans nor Democrats. Progressivism, both big- and -small p versions, cuts across party lines: Theodore Roosevelt was a Republican, Woodrow Wilson was a Democrat.
Yes, both were Progressives. Yes, they are and have been in both major parties.
You need to stop getting your history from Glen Beck, friend. The Progressive Era -- big P -- was from the 1890s to the 1920s, it didn't come into being in the '20s.
Glenn who? Sorry, I don't watch TV or listen to talk radio...not sure which this guy is, TV or radio, but I'm assuming here it's one or the other. Sorry if my assumption is incorrect.
I was referring to the period when Progressiveism was discredited and switched labels and co-opted the term "Liberal" as that's when Progressiveism started to truly radicalize.
However, you're simply wrong about the major parties and the Civil Rights Act. Democrat LBJ pushed the 1964 Civil Rights act through Congress, after Democrat JFK introduced it, and a majority of both Democratic and Republican Representatives and Senators voted for it.
Although factually correct, that doesn't put it into context or give credit where credit is due.
During the Kennedy administration, the Republican minority in Congress introduced many bills to protect the constitutional rights of blacks, including a comprehensive new civil rights bill. In February 1963, to head off a return by most blacks to the party of Lincoln, Kennedy abruptly decided to submit to Congress a new civil rights bill. Hastily drafted in a single all-nighter, the Kennedy bill fell well short of what the Republican Party had introduced into Congress the month before. Over the next several months, Democrat racists in Congress geared up for a protracted filibuster against the civil rights bill. The bill was before a committee in the House of Representatives when John Kennedy was murdered in November 1963.
Invoking his slain predecessor, Lyndon Johnson made passage of the bill his top priority, and in his first speech to Congress he urged Representatives and Senators to do "more for civil rights than the last hundred sessions combined". Though he shared Johnson's convictions on safeguarding the constitutional rights of blacks, if Nixon had been in the White House then instead, Democrats in favor of segregation and those unwilling to see a Republican achieve the victory would have blocked his legislative initiative in Congress.
I just love the way that right-wing loons have started lumping communists and fascists together, despite the fact that one of the primary attributes of fascism was anti-communism -- fascism was the right's counter-move to the Russian Revolution.
Socialism, Communism, Fascism, and Progressiveism are all on the extreme end of the scale ranging from anarchy at one extreme to total government control on the other. It's all government control, the exact flavor is relatively unimportant when discussing freedom vs government control.
It's almost as much fun as the way they complain about people talking about class warfare, while promoting the actual practice of that warfare.
Lolwut?
Using class warfare to empower themselves and sway voters has been a staple tactic of the Progressives and Democrats for decades. "Make those rich people PAY! It's not FAIR that they have money and you don't!", never minding that the rich person got that way by working hard, being smart, and oh yeah...along the way creating jobs, adding to GDP, paying taxes, etc. Meanwhile the poor saps that buy into that Progressive line of BS never actually *get* any of the things the Democrats and Progressives promise when they make promises of how it'll all be different when *they* get elected.
And if you think socialism necessarily implies a powerful central government, you need to read this. (And also have a look at this.) State socialism is not the only form of socialism.
Yeah, and? When you've got a working, successful example of a nation where that
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
You didn't get to be middle class because of your hard work, work ethic, and personality. You got to where you are because of a government that protects your physical safety, because of a government that provides roads and infrastructure so that whatever business you're in can flourish, and because of a government that protects you from monopolistic practices by large corporations.
You didn't get to be where you are because of your rugged individualism. You got to be where you are because you were fortunate enough to be born into a society that generally cares for its citizens. You got to be where you are because I, my neighbors, and your neighbors pay our taxes. And now you're trying to destroy the best part of this nation.
If you want a completely free market, completely libertarian society: to each according to their ability, and only according to their ability, move to Somalia or Darfur, but quite fucking up my country.
Wait, which part of the statement you quoted indicates what information is to be collected and to whom it should be made available?
If you're going to quote the Constitution, shouldn't the part you quote actually support your claim?
I suggest you take a remedial reading class, then attend law school (I already have, class of 1992).
The "100 years of case law" is in reference to "do whatever it wants as long as it serves some nebulous government purpose."
You too need to stop commenting on a subject you know little to nothing about.
Slashdot - The great and glorious cluster fuck of Internet wisdom.
It really does contain only that information. They changed the system between 2000 and 2010. Only a small subset of people are given a longer set of questions (to get a statistical estimate of that data); the form that everybody gets is a short form that has very few questions.
Wrong.
I'm waiting for the link - that's the survey I got too. Nothing complicated.
First of all, the Government never follows its own laws. Laws are for the lowly subjects to be bound by, not the government itself. The government itself is not bound by any law, not even the Constitution, which it has pissed on almost since the day it was ratified.
I have not answered the census yet, mainly because of the April 1st thing. But, when I do, they will get the number of people in my household, and that's it.
The relevant question, rather, is how does it permit it?
I'm going to take that rhetorical question as if you meant it as a question to which you were open for an answer, although I suspect you are not. Here is the answer:
The actual Enumeration shall be made ... every ... ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.
The answer to your question lies in that last clause: in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.
That is literally the answer to your question "how does it permit it?". That is how. It's right there in the plain text of the Constitution. And even if it weren't, which it is, it could be pinned under one of the other enumerated powers.
I suggest you take a remedial reading class, then attend law school (I already have, class of 1992).
So you are an admitted liar and thief.
You too need to stop commenting on a subject you know little to nothing about.
Nope. It's still a free country, regardless of you and your compatriots' effort to change that. And you don't know what I know, but you have the obvious I won't argue with you anymore, since you have the know-it-all attitude that the rest of your profession has, when your only real claim to knowledge is how to lie without having any.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
People put more damaging info on their Facebook pages than can be found in Census info...PLEASE! Stop the irrational panic already.
There are various laws which protect minority groups from discrimination. That kind of requires knowing who's in the minority, don't you think?
So what happened if you were a hermit and your neighbors didn't know you and etc.? At that point I was instructed to turn it over to my supervisor, who would then turn in a federal records request that had to go before a special court and resulted in a court order that allowed the Census to pull Social Security records, IRS income tax records, etc. But that never happened during the three months I worked Census, we always got our man, woman, or child :).
So in the end, all you do when you refuse to answer the Census is cost the taxpayers money. A *LOT* of money. I was getting basically $10/hour to go after these "difficult" cases once you added in my mileage charges, and that was in 1995 dollars. If it had to be escalated up to a supervisor and a records request, it cost thousands upon thousands of taxpayer dollars to go through that process. In the end, the government already has all the information that the Census requests... it just costs a lot more money to pull it together from all those vast databases than just asking you on that little form. So you might as well just fill out the friggin' form... it's not as if you're telling the government anything that it doesn't already know, after all. You're just saving taxpayer money, that's pretty much it.
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
> White Male, 30
> I don't have anything to worry about right?
It wasn't just Japanese-Americans that were put in internment
camps, they also put German-Americans in internment camps.
Last time I looked, German-Americans were white.
As I was filling out the Census Form for our household, I asked my roommate the questions. She was absolutely surprised at how short it was, and was full of "so why are people freaking out about this?"
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
The word "enumerate" doesn't mean count. If a test question says "enumerate the causes of the American Revolution," the answer "seven" would be incorrect off the bat, whereas it wouldn't be so if the question was to count the causes.
There's something very important that you're also missing: even if the purpose of the Census was simply to produce an accurate count of people, you cannot produce accurate counts unless you ask for considerably more information than just how many people live in the household. The power of Congress to dictate the manner in which the Census is conducted extends also to adopting methods to make it accurate. Extra questions allow for more statistical checks on the accuracy of the raw survey results, which are inevitably going to have all sorts of errors. The classic one is people getting counted more than once; names and dates of birth allow to reduce that error substantially.
Are you adequate?
"What? You don't like dividing people by races and having seperate laws for people based on ethnicity and endlessly discussing all the ways we're different instead of realizing that we're all the same? You must be a racist! How dare you see everyone as equal! Only racists and extremists are tolerant and peaceful!" - the Southern Povery Law Center
Compare and contrast these "concentration camps" with the Nazi version of "concentration camps".
Germans were soundly rounded up as well. I think the Italians got a free ride in WWII, and God only knows where the Irish were sent. Dubuque, I heard.
(Numbers are approximate.)
Japanese-Americans interned up: 110,000
German-Americans interned: 11,000
Italian-Americans interned: somewhere between 200~400
So, there were only 1:10 Germans per Japanese "rounded up", but then Germans certainly exceeded 100:1 or 1,000:1 to Japanese... this idea that they were "soundly rounded up" is kind of inaccurate. If one were Japanese-American, one were much more likely to be interned. Likely, if one were a German-American (like my grandfather's family, which were 100% German) one were most likely not to be interned at all... or even particularly hassled.
This all being said, I'm 25% pure German blood, speak German fluently, and would rather be a German citizen than an American citizen most of the time. I would likely be one of those Germans rounded up at the time...
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
You were one of the unlucky 10% to receive the 2000 Census Long For Questionnaire (PDF link) ; most people got the Short Form Questionnaire (PDF link). The 2010 Census doesn't have a long form.
Are you adequate?
2010 Census will be short form only--just 10 easy questions.
You chose to answer only the questions you had an answer for that fit your agenda, you conveniently skipped many of my questions and points though. The things you described or attempted to answer could and DO apply in general to how any race typically interacts with itself and with other races, it is not limited in scope to minority or majority like you think it is. Many minorities have tension between other minorities, many people even though of latino decent have tensions between other latinos from different geographical areas. The difference is when another race does it that is not a majority, it is usually considered for pride and unity and generally accepted. Your simple method of breaking it down to majority vs minority is not the problem and racial issues will not get resolved until people realize that. This goes way back to my very first post that questions why race is considered at all in decisions and my theory of why I feel it should not be.
You missed my point you gormless dip shit.
Being brown may not be -negative- in itself but when you've got to compete against a guy who's white who has a social advantage for being white it suddenly becomes a negative.
That's white privilege you asshole. to ignore that race and ethnicity still mean something in this day and age is pretty fucking ignorant and stupid.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
The Constitution says to do it in the manner the law directs. And they are. So what's the problem?
The Constitution requires that people be counted every 10 years according to the law, and the law says "count people, and, if they choose to respond, gather up all this extra information about them to go with that count." From my understanding, no one has to respond to any other question other than the count. And so, I'm confused about where you see a violation of the Constitution.
Learn to love Alaska
It's still a free country, regardless of you and your compatriots' effort to change that.
You are confused. He wasn't threatening you. That's how you and your compatriots work. "You do what I say or I'll attack you" is the standard conservative view. The "liberal" view is "you do what I expect you to do or I'll think less of you." So you added your default threat to the end of his statement and completely misunderstood.
Posting about things you don't understand will have everyone thinking you are an ignorant ass. But no one will actively try to stop you. He wasn't giving you an ultimatum, but friendly advice for not putting your foot in your mouth and looking like an idiot.
However, to him I say, "Too late."
Learn to love Alaska
My biggest problem with the census is that the government is actively trying to include illegal immigrants in the process. My issue with that is that I don't want them counted. They have no right to vote and thus should have no influence on the number of congresscritters each state gets.
The Constitution counts "free persons" (non-slaves). From the Constitution, they don't need to be residents, legal or otherwise. Everyone in the country for any reason should be counted. They count people, not citizens.
I may be wrong, but those that are most against illegals seem to be more likely strict constitutionalists, but yet call for the Constitution to be violated on this point because it's inconvenient.
Is it racism to say that all permanent residents of the country should be here legally? I don't think so.
It is when you hear "illegal immigrant" and think "wetback."
I want to go to Canada but am restricted from doing so because of my criminal record. Hence, I don't go to Canada. I expect the same of everyone else in my own country.
Sucks for you. I wanted to leave the US to live abroad for a while, and I did so without problem.
Learn to love Alaska
It's still a free country, regardless of you and your compatriots' effort to change that.
You are confused. He wasn't threatening you. That's how you and your compatriots work. "You do what I say or I'll attack you" is the standard conservative view. The "liberal" view is "you do what I expect you to do or I'll think less of you."
I think I'm pretty far from anything like a "standard conservative" - in fact I consider myself a classic liberal. But I didn't consider it a threat, just a misplaced directive (from my "betters"?). Insulting nonetheless.
You're right about his view, although I would describe it more as "I don't like what you say, so I'll assume you are stupid and ask you to shut up." And you're probably right that I should have left it alone. It's not the first time I've been baited by simple insults that don't even attempt to make a point. It probably had more to do with being marked a "Troll" for pointing out that the US Constitution preserves most powers for the states and the people.
I guess that idea is history now. I suppose Bush was right when he said "It's just a goddamn piece of paper."
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Well, got home, opened my big envelope, and...
It's not the 3rd degree I got in 2000. Extra pages in case I'm living with the Partridge family, but otherwise just the basic age/sex/race.
I did actual consider eating the census form and posting the video...then I remembered, this is slashdot. I do not give a fark what any of you think of me ;) So no eating of census forms.
But I will admit, the poster I responded to is correct. Very short questionnaire, should take about 1 minute to complete.
Again, I don't see a race question, on my sources, such as this:
And then you like to a site that lists the questions as:
How many free white males age 16 and older.
How many of all other free persons.
They didn't have a blank for "enter race here" but they most certainly ask for race in the form of "white" or "other" for free persons. Not to mention they also asked for age of the males and gender of the free persons. Again, all things that are more information and just about all that's collected now. They just have more options for age and race. Or are you going to argue that asking the question is ok, but having more options somehow makes it unconstitutional?
Not that I'll be listening. Either you are too stupid to see a question that boils down to "Is your race White or Other?" is a question about race, or you are a liar. Either way, you aren't worth responding to other than once in case anyone reading your question doesn't realize you are 100% incorrect.
Learn to love Alaska
And where is the part that dictates the precise content of the Census? Oh yeah, that's left to the discretion of those executing the Census.
Whether they count it or not is their problem, it is the scientifically correct answer, if in abbreviated form. Homo Sapiens Sapiens is the race of all human alive today. There once were other races of humans but all have been extinct for quite some time now.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
I'm not a strict constitutionalist by any stretch. I can think of many ways our countries laws have gone astray because the constitution has not been amended to more clearly reflect what our founding fathers likely wanted. More specifically, we need much much stronger states rights spelled out, and the commerce clause needs a serious reigning in.
Anyway, I'm not against Mexicans specifically. I'm against all types of illegal immigration. I also think it's a travesty that the US has not done what is possible to reduce the harm our insatiable drug demand and unwavering prohibition has done to their country. I only mentioned California specifically because they have the highest number of illegal immigrants of any place in the country.
Here we are full circle, back to the census. The founding fathers felt compelled to not count people who don't pay taxes(see untaxed indians). Although many illegal immigrants pay taxes falsely under other persons social security numbers, many also pay no taxes at all. They don't deserve representation. Their states don't deserve more money.
My view on the felons-cant-vote point brought up by another poster is simple: non-violent felons should be able to vote. They have a closer look at our racially biased and moderately wacky legal and corrections system than anybody else. They should have a right to vote for the people who they believe can make changes to those systems that are beneficial to the system.
For instance, if you let all of the non-violent drug offenders vote, you'd see voter acceptance of drug legalization rise dramatically. It can't be said from one corner of the mouth that all people(legal or not) deserve representation and say from the other corner of your mouth that they can't vote on who represents them. It's logically inconsistent.
For this reason alone, I think the census should make a distinction between registered voters to calculate congressional counts and people to divvy up federal dollars.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Racism isn't under new management. It's still the people that harm others. "Shaniqua" is less likely to get a call about a job as "Jennifer" with identical resumes. It wasn't about "race" but was about taking black-sounding names and white or neutral names and seeing responses. Or that the conviction rate for blacks is higher than whites, even when you correct for the obvious like wealth and history. Blacks are offered fewer opportunities than whites. It's a 0.01% difference that's hidden and hard to see. But when that 0.01% happens every day, it adds up.
I never believe anyone who asserts it's fixed.
Learn to love Alaska
Wow. You're guzzling the GOP Kool-Aid pretty hard -- mainlining it right from The Washington Times, apparently. That's at least a two letter grade reduction for plagiarism. Really, you could at least bother to re-phrase the Republican whining points in your own words.
As for the facts of the matter, JFK was pushing for a meaningful civil rights bill in the Senate in 1960. The idea that he "abruptly" discovered the issue is nonsense. Not to say that there weren't some progressive Republicans who favored civil rights -- I'll certainly give a nod to Eisenhower on that.
Just so long as they didn't breed with whites, that is. According to Tricky Dick, "There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white. Or a rape."
No, they aren't. Anarchists are socialist, as one of the links I've already provided to you explains. And lumping Progressives like Teddy Roosevelt in with fascists is just silly.
No. That's the fantasy. One accumulates vast wealth by a combination of being born into it, by gaming the system, by exploitation, or by luck. Very, very rarely does a person become truly wealthy by talent and hard work.
Bill Gates? Born with a silver spoon, rode IBM's coattails, used criminal business practices and used government-issued copyrights and patent to rake it in. Warren Buffet? Son of a Congressman, got rich not from producing useful goods or services but made his wealth in the form of gambling called the stock market. Carlos Slim Helú? Gamed the deregulation of the Mexican telephone system to end up in control in 90% of its landlines, so that his company can charge some of the highest usage fees in the world.
Meanwhile, the investment class sucks its profit out of the labor of the people who actually do the productive work. The worker creates all the value, the bank, the bondholder, and the stockholder create none -- yet they not only get a cut -- indeed, often the lion's share -- of the value the worker creates, but we set our economic policy for their benefit.
No, we don't. It's a great nation -- hey, we taught the world to rock and roll, and whose bootprints are on the moon? -- but it's not as great as those wearing the flag as a blindfold like to pretend. We have the highest rate of incarceration on the planet. We rank 13th on the human development index, and are well down from the top in the CIFP rights rankings.
The progress we have made, though, is entirely because of those who l
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
No, good sir, what you write is indeed bullshit.
Says Says Scientific American in 2007:
According to the same article, the Census Bureau denied this for decades.
It's true that in response, the privacy of the census was further codified:
After doing some research, it's clear that the Slashdot summary is accurate. If the "summary reads as is [sic] those protections were disregarded in that roundup", it's because they were. I pity the mods that fell for you.
Amazing to a Brit that the Federal Government is so restrained in its interpretation of the constitution. For comparison, here are the questions asked and questions that probably will be asked, by the UK censuses of 2001 and 2011 for England and Wales:
Dwelling:
Usual residence
Household and family relationships
Accommodation type
Dwellings and self-contained accommodation
Number of rooms
Household tenure
Type of landlord
Number of vehicles
Visitor information (new)
Number of bedrooms (new)
Type of central heating (new)
Central heating
Bath/shower and toilet access
Lowest floor level
Individuals within it:
Name
Sex
Date of birth
Marital or civil partnership (new) status
Students in full-time education and term-time address
Country of birth
Address one year ago
Ethnic Group
Religion
Knowledge of Welsh (Wales only)
Health status
Long-term illness or disability
Carer information
Qualifications
Economic activity status
NS-SEC (self-employed, occupation, supervisor status, ever worked)
Industry/name of employer
Workplace address
Transport to place of work
Hours worked
Second residence (new)
Main Language and English Language Proficiency (new)
Month/year of entry into UK (new)
Intended length of stay in UK (new)
Passports held [as a proxy for Citizenship] (new)
National identity (new)
Number of employees at the workplace
PS - all are compulsory and backed by threats except the religion question (which is why Britain officially has a few hundred thousand Jedi). Confidentiality assurances have been greatly eroded for the coming one.
We also hate inappropriate overloading of functions.
this is why i seriously think there should be a constitutional amendment that requires all legislation to be read aloud in both the house and senate prior to the final version being voted on. any senators/representatives not present at the reading should not be allowed to vote.
this keeps 4k page laws that clearly no one has read in its entirety from being passed.
The census form I received had about ten questions and took my wife three minutes to complete. Including the time to walk it back to the mailbox.
Bon apetit!
"If it were unlimited..."
Isn't that how they're acting now? "We do whatever we want while ignoring any rule that gets in our way."
I think the claim is no one else can do it and not cause the USPS to be unable to provide universal mail coverage at a universal price irregardless of geography as they are mandated to do. You're really that upset that there isn't an open market for first class mail service? 44 cents is egregious to you and you think an open market would decrease that enormous 44 cent cost while still providing everyone coverage?
Yea, it's giving up some freedom, that's the whole concept of government. People giving up some freedom in return for civilization. In this case I think most people are more then fine not being able to open up a first class mail delivery company in exchange to knowing the whole country gets mail service, not just the profitable parts, everyone pays a common rate, and the USPS is able to completely support itself without tax money. Seems fair to me. I'm glad they wrote that power into the constitution.
For instance, if you let all of the non-violent drug offenders vote, you'd see voter acceptance of drug legalization rise dramatically.
Bush used cocaine, and Clinton used marijuana. Neither worked on making either legal. They've managed to convince users that safe drugs they've used without problems should be illegal. They may have been ok, but everyone else that uses it becomes a violent murderer.
For this reason alone, I think the census should make a distinction between registered voters to calculate congressional counts and people to divvy up federal dollars.
Whether or not I agree with you, the Constitution is clear. All free persons are counted. That doesn't distinguish between children who can't vote or illegal aliens or anything else (aside from the one specific untaxed indians expemption). In fact, at the time the Constitution was ratified, there wasn't even a concept of an illegal alien.
The founding fathers felt compelled to not count people who don't pay taxes(see untaxed indians).
They felt compelled to separate out people living in an occupied country who may have no representation because that's similar enough situation they just rebelled against. And there's nothing that prevents the law being changed to allow illegal immigrants to vote. The Constitution does much to guarantee the rights of people, and not so much for just singling out what "citizens" get vs "non-citizens." That's a newer nationalistic concept invented to help get the "us vs them" mentality that's so useful in politics at assigning blame to the Jews or whomever and getting elected.
Learn to love Alaska
It probably had more to do with being marked a "Troll" for pointing out that the US Constitution preserves most powers for the states and the people.
Unfortunately, the people that are supposed to defend the Constitution (the Executive Branch, the Legislative Branch, and the Judicial Branch) all agree that the 9th and 10th Amendments mean nothing. Because there isn't anything "specific" in them, they can never be followed or broken, and are thus, meaningless.
If you want to change that, you have to elect people into the Executive that will appoint the proper people into the Judicial and elect the proper people into the Legislative to confirm them so that all three branches will then recognize those Amendments.
Learn to love Alaska
other clauses imply that so long as it isn't prohibited expressly or implicitly then there is no problem
I think you have that backwards. When it comes to the Federal government, anything not explicitly granted to it is reserved to the states.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
Others including the original posting have commented on the historic badness. What we do not know are the historic but unpublished reports generated but hidden and not likely to surface because the result was more focused and did not encounter a political topic that justified a book.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
So it's OK for me to threaten imprisonment of someone for a peaceful activity as long as I won't actually do it (even though I could if I wanted to, without any risk to myself)?
They said the government could do it, they didn't say that no-one else could compete.
... Once both sender and receiver have access to a computer, the marginal cost of sending an electronic message is close to zero.
And that competition thing is BS. The USPS gets bailed out every time they get into trouble.
As to reasons for privatization, Rick Geddes argued in 2000: First, basic economics implies that rural customers are unlikely to be without service under competition; they would simply have to pay the true cost of delivery to them, which may or may not be lower than under monopoly. Second, basic notions of fairness imply that the cross-subsidy should be eliminated. To the extent that people make choices about where they live, they should assume the costs of that decision. Third, there is no reason why the government monopoly is necessary to ensure service to sparsely populated areas. The government could easily award competitive contracts to private firms for that service. Fourth, early concerns that rural residents of the United States would somehow become isolated without federally subsidized mail delivery today are simply unfounded.
You can give up all the freedoms you want, all you have to do is move to North Korea, the civilization capital of the world! Enjoy!
All I can say is, enjoy the reign of the third coming of Bush. I may just take Somalia over that.
And FYI, every vital and important service you listed there is provided by you LOCAL government, except for the military, and our military is not engaged in protecting us from foreign threats, but instead goes about MAKING NEW ENEMIES, and spending our money abroad killing brown people.
Enjoy your Nazi Party redux. People like you will deserve whatever you get, for spitting in the face of freedom, and allowing any horror to be perpetuated, so long as the ones responsible are a member of your party.
Biologically, you are correct. Politically, and the census is a political event, my answer is correct.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Where is your video?