CABL Forum - US Census... Take Count!

The best I've read so far..

Robert M. Groves
Director, U.S. Census Bureau
Washington, D.C.

Dear Mr. Groves:

Thank you for your kind letter of March 8th telling me that
you will be sending me a Census
form in about a week. It made me wonder, do you also send
your employees emails giving
them a "heads up" that you'll be sending them future emails?

I will have plenty of time to wait in eager anticipation of
your census, as I am currently
unemployed. Since you are into numbers, you might be
interested in knowing that 4 million
Americans have become unemployed over the last 18 months or
so. That's a lot of people
waiting for your census! Of course not every job market is
suffering; the Federal government
has added about 55,000 jobs during this same timeframe!
That stimulus bill has really done a
number on us, hasn't it?

I know this is a really busy time for you, but perhaps you
will humor me by answering a few
survey questions:

? How does it cost $14 BILLION to count 350 million people?
That's $40 per person. Did
you think about bidding this out to a private company? I'll
count everyone in my town for
$25 per person. Please send me $250,000 and I'll send you
back the information (care to
guess how many people live in my town?). I'm also willing
to do a few surrounding towns
if you want.

? Are you really hiring 800,000 people to conduct this
count? Is this really just a government
plot to temporarily reduce the unemployment figures for two
months? Each new hire only
has to count 437.5 people? I could do that in one morning
and be done!

? Why did you think you needed a Super Bowl ad to tell
people about the Census? Never
mind, I guess that's obvious since you think you need to
send me a letter to tell me that you're
going to send me a letter.

? Is it true that every person identified could be "worth"
$1,000 in Federal government aid,
prompting cities and counties to aggressively seek out and
count illegal residents in their area?

? How many Acorn activists are working on the Census? Are
you comfortable hiring people
from an organization that is facing charges of voter
registration fraud?

? The census form only has 10 questions, so why are two of
them focused on race? Instead
of asking me if I'm Hispanic and THEN asking my race, you
could pretty much just add
Hispanic to the race question. ¿Entiendes?

Don't get me wrong, I really appreciate your letter. It is
a stark reminder of how wacky and
over-blown our government has become. I only wish you were
doing this survey in October
so we'd be even more energized for the November elections,
if that is possible. Of course,
you and the other folks in the bureaucracy are not elected,
so it doesn't matter to you who is
elected. Your jobs are safe since the bureaucracy goes on
forever, always growing to support
the never-ending 'entitlements' that our elected officials
enact so that each can be re-elected
or his/her political party can remain powerful.

Good luck with your census - we're all counting on you!

PS I got your post card this week reminding me to send in my
form. Just for fun, next time you write, tell me how much you have
spent on
postage so far. I know to you it's free but we citizens are paying for
it.

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US Census... Take Count!