Obama has ordered that the 2010 census be moved from the jurisdiction of the Commerce Dept., where it has always been, (and whose new head is BO's token Republican cabinet member) to the White House and Rohm Emanuel. The Commerce Dept. has always counted actual people; Dems think that is a waste of time and that they can "estimate" how many people are there, and where they are. He has done this in his 1st 20 days. The implications are huge, and it is frightening that it is going to be politicized. Obviously this will greatly benefit the Democratic Party. I hope Republicans have enough guts to call him on this. I wait for the obvious suspects to reply with "What's the big deal?"
Only a big deal if Rove was in the White House. With Rahm and Obama, why worry? Obama would never politicize the census.
The big deal is that Republicans want to count only those who are homeowners driving Mercedes automobiles who fill out the forms in English and make over $500,000 per year, which after all is not very much money. These figures are used for redistricting purposes, so if we actually knew about every single person, or estimated their actual numbers instead of the traditional underreported numbers, there would be more Democratic state and federal congressional districts. Did I get that about right?
The big deal? Well, instead of having an "independent" census taker, we now have a politician in charge of determining how many U.S. Representative seats each state will have, how much gov't money each state will get (a lot is allocated based on population), etc. The "method" of census taking is now statistical vs. an actual head count. But, what "method" is used is now secret, and controlled by the President. Before, it was public record and very much open. In effect, we now have a President who is taking unprecedented steps to ensure his party maintains power in D.C.
The census is used for lots of purposes, not the least being to use when redistricting Congressional districts. The number of electoral votes each states gets is based on the census. These directly affect elections. Federal Aid is often based on the census. With WH oversight, there will be no one held accountable for the number of American citizens and legal aliens versus the illegal people. (I don't trust the WH one bit on this - it is strictly a political move.)
Accurate, Please explain how Republicans prevent people from being counted under the current counting model.
from the link: The White House took a small step back from what the senior official told CQ, releasing a statement late Thursday that couched the relationship between the Census Bureau director and the West Wing as one in which the director would work with the high-level officials rather than report directly to them. “By circumventing the secretary of Commerce’s oversight of the Census Bureau and handing it directly to a political operative such as Mr. Emanuel, you are severely jeopardizing the fairness and accuracy of the 2010 census,” Issa and McHenry wrote. Issa and McHenry bitching about something that White House said is not going to happen. Nice.
Good. So if Bush had put Rove in the chain of command for the accuracy of a census, you would have said no big deal? Just checking.
do we even have a constitution anymore or have we officially become a socialist republic. giving this duty to rahm, the left's version of karl rove is kind of laughable. did obama change the law about this specifically being the duty of the department of commerce? wasnt obama a consitutional scholar? what a joke this administration has become.
If you read the link the " White House " did announce that the hard of the census would report directly to the White House, Only aftr CQ and others complanied did they do their usual back pedalling. Which time did they lie? btw so far MSM has not reported this. why not?
I think it'd be great fun if every Obama initiative came straight out of Sorkin's West Wing. How do y'all feel about a ~15k troop peacekeeping force in Gaza/WB, assassinating a high ranking official from middle eastern nation who sponsored terror, and the tapping of a Houston-area politician (who didn't go to UT - he went to Annapolis - but did do the hook'em on screen) by a staff member to run for and win the presidency?
If this is about attempting to bring back sampling, this is a GOOD move. Remember this about 10 years ago? Who cares about the truth? Nobody argued against the claim that sampling is more accurate. Sampling is mathematically provable to be more accurate than a true census given our best methods of counting.
Oh yea. I'm sure they will estimate a little more for the Blue states and a little less for the red states.
