“3/18/2010, 2:06pm EST”
When Paranoia is Unjustified: The U.S. Census
Paranoia isn’t always unjustified. For example, it’s a very safe bet that corporations will do whatever harm to others if it pads their profits and if they believe they won’t face unduly costly consequences.
But paranoia about the U.S. Census is utterly ridiculous. I just filled out my form. It asks for number of people in household, first/last name, date of birth, and race/ethnicity. The delusional paranoids who won’t answer any question except for the first — how many people are in the dwelling — say it’s because they read the law as requiring an answer only to that question, and don’t want to give the government more information than legally necessary.
Guess what? The government already has all the other information. I love how the same people who don’t want to fill out their U.S. Census form also believe Barack Obama is illegitimate because they don’t believe he has a valid birth certificate like they do — and, by the way, EVERY BIRTH CERTIFICATE HAS ALL THAT INFORMATION AND MORE, AND THE GOVERNMENT CAN ALREADY ACCESS IT.
But that won’t stop the truly nutty among us. Congressperson Michelle Bachmann (Ridiculous-Minnesota) claims the census questions have become “very intricate, very personal” — which I’ll grant her, but only because she probably couldn’t handle a 1st grade math test. (What I won’t grant her is her fear of the imagined Census influence of community organizing group ACORN.) Ron Paul fans are trying to bone up on the law to see how much they can legally refuse to fill out. Coincidence Theories, a blog in the same vein as Bachmann and Paul, has a post about “GPS Jamming to thwart your local, friendly Census worker.” (And the comment section of their post honoring Bachmann’s vow of refusal is quite amusing.) The mother of all conspiracy whackjobs, Glenn Beck, has chimed in as well.
That said, I hope these Tea Party-type morons, as they are concentrated in redder states, refuse to respond to the census properly, as some have promised. It’d mean less representation for the delusional, and that would be a bonafide blessing to the sane of the world.
Update: Turns out that Michelle Bachmann quietly reversed her census position when the Minneapolis Star-Tribune pointed out that her congressional district — and therefore her job as a U.S. Representative — could plausibly be liquidated into other districts if enough constituents didn’t fill out their forms.
A truly principled person would have faced liquidation head-on, but a threat to her personal career and power — and to her own out-sized ego — seems to be the one thing that could have gotten her to switch.
Never leave home without it.
