Free Republic

When news broke in September that a census worker had been found hanged in rural Kentucky with the word "fed" scrawled across his bare chest, a number of liberal commentators suggested that anti-government sentiment whipped up by conservative activists had inspired a heinous crime. Now it turns out to have been a suicide, but the mistaken impression of the commentators was no accident. (snip) Shortly after Mr. Sparkman's death, there were attempts to blame the political climate fostered by Fox News commentator Glenn Beck; Rep. Michele Bachmann, Minnesota Republican, and other conservatives. In a blog post from September titled "No...

A U.S. Census worker found dead in a secluded Clay County cemetery killed himself but tried to make the death look like a homicide, authorities have concluded. Bill Sparkman, 51, of London, might have tried to cover the manner of his death to preserve payments under life-insurance polices that he had taken out. The policies wouldn’t pay off if Sparkman committed suicide, state police Capt. Lisa Rudzinski said. “We believe it was an intentional act on his part to take his own life,” said Rudzinski, who helped lead the investigation.

LEXINGTON, Ky., Nov. 24 (UPI) -- A U.S. census worker found dead in Kentucky tried to fake a homicide while actually taking his own life, investigators said Tuesday. Bill Sparkman, 51, had life insurance policies with suicide clauses and apparently hoped to secure the money for his family, Kentucky State Police Capt. Lisa Rudzinkski said. Rudzinski, one of the lead detectives in the investigation, spoke to reporters at a news conference, The Lexington Herald-Leader reported. "We believe it was an intentional act on his part to take his own life," Rudzinski told reporters at a news conference. Sparkman's naked body...

A Kentucky census worker found hanging from a tree with the word "fed" written on his chest killed himself and staged his death to look like a murder, authorities said Tuesday. Kentucky State Police said Bill Sparkman died at the same location where his body was found Sept. 12 near a cemetery in a heavily wooded area of southeastern Kentucky. A man who discovered the body in the Daniel Boone National Forest said the 51-year-old was bound with duct tape, gagged and had an identification badge taped to his neck. Police told a news conference Tuesday that Sparkman was naked...

After a Census Bureau worker was found dead in rural Kentucky in September, liberals jumped at the chance to attribute his death to right-wing extremists whipped into a frenzy by the hate-filled sermons of Michelle Bachmann and Glenn Beck. It turns out the Census employee committed suicide and tried to make it seem like a murder to recoup life insurance payments for his son. USA Today reports that Bill Sparkman "committed suicide and staged his death to look like a homicide." He was not murdered by a government-hating extremist with Fox News prime time cued up on his Tivo. Given...

(AP) A U.S. census worker found naked, bound with duct tape and hanging from a tree with "fed" scrawled on his chest killed himself but staged his death to make it look like a homicide, authorities said Tuesday. Bill Sparkman, 51, was found strangled Sept. 12 with a rope around his neck near a cemetery in a heavily wooded area of the Daniel Boone National Forest in southeastern Kentucky. Authorities said his wrists were loosely bound, his glasses were taped to his head and he was gagged. Kentucky State Police Capt. Lisa Rudzinski said an analysis found that "fed" was...

The U.S. Census Bureau is offering a glimmer of hope to those looking for a job. The agency will be testing applicants on Monday in Porterville to fill 500 positions which will be available in January and the Spring of 2010. Some of the positions offered include; enumerator, crew leader, crew leader assistant, and clerk. The pay ranges from $11.75 per hour to $17.00 per hour. No experience is required. Testing for the positions will take place at the Porterville Library, from 3-5 p.m. The test is said to be a multiple chose test, and is about 30 minutes long....

There is a battle brewing in California, should we count only those who are citizens, or should we count everyone that resides inside of the Glden State. So ponder this. When we take the census in 2010 should we be counting everybody or just U.S. citizens? There are non-citizens and illegal aliens in this country. What have we done in the past and why is it important? First of all just in California if we excluded counting non-citizens we would lose 5 House seats in Congress. Exclude counting illegal immigrants we would lose an additional 2 seats. In 1990 California...

WASHINGTON – Steve Gándola, president and chief executive officer of the Sacramento Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, wants to count all Latinos in the 2010 census, including millions of noncitizens. Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter wants only legal citizens included in the official count. And the Rev. Miguel Rivera, who heads the National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders, wants illegal Latino immigrants to boycott the U.S. census as a way to show their displeasure with Congress' refusal to overhaul national immigration laws. His motto: "No legalization, no enumeration." With the largest Latino population in the nation, California has a...

The new focus of the investigation is a manipulated suicide for the insurance money.

More than 22,000 illegal immigrants with criminal charges or convictions have been arrested in Texas through a 1-year-old program that links FBI and federal immigration databases, Homeland Security officials said Thursday. About 12 percent of them, or 2,700 people, were charged or convicted of what authorities call "level one" crimes such as murder, rape, kidnapping or narcotics violations with a sentence of more than one year. (snip) Under the new system, fingerprints are run simultaneously through a national database to check criminal history and through a Homeland Security database to check the person's immigration status. All those arrested in jurisdictions...

I manage campaigns for candidates I agree with, (right to life, conservative party etc.). I am a political scientist by training and web designer when not engaged in a fight. I am quite familiar with the political game and I know what is going on. In my college years both undergraduate and graduate level I was for some time a committed Marxist of the Stalinist variant. I devoured everything from Marx to Kautsky, Lenin, Gramsci, Guevara, Mao et al. I have a good insight to what the left does and their tactics. Conservatives have unfortunately been checkmated by the left...

Subject: U.S. Census GPS From: Keith H Date: Wed, November 4, 2009 To: Ken Adachi Hi Ken, Found this interesting comment on www.markswatson.com Nov 4 posting. US Census And GPS Mapping Was The Implementation Of A UN Plan - by JK Kelly A great deal of speculation has taken place about the small army of census takers that has been reported GPS mapping individual buildings and residences across the country. A recently discovered UN document reveals the reasons behind this development. It turns out that GPS surveying is not limited to the US alone. UN document ESA/STAT/AC.98/14 (http://www.markswatson.com/globgpsun.pdf) details plans...

Remember the case of the Census worker who was found hanging from a tree with the word ‘fed' scrawled across his chest? You remember - he died at the hands of right-wing commentators and anti-government tea partiers. He was killed because of an overwhelming case of right-wing paranoia. He was murdered by Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Bachmann, and Fox News. Keep this quiet though... While the death of Bill Sparkman was a media sensation for pushing anti-conservative sentiments just a couple of months ago, it is receiving little to no coverage currently. Why? Because, as investigators have recently speculated,...

WASHINGTON – Senate Democrats have blocked a GOP attempt to require next year's census forms to ask people whether they are a U.S. citizen. The proposal by Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter was aimed at excluding immigrants from the population totals that are used to figure the number of congressional representatives for each state. Critics said Vitter's plan would discourage immigrants from responding to the census and would be hugely expensive. They also said that it's long been settled law that the apportionment of congressional seats is determined by the number of people living in each state

WASHINGTON – Investigators probing the death of a Kentucky census worker found hanging from a tree with the word "fed" scrawled on his chest increasingly doubt he was killed because of his government job and are pursuing the possibility he committed suicide, law enforcement officials told The Associated Press. Two officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case, said no final conclusions have been made in the case. In recent weeks, however, investigators have grown more skeptical that 51-year-old Bill Sparkman died at the hands of someone angry at the federal government.

The "straw-dog" that comes out of the liberal circles is asking people if they are in the US legally during the census is a horrible act of racism. In actuality it is simply an attempt to guarantee all US Citizens the right to equal representation in Congress and equal access to Congressional funds and programs. As set up by the constitution, the purpose of the US Census is to determine the amount of congressional representatives each state receives Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective...

Sen. David Vitter's bid to require the 2010 Census to ask all respondents about their citizenship was killed today when the Senate voted to invoke cloture and end debate on the Commerce spending bill without having to consider the Louisiana Republican's amendment. The Democratic leadership, which had been trying to block the Vitter amendment since early October, eked out a victory with the bare number of votes needed to invoke cloture, prevailing 60 to 39. Vitter's Democratic colleague, Sen. Mary Landrieu, who had been caustic in her criticism of Vitter's measure, voted with the majority. Vitter intended the citizenship count...

Surprising Census Statistics Bethany Stotts, November 4, 2009 In terms of payroll, states and local governments faced larger escalating costs from the education sector than from corrections in 2008, according to data released by the U.S. Census Bureau. “The payroll for state governments rose by 5.3 percent ($937 million) in 2008,” stated a recent Census Bureau news release. “Among the functions with the largest increases in payroll were education ($464 million) and corrections ($113 million)” (emphasis added.) In addition, the number of education workers at the state and local level dwarfs the number of public prison and hospital staff. The...

I have just received the American Community Survey form from the Census Bureau. This is the replacement for the 2010 long form and is being given randomly to a certain number of households. My knee jerk reaction was to chuck it and wait for my official Census Form to come in order to only give my name, rank, and serial number. However, I started looking at what my answers to the questions would be (ie. Caucasian, US citizen, Suburban driving, self-employed professional, non-grandchild rearing, enabled not disabled) and started to think maybe my lifestyle needs to be counted. What do...

I just got the American Community Survey in the mail earlier this week. I was curious if any FReepers have actually filled this out or had any related dealings with the Census people. Personally, it reads as a huge invasion of privacy, and I'm leaning towards not filling it out. Other than my Constitutional requirement to participate in the Census every 10 years, I don't feel any obligation to disclose anything further. So, any help from my FRiends out there would be much appreciated.

Thursday, October 29, 2009 More Census: While Dems Block Citizenship Question, the Mexican Government Urges Mexicans To Participate   [Andy McCarthy] I recounted earlier this morning that Democrats are trying to block a requirement that the census inquire whether respondents are American citizens.  At the same time, the Mexican government is interfering in our census by urging Mexican nationals to get themselves counted so they can grab bigger slices of hundreds of billions in social welfare spending — i.e., the redistribution of wealth from taxpaying American citizens to Mexican immigrants — legal and illegal.Check out this story in the Spanish...

Washington, DC – virtually the entire Louisiana delegation is putting pressure on Louisiana US Senator Mary Landrieu in connection with the Census-Illegal Alien amendment that has brought Louisiana Senator David Vitter back into the national news. Today, Congressman John Fleming joined Senator David Vitter, Congressmen Rodney Alexander, Charles Boustany, Bill Cassidy, Charlie Melancon and Steve Scalise in sending a letter to Senators Mary Landrieu and Harry Reid asking them to allow the Vitter-Bennett Amendment to be voted on. The amendment, number 2644, is to the Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations bill and would require next year’s census to ask a single question on...

The Vitter amendment would require the Census Bureau to ask questions about citizenship and immigration status as part of the 2010 decennial census, brining with it serious implications about a variety of issues. Census data will be used to “apportion” Congressional seats to each state. If non-citizens are used for purposes of Congressional apportionment, nine states with lower illegal immigration and lower foreign-born populations would end up losing a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, while four states would pick those seats up.The implications are that the inclusion of non-citizens for purposes of House apportionment would reduce, or dilute,...

It’s as old as the Bible, the taking of a census. The ancient Romans did it. Medieval England did it. It’s written into our Constitution that a census be conducted once every 10 years, and yet, every 10 years, the idea of the government counting the population breeds varying levels of controversy, fear and suspicion. Which, in a way, is normal; distrust of intrusive government is encoded in the American DNA. “We’ve been doing this 200-odd years,” says census historian Margo Anderson, “and every decade, there is some issue with the census. Because it’s a fairly rare event, when the...

The "straw-dog" that comes out of the liberal circles is that asking people if they are in the US Legally during the census is a horrible act of racism. In actuality it is simply an attempt to guarantee all US Citizens the right to equal representation in congress and equal access to congressional funds and programs. As set up by the constitution, the purpose of the US Census is to determine the amount of congressional representatives each state receives Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their...

FORT LEONARD WOOD, Mo. (Oct. 15, 2009) — While Waynesville and Saint Robert officials said Wednesday they expect annexing Fort Leonard Wood’s on-post housing areas will help attract new development by substantially boosting their Census 2010 population statistics, post officials aren’t yet able to give solid estimates of how many more people would actually be added to the two cities by the proposed annexation. However, it’s very unlikely that even the highest estimates of increased population would bring the populations of either Waynesville or St. Robert up to the level of Lebanon or Rolla, the closest cities on the I-44...

FORT LEONARD WOOD, Mo. (Oct. 16, 2009) — City officials in Saint Robert and Waynesville believe annexing the housing areas of Fort Leonard Wood would help the cities attract new businesses while not requiring military personnel to pay more taxes or requiring the cities to provide more services to their new on-post residents. However, calculating precisely how many people would actually be brought into the new city limits isn’t easy. Fort Leonard Wood officials released estimates Friday morning of how many housing units are available in three main categories of on-post housing with a total of 21,250 available bedrooms in...

FORT LEONARD WOOD, Mo. (Oct. 15, 2009) — In a bid to increase Census 2010 population statistics for Waynesville and Saint Robert, officials from those two cities announced Wednesday that they plan to seek voluntary annexation of housing areas on Fort Leonard Wood so both cities will have a larger population and be more attractive to potential developers. “A while back, I kind of alluded to something that was in the works,” said St. Robert City Administrator Alan Clark at Wednesday’s monthly lunch meeting of the Waynesville-St. Robert Chamber of Commerce. “I pray to God this thing comes to fruition...

THERE ARE SERIOUS problems with the administration of the U.S. census. Americans have good reason to be wary of the stranger’s knock on the door. Unfortunately, anything critics say about the federal census can and will be used against them in the court of left-wing opinion. First, the disturbing news about the government’s most recent census travails: According to a new General Accounting Office report, botched fingerprinting by ill-trained employees led to the hiring of some 36,000 census workers with insufficient background checks. “More than 200” of those workers may have had serious criminal records, according to the GAO. The...

The head of the Census Bureau said Tuesday that the number of convicted criminals who were hired to check home addresses this summer is probably fewer than the 200 estimated by the Government Accountability Office. Robert Groves said the bureau is trying to determine whether it is feasible to require a second security check on job candidates whose fingerprints cannot be read the first time they are run through the FBI database. The bureau is spending $100 million this year checking fingerprints, the first time it has done so for temporary workers. Last week, the GAO said it estimated that...

What question do I have to answer during the Census?

The upcoming 2020 Census comes with a mega-budget for advertising to media companies to encourage citizens to participate – but some media companies may be banned if the Obama-run Census Bureau has its way. The Census Bureau’s web site details its planned media offensive “in order to inform everyone about the 2010 Census and its importance, the U.S. Census Bureau has developed an integrated communications campaign (ICC) that includes paid media, earned media, a national partnership program and the Census in Schools program.”

On the website of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) from Obama's U.S. Census Bureau Director, Robert Groves, can be found. That press release appears to make obvious that the Bureau plans to count illegal aliens in our census. The press release was issued to America's Hispanic organizations to urge them to help with the coming census. In that press release, Groves says the following (my bold): We have the enormous challenge of convincing everyone in the country to participate in the national count - regardless of race, ethnicity or citizenship status. To reach the Latino community, we are counting...

(Hard copy title--"Census officials: It's only about the numbers"--subtitle SHOULD be: "or How many red flags can YOU count in this article?!) Until she retired last year, my mother was an interpreter for the U.S. Census Bureau. Every month or so, she would accompany a census worker to homes where Spanish was the main language spoken. Like so many Mexican-Americans of her generation, she's completely bilingual but prefers to speak in her mother's language. What she found many times during home visits with census workers was, unfortunately, a mountain of distrust, fear and misinformation. Chief among the unspoken concerns among...

The full Senate this week is expected to resume its consideration of the fiscal year 2010 appropriations bill that funds the nation's immigration court system and reimburses states for the costs they bear in incarcerating criminal aliens.  When it does so, the Senate will be faced with a vote on an amendment offered by Senator David Vitter (R-LA) that would force the Census Bureau to inquire about the immigration status of every person in the United States as part of its 2010 decennial census.  The Senate also this week could be faced with votes on making the E-Verify program permanent...

While there may have been a collective sigh of relief across America after the news that the Census Bureau severed ties with ACORN, it made me wonder who other Census partners were. In short, ACORN or not, the 2010 census will be an organizing tool for the American Left. Here is a partial list of other census partners, according to the Census website: AARP A. Phillip Randolph Institute AFL-CIO American Federation of Government Employees AFSCME American Federation of Teachers Coalition of Labor Union Women Coalition of Black Trade Unionists Community Action Partnership Families USA International Brotherhood of Teamsters Labor Council...

Why does this sound so familiar? A Senate Subcommittee hearing today revealed that nearly 36,000 Census Bureau employees were hired despite the fact that the fingerprint component of their criminal record checks was botched. Despite additional name checks recommended by the FBI, the GAO said that it was possible that more than 200 employees hired by the Census Bureau had criminal records, and were in contact with the public while canvassing for the ongoing 2010 census.

Census Director Robert Groves is a by-the-books statistician, but he recently made a heartfelt plea to a congressional subcommittee: If politics taint the census, "we're in deep trouble ... as a Census Bureau, as a census and as a country." Days later, politics were back in the forefront when that panel's ranking Republican came to Chicago to urge the census officials to end a partnership with the Service Employees International Union, which has traditionally backed Democrats. Partnering with the union "undermines the integrity of the census," said U.S. Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina. From ACORN to illegal Immigration, the...

History is not an easy subject. It takes decades, sometimes hundreds of them, for historians to come to a full understanding of what happened in any particular era. Sometimes, in fact, the truth is lost forever and only conjecture is left for the living to ponder. Still, it takes long, hard study and painstaking detective work to ferret out what really happened in the past, even the recent past. Consequently, history isn't something that your average journalist should attempt. This maxim couldn't be proved out better than by a recent effort by Eve Conant of Newsweek. Conant so badly garbled...

On the heals of a congressional vote to de-fund ACORN, U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) is calling on the U.S. Census to sever all ties to Illinois' largest union, the Service Employees International Union, because that union, Kirk says, is too close to ACORN.

For the first time, the decennial census will be distributed in the two languages to 13.5 million households in predominantly Spanish-speaking neighborhoods. Latino advocates hope the forms will lead to a more accurate count by winning over the trust of immigrants who are often wary of government and may be even more fearful after the recent surge in immigration raids and deportations.

Americans have tamed their wanderlust during this recession, according to the latest data released by the U.S. Census Bureau. Only about 2.4% of Americans moved from state to state in 2008, down from 2.5% the previous year. "The mobility rate is lower than it has been in years," said Robert Lang, a demographer with Virginia Tech University. "There's a recession and a housing bust. People can't sell their homes in California and move to Las Vegas or sell their condo in Florida and move to North Carolina." "People are hunkering down, trying to hold on to what they have," added...

Most of the mobile homes in the U.S. are located in the south, where land is more plentiful, the weather is warmer, and rural poverty is higher. The region is home to over 56% of the mobile housing units in the U.S., according to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2008 American Community Survey data released Monday. Specifically, two cities outside of Jacksonville, Fla., had the country's highest concentration of mobile homes, which are generally about 12-feet wide and include a kitchen, a living and dining area, and one or two smaller bedrooms. While mobile homes make up only 6.17% of the...

BIG CREEK, Ky. (AP) - A part-time census worker found hanging in a rural Kentucky cemetery was naked, gagged and had his hands and feet bound with duct tape, said an Ohio man who discovered the body two weeks ago. Jerry Weaver of Fairfield, Ohio, told The Associated Press on Friday that he was among a group of relatives who discovered the body of 51-year-old Bill Sparkman on Sept. 12. "The only thing he had on was a pair of socks," Weaver said. "And they had duct-taped his hands, his wrists. He had duct tape over his eyes, and they...

BIG CREEK, Ky. (AP) -- Authorities said a U.S. Census worker died by asphyxiation but were releasing few other details about the mysterious case nearly two weeks after Bill Sparkman's body - with the word "fed" scrawled on the chest - was found hanging from a tree near a family cemetery secluded by Appalachian forest. The word appeared to have been written with a felt-tip pen, Clay County Coroner Jim Trosper said Friday.

Online Conspiracy Theorists Latch Onto Census GPS Units

The FBI is investigating the hanging of 51 year old census worker, Robert Sparkman. Sparkman was found hanging in a remote wooded area of west Kentucky in Clay County with the word “FED” scrawled on his chest. I was reading about this case this morning and of course, the thought came to mind that “right winged” extremists would be blamed for this event. I mean, geez, there is so much hatred for those who oppose the take over of America and “fundamentally transforming” America into a European style Socialist country that, of course, when a dead fed is found that,...

MANCHESTER, Ky. (AP) - When Bill Sparkman told retired trooper Gilbert Acciardo that he was going door-to-door collecting census data in rural Kentucky, the former cop drawing on years of experience warned: "Be careful." The 51-year-old Sparkman was found hanged from a tree near a Kentucky cemetery and had the word "fed" scrawled on his chest, a law enforcement official said Wednesday, and the FBI is investigating whether he was a victim of anti-government sentiment. "Even though he was with the Census Bureau, sometimes people can view someone with any government agency as 'the government.' I just was afraid that...

MANCHESTER, Ky. – When Bill Sparkman told retired trooper Gilbert Acciardo that he was going door-to-door collecting census data in rural Kentucky, the former cop drawing on years of experience warned: "Be careful." The 51-year-old Sparkman was found hanged from a tree near a Kentucky cemetery and had the word "fed" scrawled on his chest, a law enforcement official said Wednesday, and the FBI is investigating whether he was a victim of anti-government sentiment. "Even though he was with the Census Bureau, sometimes people can view someone with any government agency as 'the government.' I just was afraid that he...