James O’Keefe Takes on the Census

Liberty Juice ^ | 06/03/2010 | Chris Bounds

[ChrisBoundsTX]

James O’Keefe is back! You may remember him as the man who brought down ACORN last year. His latest target is the U.S. Census Bureau, where he exposes Census supervisors encouraging workers to fill out time cards fraudulently, wasting taxpayer money.

O’Keefe made a name for himself as a skillful investigative journalist when he did what nobody else could do – take down ACORN. He went undercover as a pimp along with Hannah Giles, who posed as a prostitute, and used a hidden camera to film his experience with ACORN officials in six cities across the nation. When the videos were released, Americans were shocked to learn how ACORN officials gave him advice on how to evade taxes with regard to their intentions to engage in tax evasion, human smuggling and child prostitution. The videos became an instant internet hit, and caused Congress to promptly cut off government funding to ACORN. Many other state and federal government agencies took investigative and punitive actions.

O’Keefe has now turned his attention to the U.S. Census Bureau, where he found evidence of fraud that could amount to millions of taxpayer dollars being wasted every day. On Wednesday, O’Keefe released the video and details of his Census undercover operation in New Jersey, where he worked as a temporary employee. In the video, O’Keefe caught four supervisors encouraging Census workers to forge their work hours on their time sheets:

"Over the course of two days of training, I was paid for four hours of work I never did. I was told to take a 70 minute lunch break, was given an hour of travel time to drive 10 minutes, and was told to leave work at 3:30pm. I resigned prior to doing any data collection but confronted Census supervisors who assured me, “no one is going to be auditing that that level,” and “nobody is going to be questioning it except for you.” Another Census supervisor only said he’d adjust my pay after I gave him a letter recanting my hours."

In his blog post, O’Keefe went on to say that “whether this is an “isolated incident” or if there are more Census videos showing more waste, fraud, and corruption, we’ll let you take a wild guess.”

I actually did not have to guess because another video surfaced showing the exact same Census fraud. Shaughn Adeleye, posted the video and details of his undercover operation in a Louisiana Census office. In his video, Adeleye shows supervisors encouraging the same time sheet manipulation that O’Keefe exposed. So much for being isolated.

What does a few extra hours on time sheets amount to anyway? Well, there are reportedly over 600,000 Census workers. Although the hourly pay is different depending on location, the average pay is likely between $16-18 per hour (O’Keefe was paid $18.25 per hour). If just one hour a day (12% of the work day) is wasted at $16 per hour, that amounts to $9,600,000 of taxpayer money put to waste – PER DAY!

This kind of condemning evidence is exactly what is needed to bring down the culture of corruption that has been building for decades. It does not come without costs though. People like O’Keefe and Adeleye have stuck their necks out very far to shed light on corruption and incompetence within the government and government sponsored organizations (ACORN is one of many). O’Keefe mentions some heat he has received in effort to bring evidence like this and ACORN to the surface:

"The government took our camera, so I bought another. The government put us in jail and deleted our tapes, but we got out and we’ll just make more. My travel was restricted to the state of New Jersey, so that’s where I got back to work. The media establishment is busy doing character assassinations on my friends and me but time and truth is on our side. Congress answered to our ACORN videos, now it will be up to the Department of Justice to explain why it edited out of a press release their admission we had no intent to tamper with Senator Landrieu’s phones. More importantly, it will be up to the Census Bureau to explain why their supervisors are systematically falsifying time sheets."

More Americans need to follow their lead. Corruption, dishonesty, waste and abusive power are the enemies of liberty and they cannot withstand the power of sunlight. Just as O’Keefe stated, we are the sunlight. There are definitely risks involved, but ultimately the truth always prevails. Do your research, act lawfully, but help expose evil where it stands by getting out the truth.

(I posted both James O'Keefe's and Shaughn Adeleye’s video on the site: http://www.libertyjuice.com/2010/06/03/james-okeefe-takes-on-the-census/ )

[randog]

I worked for the Census in 1980, back in high school. There were a couple of African grad students that created bogus employees on paper and had their paychecks sent to them. Quite exciting when the US Marshalls stormed the building and rounded them up.

[ChrisBoundsTX]

Wow - I’m sure that was pretty interesting. That was back when the feds cared about the rule of law though.

[humblegunner]

“I posted both James O’Keefe’s and Shaughn Adeleye’s video on the site”

And I’ll post them here, for folks who don’t wish to visit a blog:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zJ04AWn-5w&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjKvIzx11cA&feature=player_embedded