Posted on 03/15/2006 12:07:15 PM PST by hocndoc
While the Patriot Act and NSA wiretapping have received enormous attention and criticism from the mainstream media, another federal agency has been quietly gathering far more personal information about Americans than those laws ever can. And this unreported project affects thousands more people.
Our inquisitive federal government has been demanding that selected U.S. residents answer 73 nosy questions. They are threatened with a fine of $5,000 for failure to respond.
When I first heard about this from a reader in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, I thought it might be a joke or an anomaly. But when another in Ishpeming in Michigan's Upper Peninsula received the same questionnaire, I realized something is going on nationwide.
These nosy questionnaires come under the friendly name "American Community Survey." But this is not a Gallup or a Harris poll; the interrogator is Big Brother Government with the power to compel and computerize your responses.
The Constitution authorizes the government to take an "enumeration" every tenth year in order to reapportion the seats in the U.S. House to accord with the "respective numbers" of each state's population. The Constitution thus authorizes a count of persons; it doesn't authorize the government to find out with whom you share your bed and board.
Beginning only in 1960, the ten-year census-taking significantly changed. The government began sending a long form with many questions to a limited number of persons, randomly selected, and a short form with only six questions to all other U.S. residents.
The government is now jumping the gun on the 2010 census, and without public announcement is already sending out an extremely long form, starting with a few thousand mailings each month to a handful of residents in widely scattered small towns that don't generate national media. Recipients can't find neighbors who received the same mailing, so it's difficult to avoid the impression that the project was planned to avoid publicity and citizen opposition.
The one filling out the new long form is labeled "Person 1." That person is required by law to list the name of every other person in the household, giving his or her birth date, sex, race, marital status, and relationship. Other persons can be husband, daughter, grandson, in-law, etc. Others can also be "unmarried partner" (defined as a person "who shares a close personal relationship with Person 1") or "roommate (someone sharing the house/apartment but who is not romantically involved with Person 1"). Person 1 must answer 25 questions about his residence and the size of the property. What kind of a home, apartment or condo do you live in, when was it built, when did you move in, are you operating a business in your home, how many rooms and how many bedrooms do you have, what kind of bathroom and kitchen fixtures do you have, and what is the market price of your residence?
The survey asks how much you pay each month for electricity, gas, water, rent, real estate taxes, fire or flood insurance, plus six very specific questions about your first and second monthly mortgage payments. There are questions about your telephone and automobile, and about how many months of the year you and others occupy the residence.
The survey then gets really personal, demanding the answers to 42 questions about you and about every other person who resides in your household. Person 1 is used like a private investigator to extract the information from everybody else, and warned that if anyone doesn't want to answer your nosy questions, you must provide the name and telephone number of such person so Big Brother can follow up.
The information demanded for you and every other person includes very specific questions about what kind of school you and each other one attended and to what grade level, what is each person's "ancestry or ethnic origin" (no matter if your ancestors came here hundreds of years ago), what language you speak at home, how well you speak English, where you lived one year ago, what are specific physical, mental or emotional health conditions, and whether you have given birth during the past year. More questions demand that you tell the government exactly where you are employed, what transportation you use to get to work, how many people ride in the vehicle with you, how many minutes it takes you to get to work, whether you have been laid off or absent from your job or business, how many weeks you worked during the last year, what kind of a job you have (for-profit company, not-for-profit company, government, self-employed), what kind of business it is, exactly what kind of work you did, what was your last year's wage or salary, and what was your other income from any other source.
The Census Bureau warns: "We may combine your answers with information that you gave to other agencies." (Does that mean IRS? Social Security? New Hires Directory? Child support enforcement? Criminal databases? Commercial databases?)
The questionnaire promises that it will take only 38 minutes to answer these questions. Of course, that low-ball estimate doesn't include the hours that it takes to collect the required information from so many different sources.
"The American Community Survey is a new nationwide survey designed to provide communities a fresh look at how they are changing. It will replace the long form in future censuses and is a critical element in the Census Bureau’s reengineered 2010 census plan.
So do what my kids used to do with stupid school questionnaires - write stupid answers!
I will tell the 2010 census-takers the same thing I told them in 2000. They can know how many people live in the house. Beyond that, they can go pound sand.
I even had a census-taker come to the door and I told her the same thing. She tried to get me to comply by telling me that I could be fined for not responding.
I told her that they could fine me if they wanted to, but I wasn't going to play their nosy little game.
Never heard from them again.
It carried a $500.00 penalty for not answering; and a $10,000.00 penalty for giving false information. It carried the same threat of database linking to check answers.
It was so offensive that I simply threw it away, but they kept sending it with increasingly threatening letters. I finally filled it out, but I wonder what other legal options one might have.
The trouble is that these will probably show up every 5 years, and supposedly are "required" by some law, court or agency (agency?).
They are spending money to check on the impact of spending money. And, your residence (that's "home" for many of us) only have a 1 in 480 chance of being chosen each year.
More from this brochure designed to sell to the State and Local bodies who are supposed to help: (a pdf)
http://www.census.gov/acs/www/Downloads/ACS04HSLO.pdf
The Department of Agriculture uses these data to determine which areas should receive direct multi-family loan assistance.
• The Department of Health and Human Services uses these data to determine the number of older people who live in inadequate housing and who may be candidates for housing assistance programs or placement in alternative housing.
• The Department of Housing and Urban Development uses these data to determine the amount of housing assistance distributed to American Indian and Alaska Native populations.
• Realtors can use these data to locate neighborhoods with housing characteristics that meet their clients’ needs.
• State and local governments, faith-based and other non-profit organizations, and businesses use these data to plan, budget, and pay benefits.EXAMPLES OF LEGAL REQUIREMENTS FOR KITCHEN FACILITIES DATA
• Older Americans Act of 1965, as amended • Community Services Block Grant Act
• Native American Housing Assistance and Self- Determination, Subchapter III—Title 25, Chapter 43
Wonderful!
Your pdf file states that it is 1 in 480 each month, or 1 in 40 in a given year.
But then I got annoyed with over nosiness the short form after 3 of the 6 questions and left the rest unfilled. They have the Constitutional power to perform an enumeration every 10 years. Anything else is unconstitutional, like most of the rest of the government.
I wonder if someone's ever been fined for failure to respond, and then taken the fed.gov to court. It seems pretty outrageous to ask all of these questions...seems almost like they sell it to private companies for marketing purposes.
I think that I'd probably refuse to fill out the long form, and do the Christopher Walken thing if anyone came to the door.
I always just throw those forms in the trash at the post office with the rest of my junk mail.
Whoops. But my number seems so much more reasonable (end sarcasm).
The last time I looked at the sample surveys at the CB website, that long form also asked what time you leave for work each day. They explained it as necessary to determine traffic flow patterns vis-a-vis DOT allotments to local hwy departments, or some such trash.
Hooey! That's what counter lines laid across a roadway can do.
Along with all the other intrusive data someone wants to log into a database, ya think I'm gonna tell 'em when the house is unguarded? Fie! And that dealie about cross-checking against "other DBs" is freakin' hairy.
I suppose these early, unannounced mailings are intended to be an end run around people like me. Soon as regular census season opens, I pick up a short form from the post office and mail in the thing ASAP so's I can claim I already did it if a census worker comes calling.
My husband and I filled out the 2000 form until he got to the part where they asked for our phone number. He cursed, wrote "none of your damn business" and we mailed it in.
Never heard anything from them since.
I received the American Community Survey in February or earlier. Inately, I knew that filling it out would be against my convictions. The government should have no place in sending me this big pamphlet with large print on the envelope stating the threat of fines if I do not complete it.
I rent a trailer house on a farm new small towns.
Now tonight around 7 PM, the Census Bureau left a message on my anwering machine telling me to call a toll free number and refer to my case number (!) which the woman mentioned.
So I rejoined Free Republic tonight and did a search for "Census Bureau" and found this posting. I'm glad a few people wrote their experience. I never completed the survey, and they have send more mail and another survey. I refuse to fill in any information or call them.
Wouldn't this kind of intrusion be an illegal search - after all they are 'searching' through the most intimate details of your life (through use of a compelled questionaire) without a warrant????
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