Posted on 04/10/2010 12:38:40 PM PDT by Congressman Billybob
This is more or less an open letter to Robert Groves, Director of the Census Bureau. Dear Bob.
Can I call you Bob? I feel I know you since you’ve been all over the TV explaining that the screw-ups that have occurred in your Bureau about operations and cost will all be resolved. Well. here’s another screw-up for you to put on your plate.
The Census has a rule that it will not mail Census forms to Post Office Box addresses. As a general rule, I understand and support that. There are probably more than a million people in the US who use P.O. Boxes to cheat on their spouses, run investment scams, sell useless or non-existent products on the Internet, etc. However, every rule has its exceptions.
We live in Highlands, North Carolina. The summertime population grows to about 25,000 every year. But the permanent residents are only about 3,000 Americans, plus about 500 Mexicans. Because we are a small town, the Post Office by its own rules does not deliver to anyone’s home, except a handful of folks who live so far out of town they qualify for RFD. We say they live 20 miles south of nowhere. RFD, in case you don’t know, stands for Rural Free Delivery.
After four weeks of seeing your cute but annoying ads for the Census, and not having a form sent to us, we found out by accident that we weren’t going to get any forms mailed to us because of your anti-Box rule. Now, missing 3,500 people doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.
However, there are other towns just like us. Maybe you should pull out your company phone book, and look up the number for the Postmaster General. Give him a call. Ask him how many small towns there are in the nation where almost no one gets their mail delivered except to the Post Office.
If there are 1,000 such towns, then you are missing 3.5 million people. That’s a significant number. Plus, our demographics are not the same as everyone else. Half of us are retired. The other half are young people with kids, trying to make do and survive. Our town has the demographics of Brazil.
Now, I know you have hired a whole bunch of people in localities across the nation. I know you’ve hired some locals in Highlands. They are supposed to have “special knowledge” of their areas. Haven’t any of them told their supervisors about the P.O. Box problem here, and elsewhere?
The alternative to mailing forms and getting them back by mail, is sending people out to every house. Again, local knowledge is your friend. Most of us live at the end of long, gravel roads. Ours, for instance, goes a half mile from the nearest paved road to our house. That’s a fur piece as we say. Only people who are lost, Jehovah’s Witnesses, workmen, UPS drivers, and personal friends make that trip.
Do you have a clue how much time and money will be wasted by your Bureau to visit every house in Highlands? And you’ll have to budget for multiple visits, because all of us drive into town every day to run errands and get our mail. (Remember, it comes to the Post Office.)
Do we have addresses? Why yes, we do. So, fire, police and ambulances can reach us in emergencies, all of us have actual street addresses. I’ll bet your local people could get those from the Emergency Network. Then, you could mail our forms to the Post Office, and cross reference the reported addresses with the Emergency list.
Just trying to help you run an efficient, effective Census. And, you could have added a question on the form whether the respondents were American citizens. I have my copy of the Constitution handy, and it says the legitimate purpose of the Census “enumeration” is for reallocating the seats in Congress, every ten years. I sort of had the impression that Members of Congress were only supposed to represent legal residents. (Except in California, and parts of a few other states.)
Cordially,
Your so-far uncounted fellow citizen at the end of a gravel road,
J. Armor, Esq.
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About the Author: John Armor practiced in the US Supreme Court for 33 years. John_Armor@aya.yale.edu His latest book, on Thomas Paine, will be published in September. www.TheseAreTheTimes.us
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Highlands is just a bunch of rich white people. Why would a socialist/maxist want to inflate numbers that would work against the sole purposes of increasing welfare rolls and gerrymandering congressional districts?
History ch. documentary
http://www.history.com/videos/mega-disasters-east-coast-tsunami#mega-disasters-east-coast-tsunami
Maybe the Census Bureau doesn’t want to count rural white people. Western Maryland has several communities that have virtually disappeared from the Census Bureau’s radar screen because of this Post Office Box business. Is this something the Census Bureau has never encountered before? Or are more imbecilic sorts in charge of the census this year? Or do these ACORN types want to exclude some decidedly non-ACORN folks so they can spread things around differently?
Here in West Virginia many counties over the past decade have been involved in projects to regularize the naming of streets and roads, eliminating duplicates, and creating a consistent system of numbering so that first responders can be efficiently directed after a call to 911. The readdressing process is coordinated with the USPS. Many addresses have disappeared in this but no people disappeared; and many new addresses have been created, but no new people were created — and the Post Office knows all the new addresses of the people living right there in the same houses they have always lived in, and maybe the Census Bureau just could have had the sense to check with the Post Office Department instead of sending a whole bunch of undeliverable mail, and sending a bunch of people at big wages to try and find people who are right where they always were. But that’s your government strutting its stuff.
Why don’t these smart-ass congresscritters who hold hearings on practically anything announce hearings on the handling of the 2010 Census, which is FUBR, an acronym those of you who remember better times will recognize. The reason there will be no hearings is because a census that is FUBR is what the administration wants, because it is easy to rig and corrupt and skew. When the 2020 Census discovers a whole bunch of rural white people the 2010 Census missed then there will probably be hearings to prevent these rural white folks from existing.
Well if they don’t count them, they won’t know how big of a problem they have on their hands. Plus, they won’t know how many votes they need steal an election.
Seems to me that them FEDs have created another problem that now they need to fix.
Kinda makes you wonder how well the governmnet is going to run healthcare, doesn’t it?
Here in rural WNY, in the snow belt, lots of us do not have roadside mailboxes, mostly because they are snowplow magnets.
We haven’t received a census form either, and I suspect this is happening all over the US.
Screwups and incompetence in the Census are not important this time around. The results have already been compiled.
I’m in this same situation and so are all my neighbors. PO doesn’t deliver to our addresses. The census forms were hung on our doorknobs.
When it’s really a PITA is when we want to order something online and the shipping method used isn’t clear-if it’s the via Postal Service I need to give them my PO Box address, if it’s via FedEx or UPS I need to give them our street address.
Thanks...that was very clear. I think I was dense when I first read what you wrote.
It reminds me of what happened when I voted in the GOP Primary in 2008. I had a 25-year driver’s license, and the address on the front was the original address. Whenever I moved, I notified DMV and they instructed me to put the correct address on the back. Poll worker would not let me vote because the instructions to the poll workers was that the address has to be printed on the front. So...what was perfectly legal for the Police and any other jurisdiction was not legal enough to vote.
I ended up voting because I had a proof if insurance card in the glovebox of my car, and I was able to show alternative ID.
Ironically, I had to get the license replaced that year anyway because the State decided that even though the license was good for 25 years, the photo was only good for 15. Revenue enhancement is my guess.
Driver’s licenses are no longer mailed here in AZ...they are printed and issued on the spot at the office where you get the photo taken. I suppose that was why I was confused.
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