Posted on 05/16/2010 4:50:27 PM PDT by combat_boots
Here’s a theory we’d love your help researching.
Last night, we were all talking about the crazy amount of mail everyone’s received about the 2010 Census. We don’t remember this much mail in 2000, or in 1990, the other two censuses we were aware enough to take note of.
The Census mailed letters advising Americans a census was happening. Then, the government sent letters asking if the first letters were received. It seems letters were sent informing the public that more letters would be coming telling them to expect letters that would give further details about expecting more letters, and what to do if they needed more letters to read while the other letters were still being delivering.
Now, there are letters coming to follow up on each of the previous letters.
That’s an awful lot of postage.
Hey — wasn’t the USPS recently complaining that it was insolvent and imploding as an institution?
Were all of the letters the Census sent out a scam for Democrats to funnel Census-dedicated money into the USPS, by way of a massive infusion of postage?
Who was the recipient of all the printing costs that went into those letters?
Having mailings on that scale printed is NOT cheap. In perspective, to do a relatively small mailing for a private event here in Chicago to about 1,000 people or so, it would easily be $1,500 or more. Writing the letter, proofing it, printing it, stuffing it, stamping it, sending it out. It’s a LOT of money.
Hence the popularity of email lists.
Who got the contract to send out all those Census letters?
How much did the USPS make off the Census mailings?
Why were so many letters needed in the first place, if they weren’t intended as some sort of pork barrel graft for interested parties?
Can anyone shed some light on this?
"May 15, 2010 THEORY: Was the US 2010 Census used to prop up the Post Office by sending so much redundant, wasteful mail to every America?"
not sure but I do know that the amount of money spent was disgusting.
The Census Bureau and the USPS are both just another tax payer required prop up.
Both are a liability, neither are a producer of revenue.
Taxpayers and their children are the producers who pay for both of them.
And the census does allow proportional representation in congress.
/johnny
The Brits held off another 54 years but eventually had to cave in on the idea.
No doubt you think you are fighting some sort of battle on behalf of something, but what it is remains unclear to anyone ~ probably not even to yourself.
I got THREE mailings. All the same about a month apart to the same address (mine). This after we sent the first one in promptly. So for me, as an individual, TRIPLE!
It's less expensive to mail out the forms, and use the mail to remind folks they are coming and should have been there, than it is to send census takers door to door to fill out forms on the spot with everyone.
Fortunately a large percentage of the people do fill out the forms, mail them in, and they never get bothered by a census worker. A smaller percentage are trying for cheap dates or something, eh, and they waited until the census sent someone to visit them personally.
Lots of rural people with a Post Office Box are not counted. I had to drive 20 miles to find and fill out a form.
It would be far more economical to contract the census work.
As you recall, no doubt, Obama proposed that very thing ~ or at least his evil minions did. They were going to hire ACORN to do the job.
Not that I doubt your story, but you will need to 'splain how it is you found yourself outside rural letter carrier service.
As far as census mailings being used to add funding to the USPS - I really doubt it. The odd flow of this mail and the special effort that the USPS had to apply to deliver this stuff made it more costly to handle than the average letter. In all likely-hood it cost the USPS more than what was probably paid.
Write to the Postmaster General about the problem.
The USPS lost 3.8 billion dollar in 2009.
Of course, anything this Administration manages to propose, and execute, right under our noses, is ALL going to prop up one thing or another, most dramatically the bogus statistics
they tell us signify JOBS CREATED by them. These jobs were probably never intended to last more than a few months, but watch what happens to them. Like everything else created by Bureaucratbots, they managed to hang on and linger for many months and years , if not forever. I expect we’ll all be hearing about how the Census needs another several weeks to complete, how even more manpower is needed to process the information, and how what we REALLY need is an expanded Bureau with MORE permanent employees. Eventually of course the Census Drones, their highpaying makework extended beyond all imagining, will find themselves out of a job but at that point they will be entitled to unemployment benefits, which, believe me, they will ALL take.
It never ends.
Folks, I posted this on another thread yesterday. After I posted it, I met with some friends, and we began discussing the census. A woman there had the same experience I did which I relate below. Then, when I came home, there were two more calls from the census...
I do not take exception to fulfilling my duties as a citizen under the constitution with regard to census.
What I take exception to is paying people $22.50 an hour to take the census.
I object to spending tens of millions of dollars on advertising, our money, for the census. And the ads they spent it on are stupid and useless to boot.
I object to having my tax dollars spent on multiple mailings sent to me about the census...telling me that the census form would be arriving soon.
I object to someone being paid $22.50 an hour to call my house multiple times over the course of several weeks during the day when we aren’t home to answer it, saying they will call back, but leaving no number for us to call them.
I object to having someone being paid $22.50 an hour to come to our door and ask us questions on a form we completely filled out and mailed back.
I object to someone being paid $22.50 an hour to follow up with at least four more phone calls to the completed follow up to a completed mail in of a census form. None of those phone calls were when we were home because we both work for a living and pay taxes that pay these worthless government employees $22.50 an hour to make work.
If anyone wants to know why we as conservatives are outraged and upset that our healthcare is soon going to be administered by people like this, then this is why.
It makes me hopping mad, and not just because I view this iteration of the census as a massive make-work project, being dragged out as long as possible, but because the data is likely to be mangled and inaccurate anyway.
IF THEY CANNOT GET A MAILED FORM, COMPLETELY FILLED OUT BY COMPETENT, REASONABLE PEOPLE TO INCLUDE IN DATA BEING COMPILED FOR STATISTICAL ANALYSIS, THEY MIGHT JUST AS WELL...AND MOST LIKELY ARE...JUST GOING TO FUDGE THE DATA COMPLETELY.
This is WORTHLESS data to compile for statistical analysis.
Worthless.
See, my wife sent the census form in. But they didn’t get it, apparently. Where did our form go? Where did YOURS go?
Did our form even get lost, bent, spindled, folded or mutilated at all?
Or did it just get ignored and thrown in the trash to give people a job to work phone banks and drive around neighborhoods to “follow up”.
And, at $22.50 per person, this is happening all over the country. Apparently, not just with me.
THAT is what I take exception to. I am not one of those who says don’t send the form in. I know what it is for and how it is used, so I know how important this is, or supposedly is. I am convinced now, this is just a BS sham.
Leastwise that's how it was done in 2000, and 1990, and 1980, and 1970.
No reason whatsoever to do it differently in 2010 (with regard to delivery).
They just don’t deliver here. They did not deliver the last place I lived. They don’t deliver.
The USPS lost 3.8 billion dollar in 2009.
Of course, anything this Administration manages to propose, and execute, right under our noses, is ALL going to prop up one thing or another, most dramatically the bogus statistics
they tell us signify JOBS CREATED by them. These jobs were probably never intended to last more than a few months, but watch what happens to them. Like everything else created by Bureaucratbots, they managed to hang on and linger for many months and years , if not forever. I expect we’ll all be hearing about how the Census needs another several weeks to complete, how even more manpower is needed to process the information, and how what we REALLY need is an expanded Bureau with MORE permanent employees. Eventually of course the Census Drones, their highpaying makework extended beyond all imagining, will find themselves out of a job but at that point they will be entitled to unemployment benefits, which, believe me, they will ALL take.
It never ends.
Secondly, to get to some of the specifics of your theory, you mention that 1000 letters cost $1500 or so to send. Balloon that to every person/family in America and it is a LOT of money, that’s for sure.
Where does one get the idea that the USPS did the printing, or produced all that paper or did anything but move all of that crap from A to B? At first class rates that $0.44 of your $1.50 per letter. And while I am uncertain, I do not believe the government pays first class rates. But let us suppose they did pay 1C rates. I’m sure that the $0.005 (or whatever it is) that the USPS pulls down per first class letter was a HUGE financial shot in the arm! /s
Apply a little logic and reason to the facts. If the government wanted to supply cash to the USPS they would only need to vote for the requested change to retiree health benefits funding.
Get real. Obama doesn’t need to take over the USPS - it’s already his. What possible motivation would this government have?
I expect some people did pull down a lot of cash because of this. It wasn’t the USPS. OTOH, if the govt beats the crap out of the bushes in areas they want to redistrict it could make sense to flood some areas w/ letters, no? My house received two - 1 - “the census is coming - fill it out” and 2 - the form. It seems other locations had different experiences...
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