Posted on 05/06/2014 10:20:20 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
In 2009, in the earliest weeks of President Barack Obamas administration, the White House made the controversial decision to take the unprecedented step of moving the Census Bureau from control of the commerce secretary over to the White House ahead of the decennial 2010 census.
Conservatives sounded alarm bells. It takes something that is supposedly apolitical like the census, and gives it to a guy who is infamously political, said Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT) of then White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.
Requiring the Census director to report directly to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is a shamefully transparent attempt by your administration to politicize the Census Bureau and manipulate the 2010 Census, read a letter addressed to Obama authored by Reps. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Patrick McHenry (R-NC).
While Republican officeholders were the primary sources of statements expressing concern over the move, some non-partisan analysts were also unnerved by the move. The last thing the census needs is for any hard-bitten partisan (either a Karl Rove or a Rahm Emanuel) to manipulate these critical numbers, wrote University of Virginia professor Larry Sabato in an email to Fox News at the time. Partisans have a natural impulse to tilt the playing field in their favor, and this has to be resisted.
The White House dismissed the concerns of conservatives which were, indeed, unfounded insofar as they related to the 2010 census. But the fears of some that the Census Bureau could be corrupted by the imperatives of the political operatives in the White House was today proven accurate.
According to a report in The New York Times, the Census Bureau has been directed to change the wording of its questions relating to health care coverage so that they can no longer be checked against the past three decades of data. According to the nonpartisan analysts and census officials The Times spoke with, this change will make it nearly impossible to accurately assess the effects of the Affordable Care Act has had on the number of Americans who have health insurance.
The changes will, however, likely have the effect of showing a reduction in the number of uninsured. This will not be the result of the effects of the law. Rather, according to the Census Bureaus chief of the health statistics branch, the drop in uninsured is only going to be due to the questions and how they are asked.
Policy analysts and columnists, who are not reflexively friendly to conservative causes, called the debasement of a formerly neutral agency to achieve a political end insane and inexcusable.
And, thus, another crazy conservative conspiracy theory is proven to not be so crazy after all.
Has there been any action by this administration that hasn't been political ?
I think not .. everything for the AGENDA !!
Politics by Psychopathics
Just more fraud from an increasingly corrupt and illegitimate feral gummint.
the second I heard it was going to be directed by rahm Emanuel I knew they were planning criminal activity.
Nut-job Conspiracy Theory Ping!
To get onto The Nut-job Conspiracy Theory Ping List you must threaten to report me to the Mods if I don't add you to the list...
!
Wife and I escorted the “census taker” off our property a few years ago.
I informed him that the sheriff would be called if he returned.
I was ready for them but I only rec’d a short census in the mail.
The next crazy conservative conspiracy theory to be proven correct: the GOP-e wants Democrats to win elections against true conservative Republicans.
*sigh*
This was not really a crazy conspiracy theory as much as a theory of what the O admin was going to do with control of the census data collection.....That doesn’t even come close to what some of those nut jobs out there are throwing around.
And aren’t we all shocked that this is happening????
Shocked and astonished.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.