Fenger Pointing
Becky Fenger | April 7, 2010
Let me count the ways
Have you mailed back your Census 2010 form? It was due on April Fools' Day, and the U.S. Census Bureau fears a lower response than in 2000 when only 67 percent of households complied. With the help of Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF), let's list some of the reasons Americans are justly ticked off by Census 2010.
First of all, despite all the sins and scandals of President Barack Obama's beloved ACORN (The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), these folks are recruiting census workers to go door to door. No opportunity for mischief here! Warning bells should have sounded when the White House grabbed control over the Census. This so disgusted U.S. Senator Judd Greg (R-NH), who was nominated to be Commerce Secretary, that he withdrew his name.
Proving that this administration is tone deaf to the fact that the U.S. is broke, the Census Bureau spent $133 million on a national advertising campaign mailing us that we will be receiving our forms in the mail, mailing us to watch for our forms in the mail, mailing us notice that the forms have been mailed, and mailing us reminders to fill out the mailed forms. Whew.
It seems to me that the notices and reminders about Census 2010 that I get in the publications tucked into my utility bills would suffice and cost us nothing.
The topper to the reckless spending on all this redundancy was the $2.5 million spent on a Super Bowl ad which was widely panned by media experts who called it "dry, uninformative, and culturally obscure." No wonder it was rated the worst of all the commercials aired during the big game.
MSLF writes that an already suspicious public is being subjected to the arrogance and ignorance too often exhibited by the federal government. One example comes from the foothills west of Denver, Colorado, where a census worker knocked on the door and asked the woman who opened it, "What address is this?" She answered, "You found it; where do you think you are?" He insisted, "You have to tell me where I am." It makes your heart flutter to watch your tax dollars at work, doesn't it?
Despite the fact that President Obama was billed as "post racial," his administration has been fixated on race. Mark Kirkorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, complains that "fully one quarter of the space on the Census concerns questions of race and ethnicity."
Take a look at our "post racial" officials and agencies. MSLF reminds us that "Obama's economic advisor Robert Reich proclaimed that the 'stimulus package' was not intended for 'white construction workers.' In short order, the Administration mulled implementation of a new 'Fairness Doctrine' due to the lack of the requisite diversity, filled the health care plan with racial quotas and set-asides, and beefed up the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division to file more race-based lawsuits, at the same time that the justice Department dropped its case against Black Panthers who had violated federal law by intimidating voters in Philadelphia in 2008." Isn't that precious? And just last week the Justice Department endorsed racial discrimination by colleges and universities. Let's see what the U.S. Supreme Court does with this ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
There are manuals that newspaper editors follow for "style and usage" standards that are revised over the decades. One of the worst changes to occur, I maintain, is the grammatically incorrect capitalization of the Black and White races. It only draws attention to the color of our skin, which is what we have spent time, energy and lives trying to erase. Go figure.
Quoteworthy:
Upon passage of the Health Care Reform Bill, U.S. Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) uttered these memorable words on the floor of the Senate
"This is also an income shift."
"This will help lower income Americans. Too often of late, the last couple, three years, this maldistribution of income of America has gone up way too much. The wealthy are getting way, way too wealthy."
"Wages have not kept up with the income to the highest-income Americans. This legislation will have the effect of addressing that maldistribution of income in America, because health care is now a right for all Americans and because health care is now affordable for all Americans."
