In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.
- Autobiography of Mark Twain
A Consensus on the Census Con
Minnesota Representative Michelle Bachmann recently made a statement to the media that she and her family would not be cooperating with the 2010 U.S. Census in answering most of the census questions. Bachmann fears the possible participation by ACORN in census taking, expressing two concerns:
1. She fears that the information requested by the Census Bureau exceeds the mandate of the constitution, and the questions are therefore improper.
2. Bachmann fears that ACORN will act as part of a conspiracy to provide false information to the Census Bureau so the data will be altered, changing the proper redistricting that would result from the correct census figures, and changing the resulting electoral votes.
Rep. Bachmann as a practicing attorney, a litigating attorney for the United States Treasury department for five years, should know that there have been multiple court challenges over the history of the Census to the various aspects of their legality. Certainly with her legal background she is capable of a more informed opinion.
Unlike the few people working for ACORN out of more than 13,000 who did not accurately fill out voter registrations for the 2008 election, census takers have to pass a proficiency test AND a background test, (which I understand is conducted by the FBI). Not one instance of fraudulent voting was ever connected to ACORN, so no results were changed in any election - including Minnesota's.
There are also multiple processes in place to verify the census data. Those processes involved in verification are far too numerous and extensive to be listed here, but they can be found under 2010 operations and FAQ at the Census website.
It would be extremely difficult, as well as risky, to attempt to alter the census data, an important fact which of course Bachmann also omits.
Given that the data from the Census is so very private - I could find no single case where confidentiality had been breached OR data altered by a census taker - we will never know if Ms. Bachmann actually completes the questions or not. This year, the short form is being used, with fewer questions than the previous census.
Well, strictly speaking that is not quite true about privacy. The data IS made public, but only 72 years after the census is completed, in the case of the 2010 census, in 2082. Ms. Bachmann will no doubt, at approximately 125 years of age - given she was born in 1956 - be long dead, and so will a majority of the rest of us who are adults now (or we will be too old to care).
Rep. Bachmann has a long and colorful career of getting facts wrong. Both factcheck.org, and politifact.org cite instances (including the assertion about money going to ACORN from the Stimulus Bill) as false - one of her 'facts' rates a 'pants on fire', and no statements which are true. Because Bachmann rarely if ever gets her facts straight. Politifact has give her statements about ACORN and the Census not one but TWO "pants on fire" ratings, their most extreme standard for falsification.
She earned a JD from the now defunct Coburn School of Law, part of Oral Roberts University, where the website makes the following statements,
under Whole Person Assessment:
"ORU helps you become spiritually alive, intellectually alert, physically disciplined, socially adept and professionally competent."
Does that sound to you consistent with getting so many facts wrong?
Rep. Bachmann has an LLM degree from the College of William and Mary, whose website states in part, under Academics:
"William and Mary is an academic powerhouse. Our undergraduate and graduate students choose W&M because of its celebrated liberal arts tradition and commitment to hands-on, original research. They know they'll work hard and that their uncommon efforts will be personally, academically and professionally rewarding."
All that "hands-on, original research" surely doesn't sound very consistent with those factual errors either.
I was not particularly familiar with an LLM degree, which stands for Legum Magister (feminine Magistra) but it is described as an advanced academic or research degree in Law. All of which taken together with Ms. Bachmann's startling pattern of errors of fact in her many highly publicized, one might say notorious statements, suggest not that Ms. Bachmann is simply stupid, but the contrary.
It suggests a pattern of disinformation rather than misinformation. Misinformation is simply errors in fact. Disinformation is an intentional strategy or tactic of misleading and deceiving people, usually associated with governmental, political, or military actions.
That Ms. Bachmann regards the attention she receives from these disinformative statements as a "Badge of Honor" further suggests these are intentional deceptions, deliberately inflammatory and unethical. Fear mongering poor, lazy, ignorant slobs politely characterized as the "low information voter", people who do not critically think, who are too lazy or ignorant to question what they hear so long as it appears to conform to an ideology that they follow blindly.
Contributing to the fear and misinformation campaign promoted by Bachmann is the effort of Chairman Michael Steele in a widely disseminated RNC email, quoted here in part:
"It seems the Obama Administration has plans to rig the Census results.
President Obama's old friends from ACORN, the leftist, urban "community" organization with a long history of promoting vote fraud, has been chosen by the Administration as a "partner" with the Census Bureau to determine population counts in cities around the country.
With this group's track record of coming up with countless fraudulent voter registrations in heavily Democrat areas to sway elections to ultra-liberals, you can be sure they'll be manipulating population numbers as well.
And after receiving millions in political payback from the Democrats' recently passed "Stimulus" Bill, ACORN's community organizers are eager to once again take action to aid their old friend in the White House. "
Except that ACORN did not receive millions in the recently passed Stimulus Bill. And partnering with the Census Bureau, along with many other organizations, does not involve collecting census data.
What is partnering with the Census Bureau for the 2010 Census?
That is an easy question to answer; all you have to do is to go to the official online website at http://www.census.gov/, where it clearly explains in the following quote taken from their section on partnering 2010:
"What is a Partner?2010 Census Partners are government, non-profit, corporate or community organizations that have formally pledged their commitment to share the 2010 Census message and mobilize their constituents in support of the Census Bureau's goal of achieving a complete count.
How can my organization become a 2010 Census Partner?To become an official regional/local level 2010 Census partner, please telephone the Census Bureau's, Regional Census Center [PDF] that serves your area. To become an official national level partner, please email clmso.2010.census.partners.list@census.gov "
ACORN is not asking people to answer the 2010 Census questions. People who are hired and trained by the Census Bureau go door to door asking those questions. The Census Bureau takes a variety of measures to ensure confidentiality, and according to the website, there is a considerable penalty for violation:
"It is against the law to publish or disclose any data that identifies an individual or company – no names, no addresses, no Social Security numbers. Violating the law is a federal crime with serious penalties, including a prison sentence of up to five years and a $250,000 fine."
The other little fact that both Steele and Bachmann omit is that the only documented attempts to abuse the privacy of the Census data - at least, that I was able to locate - were by the FBI, which between 1939 - 1941 used data to identify individuals for the 1941 internment of Japanese-Americans; and an attempt in 1980 by the FBI to confiscate data that was blocked by the courts.
The rounding up of Japanese aliens and Japanese-Americans under an executive order from President Franklin Roosevelt was upheld by a 1944 Supreme Court decision, and later it was overturned by a District Court in the 1980s when it turned out the government had lied about the justification for the internments through "willful historical inaccuracies and intentional falsehoods". While it is true that census data did contribute to the round-up and internment, it was hardly the only resource for it. The areas where such round-ups occurred varied dramatically from one part of the country to another. Had the Census data not been available, I doubt that either the round-up or subsequent internment would have been avoided; some other method would have been used instead.
It is worth noting that the motivation for the round-ups and interments was FEAR. While Rep. Bachmann has expressed a paranoid concern about the possible creation of Stalin-style 're-education camps' as part of a public service program, there is no plausible indication that answering the Census questions will lead to Ms. Bachmann or anyone else being 'interned' in such a place.
If the FBI cannot take control of the data, is it REALLY plausible to be worried about ACORN? Of course not; it's not scary, it's just stupid.
Steele goes on in his widely disseminated official RNC email rant to say:
"If the Democrats and their friends at ACORN have their way, the Census will only "estimate" state populations and therefore be subject to political calculations. And surely their estimate will be far higher than the actual number of people, and voters, present. "
This paragraph presumably refers to the Supreme Court decision, Utah v. Evans, 536 U.S. 452 (20002), which upheld the legality of a statistical technique, hot deck imputation. Using hot deck imputation, Utah lost a representative to Congress; and North Carolina would have lost a Congressional representative had the technique not been used.
This has nothing to do with the influence of the current residents of the White House or the Obama administration - which didn't exist when the court made its ruling. And it clearly has nothing to do with ACORN either.
Steele next goes on in his RNC email to state:
"We must not let the Democrats and their radical leftist allies falsify the U.S. Census and manipulate elections in their favor. Our democracy, and the principle of "One Person, One Vote" are in jeopardy.
Please help the Republican Party's effort to spread the word about the Obama Democrats' misuse of power and plans to end free and fair elections. Support our effort to get the word out about this threat and ensure an accurate, non-partisan Census by making a contribution of $1,000, $500, $100, $50 or $25 to the Republican National Committee today.
Your gift will also help support the recruitment and election of principled candidates who will defeat the Democrats in 2010 and pave the way to send Barack Obama packing in 2012."
Here we get to the heart of the "CON", the swindle, the attempt to manipulate, deceive, in order to raise money through fear and intentional misinformation. Every bit as much as a two-bit hustler, just better dressed, and with a bigger mailing list. I would hope that all of us, regardless of ideology or belief, object to lying, to conniving, to deception and falsification, and most of all, to manipulation. Do not give these people your trust, your confidence, your support and most of all do not give them any of your money or your votes.
Do not fear too quickly or too easily.
Do not be manipulated - by anyone.
DO question what you are told - by everyone regardless of politics and idealogy. Be critical of the logic, verify the information from objective sources. There are many fact checking resources available through the internet. Use them wisely - and often.
DG - I must admit to being surprised - I have always felt Bachmann was a sack of air.
ReplyDeleteI have no doubt that the GOP uses the 'big lie' theory - and uses it time and again, knowing full well such statement's as Steele's (and Bachmann's) are factually flawed from the most simple level to the most complex, but I had always thought of her as a consumer of those lies, rather than a willing purveyor.
She has seemed, time and again, to not get how daffy she appeared. Yet, based on your commmentary (and the LLM degree), I believe you may be write, that her view is instead that she desires to put out ludicrous statements because it will 'fool the people she needs to fool' so to speak, and she doesn't much care about the rest.
The funny thing is, she is like Ann Coulter and Laura Ingram then, a clever, mendacious tease. Someone playing upon relative good looks to twist the secretly infatuated masses of the GOP mainstream sychophants. I always felt she knew she was playing on her looks, but I never thought she knew her lies were lies.
I have a newfound respect for her, and a deeper sense of revulsion.
While anyone can occasionally be deceived, more often we cooperate with the deception.
ReplyDeleteWe are all want to hear what affirms our world view. One of the first steps is to ask the question, "who is the intended audience for these statements?" And, of course, to step back before agreeing or disagreeing, and ask the all-important question, "hang on a minute, IS this true?". Last, but far from least, we have to be willing to ask the most important question, "Were my previous assumptions or beliefs wrong?".
When an intended audience is very narrowly selected - preaching to the choir, it should raise a red flag. When statements are long on emotion - ESPECIALLY FEAR, and short on objective fact, it should raise another red flag.
What I have written here will not persuade anyone who is unwilling to ask those questions honestly, or to check facts for themselves.
What Bachmann and Steele are doing is not unique to the GOP or Conservatives, but it is possibly a greater temptation when out of power and in an increasingly small minority. But pandering to what an audience takes place across the full spectrum.
Let me be clear. There are Conservatives, and members of the GOP whom I respect for their integrity and ethics; individuals who present their positions fairly, who research their facts with care and objectivity, and who don't pander to the most crass emotions.
Bachmann was in the Minnesota State Senate from 2001 to 2007; she was a federal litigating attorney from 1988 to 1993, and has been our Minnesota Representative to Congress since 2007. There is nothing wrong with questioning how the Census works, who the enumerators are, or the content of the questions in and of itself. Given her lengthy government career, wouldn't it make more sense to address these questions from within the government processes? To question how the questions in the Census were arrived at, and by whom, and how the data was used or why it was needed?
Advocating instead eleventh hour civil disobedience?
Civil disobedience is a tactic usually reserved for acting where other actions have failed, where one is expecting not only to be arrested, but where there is a probability of being a victim of violence. There is no reason to resort to civil disobedience when normal participation in government would work better. The Census process is not secretive, except for the privacy of the VERIFIED data. The sudden fear about the questions? The Census Bureau has been preparing for the big every-decade census since shortly after the last one was concluded; therefore the majority of the questions - presumably all of them - would have been written during the previous Bush administration. They are not being hastily re-written in some little locked room in the White House basement NOW, where they will be unseen until the night before the Census enumeration. Lag time for projects as enormous as the big Census take far more preparation than that, and the full-time professional staff of the Census Bureau is not provided by ACORN. Nor, in contrast to the Bush JoD, is there any indication they have been politicized - although I can see where that would raise a concern that the other party might be as bad in their turn.
The fear over the possibility of hacking the Census data is overdone. If we give in to that fear, we couldn't use the library, or a bank, or go to the doctor. While the government and businesses deal with the occasional odd success by hackers, for the most part to go on with daily life, it is a small risk that we have to accept. The process of securing data is an ongoing one. Beyond that, given the positions of Bachmann on our privacy, such as wireless wiretapping and other surveillance, the fuss over Census data seems at the very least selective and insincere.
A LLM degree, unfortunately, doesn't confer intelligence. It IS an advanced degree in law. I'm not familiar with the law school from which Ms. Bachmann graduated. I will note, however, that most states permit only graduates of an ABA approved law school to register for and be admitted to their bar. If, for instance, Ms. Bachmann's law school was not ABA accredited, she would have had to earn a LLM from a ABA school to be eligible. William and Mary IS an ABA accredited law school. Caveat: This is pure speculation. I do know that the William and Mary LLM program is widely respected, however.
ReplyDeleteAll members of the bar are required pursuant to the Code of Professional Responsibility (Minnesota has largely adopted the Model Rules of Professional Conduct). This includes the requirement that lawyers will obey all lawful duties of citizens, and will seek to overturn such laws only by legal methods. What Ms. Bachmann is purporting to do is a potential breach of an attorney's ethical obligations. I doubt she will be disciplined, however, because it would be almost impossible to proved that she did not register for the census.
The constitutional requirement of a census is clear. Although the Constitution does not require anything except for a head count, our modern interpretation requires that we collect data about ethnicity, income, faith, and a variety of other factors. This is because over the years, the concept of one-man, one-vote has being replaced by concerns about a requirement for equality in the gender, race and other make up of districts. State legislatures have for years required the census to produce such data, because they have always known that they can then extrapolate basic voting patterns based on age, gender, ethnicity, etc. These are the origins of gerrymandering. (This has been going on for over a century, by the way)
I'm saddened, but not much surprised by the Republican party's use of "The Big Lie"... what saddens me even more is that there are some who will buy into this rubbish.
Overall, well said, Dog Gone. Your analysis is, as usual, on the mark and quite correct, IMHO.
(Note: I have a J.D. but not a LLM.)
K-rod wrote:
ReplyDelete"I do not support breaking the law, but I also do not support such flippant attitudes like "don't worry, you'll be dead anyway or too old to care if people find any issues..."
I don't think it is flippant to point out that no personal information is made public until long after the people of an age to answer will be past caring for whatever reason.
There is a process where the Census Bureau provides all of the questions to Congress for review, with an explanation for what questions are being discontinued; what questions are continuing - and why they are asked / what purpose they sere; and a third category, new questions (mostly replacements) what they are, why, etc.
Bachmann does not appear to have availed herself of that opportunity to comment, question or complain, nor at any time prior to the fund raising drive that is falsely fear mongering about ACORN. It will take me a moment to find the information - it is available on-line - and post the link. It was presented to Congress in March of 2007; while Bachmann was in office.
The more I researched this topic, the more I was impressed with the transparency (boy, is THAT getting to be an over-used word!) and accountability, and security efforts that the Census Bureau is demonstrating in this next enumeration.
Add in that the short form is the one being used in 2010, Bachmann's comments are even less applicable. There are NOT a lot of intrusive OR intricate questions being asked. There IS an ongoing longer form census inquiry that is sent out in between the regular Census that is done every 10 years. That is actually the long-form with a lot of questions; NOT the 2010 Census. Very few people receive that long-form question in any given year, and many of those questions date WAY back.
So, K-rod, when you write:"I think we should err on the side of fewer questions that strictly follow the constitution.", the 2010 Census pretty much DOES do that.
Remember me writing on SitD about NOT cherrypicking information, and reading things in their entirety. Oh, boy oh boy, did I....