Political foo: The Census
Mar. 9th, 2010 07:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
The thing that strikes me about this letter, just like the commercials I've seen, is that it says that it's important to fill out the census form so that your neighborhood can get its "fair share" of government programs.
This is not what the census is for.
According to The Constitution, the reason we have a Constitutionally mandated census every ten years is to allocate representation in the House of Representatives. Districts are redesigned and new ones may be created in order that the population as a whole is equally represented in our "lower" House.
The federal government may also use this data in order to send money to people, but this is not the intended purpose of the census and has nothing to do with why we have to redo it every ten years.
On that note, I really like this idea and think I will do it. Let's all be Americans.
This is not what the census is for.
According to The Constitution, the reason we have a Constitutionally mandated census every ten years is to allocate representation in the House of Representatives. Districts are redesigned and new ones may be created in order that the population as a whole is equally represented in our "lower" House.
The federal government may also use this data in order to send money to people, but this is not the intended purpose of the census and has nothing to do with why we have to redo it every ten years.
On that note, I really like this idea and think I will do it. Let's all be Americans.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-09 01:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-10 12:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-10 02:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-10 11:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-09 05:01 pm (UTC)"Make sure your district gets money" is a bit more tangible incentive, although it certainly does fly in the face of what the Census is supposed to accomplish.
Although we'd be fools to deny that one of the things our representatives are elected to do is to do just that - get money for their districts.
I suppose it's a bit of a "we don't want to talk about that" kind of indirect effect of the Census.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-09 07:32 pm (UTC)The language should be "you should do this so that your government can reflect your area's values" by providing sufficient representation. "You should do this so that your town gets a vote on big issues," would be even better.
Less than a third of our population currently believes that the government in Washington actually has "the consent of the governed" for what it does. I think people want to feel that the government is responsible to them. Instead, we get told that we have to fill out paperwork in order to have the government spend more money on whatever it feels like doing today.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-09 09:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-12 04:58 am (UTC)I just realized that, so far as I can recall, it has been more than four years since we last crossed paths. That was in Prester_Scott's LJ.
Good to see you again!
===|==============/ Level Head
no subject
Date: 2010-04-12 11:27 am (UTC)