Posted on 10/19/2001 7:52:35 AM PDT by Jolly Rodgers
Census Wants to Keep Oregon Count Secret
October 19, 2001, 07:15 AM
By AP Staff
The U.S. Census Bureau can't release its statistically adjusted count of Americans because the numbers would be too revealing, a Census Bureau lawyer said Thursday.
Responding to a lawsuit by two Oregon legislators, attorney Gregory Katsas told a federal judge that the adjusted counts give away the bureau's inside thinking on the accuracy of its population counts, and they make it too obvious to politicians around the country which communities win and which lose under the bureau's decision not to adjust for its undercount of renters and minorities.
Federal law requires government to be conducted in the open except in special circumstances, and U.S. District Judge James A. Retten said he had a hard time seeing how secrecy would be ruled permissible in this case.
Still, Retten said he wanted to hear more from both sides before he ruled.
The case was brought by two Oregon state senators, Susan Castillo, D-Eugene, and Margaret Carter, D-Portland. They filed a federal Freedom of Information Act request to see the Census Bureau's statistically adjusted population counts but were turned down.
Carter and Castillo want the numbers released so they can be considered in state and local funding decisions and used to scrutinize Census Bureau decisions.
Their lawyer, David O. Stewart, argued that a decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on adjusted 1990 Census counts meant the 2000 numbers must be made public. In the 1990 case, the California Legislature sought the adjusted counts, the Census Bureau fought to keep them secret, and the courts ordered the bureau to give them out.
But Katsas, lawyer for the Census Bureau, argued Thursday that the 2000 Census was different.
This time, he said, the bureau is more concerned about the adjusted 2000 numbers themselves, not the process by which they were generated.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Donald Evans has decided that adjusted population counts cannot be used to redraw political boundaries or award federal funds.
The adjusted counts --designed to improve the accuracy of Census 2000 by boosting the count of renters, minorities and other undercounted populations in some places while reducing the count of whites, college students and other overcounted people in other places -- are too flawed to be useful, Evans and Census Bureau statisticians say.
(Copyright 2001 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
Oregon Democrats want the bogus numbers released so they can use the skewed results to further screw the real population.
Free press?
Open, accountable government?
In a pig's eye.
They actually did give us the REAL census numbers. What they are refusing to do is give us the bogus, "politically manipulated," numbers. I have mixed thoughts on that. On the one hand, the Democrats will use them at the state level to advance a corrupt agenda. On the other hand, it would be a good opportunity to show just how fallacious the manipulation of the numbers really is.
Actually, Bush beat Gore in Florida and was declared the winner by that state's Secretary of State in accordance with the law. Remember?
And the Census Bureau doesn't want to tell people what the census count is
Nonsense. The Census Bureau is or will release the census count. You know, the official one.
What they are trying not to release is not the census count at all but a bunch of made-up numbers which have been fudged and massaged by statisticians.
Of course, you're the one who posts something then never comes back to defend your statement, aren't you?
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