Posted on 05/17/2009 4:46:49 PM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
Squads of federal agents with badges, hand-held tracking systems and oaths of secrecy are infiltrating neighborhoods across Wisconsin and the rest of the country these days. They’re with the U.S. Census Bureau and they are taking the first step to confirm your address.
They’re not cops, and they are not taking names, yet, just numbers.
The once-every-ten-years population count has begun with that process, address canvassing, which should last through at least the beginning of June, according to Muriel Jackson, a media specialist for the Census Bureau.
Having the addresses confirmed now, in person, will mean more accurate mailings and returns when the Census takes place next year.
And that’s important because the population numbers are used by federal and state entities in formulas that determine funding for all sorts of tax-paid programs, including heating assistance, Head Start, school lunches, and road projects as well as university and hospital support, said Jackson.
"So there’s a lot of money riding on this," said Don Harrier, chief of the state Department of Administration’s Demographic Services Center.
As important, he said, is the use of the numbers for legislative redistricting for both state and federal elected offices. The Census Bureau is required to present data to the state for redistricting by spring 2011. The thousands of workers — there are 1,300 in the southern Wisconsin census area that includes Milwaukee and Madison — are equipped with handheld computers to log in global positioning system coordinates. They will try to contact someone at each household to confirm the address and the number of living quarters on site. If no one is home, they will revisit, said Jackson.
So if there is a stranger in the neighborhood, or someone standing in front of your house or apartment, you will know it is a Census Bureau employee if you can see the badge, which must be visible at all times.
Questionnaires will be mailed
In mid-March 2010, a questionnaire will be mailed to every address across the country in preparation for Census Day: April 1, 2010. The form will ask a few simple questions, including name, gender, age, race and whether the person owns or rents the home.
The households that don’t respond will get a visit from one of hundreds of thousands of temporary government workers, the enumerators.
Getting the right address to begin with not only helps provide accurate information, it saves the government a lot of money, said Dan Veroff, of the Applied Population Laboratory in the Department of Rural Sociology at the UW-Madison.
"The Census Bureau goal right now is to develop the best mailing list possible, get the most accurate and comprehensive list assembled that they will use to send out census questionnaire in 2010," said Veroff.
"The more people who receive the form, file it and send it back the more accurate the census is and the cheaper it is to administer. They don’t have to send out as many in-person enumerators."
Outreach efforts
Communities where the population has historically been under counted, including Hispanic, Hmong and Native American, are already the targets of outreach efforts, said Jackson.
Another community that has historically been miscounted is the Amish.
The census does not ask a person’s religious affiliation, and some Amish avoid government contact altogether.
The bureau hopes to include the Amish here in a partnership program, which engages volunteers from local agencies to form "complete count committees." Volunteers are solicited from business, education, faith-based groups to "help build excitement and spread the word on the importance" of responding to the census, said Jackson.
Veroff said sufficient data on the Amish can be extrapolated from other questions. For the Amish who respond to the census questions, a query on ancestry or ethnic origin, for example, might get an answer of "Pennsylvania Dutch," which demographers have interpreted as "possibly" Amish, said Veroff.
The Wisconsin Amish population has been estimated at 15,525, according to the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College, which uses several sources to get that number, giving Wisconsin the fourth largest Amish population in the country.
For the skeptical, the bureau reminds, "All employees, including the census workers who collect the address information and GPS coordinates, have taken a lifetime oath to protect confidentiality and are subject to a jail term, a fine — or both — for disclosing any information that could identify a respondent or household." By law, the Census Bureau cannot share respondents’ answers with the FBI, the IRS, CIA, welfare or immigration authorities, or any other government agency. No judge or law enforcement agency can find out respondents’ answers.
The bureau’s fact sheet notes this is the first census to include group quarters (such as dormitories, group homes, prisons and homeless shelters) in the address canvassing operation.
lock up your children.
I don’t need no steenkin’ badge......
;-)
The last census had about a million none of your business questions.
Badgees??? We DOON Ned NO STINKIN Badgees!
So what do you legally (read: Constitutionally) have to answer?
So why do they need the GPS systems?
Obama's Brown Shirts, ACORN, will be casing your neighborhood. (Maybe along with SEIU thugs)
BTW, billions of your tax dollars are going to ACORN, a political action group.
What will happen is they’ll find out your town is too white and demand that the town diversify ....
You said — The last census had about a million none of your business questions.
—
I threw the last one away... :-)
No mention of ACORN, who’s been indicted in 14 states with voter fraud, being involved even though they are conducting the census.
A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott said yesterday that while people should fill out the basic census information -- like name, age, gender and race -- "if people feel their privacy is being invaded by those additional questions, they can choose not to answer those questions." Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel and a number of Republican congressmen were quoted as giving similar advice
I’m moving out to a frontier area by then (for peace and quiet) but will probably receive a questionnaire in the PO box in town. That’s cool. Hermits count, too. ;-)
You asked — So why do they need the GPS systems?
—
They’re not good at reading maps... LOL...
Naaah..., really, it’s a good way to map locations, instead of simply addresses. I use GPS all the time, a great way to go.
One example is with an address, it can get complicated about actually finding a location, like the N/S/E/W designations on some streets and things like PL, CT, CR, etc. Addresses can be notoriously bad for finding places.
But, once you’ve got the GPS coordinates, then there’s no problem, and it can accurately be mapped into the proper counties and cities and so on, without mistake.
I like to see a copy of that oath.
Also, if we cooperate, does that mean we can get ammo stamps in the near future?
I doubt they will be around my home; Well, If they go way back in the mountains and get past my dogs...hmm, quite a challenge, I may talk to them..but doubtful.
I was home sick froom work last month and the doorbell rang. It was one of the census workers - a minivan mom in capri pants. She asked me if anyone lived in the “other buildings” on my property.
Let’s see, other buildings - two barns, a hay shed, and two equipment sheds.
I felt like telling her that fourteen occupants were in one barn and seven in the other, but then she would have come back some day to bother my alpacas and they would not be amused.
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