My Two Census

H/t to Jim Edwards, the managing editor of AdWeek, for making us aware of the following (full article HERE):

Ad agencies for the U.S. Census Bureau appear to have learned nothing from a decade-old White House scandal — because they’re busy repeating history.

Back in 2000, the White House was discovered trading ad buys with TV networks in return for positive spin in its war on drugs. That covert operation, which exposed millions to anti-drug propaganda masquerading as drama and sitcoms, ended in disgrace and the White House promised to cancel the program.

Ten years later, that promise is long forgotten. Globalhue, the ad agency that controls much of the government’s ad money targeting minorities for Census 2010, sent a letter to the National Newspaper Association demanding that publishers run six articles about the census or else the government would cancel its ads. (The NNPA represents community newspapers.)

While there was no explicit requirement of positive coverage demanded by Globalhue, the implication is clear: How long do you think the agency would continue placing ads in any newspaper that was digging dirt against the national headcount?

According to congressional hearings in February and March, the letter from Globalhue CEO Don Coleman said:

“In lieu of free ad space, all papers must agree to running six articles (preferably during hiatus weeks) about the Census 2010 as well as two editorials. If paper does not agree to the added value stipulations, buy will be canceled immediately.”

Amazingly, the arrangement proposed in the letter — that ad buys be contingent upon articles written by the papers themselves — is exactly the same as the one conducted by the Office of National Drug Control Policy during its disgraced ads-for-coverage scheme.

Disclaimer: The following does not represent the views of Stephen Robert Morse or MyTwoCensus.com.

I just sent this email to the Census Bureau after witnessing incredible waste this morning. And for the record, I’m not some crazy anti-government teabagger, I’m a diehard Democrat.

Did you have someone handing out red plastic cups today at Wollaston Station in Quincy MA?? Everywhere I looked I saw LITTERED red plastic cups, wrapped in plastic, with info cards about the US Census!! Plastic cups on the subway platform, the sidewalk, and in the TRASH CANS, headed not for recycling, but straight to landfills. Pollution and landfills! WHO authorized this boneheaded promotion? First, whoever you had forcing these pointless, plastic giveaways on commuters should be admonished. “Do you WANT a red plastic cup?” 99% will say no. Don’t force them into people’s hands where they will take one to be nice, get your guy to shut up, or help him meet some possible quota for giving away this crap. Second, you need to cease this “plastic cup” giveaway, just donate what’s left to schools or shelters. Why would you think anyone would want an ugly plastic dixie cup anyway? Hand out the cards if you must, but draw the line at pointless WASTE that pollutes our streets and waterways or ends up in landfills! I guess Congress gave you an advertising budget and you didn’t know what to do with it. Unbelievable. The Census shouldn’t even be advertising in the first place, it’s self-explanatory to anyone with half a brain.

–  Mr. R. Feinberg, Boston

As the 2010 Census approaches, more and more questions are pouring in about the history of the decennial census –spanning  from the 1790 Census to the present. From the Census Bureau’s self-recorded history, we’d like to give a hat tip to Vector1media.com for highlighting the following points about the progression of  technology and the census:

1890 is the first year that census workers were given detailed maps to help complete their tasks, and it’s also the same year that an electric tabulating system was utilized for the count

1950 was the first time a computer was used to tabulate results, and it was also the first computer designed for civilian use

1960 was the first time that census results were digitally recorded (on magnetic tape)

1970 was the first time that census data products were made available digitally on magnetic tape.

1980 saw the creation of the State Data Center Program for easier access to digital data on computer tapes

1990 was the year that the Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing (TIGER), computer-based maps, was introduced. It also was the first year that data was released on CD-ROM

2000 was when the Internet became the primary means of distributing Census data

2010 won’t include the “long form” because this more detailed collection has been converted to the ongoing American Community Survey

Additionally, the Census Bureau sent out a media advisory today with historical Census Bureau information. Enjoy it here:

1790
(See < http://www.census.gov/history/www/through_the_decades/overview/1790.html>
for more information)
– Census Day was Aug. 2 (the first Monday of the month).
– Six questions were asked.
– The census was conducted in the 13 original states as well as the
districts of Maine, Vermont, Kentucky and the Southwest Territory
(Tennessee).
– U.S. marshals, who conducted the census, submitted their results to
Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, nominal director of the census.
– President George Washington delivered the first “State of the Union”
address on Jan. 8, 1790.
– Rhode Island entered the Union as the 13th state, May 29, 1790.
– U.S. population: 3.9 million. (more…)

Despite the threat of service cutbacks and job losses at the US Postal Service that were announced in recent days, the mailing of approximately 100 million “advance letters” appears to have gone off with only a few minor glitches. (See previous post about city names and zip codes being inaccurate in St. Louis!) Yes, this whole mass mailing concept should seem like a fairly simple process, but after the major printing debacle that occurred in 2000 (that could have been fatal to the advance letter process), we taking nothing for granted. Despite some small levels of populist discontent about the Census Bureau “wasting money,” the lack of discussion about the advance letter should be treated as a good thing, in that people are now generally aware that their 2010 Census form will arrive in the mail in one week. Let’s just hope that next week’s mailing, which is clearly the most important one in terms of obtaining data (and saving taxpayers money in the long run) is also a process marked by accuracy and efficiency.

Below are important highlights from an article on STLToday.com:

Advance letters from the U.S. Census Bureau are causing confusion in parts of the St. Louis area that share common ZIP codes.

But census officials said Tuesday that residents and municipal leaders shouldn’t be worried, the information will be correct on the forms, which are set to start arriving Monday.

The one-page notes that residents received this week say the census forms are coming. The notes are part of an $85 million mailing effort to encourage the sending back of the forms. But some of the letters listed incorrect city names, prompting residents and officials to worry about the accuracy of the count.

After the official census forms arrive, reminder postcards will be sent to areas with low responses, said Shelly Lowe, a spokeswoman for the Census Bureau’s national office.

Some residents of O’Fallon and St. Peters received letters with the correct address and ZIP code, but the wrong city name — Cottleville. Cottleville residents are served by some of the same ZIP codes.

Drabelle said the city received at least 20 calls from residents who were concerned about the city name error.

Lisa Bedian, a spokeswoman for St. Peters, reported a similar number of calls. Part of St. Peters borders Cottleville, she said, but some of the residents who called about their letters lived several miles from the border.

“People are worried about whether St. Peters is going to get credit for this,” Bedian said.

She said the city was asking residents to call if they received an incorrect city name on their letters. She said that residents need not leave their names, but that the city was collecting addresses to get a sense of where the letters were sent.

In St. Louis County, some Maryland Heights residents received letters addressed to Hazelwood. The city’s website told residents they would be counted as living in Maryland Heights. Sara Berry, a city spokeswoman, said the city had received a handful of calls.

“We’re trying to get the word out as best we can and let people know to go ahead and fill out their forms,” she said.

Dennis Johnson, a spokesman with the regional office in Kansas City, said an outside contractor prepared the letters using postal data. The city name on the letter will have no effect on the official census form, he said. Johnson said the official census forms had a bar code with information about exactly where the residence was situated. He said the Census Bureau had been working with city and county officials to make sure addresses were accurate.
“It’s not going to affect the population count,” Johnson said. “They will be tabulated properly for each jurisdiction.”

Scott Hanson, city planner in Edwardsville, said his city had had technicians review data from the census to make sure it included recently annexed properties. “We’re keeping a close eye on that,” he said.

The letters generated controversy in 2000, too. That year, they included return envelopes for those who wanted to receive census forms in another language, but no English explanation was printed on the envelope.

This is about as weird as it gets in 2010 Censusville…The following comes from the Associated Press:

By GREG BLUESTEIN (AP) – 22 hours ago

ATLANTA — A Georgia man accused of killing two people used an innovative legal strategy Monday in an attempt to get his murder charges dismissed. Call it the Census defense.

Floyd Wayne Williams Jr. wants the charges dropped — or at least his trial delayed — until the 2010 Census is done so that a jury more accurately reflecting the county’s racial makeup can be chosen. Williams, who is black, is to be tried in the south Atlanta’s Clayton County, which has seen a surge in African-American residents since the 2000 Census.

Jury pools in Clayton County, like many other jurisdictions, are drawn from voter registration lists, driver’s license data and utility records. The list is then balanced by race and gender from the Census to reflect a cross-section of the population.

Williams, 31, argued his constitutional rights will be violated if he is tried by a jury drawn from the 2000 Census, when the black population was 50.6 percent, instead of 2007, when the number had swelled to 64.5 percent.

There has been an increase in attorneys using a jury’s racial makeup as a defense argument, in particular as Hispanic and black populations in parts of the country have swelled since the 2000 Census, said Jeffrey Abramson, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law who has written a book about the role of juries.

The U.S. Supreme Court could soon decide whether a Michigan man’s murder convictions should have been tossed out because there were too few black residents in a county’s jury pool. Diapolis Smith, who is black, was convicted by an all-white jury for shooting a man in Grand Rapids in 1991.

“It does seem to be a systemic problem nationwide, because it’s difficult updating the list and also because the courts are reluctant to fault the existing lists,” Abramson said.

The challenges like Williams’ are difficult to win, though, he said.

“There’s just a sense that we do the best we can, that it would be difficult to find a list that is more representative,” Abramson said.

Williams’ case has been drawn out since he was charged in 2002 with fatally shooting 48-year-old Alejandro Javier Gutierrez-Martinez and Jose Simon Arias, who was 16 months old, during a 2001 home invasion.

State prosecutors soon announced they would seek the death penalty, but before the trial started Williams escaped the county jail in 2003. He was caught in Baltimore and is currently in jail in Georgia.

At a hearing Monday, Williams’ attorneys contended that Clayton County should either use the 2007 population estimate or wait until the 2010 Census is completed. (more…)

The following piece from The Washington Post reiterates a position that MyTwoCensus.com has expressed for quite some time now, because as recently as 2004, confidential data from the decennial census was handed over to federal law enforcement officials:

By Tara Bahrampour

Tuesday, March 9, 2010; 4:02 PM

The millions of blue forms being mailed this month in the first census count since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, do not ask about religion. But the idea of answering any questions posed by the government makes some Muslims uneasy, so community leaders are worried that many may avoid the Census altogether.

“A lot of people, they have the concern,” said Raja Mahmood, 50, a Manassas taxi driver who moved to the United States from Pakistan 25 years ago. “The majority of Muslims, they don’t want to draw attention.”

Although he plans to fill out the census form — and the Falls Church mosque he attends, Dar Al-Hijrah, has encouraged it — Mahmood said many Muslims he knows are wary about why the government, which treated them with suspicion in the years after the terrorist strike, wants to collect information about them.

“They can look for the count of how many people live here, and that’s a good thing,” he said, “but God knows what is in their heart.”

Muslim leaders have been holding forums to explain the process. Last week, the Justice Department said that information-gathering and sharing provisions of the Patriot Act do not override federal confidentiality laws related to the Census, with stiff penalties for sharing information about an individual.

“That would go a long way toward calming fears,” said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Still, community leaders say they understand why people might be cautious. Many remember the trepidation that arose after 9/11, when men from some Muslim countries were required to register with the then-Immigration and Naturalization Service. The requirement led to deportations for visa violations or minor infractions unrelated to terrorism, Hooper said, adding that “whole neighborhoods were emptied.”

(more…)

There must be some major discontent against the Census Bureau in Maine, as Census Bureau employees faced angry citizens on at least two occasions in recent days.  (If you know of other incidents of assault or abuse against Census Bureau employees, please do not hesitate to let us know.) The following comes from the Maine Public Broadcasting Network:

Gov. John Baldacci today is encouraging Mainers to fill out and mail back their 2010 Census forms, as authorities look into the alleged assaults last week of two Census workers in the state.

Authorities told the Bangor Daily News that Wesley Storer, 61, of Bar Harbor is facing criminal retraint, assault and theft charges after tearing the ID badge off a 50-year-old female U.S. Census worker last Monday at an apartment building he owns in Harrington.

Storer then blocked the woman from leaving the building, Washington County Sheriff Department officials told the paper. Officials say Storer was intoxicated.

On Friday, a Brooksville man was charged with simple assault after he allegedly grabbed and pushed a 39-year-old female census worker who knocked on his door. Authorities say James Swift, 53, grabbed and pushed the woman after she tried to leave census papers on his doorknob. The worker did not require medical attention, the paper reports.

U.S. Census workers are currently gathering information for the once-in-a-decade survey of population trends. The incidents have prompted a warning to Census staff. “It has not changed protocol for us, but we have reiterated to our staff to use extreme caution,” says Terry Drake, the local census office manager based in Augusta.

Drake’s office is still hiring workers, and it’s too early to say whether the assaults will affect recruiting.  Drake says that the two workers who were assaulted are still on the job.

The 2010 Census advance letters that were mailed today have started to arrive at homes across America. For questions or comments or complaints, share your thoughts in the comments section here!

The text of the advance letter is as follows:

Dear Resident:

About one week from now, you will receive a 2010 Census form in the mail.
When you receive your form, please fill it out and mail it in promptly.
Your response is important. Results from the 2010 Census will be used to
help each community get its fair share of government funds for highways,
schools, health facilities, and many other programs you and your neighbors
need. Without a complete, accurate census, your community may not receive
its fair share. Thank you in advance for your help.

Sincerely, Robert M. Groves
Director, U.S. Census Bureau

Since MyTwoCensus.com added a Twitter widget to the lower right side of our page in December 2009, it has been very easy to observe Tweets and dialogues from across the US that pertain to the 2010 Census. However, last week, we noticed a suspicious Tweet (see below) and contacted the person who posted it. Thus far, we have not recieved a response, but we must wonder: Are federal, state, regional, or local agencies hiring people (at $29.50 per hour!!!) to complete 2010 Census forms on behalf of prisoners? Is this legal? Will this produce a fair and accurate  count? On Friday, we inquired about this Tweet with the Census Bureau. They have not yet responded to our inquiry.

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