How the Census Stimululates the Economy

[SMAN]

Robert M. Groves

Director, U.S. Census Bureau

Washington, DC

March 10, 2010

Dear Mr. Groves:

Thank you for your kind letter of March 8th telling me that you will be sending me a Census form in about a week. It made me wonder, do you also send your employees emails giving them a “heads up” that you’ll be sending them future emails?

I will have plenty of time to wait in eager anticipation of your census, as I am currently unemployed. Since you are into numbers, you might be interested in knowing that 4 million Americans have become unemployed over the last 18 months or so. That’s a lot of people waiting for your census! Of course not every job market is suffering; the government has added about 55,000 jobs during this same timeframe! That stimulus bill has really done a number on us, hasn’t it?

I know this is a really busy time for you, but perhaps you will humor me by answering a few survey questions:

• How does it cost $14 BILLION to count 350 million people? That’s $40 per person. Did you think about bidding this out to a private company? I’ll count everyone in my town for $25 per person. Please send me $250,000 and I’ll send you back the information (care to guess how many people live in Groton?). I’m also willing to do a few surrounding towns if you want.

• Are you really hiring 800,000 people to conduct this count? Is this really just a government plot to temporarily reduce the unemployment figures for two months? Each new hire only has to count 437.5 people—I could do that in one morning and be done!

• Why did you think you needed a Super Bowl Advertisement to tell people about the Census? Never mind, I guess that’s obvious since you think you need to send me a letter to tell me that you’re going to send me a letter.

• Is it true that every person identified could be “worth” $1,000 in Federal government aid, prompting cities and counties to aggressively seek out and count illegal residents in their area?

• How many Acorn activists are working on the Census? Are you comfortable hiring people from an organization that is facing charges of voter registration fraud?

• The census only has 10 questions, so why are two of them focused on race? Instead of asking me if I’m Hispanic and THEN asking my race, you could pretty much just add Hispanic to the race question. ¿Entiendes?

Don’t get me wrong, I really appreciate your letter. It is a stark reminder of how wacky and over-blown our government has become. I only wish you were doing this survey in October so we’d be even more energized for the November elections, if that is possible.

Good luck with your census—we’re all counting on you!

Chuck McKinney

Groton, MA

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