Census Bureau Adopts GPS to Find American Homes

not that I disagree with most of the comments here, but the census is mandated by the Constitution. The explicit use of the Census is to distribute the number of representatives geographically, but its also the best tool the government has to make policy decisions regarding how to distribute, plan, budget, forecast, for various government programs, from telecommunications licensing and land development to, yes, planning for future sanitation projects.

The government doesn't care if you crap in the woods in your back yard or your john, but they would like to know if enough people are using plumbing to predict the amount of demand people will have on public utilities.
 
Nunoste: well, no; sewer projects would be a thing done by local government. The Census data is held by the Feds -- and there are limits on just how specific they can be with the information they release. It's also slow.

Nope, the only reason to have a census is to count heads to apportion Representatives. They don't need to know anything about my race or plumbing in order to do that.
 
"Anyone who fails to full fill out the census form is subject to, IIRC, a $100 fine."

And that's the part that's bizarre to me. How can the government, seemingly just because it's the "census" rather than an "interrogation" demand that you provide a bunch of information that ordinarily it would need a warrant to discover? That is to say, of course, information well beyond that which would be required by the Constitution.

Tim
 
Roberta
Census data isn't "held" by the Feds. Anyone can have access to the full data sets minus the questions that are filtered out by law, such as names. Even names aren't necessarily held out for certain reasons, ie. getting a surname list to match Hispanics to other lists. Many local governments don't have the resources to conduct their own census just for a sewer project, and I suspect it would be considered a waste of money by politicians since the local district can access the Federal census anyways. Sewer projects are also one of the many projects that local governments apply for Federal or State resources in order to fund. The local government will appeal to get access to those resources using the new census data to justify their request. Sewer projects are also expensive and will often run across multiple jurisdictions and even across federal or state property, especially since most local residents want sewage, but almost none want the sewage or treatment plant in their neighborhood.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top