Taking Leave of our Census
By: Floyd and Mary Beth Brown
FrontPageMagazine.com | Monday, February 23, 2009
"This is nothing
more than a political land grab," Congressman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah,
said of Barack Obama’s Chicago-style political decision to bring the
influential role of conducting the U.S. Census under White House
influence. This single act should end any further bipartisanship. Obama
is executing raw power politics as taught by his role model, leftist
Chicago organizer Saul Alinsky. Alinsky pioneered this in-your-face
style of political move.
Practically, this means that Rahm
Emanuel, the White House Chief of Staff and the former Democratic
congressional campaign chairman -- who has tax problems, ethics
problems and negotiated with impeached Gov. Rod Blagojevich -- will be
in charge of the process that determines congressional redistricting
and the makeup of the Electoral College.
The census has
tremendous political significance. Political parties are always eager
to have a hand in redrawing congressional districts so that they can
maximize their own party's clout while minimizing the opposition, often
through gerrymandering. This explains some of the bizarre,
crazy-looking congressional district maps in America. The census
decides how many congressional districts are in each state.
Experts
note that the method of counting can significantly skew the census. The
well-known college textbook, “How to Lie with Statistics,” comes to
mind. Democrats advocate using mathematical estimates, a practice known
as "sampling," to count urban residents and immigrants. Republicans say
the constitution requires a physical head count, which entails going
door-to-door and is much more accurate. As expected, the Democrats
models overstate the population in urban areas, traditionally
Democratic strongholds.
The census also determines the
composition of the all-important Electoral College, which chooses the
president. If one party controls the census, it could try to perpetuate
its hold on political power. The system we have is the result of a
finely crafted compromise by our Founding Fathers when the constitution
was drafted.
When Obama nominated New Mexico Gov. Bill
Richardson to be commerce secretary --who later withdrew for scandal
reasons -- he indicated that Richardson would be in charge of the
census. All that changed with the nomination of New Hampshire Sen. Judd
Gregg. Gregg, a Republican, favors actually counting individual
citizens rather than using statistical samples and computer models.
Therein lies the source of the debate.
So far the situation is
still unresolved, Obama has yet to fill the commerce secretary post and
the administration contends that they aren’t actually bringing the
census inside the White House, quickly retracting an earlier White
House statement. Either way, the most important issue at hand is the
methodology of the census. This power play led to nominee Judd Gregg
wisely removing his name from consideration for the post.
The
Constitution is clear: “the actual Enumeration shall be made… ”, and
enumeration means “to ascertain the number of, to count.” The
Constitution is straightforward in setting up the purpose and practice
of the census. America is supposed to count each person. As detrimental
as it would be to have a hardened operative such as Rahm Emanuel
playing politics with the census, it will be just as damaging to have
whomever Obama finally appoints as commerce secretary if they violate
the constitution by employing statistical sampling with the purpose of
exaggerating the population count in urban areas.
If Obama and
his Commerce Department bow to leftist pressure groups and trample the
Constitution, our very democracy will be undermined. Our system of
voting is a sacred trust. Attempts to manipulate that system violate
that trust. This issue will be a test of Obama and the U.S.
Constitution.
"The last thing the census needs is for any
hard-bitten partisan (either a Karl Rove or a Rahm Emanuel) to
manipulate these critical numbers. Many federal funding formulas depend
on them, as well as the whole fabric of federal and state
representation. Partisans have a natural impulse to tilt the playing
field in their favor, and this has to be resisted," says Larry Sabato,
the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia,
in an e-mail to Fox News. “I've always remembered what Joseph Stalin
said: 'Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the
votes decide everything.’”
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