Did anyone else receive one of these? According to their web site, US Code Title 13, sections Section 141 and Section 193 your response is required by law.
In reality, those sections outline that The Secretary (who is presumably defined elsewhere) can take surveys as a part of their census process. It is Section 221 that requires you to respond:
Whoever, being over eighteen years of age, refuses or willfully neglects, when requested by the Secretary, or by any other authorized officer or employee of the Department of Commerce or bureau or agency thereof acting under the instructions of the Secretary or authorized officer, to answer, to the best of his knowledge, any of the questions on any schedule submitted to him in connection with any census or survey provided…
That’s just a crock.
Oh, sure, census information is useful and all that. It’s just the principal of it. I guess I’ll have to ask the nice lady who came to my door for some evidence that she is an authorized officer or employee of the Deparment of Commerce, or a bureau or agency thereof acting under the instructions of The Secretary.
Heck, I’d pay the $100 if it weren’t for Title 18, Section 3571 (allegedly Section 3559 as well, but that seems to deal with imprisonment and not monetary fines). With it on the books, the “not greater than $100” fine becomes “not greater than $5000” fine. That really blows.
Comments
718 responses to “American Community Survey”
Here’s a little tidbit brought to you by the Legal Defense Fund. The following is a collection or reasons that organization offers to convince the public to respond to the ACS.
The survey is useful to capture more details about your household to have a better understanding of what your community is like. (Well, gee….why not ask local leaders? Why not park in the neighborhood? Where in the Constitution does it say that the federal gov needs to collect “details” on communities?
Answers help expose many of the problems and disparities that are seen in you community but remain unknown to others. (So…”they”, in their infinite wisdom are going to judge what is a problem in you community. Maybe I chose my community for the way it is and feel that the members of the community have the right to decide what is a problem and what is not. We don’t need the feds deciding what is needed. Just because something is a good idea doesn’t mean that the gov should do it – because is can’t seem to do anything well. The gov IS NOT MY PARENT! )
Organization like the LDF push for greater equality and helps enforce civil rights laws. (Push for greater equality???? According to whom??? What I need or want may have nothing in common with anyone else and I don’t want a one size fits all lifestyle. This country was founded on equal opportunity and not equal or guaranteed outcomes – Got it social scientists! INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS not collective rights; not social justice; not forced equality. I acquire what I have because I am willing to work for it, not because it got handed to me. I don’t expect anyone to give me stuff, especially stuff I don’t want – like gov help.)
If people in your community are having a hard(difficult) time finding a job after a layoff or unfairly paying more for their mortgage, the ACS can help expose the problem and help to identify a solution. (Oh, like you helped by forcing banks to loan money to people who couldn’t pay mortgages causing the current housing crisis. Here are some solutions for ya…. don’t treat us all like we need the gov or organizations in bed with the gov to design our lives or fix problems we don’t have. If someone is unfairly paying more for a mortgage the maybe they bought a house the could not afford.)
Details matter. ( Yeah, how much do the details matter after data manipulation and imputation occur?)
Must study the impact of race. To truly get rid of racial discrimination, we must expose the problem. (First, there is no way to eliminate all the biases or racism, so I guess this is another job security ploy. Next, maybe the perceived bias/racism is simply a jerk being a jerk and it could have been directed at anyone regardless of race, but when directed at a minority it turns into racism. When do we get to be Americans and not hyphen this or hyphen that? When it come to jobs, character matters along with qualification, integrity and a solid work ethic. If the LDF was to do something productive then fight to get rid of the survey, since this data collection is a distraction from getting to the real problems and finding real solutions and not by shoving gov programs down our throats. I’d like to spend my own money instead of having the gov take it. Oh and demonizing employers won’t expand job opportunities. Punishing employers with gov mandates won’t expand jobs either. )
I did the silence thing. There is no law which requires me to read my mail, answer my phone or open my door. I have a right not to allow the CB field reps to waste my time. Further, I didn’t want the field rep guessing at my age, race or recording my gender. We are all Americans; not Americans by category! I didn’t feel that I needed to explain my position to a field rep since they are trained to get as much cooperation as possible. I went so far as to install cameras and I disconnected my phone. Landlines define an occupied residence. Ditching a land line gets rid of that and it saves money in taxes, since every land line is billed a tax to pay for the Spanish American War. That tax should have been discontinued when the war was paid off, but our money grubbing gov can never get rid of a tax once it gets it.
The way to fight this is to get the word out. The ACS was created because of the public backlash over the 2000 census long form, which asked the same types of questions. The next thing is to do research. Follow the data. Look at how it is used. There are marketers who have the data distributed by zipcode of by block. Understand how much personal info is already out there and who sells it.
Don’t count on the media or your elected officials to be on your side. They all benefit from the data. States gerrymander districts using racial data. That’s why we have so many beyond stupid elected officials. Instead, read and understand the Constitution. Understand how the gov is violating the Constitution.
Merinas is right about money. The CB has wasted lots of money. Congress has cut the budget for them only to have it restored because the CB supporters and data junkies petitioned congress. COSSA is an organization which lobbies congress on behalf of a huge group of social, behavioral and economic scientists to get funding (they received stimulus money) and to get new questions added to surveys.
As Merinas van der Lubbe has pointed out the only way we can bring this kind of thing to the front pages is to organize the vast majority and make a lot of noise. I for one would volinteer my time to help. Any takers?
Several comments…
An organized campaign against the Census Bureau is in order. When they start seeing bumperstickers that say “DON’T ANSWER THE CENSUS”, or “AMERICAN COMMUNITY SURVEY: BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING” (too long, I know, but…) they’ll realize that they ‘re in *real* trouble.
The fact that people can organize and form support groups on the Internet against this sort of thing has got to really have the Government piglets peeing in their French lace panties. As long as they can keep people divided and ignorant, they can rule untrammeled. They’ve never before been up against an electronic samizdat-style spread of information that they DON’T want spread. I.e., you’re ruining their day just posting on here – Keep it up!
The best *strategy* is probably to do whatever spends the most of their money. The more refusers they get, and the more money they have to spend per “refusal”, the harder it is on their budget and the less efficient they look, and consequently the harder it is for them to justify their machinations to Clowngress. There *are* other (equally vile, but whatever) agencies who want that money to fund their expensive Government salaries and perks, you know.
From that standpoint, the best *tactics* should be directed not at embarrassing them or “telling them off” (even though they deserve both, of course) but to take up as much of their time as possible. From that standpoint, the best approach might be complete silence whenever confronting them. If they have NOTHING to write down – not even a refusal – they’ll have to keep trying over and over again until their protocol expires (which I gather is 90 days, but who knows).
I haven’t done the math, but a widespread campaign of non-cooperation, contrived so as to cause them vast expenditures for no results or inaccurate and unusable results, will probably result in cancellation of the program. Again, there are plenty of other Government piglets who want that money to fund their cocaine-and-underage-boys habits.
John Whitehead is one of the lawyers. He is well versed in Constitutional law. He runs the website The Rutherford Institute. Also check out the checkpointusa site (checkpointusa.org/census/census.htm) which has a collection other links for ACS info.
There is a lot of outrage over the ACS out there. Every year I notice more sites and blogs appearing on the net. The word is getting out.
Thanks Cathy for the info. I will take a look at Mr Whitehead’s writings as well as Youtube. I have informed all my heighbors about this and most of them were very surprised of the questions on ACS. Only one heighbor knew about this and they were all happy that I told them. As far as the lawyers do you know of any and are they well versed in constitutional law? By the way I have taken down my name from the front of my house.
It has hit the media at various times. FOX News has had a bunch of features on the ACS prior to the 2010 census mailing. World Net Daily had a bunch of articles on it as well. There are lawyers waiting for someone, anyone to get fined so they can go to court over it. Check out John W, Whitehead’s writings about it. As for the rest of the media and elected officials, the CB has its “rapid response team” which it sends out to do damage control when there is an unflattering story because they need to maintain the deception so as to obtain public cooperation. Since no one is harmed in their estimation and the media likes printing stories using the data the CB collects, the media will not report the outrage. Which is no surprise given that the media prefers to not print many stories which the public needs to know. Youtube has videos of various stories on the ACS.
I am not a rebealious person by any strech of the immagination but when I received the ACS I went up the wall. How dare they think that they can come into my private life! This is one of the main reasons why I left the country I was in. I am a naturalizen American citizen, gave by being in the military, paid my taxes and now they want to know every aspect of my daily life? I say NO! Enough is enough! I will be damned to be dictated to and that is what is coming if people answer this rediculous “Survey”. One more thing, Title 13, Sections 141, 193, and 221, doesn’t that pertain to the census not the servey? I am now lawyer but that is how I see it. Cathy, why hasn’t this hit the media big time?
Gov weasels do read these comments. They use to post arguments in support of the data gathering. They would blab on about how the community would suffer; how sad it made them feel; how paranoid we sounded; how safe the info was; how selfish we are; how ancestry sites would suffer. Blab, blab…….
Remember, they are still studying us. Non-responders are a puzzling group. The challenge is to get us to comply by whatever manipulation they can develop. It’s not about helping the country, because all these studies and gov programs have spent us into massive debt. It has helped to expand the CB and all its support groups into a huge employment agency, whose work hasn’t resulted in anything beneficial for the communities they claim to serve. They serve only themselves. If they truly wanted to help advance the disenfranchised groups they study, they would working towards getting people on a track towards prosperity, which would result in social scientists pushing themselves out of the very jobs they are in. They are too selfish to do that. Keeping victims as victims equals job security and keeps the funding rolling in for all their stupid projects. How does studying what doesn’t work result in producing solutions for people?
Stimulus money went to save or create jobs for social scientists. Get a REAL job! Make something which contributes to society. Build a business which employs people. Stop with the never ending guilt trip and READ THE CONSTITUTION!!!!! WE the PEOPLE ultimately CONTROL this country!!!!
This country was built through hard work and individual freedom. Freedom which has been eroded over time and crushed by mandates and policies forced upon the public. The fact that after decades of data collection, we have an economy in the dumper proves that these surveys have done more harm than good. Communities haven’t improved and won’t because it is not about the “collective”. It is about the INDIVIDUAL.
Social scientists believe in winner and losers, income redistribution, SOCIALISM!!!! I believe that the tide raises all boats. Individuals don’t win because something was taken from someone else. Winning comes from working hard to produce something; creating a path for others to be successful. Knowing what I have doesn’t tell anyone about HOW I got it. I have always been open to teaching others what I can do even if they become competitors because I believe competition is good. Forcing me to share is un-American. The ACS is un-American. The people behind the survey are un-American.
I’ve thought several times that it would be great if some our government weasels read these comments and realized “oops, we’ve awakened them… and damn… they’re not afraid of us!” or some variation thereof. They’ve certainly stepped in it deep… and they’re not coming in my house.
I live in the southeast where the heat is oppressive so I’ve imagined our conversations taking place with them standing in the hot sun on my porch and me with the door cracked, a cool 72 (though I’m not telling them that if they ask) and leading them into thinking that they may actually get some answers.
They will get some answers, but they won’t necessarily be related to the questions.
“How many vehicles do you and your wife own?”
“Well, we might own more if Obama wasn’t a Marxist.”
“You and your wife rent this place or are you buying it?”
“I don’t really care for seafood. Now a steak sounds good.”
“Sir, you must answer these questions.”
“Cats suck, you know? They’re just arrogant.”
🙂 this might be fun