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.
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718 responses to “American Community Survey”
There may be relief from this mess on the way thanks to the budget deal just agreed upon.
Cuts to the Periodic Census are the second largest line item on the budget at a cut of -$6.2 billion compared to FY 2010. Now that is a big number but 2010 was a general census year. The number is also -$93 million less than requested for 2011.
The Periodic Census account/line item on the budget is where the funding for the American Communiity Survey comes from.
Keep your ears open as the details of the budget cuts emerge.
Interesting that it went beyond the 90 days. The CB may have messed up.
The intro letter is not part of the 90 days. The way it is supposed to work is that the intro letter arrives about 2 weeks prior to the start of the 1st month. The 1st copy of the survey arrives after the 1st of the month, followed by a reminder card and a second survey. Calls start about a week into the 2nd month and the visits start on the 3rd. So if the intro letter came in March, the 1st month would be April, 2nd – May and 3rd – June.
When I refused the other questions on the 2010 census, I got bothered for a total of 5 months. No phone calls, but got lots of visits. It was quite entertaining.
The end of March really was pretty close to 90 days. If they go until the end of April it will be well over 100 days and pretty close to four months. I guess they got to stretch it out based on timing. Just reading these responses, I’m surprised the length between the phone calls and actual visits. I guess that just spreads it out more. And I’m surprised, though not complaining, that the calls have stopped completely. Seems like most have to deal with both for a while. Either way, it hasn’t been too hard to ignore it, but I am looking forward to not looking out the window or seeing if we missed a “visitor” while we were gone. Got to love legalized harrassment.
The house visits will go til the end of the month. The whole thing takes 90 days, starting from the month the survey is received.
I was wondering if anyone else had this situation occur? We got the survey in mid-January and were offended right away. Did research and concluded there wasn’t a chance we were filling it out. The calls started in early March and lasted just a few weeks, although we got well over 30 calls. We haven’t had another call in about three weeks and thought we were done. Then last Thursday we got a visit. We weren’t home. Got another one Sunday but didn’t answer the door. Still no more calls, though. Many comments here and other places people are being bombarded by both. Since the house visits just started, how much longer do we have to deal with this? Already been about three months. Seems like a waste of time and money to me.
The 4th amendment to the constitution which states, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, PAPERS, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon the probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons of things to be seized.”
The Census Bureau has a defined role in the U.S. Constitution of finding out how many people live in a house hold, period. The requirement that I divulge any other information to this federal department is a violation of my 4th amendment right “to be secure in my person and papers against unreasonable searches and seizures of my personal information from my own government”.
Further, in order to impose a fine or jail sentence for failure to comply with filling out the ACS would have to done in a U.S. court of law. This is the “LAST” thing they want to happen because if the courts rule it an illegal search and seizure of personal information, they can no longer harass a person by using an “inferior” federal law that tries to usurp a person’s Constitutional right.
If they try to prosecute a person(s) for failure to comply, the Department of Commerce and/or the Census Bureau will have a, very ugly and very public, legal battle on their hands. If they lose, they lose the right to harass and intimidate people into complying as the threat of fine or imprisonment would no longer be an issue.
All this data collection does is to allow the nanny state promoters implement more growth crushing gov programs. We can thank them for the current housing crisis; for the ever growing criteria for what constitutes disabled; for burying us in endless regulation. What will they collapse next?
File under: Are you sick of seeing newspaper articles featuring CB data?
The Constitution require a count of “persons”, which is then used to create districts for house members. Count and done. Instead, we are treated to endless dribble about the distribution of races within a community, because a micro-managing utopianist isn’t happy unless there is an equal distribution of individuals. These articles continue with either dirt obvious conclusions or stupid interpretations of the data.
Take housing. May criteria go into a decision in choosing a residence. We can start with availability and cost. If there are no vacancies or the cost is too high, it will be eliminated. Then there are the considerations of distance from work, activities, family, friends, shopping….. etc. Or maybe a residence off the beaten path is desired.
Take income. Suppose a person could make more money and chooses not to. Suppose a person could afford a house and chooses not to buy one. Suppose a person chooses to live either at or below their means. Decisions about income and spending are personal choices.
Life is complex, involving many decisions which may not even be apparent to the person making the decisions. There is not enough collective intelligence anywhere to then decide on policy and programs for a complex society. All this data collection does is to allow the nanny state promoters to implement more growth crushing
B,
When they say that the survey is anonymous, it isn’t. They can release your name or anything else you write as long as the entire profile is not released together. They will LIE to you to get you to cooperate. You don’t have to answer IT AT ALL. Writing “decline to answer” or “refused” allows the CB to count your form as “completed”. It will not save you from having someone call you to verify your answers. It will not stop them from sending a field rep to your residence if your residence is one of the lucky ones.
If you still want to return the form, then do so. Understand that you are being played. What you were told is from the CB non-responder playbook. Also know that your profile can be reconstructed using only 6 data points, many of which are already public knowledge. The CB knows that profile reconstruction is a problem and doesn’t know how to prevent it from happening. Also, the CB can’t protect the data bases from hackers, which is why the census is not conducted using the internet. The CB will share our census data with the UN. Do you want your stuff to available to the UN? Do you trust the postal service? Will you be returning the survey registered with a return receipt?
I didn’t return the form. I wasn’t going to return the form with any answers. The whole thing is unConstitutional. This survey just feeds the central planning monster that the CB created to justify CB jobs.
I would rather that the public has all the info to make an informed decision about participating in the survey and not just the lies an propaganda spewed by the CB.
I received the ACS and after reading it. I didn’t want to fill it out. I called the Census Bureau and after explainig to me that this survey was “anonymous” and “very important” I still was’t going to fill it out. She finally told me that I was required to, but if I didn’t want to answer some questions it is better to write “I decline to answer” rather than leave it blank. There you go, straight from the CB it is better to write “I decline to answer” rather than leave it blank.