she also fears ACORN, the community organizing group that came under fire for its voter registration efforts last year, will be part of the Census Bureau’s door-to-door information collection efforts.

Does she provide any evidence for this fear, or is it the default wingnut version of evidence known as “making stuff up”?

Shorter Bachmann: We should all take leave of our census!

Ok, a little bit about the fight over the census.  It did start 10 years ago when the Clinton administration was set to go ahead and allow that Census to use statistical methods to arrive at a truer count than going door to door can do.  Basically it would allow for better counting of homeless and migrant populations.  Now this was something the Census Bureau was planning for years to make their count more accurate but because it would count the wrong type of people in the wrong areas (ie add to city populations) Republicans fought against it.  and so part of the plan is the typical Republican idea that we need not only talk about the census using sampling but how evil the census really is in order to undermind it if necessary.  Add in the paranoia that is already there and you get Bachmann 8 years later misunderstanding the whole point.

Shhhh…. they’ve got rope and their making a noose. Don’t step in. Let nature take its course.

Census is how representatives are assigned to districts. If you’re bowing out of the census then you’re shrinking your political voice.

PiaToR rocks once again.  Even if puns are the lowest form of humor.

It’s not like the explain why they ask every question or anything:

http://2010.census.gov/2010census/recent_news/011812.html

I actually want to encourage all conservatives to follow Bachmann’s lead on this.  Firstly, it presents the possibility of landing them all in jail (a most pleasant and richly deserved outcome.  More importantly, it maens a dramatic undercount in strongly conservative districts.  Since congressional representation is based on the census count it could well mean fewer Bachmanns, Cronyns, and Brownbacks in the future.

My husband and I were contacted to take part in a government financial census, which requires that we answer a bunch of the same questions once every few months. The census lady gave us a huge packet of information and explained why she was doing this. Obviously, it’s so the government has information about the citizenry to craft policy. Duh. It’s not like they want to know how much money I spend on coke-n-hooker parties per month. They want to know how many Americans are receiving various forms of aid and if we’re able to save any of our income for the future, etc. Maybe it’s because I’m not a bet-wetting lunatic, but I don’t find that frightening.

I really don’t want conservatives to follow Bachmann’s lead, or at least only long enough to get them all hooked for conspiracy to violate the federal law requiring that you answer census questions.

Because Bachman’s craziness about ACORN coming to get your personal information is going to lead to a bunch of perfectly nice temp workers getting shot or beaten. And that’s not a price I’m willing to pay just to hear a bunch of sanctimonious denials that “resist government intrusion by any means necessary” actually meant, y’know, doing anything physical.

I don’t remember about the places I’ve lived before, but in MA the cities and towns take a census for the state every damn year.  It is mailed to every household and counts household members, occupations and number of cats and dogs.  I think we were supposed to keep our son on due to him being active duty military with our house as his home of record, but I’m not certain I am remebering that correctly.  They cross check against voting registers and use the info for jury notifications among other things.

I love this. Conservatives always whine that the government doesn’t work. Then they do everything possible to make the government not work. Then when the government doesn’t work, they go about saying “See, I was right!”.

Bachmann’s misperceptions of how the census works are epic fail.  I love how she says “I’ll say how many people are in the household”, but she not realize that the long form info she is paranoiding about has been pushed to the community survey.

Gotta also love how she makes sure you know that you have to say how many people are in your household ... otherwise, she might lose her district if a lot of her fool minions are undercounted!

Right ... lets go for a wingnut undercount ... make them lose their districts BWAHAHAHAHAH!

I think we were supposed to keep our son on due to him being active duty military with our house as his home of record, but I’m not certain I am remebering that correctly.

They drop you from the voter rolls if you don’t respond or are not listed, so he would want to be on there if he was still getting absentee ballots overseas.

Who starts this shit?  Who decides this would be a good idea?  I can’t even fathom the mind that would jump to this as an example of liberal over-reach.  It’s just baffling.

“And really, unless you understand that dog whistle, her remarks make zero sense.”

Indeed. Even if the government were hiring ACORN, so what? I wouldn’t care if the census taker were from the Heritage Foundation.

but that he will be sending black people directly to your home to ask you questions.

Boy when it’s my turn,  I hope he sends Reggie Love to question me.

The census takers will be going around in black helicopters this year.

Does she provide any evidence for this fear, or is it the default wingnut version of evidence known as “making stuff up”?

In Bachmann’s case, it’s more like “what the voices in my head told me.”  She is seriously Looney Tunes.

but that he will be sending black people directly to your home

Could he send Will Smith to mine?  I’d love to talk chess with him.

“The motherload of all data information will be from the Census. … Unfortunately, the Census data has become very intricate, very personal, a lot of the questions that are asked. I know for my family, the only question we will be answering is how many people are in our home. We won’t be answering any information beyond that, because the Constitution doesn’t require any information beyond that.”

Am I the only one wondering about the ridiculous dichotomy here?

As soon as Cheney appointed himself Vice President, the plans for domestic spying began to be formed, and then put into action as soon as the Cheney/Bush administration were sworn in.  The NSA has been vacuuming up every byte they could put their hands on, collecting (every?) email, tapping (every?) phone call, etc. for the last 8-years, and most likely continue to do so to this very day.

But what do the wingnuts, and Michelle, Wingnut Queen of Reichwing Insanity worry about?
The frakking census.

Reading what you wrote in an email to your wife?  Nothing to be concerned about.

Learning that you have some non-WASP blood in your family?  OMG, the FedCORNs are stealing our souls!!!

Huh?...

Didn’t the republican fighting over the census start when they began counting people who weren’t white? I seem to remember this “the census is going to destroy this country” wackiness even when I was a kid (70’s) and I’m sure it goes back farther than that.

Oh my god.  It’s Piotr FTW.

I remember when St. Ronnie was still President and people whined about having to fill out the flushing toilet questions.

There are two forms of the census, and you are randomly chosen to receive the short or long form.  The long form asks a jillion questions that are fucking important.  There are dozens of federal programs based on median incomes of areas.  How do they determine the median income?  THROUGH THE FUCKING LONG FORM CENSUS.  They do random mini-censuses (censi?) in between, but major funding is decided by rules predicated on information from the Census.  It’s important.

I’d really like someone to inform Bachmann that refusing to fill out the census is a crime—a real crime, with punishments and fines.
———-
I moved in May in 2000, and census workers parked in the lobby in my new home.  They’d harrass me about who lived in my unit.  NO, you cannot put my family b/c as of April 1, 2000 we LIVED SOMEWHERE ELSE and MY SON WAS STILL IN UTERO. 

I think we were counted twice.

[U]ndeniably mainstream sources like sitting Representatives and the head of the Republican Party[.]

Bachmann and Steele are not “undeniably mainstream,” because he party as a whole (and let alone the looniest elements of it) are not in any sense mainstream.  I’m not even sure the term can be usefully applied to Repubs anymore.  The term itself implies some sort of coherent flow or direction.  “WHARRRGARBLE,” which is the what most any Repub statement can be boiled down to, is no such thing.

but that he will be sending black people directly to your home

Like hell he will!  Martha, get the guns!  Junior, untie the hounds.  Ain’t none of those people gittin’ on mah property.

The motherload of all data information?

Jericho - Are you implying the Bachman was being repetitive and redundant?

“The Constitution doesn’t require any information beyond that.”

Um, does the Constitution actually refer to the US Census?

Also, it’s “mother lode”, not “mother load” or “motherload.”  What is “motherload” even supposed to mean?

And where’s my damned coffee?

“What is “motherload” even supposed to mean?”

...I think it’s a reference to bowel movements…by your mother…

My state has a “make my day” law; if this squawking continues I’d certainly hesitate to be a census worker.

The long form asks a jillion questions that are fucking important.

Caren, I do agree, but it behooves us to at least recognize that people don’t like to be asked intimate questions, nor do they like being questioned at great length.  It is therefore unsurprising that some people have a negative reaction to intimate questions that go on at great length and which carry penalties if you don’t do as you’re told.  One can value the census whilst still resenting the intrusion; one can simultaneously recognize that there is a civil liberties value to pushback against the government getting too nosy and too arrogant in its entitlement assumptions.  Sometimes privacy ispredicated on saying “piss off, I don’t have to tell you shit!” to an objectively worthy question because, when that push comes to the citizens’ right to shove back we should err on the side of citizen rather than state.

Maybe I’m still nettled, I don’t know.  In Canada’s recent census I was, thanks to a screwup in the government’s assigning of unit numbers, actually able to pick which one that I wanted to do.  I was glad for the because the long form was astonishing in the intimacy of its detail and infuriating in waving the Threat Stick of all sorts of legal things that could happen to me.

Those things aside, let’s face the biggest fact here, already noted by others upthread: an accurate census is going to show the increasing urbanization (both literally and metaphorically) of the American population.  The GOP rests on rural roots and ideas of isolation and siloed mentalities and self-deceptive nostalgia fetishes.  They don’t want an accurate reflection of a rapidly changing America; their very existence relies on their voter base having the rules rigged so that they are disproportionately benefited by the system.

This sort of “favour the retrograde minority” isn’t exactly new to America.  The 3/5ths compromise was all about rigging the Constitution so that an entitled minority could receive extra representation to which they were not entitled.

Because Bachman’s craziness about ACORN coming to get your personal information is going to lead to a bunch of perfectly nice temp workers getting shot or beaten.

Seriously, in this climate of more than one hate crime a month, this words by a US elected official can create a bloodbath. She should be forced to retract it.

Roving Thundercloud, the census is constitutionally required, albeit without using the word Census: Article 1, Section 2: “The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.”  The .gov has a good page on it here: http://www.census.gov/dmd/www/dropin7.htm

I think the argument is that ‘enumeration’ means ‘counting’ and nothing else.  That strikes me as probably wrong but non-frivolous.  I haven’t read any census clause jurisprudence, though, so I’m not sure if the courts have provided a definition of what ‘enumeration’ means.  I have no idea what kind of data the first census collected, but it would be fascinating to find out.

Because Bachman’s craziness about ACORN coming to get your personal information is going to lead to a bunch of perfectly nice temp workers getting shot or beaten.

Seriously, in this climate of more than one hate crime a month, this words by a US elected official can create a bloodbath.

What was that line…?
Something about a feature not a bug?

Um, does the Constitution actually refer to the US Census?

Article 1, Section 2.  A census is required by the Constitution every 10 years.

The 3/5ths compromise was all about rigging the Constitution so that an entitled minority could receive extra representation to which they were not entitled.

Other way around—the 3/5ths compromise was so the Southern states could not boost their numbers by counting slaves as full members of the population.  Without the compromise, the South would have had many more representatives in Congress than the North.  The compromise was designed to eliminate as much of that extra representation as possible.

What the fuck, they are actually trolling the fucking Census?

Holy mother of what the fuck.

Roving Thundercloud, it is indeed in the Constitution. It’s so that they can reapportion the representation in the House.

Um, does the Constitution actually refer to the US Census?

It’s somewhat necessary for a functioning Democracy to know roughly how many people are in it.  Otherwise you have no idea how many Congressional delegates to assign the various states.  If everyone in New York picks up and moves to Maine, you’ve got to reallocate the 20-odd congressmen and electoral votes.  And it’s also not the worst way to detect voter fraud, since you shouldn’t see a thousand votes for candidate A coming from a town with 500 people in it. ... ... Not that the GOP would be concerned with voter fraud.  Because… something.

Seriously, in this climate of more than one hate crime a month, this words by a US elected official can create a bloodbath. She should be forced to retract it.

Little late for that now.  And besides, Michael Weiner Savage, Batshit Crazy Beck and Rush “I hope Obama fails” Limbaugh have bigger respective audiences than Bachman by leaps and bounds.  She’s farting in the wind with comments like this.

Nerd Trivia:

The American Census was a driver behind some of the early innovations in computers.  The 1890 Census was a milestone in American and world history because it was the first calculated by automated equipment. 

Herman Hollerith, who made the original 1890 census equipment, and the company he started, went on to become part of the founding of IBM…

Other way around—the 3/5ths compromise was so the Southern states could not boost their numbers by counting slaves as full members of the population.  Without the compromise, the South would have had many more representatives in Congress than the North.  The compromise was designed to eliminate as much of that extra representation as possible.

I don’t think that the argument holds water.  It was clearly a win for South as I detailed, because it permitted them to suck and blow at the same time.  The South held that slaves weren’t people, they were property.  Fine, the North said.  If they’re not people then you don’t use them in your people count for the purposes of voting representation.  Ahhh, said the South.  They’re people if they give me extra benefits and no corresponding obligations to the new union or to the slaves themselves.  Oh, fuck it, the North said, all right, but you can’t count all of them.  Call it a compromise.

^ What seeker said.

I don’t think that the argument holds water.  It was clearly a win for South as I detailed, because it permitted them to suck and blow at the same time.

It’s certainly debatable.  By allowing the compromise, they were able to get the Constitution ratified by all of the states instead of breaking apart entirely after the failure of the Articles of Confederation, and the South did not get what they originally wanted, which was to count every person living in their state as part of their population.  So it was good for the South in some ways and good for the North in other ways and allowed the US to remain a single country.  Hence the term “compromise.”  I don’t think you can call it an unalloyed win for the South given what their original demand was.

One can value the census whilst still resenting the intrusion; one can simultaneously recognize that there is a civil liberties value to pushback against the government getting too nosy and too arrogant in its entitlement assumptions.

One can also educate one’s self about the reasons the questions are being asked.  They are NOT being “too nosy and too arrogant”.  They are trying to determine not only howo many future representatives there should be, and where they shoudl be apportioned, but where to send social services, how to determine FHA insurance policy (pretty much the only way nursing homes/assisted living units are being funded today) and a plethora of other issues.

If you want to pay through your taxes for a non-functional government, go ahead and ignore the damn thing.  If you’re happy with Brownie’s running of FEMA, whine about the Census and refuse to answer it.

But if you’d like to see things run more efficiently and fairly, and perhaps have the government protect some of those civil liberties, the least you can do is give them the information they need to do the job.

I wish I could say that the obvious looniness of this works by pushing Republicans further out of the mainstream.  And it might.  But in the past, it worked to help make Americans crazier, because they assumed where there’s wingnut smoke, there’s liberal overreach fire.

Census is how representatives are assigned to districts. If you’re bowing out of the census then you’re shrinking your political voice.

Indeed.  If anything, it appears that the Census will likely be overall beneficial to Repukes in the Electoral College, based on the early estimates I’m hearing:

+3: Texas
+2: Florida
+1: Arizona, California, Georgia, Nevada, Utah
-1: Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Missouri, Pennsylvania
-2: New York, Ohio

The red states are clearly gonna gain more seats than the blue states, and several blue states are gonna be losing seats.

New York state very likely will become the fourth biggest state in the country next year, being passed up by Florida.  If not next year, they surely will get passed in the next five years by the Sunshine State.

seeker, people’s dislike just makes Republican exploitation even more fucked up, since they’re exploiting ignorance and using instincts that, if applied properly (like say, by donating to the ACLU) are good things, but in this case are fucked up.  I’m sure we can all think of many instances where conservative appeals are based on real values, just badly thwarted.

I don’t subscribe to an either/or, Caren.  I believe in your version of a state.  I also believe in a liberated citizenry that makes sure that government has limits to what it can demand of you.  A healthy dynamic is based in very large measure in forcing government to justify whatever it wants to do; that’s part of what keeps it honest and, so far as it is possible for us corporate peasants to do so, subject to our control.  As soon as we start assuming that it has a prima facie right to do anything without having a damned good reason then we see it turn into a bit of a problem.

Mnem, whatever the intentions were, what it did was put slavery into the Constitution, which made it harder to get rid of, which is also what the South wanted.  Of course, that also didn’t work out so well for them (losing the war), but apparently they wanted it bad enough to start a war over it.

“I’m sure we can all think of many instances where conservative appeals are based on real values, just badly thwarted. “

Agreed.  One could say the same for the civil libertarian component of libertarian thought.

I do think there’s a good reason to think that Republicans are stoking this paranoia for political reasons.  They just seem foolish.

In the past there have been two forms as noted.  (I remember getting the long form in 1980.)  Reading the Census website now though shows that they take an annual American Community Survey which has those long form questions, especially the economic/income stuff.  It may be that the 10-year count will be confined to a people head count. The community survey seems to be of a random sampling and is conducted on an ongoing basis.  So Bachman shows what an uninformed she is, that she doesn’t know how the Census is conducted. Neither she or any of her staff apparently read the pages on the requirements for being hired by the Census Bureau.

Got my figures wrong above.  Here are the best estimates about how states will be gaining or losing seats in 2010:

GAINING SEATS:

Texas +4
Arizona, Florida +2
Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Utah, Nevada, Oregon +1

LOSING SEATS:

New York, Ohio -2
Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Louisiana, California -1

Had that been the map in 2008, Obama would have beaten McCain by an Electoral Vote of 358-180 instead of 365-173 as was the case.  Still a clearly strong victory, but this shows that the GOP looks to gain more in the Electoral College than the Democrats.

I agree that all the loony talk will make it dangerous for the door-to-door Census workers and there may well be violence against them.

Sending black people to my home?  Does that mean I get to hold out until B. Hussein Obama himself comes round to count my family?

As soon as we start assuming that it has a prima facie right to do anything without having a damned good reason then we see it turn into a bit of a problem.

True, but as Billingham pointed out way upthread, there is indeed an entire publication explaining the reasoning for every single question asked, what funding and services depend on that question’s information, etc.
http://2010.census.gov/2010census/pdf/2010ACSnotebook.pdf

It’s just repeating the wingnut line to suggest that these questions are simply nosiness with no real reason or need-to-know.  It is not a secret, it is not a conspiracy, the “damned good reasons” are published for all to see.

I think we were supposed to keep our son on due to him being active duty military with our house as his home of record, but I’m not certain I am remebering that correctly.

They drop you from the voter rolls if you don’t respond or are not listed, so he would want to be on there if he was still getting absentee ballots overseas.

Right now he is just a non-resident in another state living on a base.  He did receive a jury selection card after we filled out this year’s census, so he’s still listed as a resident, paid his taxes, etc.  I’ve also remembered filling out an interum census card in ID, at the five year mark, I think, but it may have been city or county rather than state.

If it weren’t official before, it is now: Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District is now a national laughingstock.

They should be very proud.

Mnem, whatever the intentions were, what it did was put slavery into the Constitution, which made it harder to get rid of, which is also what the South wanted.

Slavery was already in the Constitution—it wasn’t inserted in there by the 3/5ths compromise.

Basically, Seeker brushed up against one of my pet peeves, which is when people say, “OMG, the South hated black people so much that they only wanted them counted as 3/5ths of a person!”  No, the South wanted them counted as whole people to boost their population—it was the North that didn’t want them counted at all, and that finally compromised by saying they could be counted as a fraction of a person.

DTG in STL:
I’d hazard that a bigger factor than the state-by-state changes are the rural to urban demographics and just how much damage that the current recession does to the previously smugly secure suburban class.  Both would tend to break Dem.

Basically, Seeker brushed up against one of my pet peeves…

(Looks uncomfortable, nervous)  Your pet peeve isn’t going to, you know, take that, you know, personally, like Human Resources complaint personal, right?  I mean, we’re all friends here, right?  Aren’t we?

Mnem, I still don’t buy it.  If slavery was in the Constitution first (and I defer to your knowledge in this regard) then the fact remains that the South received votes for three out of five of what was, by its own view, horses or dogs.  I would point out that the white classes of the south have been addicted to bending the national will far out of proportion to their numbers for some time and the 3/5 deal was one of the things that fed that raging and often violent sense of entitlement: they didn’t even have to live up to the implications of their own fundamental worldview.

I agree with what Seeker says—the 3/5ths compromise was a compromise between a reasonable and an unreasonable position.  The three positions were:

1) Slavery is illegal
2) At least don’t count the slaves for representation
<———3/5ths compromise
3) Count the slaves for representation, but nothing else.

It’s all about framing.

I used to work for the Census Bureau my (2nd) senior year of college.  Title:  Field Enumerator, 2000 Census.  In other words, I was the person who got in her car and went door to door to help people fill out the long form.  The pay was $12.50/hr with travel reimbursed at .32/mi.  There was no interview process and there was practically no selectivity in choosing enumerators.  You could get a PhD knocking on your door, or the biggest idiot in town.  I saw people during training who couldn’t follow simple instructions to fill out their sample census reports, and some people who whizzed through it in 15 minutes.  Mostly, it was part-time mothers and college students trying to make extra income.

The job wasn’t particularly unpleasant (I was on the NH seacoast) but sometimes I did have to go to sketchy parts of town and go into strangers’ homes to get confidential information from them (or just information they refused to provide over the phone) and so there was some safety fear there, not unreasonable, considering a particularly violent rape that happened to one female census taker when on the job.

As far as the data goes, there are definitely some security issues.  The census forms, though passed out in thick envelopes, were not required to be kept in those envelopes by census takers while the forms were at their home.  If you didn’t turn in a form the day the person filled it out with you, that person’s information was just kicking around your house until you did turn it in.  I can’t remember if the form had the person’s SSN on a sticker on top. 

On the other hand, when you filled it in, in pencil, you had to write numbers quite exactly, and you had to be very careful with spelling, which leads me to believe very little of this info was reviewed by other people, and overwhelmingly scanned for tabulation.  We were told the Department of Commerce (which includes the Census Bureau)  “had separate databases” from other government departments and agencies, so it was unlikely your information could be misused for nefarious, unethical or illegal purposes.

And it’s also not the worst way to detect voter fraud, since you shouldn’t see a thousand votes for candidate A coming from a town with 500 people in it. ... ... Not that the GOP would be concerned with voter fraud.  Because… something.

Sure, but it’s not perfect.  I’ve seen reports of recent elections which show turnout higher than population.  How does that happen?  Well, the population information was collected in 2000, and the votes were collected in 2008.  People see those reports and they freak out and think it’s an indication of fraud, and all it really means is that the two datums are not comparable.  It’s still useful to have, but it’s not perfect.

to explain a bit more: I’ve seen reports of recent elections which show turnout higher than population. for certain precincts.  These are precincts which have new development or some other circumstance where there was a big increase in population in the last 8 years.

I would point out that the white classes of the south have been addicted to bending the national will far out of proportion to their numbers for some time and the 3/5 deal was one of the things that fed that raging and often violent sense of entitlement: they didn’t even have to live up to the implications of their own fundamental worldview.

I’m not arguing with you there.  In fact, the fact that it was a compromise at all probably fed the South’s sense of aggrievance even more than completely getting their way or being completely quashed would have and just escalated the feeling they had that the North was trying to run roughshod over them that ultimately exploded into open war 70 years later.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that the South wanted to count slaves as full members of the population for purposes of allotting representatives in Congress to artificially boost their numbers while the North didn’t want to count them at all, and it bugs the crap out of me when people use the 3/5ths compromise as “proof” that the South insisted on only counting slaves as 3/5ths of a person when that was pretty much the opposite of what they wanted.  Technical, but it still annoys me that people don’t understand what the 3/5ths compromise was, what each side wanted, and why, and instead project their own misguided after-the-fact interpretation on to it.

(Not that you did that, but, as I said, it’s a pet peeve of mine that comes running out at the slightest provocation.  Sorry about your pants leg.  Dry cleaning should get that out, right?)

BTW, whether Texas gets +4 or +5 representatives in 2012 is going to depend on the accuracy of the census.  If Hispanics are undercounted again and a significant number of paranoid right wingers refuse to be counted, we will probably get +4, and if we have an accurate count, it’s very possible that the Texas delegation to the 2012 Congress will be 37 members.

Mnemosyne, the South won the issue when they got to keep slavery.  The 3/5ths compromise was just gravy.

She’s saying that not only is Obama behind this Census they speak of, but that he will be sending black people directly to your home to ask you questions.

For some reason, this makes me think of an old Doonesbury sequence where Clyde (the young, militant Clyde, not today’s Michael Steele wannabe) goes out to campaign for his girlfriend for Congress in a bigoted white neighborhood:

CLYDE: Hi, I’d like to talk to you about Ginny—-

SLOBBY WHITE GUY IN UNDERSHIRT: No rooms.

CLYDE: Excuse me?

SWGIU: If you’re looking for a room, there just aren’t any available!

CLYDE: Imagine my surprise. And I didn’t even have to ask.

SWGIU: Let me be frank, boy. We got a nice neighborhood here.

CLYDE: I see. Your mother moved out, did she?

Mnemosyne, the South won the issue when they got to keep slavery.  The 3/5ths compromise was just gravy.

Yes, but it’s still not the case that the South insisted that slaves only be counted as 3/5ths of a person.  It was the North, and it bugs the crap out of me when people take the 3/5ths compromise and distort it to fit the facts they prefer (“Southerners hated black people so much that they refused to let them be counted as full people in the census!  The South insisted that they could only be counted as 3/5ths of a person, and that was only after a compromise!”)  To do a convenient after-the-fact recasting of who wanted the 3/5ths compromise and why shows an incredible ignorance of our history and how our culture was distorted by slavery and it makes me go all stabby.

(Not that you did that, but, as I said, it’s a pet peeve of mine that comes running out at the slightest provocation.  Sorry about your pants leg.  Dry cleaning should get that out, right?)

Shower actually.  I don’t wear pants when I’m in my Doctor Manhattan mood.

Mnem, I think that you may be missing the underlying reality:
When thieves break into your home and steal only six-tenths of your stuff you haven’t won, the thieves have.  Getting most of what you want when what you want isn’t something that you aren’t entitled to even under your own legal* or moral rules is a win, not a loss.  There’s no gilding that.

Stabby stabby!

* - PS: Were slaves counted for the purposes of determining representation in state or local elections in slave states?  In other words, would Rhett Butler County with 10,000 whites and 90,000 slaves get as many representatives as Scarlett O’Hara County with 90,000 whites and 10,000 slaves?  Can anybody else help me on that????  If they did then their position in demanding 1-1 from the north is at least morally consistent in its immorality.  If not, then another “scummy hypocrite badge” for the south, which already has too many to sew on its uniform.

hp: I’ve told you before: get that cloning problem under control!

Deep6, thanks for the information.

You would probably be happy to hear that the long form no longer exists.  The census has set up the Community Survey, which cultivates regular respondents at intervals more closely spaced than the decennial census.  Instead of wandering over to get information from random people, they select and maintain a cohort of people who report from time to time.

For the decennial census, it’s just the short form count.

seeker ur getn cumpulsve agin!

hp: Yeah, but you can kiss that growth goodbye until the housing market climbs out of the grave.

Dude, the South hated black people so much they wanted to own them as property.  3/5ths is nothing compared to that.

Mnemosyne, what irks you also bothers me when people take the 3/5 compromise in the context of today, rather than the reality of 1789. It’s easy to say today that slavery should never have happened in America.  But it was already there for centuries. What could the conventioneers desperate to replace the Articles of Confederation achieve? What tools could they use to advance the cause of liberty as well as national strength?

Yankee Trading, is what.

What the South got out of the trade is what distracts and upsets people, that and the impression that the North “let” them. But a Yankee Trader knows how to sell what you think you want, and make you give up much more than you would part with, if you only knew.

So what did the North get, what did they know they were getting? That’s what modern critics of the situation overlook, or dismiss as shortsighted. They got leaders sympathetic to liberty, who were tied into the realities of slaveowning, beloved men like Washington and Jefferson. They also got an easier time with trade between former colonies.

And, something the discarded Articles were kind of vague about, they got Union.

Without the 3/5 compromise, the South had no reason to stay, and the North no power, and little will, to keep them.  Europe thought a breakup was inevitable, and would have exacerbated it if they were not distracted by the Revolution in France. European mischief was the greatest fear driving the Founders toward a stronger federal state, but the issue of slavery was still a mighty potential dealbreaker.

This meant, with absolute certainty, that there would be at least two nations made out of the former colonies if a compromise could not be reached. One free. One slave.

And there’s something about a foreign country. Its problems aren’t really yours, unless there’s desired resource that’s better captured than traded, or they’re holding your citizens or something.*

The angry feeling most decent Americans have when hearing about the 3/5-of-a-person compromise? That. You were meant to feel that by its Yankee authors. Because it’s your country.  And here we are with Mr. Obama as President today and we still feel the outrage.

Remember what the outrage must have been to people knowing the laws of their “free” country protected human bondage. On the other hand, if there was a separate “slave country” to the south, well, that’s horrible, thank heavens our nation is civilized like the English.

And in the South, yeah, some of those animals escape over the international border, but we have treaties for that. And independence will really boost our transatlantic trade for more.

In any case, back in real history, the South called for counting all their human heads for representation, and the North called for none, but the Northerners were realizing an opportunity: the South was opening a door to seeing their property as people—without even knowing it.  So it became a matter of haggling with the devil that would be there no matter what.

It looked like kicking a ball down the road, but actually it was the getting the ball moving that would destroy slavery as an American institution.

Union provided the brake on slavery that nothing else could have. Nothing else. Compromise after compromise would follow, it was a built-in necessity that two independent countries would not have had to heed. One of the original balances of power in the United States.

When 1860 finally came, there were no calls from the government to free the Negro. The Northern cities would have rejected any effort to push that, and the South would have felt instantly vindicated.  No, it was Lincoln’s understanding and in his interest to fight for U N I O N.  That was the North’s galvanizing Cause.

Because that was the Yankee Trade.

The Yankee Trade was even there in the haggled number. 3/5 is greater than 1/2. It was agreed by all that the Negro was more than half a person. Why, that’s almost 3/4.

And if one were ever to round 3/4… you’d have to round up.

—-
*As a simple proof, I offer the fact that slavery is alive and well in many corners of the world today, not a few of them under our protection.  The United States of America now has the mightiest military in the history of humanity.

And the political calls to eradicate modern slavery are….?

The angry feeling most decent Americans have when hearing about the 3/5-of-a-person compromise? That. You were meant to feel that by its Yankee authors. Because it’s your country. And here we are with Mr. Obama as President today and we still feel the outrage.

Can you provide any quote or cite to show that this was the intention at the time? What little I know of politics suggest that it is more likely that teh authors were thinking way more in the short-term.

Is there a bit in the Federalist Papers or something?

This isn’t actually new:
http://fstdt.net/QuoteComment.aspx?QID=62108

The right-wing reaction to the impending census confirms what I have long suspected: right-wingers read somewhat dated (by now) left-wing academic analyses such as Michel Foucault’s “surveiler et punir” and rewrite them as applying to themselves, rather than to those whom historically authoritarian states deemed undesirable.

Paranoia factory.

Do they think we’re going to discover / cover up a whole extra state of Zu-Vendians to swell the ranks of white Americans?

Thanks to those who kindly provided me with the info on the census in the Constitution, rather than smacking me one.  Well, duh.  Not only lack of caffeine, and too lazy to look it up, but I should have been able to make that supposition myself.

As this thread winds to its end…

That picture of Michelle Bachmann, with its odd combination of spirited political self-delusion and stark-raving-madness has always made me think of dear Serena Joy.  Faye Dunaway couldn’t compete with that…

As a Black man who just finished working for the census in a primarily white neighborhood, let me just say that, yes there are already a lot of paranoid right-wing fucktards out there. Not to say there aren’t nice people (I’m thinking mainly of the ex-marine, who was white, who was the only person to ever offer to shake my hand after talking to me) there are a good deal of crazies involved.

Can you provide any quote or cite to show that this was the intention at the time? What little I know of politics suggest that it is more likely that teh authors were thinking way more in the short-term.

Is there a bit in the Federalist Papers or something?

I don’t have a concise quote, and it is still a matter of amateur research on my part. I don’t claim the Northern Conventioneers had prescience as a magic super-power. On the other hand, a scrip reading “let’s trick ‘em in the long game, shall we?” is unlikely to have been written at the time, either. I believe the North’s interest in the 3/5 compromise needs to be examined with the respect of foresight and practicality accorded the rest of the deliberations and actions of the time.

The policies of compromise, and the the Convention’s goal of a “more perfect union” I’m certain are well-documented. The balance of slave vs. free states was as bedrock a founding principle of the Constitution as the separation of powers, separation of church and state, or the Bill of Rights—no historian would question that, either.

Eliminating slavery was impossible, because the South would otherwise walk, and keep its slaves even farther from Northern influence. Anyone sympathetic to the plight of human bondage would want influence against it to be as strong as possible. This was achieved, and it was largely because of this compromise, which set the precedent for more compromise—and more influence.

While the 3/5 compromise met short-term goals, I don’t think it was any more short-sighted than the parts of Constitution that called for Enumeration every ten years (and calculating a frontier line) or there being no religious test for office, or making Amendments challenging to enact. It was going to be a problem for future generations either way: the Yankees put in as clever a wedge as they could after 300 years of bondage in North America.

It kept up the pressure until the chains broke.

Yamara, thanks for that angle.

Does anybody have that info on the local/state allocation?

This article explains the actual formula how congressional seats are apportioned to states.

http://www.census.gov/population/www/censusdata/apportionment/computing.html

I wrote a little program in 2000 to encapsulate the algorithm and explore some scenarios. It’s buried somewhere on an archive at work. It’s only about 16 lines of code.  I’ll either dust it off or write a new one next year once we start getting some population projections for the next census.

You know what would be really ironic? Minnesota may lose one set next census. Our population is growing, but not very fast (Arizona now out-peoples MN; they passed us in population about three years ago. Both states have currently have 10 EVs.) If Bachmann encourages all the wingnuts in her district to skip the census, MN will undercount and will certainly lose one seat.

The MN 6th is the most conservative district in the state. It would be easy to redistrict Bachmann out of her seat, since Democrats will control the state legislature and may, after 2010, control the Governorship as well. It would be really funny if Bachmann’s agitating against the census causes her to get re-districted out of office. It would be even more ironic than a black fly in your chardonnay.

Hmmmm… would it be a bad thing if wingnuts were under-counted in the next census?  Considering that the census is used to apportion representation and all, I mean. Just saying.