Revolting. It would be fitting punishment if this sort of insanity resulted in an undercount of Republican base strongholds.

the thing I find utterly infuriating is they keep ranting about how it’s “government intrusion” and “people need to be able to protect their privacy.”

as a liberal defender of the first amendment and lover of the American Public Library system, I have to say: go fuck yourselves. We’ve been saying this shit for years, and you insisted that everyone else had to surrender their privacy for your security. Now that you’re being not-even-inconvenienced, suddenly there’s a right to privacy?

You don’t understand, karpad—they have a right to privacy; we don’t.  Or so it seems to them . . .

Okay, so just don’t count them. Problem solved.

A headcount is a huge invasion of your privacy, but a warrantless wiretap isn’t.  Makes perfect sense.

”...they have a right to privacy; we don’t.”

Privacy is cool with them if it’s protecting their racism and hate, where they make their meth, where they grow their “special” crops, how many guns they have, what they do to their wives and kids.

There is no privacy in our bedrooms, or our wombs, no private phone calls or email, no privacy regarding what web sites we visit or comment on, no privacy for our political opinions, or our non-Christian religious beliefs - or lack thereof, etc…

I live next to Bachmann’s district.

The problem is that she is a virtual lock for reelection - she represents her base perfectly, her base is approx 53% of her district, and they LOVE her, damn near worship her. A lot of monied folks, a number of mallchurches, the famous Mac Hammond, very little diversity in any sense of the word. Unless there is some real demographic change in the 6th, we are stuck with her in the Congress, repeatedly winning the same 53%.

A census worker is no safer in the MN 6th than in Kentucky.

Is there no way for Congress to censure Bachmann for her lies and for her part in whipping up the frenzied , craziness that resulted in this man’s death?

The Feds need to be out there arresting and convicting every asshole involved, but while Bachmann has a first Amendment right to say crazy shit, she also has responsibilities as a Member of Congress.  Lying about the Census and encouraging people to break the law has to be a violation of her oath of office.

It’s different from Glenn Beck, who’s just a hack with Murdoch’s pulpit.  Bachmann is a Congressperson.

Never been more relieved that I didn’t have to apply for any of the Census jobs…

I say the feds should request local police escorts for every Census worker, especially in areas where there’s an established risk of local wingnuts shooting Census employees. Any area that refuses to keep the Census takers safe won’t have to get counted at all—a nice fat ZERO recorded for their population, with the associated loss of legislative representation and government dollars.

paleotectonics - Perhaps you will be saved from Bachmann with the new re-districting?  On the other hand, it’s handy to keep all the MN wingnuts in one place.  Easier to keep an eye on ‘em.

Two things I would like to see as a response:

1) if local law enforcement cannot secure the safety of census workers, then census workers should withdraw and count an area as ZERO, with all the consequences that entails.  They used to do that in inner city areas torn by crime and gang strife, they should do it again here.

2) congress needs to step in and declare that harassment of a census taker is a federal crime and a terrorist activity.  These people are only upholding the constitution.  Interfering and threatening is terrorism and there should be heavy penalties for anyone who perpetrates any level of violence toward census employees.

Paleotechtonics, if the census refuses to put its workers into her district, her district might well disappear.  Ditto if the noncooperation is nonviolent, but there nonetheless.  It would be fantastic to see her district chopped into pieces because her fanatical jerkweeds didn’t read their constitution.

The overwhelming anger is directed straight at the President.

Gee, it’s so hard to understand what that’s about. [scratches head]

I’ve been called an “employee of president nigger”

Aha, NOW I get it.

Funny how there is not anger directed at a white president whose policies directly killed a lot of young people in these areas, but there is high anger directed at a president who is trying to make sure more kids grow up and more adults stay healthy BECAUSE and ONLY BECAUSE he isn’t the “right” race.

Interesting how generations of poverty leads to poor education and cognitive disability.

Oh, and I love how Faux is using the sidebar to desperately try to explain why the census exists and why it is in the best interest of their viewers to cooperate ...

Ms. Kate:  It already is a federal crime to interfere with federal employees in the execution of their duties.  Perhaps it needs to be made more clear, but that’s not very likely to actually stop anyone.

I say the Census is Socialism and to hell with it!...

But the President is an Ayrab, don’t you know?!

I just want to slap their heads together till they see some sense.

Falconer, that isn’t enough.  Not all federal activities are mandated by the Constitution.

Interference needs to be vigorously prosecuted, but census interference needs to be even more harshly punished because it is terrorism.

I suspect the kind of people who would come unglued over the Constitutionally mandated Census are the same kind who, when read selected items from the Bill of Rights, describe what they hear (as if they’ve never heard it before) as socialism.

The epic stupidity and proud ignorance of too many Americans continues to grow, and, along with the greed of the financial class, predicts a future of pain and suffering the size of which they are incapable of imagining.

At least they’ve still got their God, Guns, and Bigotry to cling to ever tighter…

Idiot America indeed…

I worked as a census taker in 1980. I was a college student and it was a good summer job—you could get paid piece rate (per form) or by the hour, and the wages were decent. Our job was to go to houses where a mail-in form had not been returned, and to fill out a form if we found anyone home.

One of the things I remember most was the amount of rural poverty I encountered. I grew up in a sheltered, suburban existence and to see people living on $1,000 a year was something that fundamentally changed my view of the world (like a lot of college boys, I was a proto-Randian libertarian—until that experience).

BUT—I ran into a shitload of right-wing paranoia in northwest Louisiana where I worked. This was right after Carter had allowed the Mariel boatlift from Cuba, and the wingers were pissed. One guy threatened to “take me apart” with his bare hands after I approached his house. Another screamed at me that he wanted nothing to do with the government and said he’d release his dog—who was the size of a Volkswagen—on me if I didn’t leave. I didn’t ever feel in danger for my life, but I sure as hell didn’t feel comfortable. I expect things have only gotten worse in 30 years.

A census worker is no safer in the MN 6th than in Kentucky.

Especially when you get out of the McMansionburbs near the TCs and into the northern part of the district around St Cloud.

But Eric Rudolph Country, and its Kentucky equivalent, really are not much different from the Afghan-Pakistan “tribal regions”. Drugs, guns, local warlords.

paleotectonics @ 7:

The problem is that she is a virtual lock for reelection - she represents her base perfectly, her base is approx 53% of her district, and they LOVE her, damn near worship her.

I have a friend who is an attorney in MN’s 6th, and despite being a very intelligent and rational person he inexplicably adores Bachmann. He also often shares his admiration for Sarah Palin’s “moral compass” (despite her using her Down’s baby as a political football), and believes she’s the greatest thing since Jesus and sliced bread.

For the life of me, I can’t figure it out.

But I agree that barring a major scandal that Bachmann will be reelected easily in 2010, which is good news for the rest of us as she gives us stuff to laugh at on a daily basis.

I’m ok with their not being counted.

But remember, the feds listening in on your phones is just A-OK!

CHV,

I’ve lived here for about a decade, enough time that, I guess, I am now a Minnesotan (ppbbbbllffffhht!) (Originally from the better side of the river - eat cheese or die!) If I did not live here, I would agree with you - we got a helluva kick out of Governor Turnbuckle when I still lived in Sconny.

As a MN res, though, it is scary. The lesser evil is that she’s a bloody embarrassment, proof of the Dilbert Principle - People will rise to the level of their incompetence. The greater evil though is that 100% OF HER BASE LOVES HER, and that, for now, carries that district. She will face no primary opponent, and it will take a very visible Dem. candidate, with a pile of campaign funds, who cannot be particularly liberal, and a lot of luck, to unseat her.

One of the local papers throws flower petals for her, the other is in financial trouble, and with the exception of a limited signal Air America station, the local TV and radio stations are either apolitical or tend wingnut. ONE OF OUR LIMITED NUMBER OF REPRESENTATIVES (and we are likely to lose one due to 2010 redistricting, which would stink, even though it may be one of the lucky items needed to dump her) IS CERTIFIABLE. To top everything off, she has a growing fanbase within the natl Thugs party, Cantor and Boehner’s statements notwithstanding. There is no mainstream pushback, locally or nationally, against this latter day Aimee Semple MacPherson. Her ‘moral compass’ has only one point, “my way.”

Major scandal? She damn near raped Bush after a state of the union. Last fall, she called for an investigation into ‘Anti-American’ officials. Both on tape. El Tinklenberg, a good man but not nearly rough-and-tumble enough, got a huge last-minute influx of cash, even from the DCCC (and I don’t want to start on that collection of frauds, cowards, blue-dogs, and Emanuels). Although she took a big roundhouse, she still won, still got 47%  (3rd party candidate did not help much, but that would be getting into political arcana and circular argument.) If it was going to happen, 2008 was it.

According to Real Clear Politics, she is on TV, mostly Faux, every nine days.

I guess the overarching point here, is that she is safe where she is at, her natl exposure is growing, and when she says things like ‘slit your wrists to fight health care’ or ‘census workers are dangerous communist insurgents, mostly black gays, who should be shot like Jews’, she gets heard, and believed by a disturbingly large segment of the population.

FSM, what did we do wrong?!?!?

He also often shares his admiration for Sarah Palin’s “moral compass” (despite her using her Down’s baby as a political football), and believes she’s the greatest thing since Jesus and sliced bread.

This one boggles me, b/c Palin’s water broke, and she still didn’t go to a hospital to be checked out.  She got on a plane for 5 hours, then another plane, then drove to Wasilla.  Yeah, she called her doctor in AK, but if that doc didn’t tell her to go to an ER and get checked out, then she has a pretty simple malpractise case.

I figure it might be a story of Shit Healthcare in this country, since all in the insurance policies I know of insist that you can’t go more than 150 miles from home from the 7-8th month forward in a pregnancy or else YOUR DELIVERY WILL NOT BE COVERED, IN NETWORK HOSPITAL OR NOT.

Desperately returning to your ‘home’ hospital to be sure you can afford the delivery of a high-risk pregnancy/infant is a horror story, but a plausible one to me, although it still means endangering the baby’s life.

Defying rationality and avoiding health care during a high-risk pregnancy with a baby that may very well need NICU care just “because”?  It *still* sounds like an “Irish” abortion to me.  Incredible idiocy while endangering the baby is the least damning description I can ascribe to her in that situation.

But I’m sure your lawyer friend goes along with the “She already had 4 babies, and she can shoot a moose, so she just instinctually understood how her pregnancies progress”  utter bullshit that absolves her neglect of poor Trig.

———-
More on topic, this poor man’s murder needs more press and more framing as the domestic terrorism it is.  Use FISA and the PATRIOT act on them!  You have extra-Constitutional powers that allow you to violate our rights, so USE THEM.

He wasn’t hung and there have been no credible reports that he had “Fed” or anything else on his chest. The police still don’t know what happened and are working on it. His work computer wasn’t in his truck and there’s nothing to indicate he was on Census business when whatever happened happened.

Don’t get me wrong, it could easily turn out that this guy was killed for being a federal worker. It’s just not anywhere close to proven yet, so I’d avoid putting a lot of capital behind this bet.

@Alkaloid: You’re kidding, right? My sarcasm detector may be broken, but in case it isn’t….
Pandagon’s original linked article cites the AP and makes 4 things clear:
1) He was hung
2) He had the word ‘fed’ on his chest
3) The Census Bureau has stopped all operations in the county where this happened - they, at least, think the likelihood that the killing was related to his job was not small
4) His work computer was found in his truck

source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wires/2009/09/23/ap-source-census-worker-h_ws_297073.html

If you have a link contradicting that one, please share.

He wasn’t hung and there have been no credible reports that he had “Fed” or anything else on his chest.

The coroner confirmed today that the word “fed” was written on Sparkman’s body with a felt-tip pen and that he died by asphyxiation.  It’s looking very unlikely to be a suicide or accidental death at this point.

However, I’m still reluctant to definitely declare it right-wing terrorism because he was killed in an area with a lot of drug growing and trafficking.  It’s certainly possible that a drug trafficker would kill someone he suspected was an undercover agent and label him as such.  Given the provocation by the right wing, I think it’s somewhat more likely that this was terrorism, but we won’t know until they catch someone.

Alkaloid is right.  Sparkman wasn’t hung.

Sparkman was a human being, not a painting.  He was HANGED.  More properly, he was lynched.

Mnemo, if he stumbled in on a drug trafficker, why would he be left out where they could find him?  I can see killing him to keep their stashes hidden, but why would they leave him strung up?  Wouldn’t they just stash him in a shallow grave somewhere?

Plus, it was 9/12, Beck’s personal little day to show us liberals that we’re surrounded by “real Americans.”

Well, obviously I was misinformed. My bad.

Carry on!

Hi all, longtime lurker, first-time poster.

Huffpo is now reporting that Sparkman’s Census ID badge was taped to his neck/shoulder area when his body was found.  He was also naked and bound and gagged.

I literally feel sick.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/25/bill-sparkman-found-naked_n_300659.html

(I’m sorry, as I’m an infrequent commenter I am not good at links.  Forgive me…I’ll do better next time.)