A Letter to the Census

Swiped in its entirety from Ol' Broad

This letter is a copy and paste I received via email. This is real letter, written by a real person. Obviously, I’m not including personal information, other than Herr Director’s, just the text:

Mr. Robert M. Groves
Director, U. S. Census Bureau
Washington, D. C. 20233-0001

Dear Mr. Groves:

I have received your form notification that I will be receiving the 2010 Census form shortly. I appreciate your polite request that I fill it out and respond quickly. I will therefore respond as politely as I can with my criticisms.

First of all, your announced purpose for the Census and how it will be used violates the authority conferred by the United States Constitution. The authority to conduct a census every ten years was created by the People upon ratifying the Constitution in 1788. The specific purpose was to provide a count to support the apportionment among the states for authorizing representatives to Congress. The one other purpose allowed was to support the laying of capitation taxes, in Article 1, Section 9. There was no other purpose listed, and no other purpose is therefore authorized.

The specific wording is: “Article 1, § 1, Clause 3: Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States…, according to their respective Numbers… 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.”

It says “In such manner,” not “for such purposes as they shall by law direct.”

Your list of purposes – “Results from the 2010 Census will be used to help each community gets its fair share of government funds for highways, schools, health facilities and many other programs you and your neighbors need.”

Lord it is hard to remain polite when I see you telling me what I need. What I need from the federal government is enumerated in Article 1, Section 8. In every other respect, leave me alone.

Just go away, for God’s sake. Please. We did not form this government to take from some of us and hand out to others.

You and your government co-bureaucrats have overstretched your authority in every way imaginable, and it has turned into a tyrannic chaos. And expensive beyond human comprehension.

Let me tell you what you need. You need the location for which I am answering. You need the names and ages of the citizens residing in the identified location. That is all.

You do not need the names or numbers of aliens. You do not need the character of the structure, its plumbing, or whether I have an internet connection. You for sure have no business digging into my finances. The same goes for all the rest of your questions.

You also need to stop spending my tax dollars on ink and paper, multiplied millions of times, on alien language announcements and services. If you were interested in serving my pre-American heritage, you blew it anyway – none of your gibberish included French or Gaelic instructions.

And you bungled one other thing. The town I live in is NOT (name of city & state). You got the street and zip code correct, but (zip code) is (name of town). (name of town) is in the next county over. If you bungle that, what good is it going to do to give you my unrequired information, anyway?

So – just stick to what the Constitution authorized. Think of how proud we will all be that you kept your oath to uphold the Constitution. And how you cut your budget and saved us all that tax money.