This Was My Suggestion As Well
I have proposed a similar protest effort for the next census as this:
The Washington Times reports that:
Outspoken Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann says she's so worried that information from next year's national census will be abused that she will refuse to fill out anything more than the number of people in her household.
We should all follow her lead on this. The government has no legitimate business asking about plumbing, race, and financial affairs in the census. Last census I did the same thing as Ms. Bachmann and refused to answer any but the constitutionally required information, which I took to be number of people, sex and age, since all (except now sex) apply to voting. Note that race does not, and certainly not bathroom fixtures.
The Constitution requires number of people and location to set Congressionaly districts. Any other information is pure intrusion that the state uses generally to justify and/or manage a huge variety of coercive programs.
I am enormously inexperienced in organizing grass roots efforts and my not have the time or where-with-all to to so in the case, but this is the closest I have ever been to doing so. My original post (linked above) garnered a lot of interest.
Matt:
The last time the census drones came to my house, that's exactly what I did: told them the number of people and explained that I wouldn't tell them anything else, then told them to leave.
The drones were a bit miffed and went to my neighbors to ask for more info about me and my family. Fortunately, I have the kind of neighbors who like to screw with such people, telling the drones things like, "I *think* they have about 90 or 100 kids."
June 22, 2009, 1:06 pmJim Collins:
I was listening to a radio talk show this morning and a woman stated that she is afraid that the information on the census forms could be used for identity theft. I have to agree with her.
June 22, 2009, 1:48 pmBob Smith:
Only one problem: ACORN. I bet they fill in the empty forms any way they like.
June 22, 2009, 5:19 pmJim Collins:
Bob,
June 23, 2009, 6:01 amI'm more concerned about ACORN aquiring this information for it's own uses. With data storage being as inexpensive as it is, who's to say that copies of the Census data won't be made? Talk about the ultimate mailing list. Compair it to the voting registration lists and look at all of the open names and addresses of people who aren't registered to vote. Your imagination can take it from there.
Paul:
As Matt did, in 2000, I simply told the person at my door there were two people in the house. He pressed for more information, which I declined to provide.
One of the questions he asked me was my race. I told him to use his best jugement, as he was looking at me.
I'll do the same this time.
June 23, 2009, 9:19 amRob:
Like Matt and Paul, I refused to tell the "census" snooper in 2000 anything beyond how many kids under 18 and adults over 18 we had in our household, and then I politely ordered her off of our property. When she left she pulled over to the side of the road and sat there for several minutes, apparently filling in the form on her own. I'll be doing the same in 2010.
June 24, 2009, 9:21 amBrad Warbiany:
Two days ago, my second son was born. I was faced with a number of decisions, such as whether to obtain for him a social security number (I did, just to save him hassle) and how to fill out his birth certificate paperwork.
On the birth certificate, there were all sorts of questions about my occupation, my education level, and identical for my wife. It was clear that these answers were optional (although I might have withheld the info anyway). So I declined to answer them, as I don't see their necessity to issue a birth certificate.
I was especially happy to see, when they brought the draft birth certificate back to me for review, that it had a bunch of fields that simply said "WITHHELD". This is definitive long-term recognition that I don't want to answer these questions. And I can only hope, that if nothing else I do affects my son, that he will someday grow to understand why his birth certificate does not contain that information.
Of course, if he's ever elected President and "birthers" want his records, they'll realize that his dad is an anti-government crackpot. But that's a risk I'm willing to take.
June 24, 2009, 11:40 pm