© 2011, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

© 2010, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

Paul Revere in the 1790 Census

A recurring topic these days is the 2010 US Census, and what exactly one has to do in response to the tri-fold form currently being mailed to every known “home” in the United States.

Information, misinformation, believes, and rumors abound, and the situation isn’t helped by somewhat misleading information provided by the Census itself. (This will be discussed below.)

It isn’t our intention to interpret law or provide legal advice, but it seems to us that one could take a few different positions on the Census:

1. Respond in full, perhaps using the form as requested, or waiting for a door-to-door Census worker to pay a visit;
2. Not respond at all, and waiting to see if a door-to-door Census worker appears;
3. Respond in full or in part, but making some inaccurate or misleading statements on the form; or
4. Respond only to the part that is required for the Census to perform its Constitutional function.

The Census tries to scare people into responding by implying that the maximum fine for not responding is $5,000¹, but it seems that this is misleading at a minimum. A review of the related US Code sections implies that the $5,000 applies only if an individual committed a crime against the Census, which is an act far beyond simply refusing to respond.²

The related US code section is far clearer about specific limits for fines that can be imposed on individuals who don’t respond, or respond with false information. The fines are set at no more than $100 for no response, and $500 for misleading responses.³

For those who choose not to respond, it’s quite likely that a Census worker will appear at the door. If that happens, it’s worth noting that it would be unusual if one were to be required to interrupt anything and everything just to respond to Census inquiries. It is not unreasonable to ask the Census worker to come back some other time. In fact, the Census mentions that they will make up to 3 attempts to get a response, perhaps implying that a fourth won’t be made.⁴ In any case, Census workers are not entitled to enter ones dwelling, and they certainly aren’t entitled to a telephone number, or to set up an appointment, regardless of how hard they might try to obtain these.

With this in mind, what should one respond with?

Not responding to the Census doesn’t help one’s State, because the Census count is used to apportion pork and kickbacks, also known as Federal grants and programs. In addition, the Census data is used to redistrict areas and to assign new Representatives to Congress for States that grow their population faster than others. This brings with it more political power in D.C.

However, it’s also obvious that the vast majority of the Census questions go well beyond the original purpose for which the Census was established in the Constitution, namely that of counting the number of people in any particular area.

On the 2010 “simplified” and “shortened” form, questions range from name, date of birth, sex and race to a telephone number. None of these are necessary for the Constitutional function of the Census, and are probably seen as an invasion of privacy by many if not most Americans.⁵

This is also a far cry from the questions posed on the first Census in 1790, which only inquired:⁶

1. Name of the head of each household.
2. How many free white males age 16 and older.
3. How many free white males under age 16.
4. How many free white females.
5. How many of all other free persons.
6. How many slaves.

The Census tries to set respondents at ease by promising that “the penalty for unlawful disclosure is a fine of up to $250,000“.⁷ However, such statements are not really honest in describing the real protection afforded to personal data collected by the Census. Excepting weasel clauses that allow sharing of Census data with other Federal agencies, it appears that the actual maximum fine is a paltry $5,000.⁸

Interestingly a flier that comes with the Census form doesn’t focus on the fines for releases of personal information, but instead discusses at length that no information will be given to law enforcement or tax collection agencies. This is clearly intended to encourage a response from those who live at the edges or beyond the legal society, allowing one to comment that seemingly the Census cares more for the privacy of illegal immigrants than that of Citizens.

Making a decision as to how to respond doesn’t need to be difficult. The Census form itself highlights one question out of the dozens that are on it. This question is also the one that the Constitution directly requires the Federal government to determine every 10 years, and it might be no coincidence that the form applies an encouraging statement “Start here” to it:

1. How many people were living or staying in this house, apartment, or mobile home on April 1, 2010? Number of people = [blank]

Perhaps that’s the only question one should respond to.

© 2010, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

Spending your way to debt bondage

In the sea of self-righteous proclamations by Democrats in Congress to wait for the new Republican Senator from Massachusetts before engaging in further healthcare debate, the same induhviduals have carefully neglected to discuss the real elephant in the room. Namely the national debt.

The reason is now obvious. Harry Reid and company clearly wanted to pass the biggest increase in the national debt ever, and saying that they would wait for Brown on such a key issue would have made them liars.

So there it goes, a $1.9 TRILLION dollar addition to the national debt, care of the Democrat Senate.¹ The vote was on party lines, 60-40, and would have failed had Reid waited another few days.

To put this number in perspective, it represents about 53% of the 2010 federal budget, as submitted by the biggest spender ever to occupy the White House. It also increases the national debt by a whopping 15%, the biggest percentage ever, in addition to by far the biggest absolute value ever. And it increases the direct national debt to $45,000 for every American man, woman and child.

This vote by the Democrat controlled Senate shows that Democrats with Harry Reid at the helm take issue with Brown, who might have taken away their credit card and impacted their freespending habits. Should the Democrat controlled House concur that the credit card limit should be raised by this whopper, the Democrats lead by Reid, Pelosi and Obama will be free to spend their way into the worst possible future for the American people. Namely debt bondage.²

© 2010, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

I Want To Believe

It seems that the “warmers” at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) (University of East Anglia, UEA) aren’t the only ones manipulating climate data to match models and predictions.

Now the Russian Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) in Moscow claims that the Hadley Center for Climate Change (Hadley Climate Research Unit Temperature, HadCRUT), based at the British Meteorological Office in Exeter, has tampered with Russian climate data.¹²

The short version is that HadCRUT includes only a small portion of Russian climate data; specifically only those parts that showed measurements to Hadley’s liking. According to Russian analysts, only 25% of stations were actually used. The measurements that were left out showed no substantial warming in the late 20th century and the early 21st century.

Interestingly, apparently HadCRUT seemed to use measurements from stations with only partial observations, while ignoring many others that had complete observation records.

The impact of this accusation to any “Climate Change” discussions in Copenhagen is direct, as IEA states that HadCRUT research is used to form the foundation for many of the climate change calculations — including financial ones.

Should this allegation regarding HadCRUT “research” be accurate, it means that large portions of the fundamental observations behind “Climate Change” have been blatantly manipulated for a particular result. Since much of the research in this space relies on climate observations, the manipulated CRU and HadCRUT research could very well contaminate and invalidate most — if not all — of climate change “science”.

To an observer, “Climate Change” is looking more and more like a religion, rather than anything having to do with “science”… unless some in the “scientific” establishment have decided to redefine the meaning of “science” to the standards employed by the Catholic Church in the era of Copernicus and Galileo.

© 2009, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

Imagine There's No Global Warming

Speaks for itself…

© 2009 – 2010, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

Head in the Sand

It has now been 14 days since the ClimateGate matter broke, and major news networks have yet to cover the topic. According to Media Research Center¹ ABC, CBS and NBC have yet to mention ClimateGate. Perhaps this is all one needs to know about the “quality” of “news” from these networks.

Perhaps it’s not just that the news networks haven’t heard about ClimateGate from a “reliable” source — such as Gibbsy² at the White House briefing room — ignoring the stepping down of the head of the Climatic Research Unit³ and the UN calling for an investigation⁴.

Or it could also be that the topic isn’t important enough. What, with the Democratic Congress giving away trillion dollar handouts from healthcare to the umptieth bailout of a union driven industry, they might rightfully be under the impression that legislation based on made up data and inconsistent models is quite ordinary, and therefore not newsworthy.

Or maybe these “news” outlets just want to stay away from commenting on the cap and tax trading scheme voted to the Senate by Pelosi’s House of Representatives, because the trading scheme apparently was originally invented by Ken Lay of Enron fame⁵.

Regardless of the reasons behind it, actions speak louder than words. It would be a good idea for everyone to remember this failure by ABC, CBS and NBC next time when one turns to television for “news”.

© 2009, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

The issue is that while the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) evaluates the cost of ObamaCare at some $1 trillion, give or take, it is restricting itself to the impact to the Federal budget, and excluding several factors that massively increase the real cost of the proposed legislation.

First, the bill is back-loaded, so that the cost of the 10 year period from 2014 to 2023 will be $2.5 trillion, instead of the $1 trillion so often quoted for the first 10 years from 2010 to 2019.

Second, the CBO does not evaluate the cost to the private sector (corporations and individuals), which Mr. Cannon estimates at some $2.5 trillion.

The scary part here is that adding these numbers up, the real cost of ObamaCare is some $6 trillion over a 10 year period, not including possible budget overruns, which could push the total up another trillion or two.

ObamaCare will also break new ground for unfunded Federal mandates, as the bulk of the spending will be in the form of mandates on the private sector.

To put this in perspective, assuming 138 million tax payers² the cost is $43,500 in additional direct and indirect taxes for every tax payer.

© 2009, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

Tru$$$t in me...

The Climatic Research Unit (CRU) seems to have destroyed raw weather data that it gathered, only holding onto “value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data“.¹

Now isn’t that convenient? The same people who manipulated their data to make their models show results they wanted to see are now effectively asking everyone to trust them on the processing of raw measurements into “value-added data”.

The CRU seems to have offered as an explanation that records were discarded in the 1980′s. But with the CRU’s record for honesty, who knows?

If the data had really been as precious and important as the “warmers” have long claimed, then why was it discarded? Or does the now-lost raw data have further inconvenient revelations in it?

James Delingpole of the Telegraph points out that the ClimateGate scandal is finally allowing those who have posed legitimate questions all along to have their voices heard.²

Now that the warmers have been outed, it’s becoming more and more obvious that the entire Church of Man Made Global Warming (CMMGW) movement — to give them a name — is really a cover for Big Business hitching up with Big Government and Big Green. Or how else would one interpret the actions by large multinationals who are actually expecting to see new profits from massive CMMGW related government programs, financed by new taxes on practically everything, all in the name of saving the environment?³

It’s time to take action. Call your Congressman and Senators and tell them to help stick Cap and Tax legislation right where it should go: the nearest shredder. And for the next door neighbor who bought into the warmer ideology and has been preaching the dangers of “man made” global warming, a “told you so” might be in order.

© 2009, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

What Obamacare Means For You

Obamacare

• The Efficiency of the Postal Service
• The Sustainability of Social Security
• and all the Compassion of the IRS

(No further comment)

© 2009, Pontificus. All rights reserved.