Free Talk Live

You know the old saying: "Everyone loves a charade." Well, it seems that the Census Bureau may be playing games.

Last week, one of the millions of workers hired by Census 2010 to parade around the country counting Americans blew the whistle on some statistical tricks.

The worker, Naomi Cohn, told The Post that she was hired and fired a number of times by Census. Each time she was hired back, it seems, Census was able to report the creation of a new job to the Labor Department.

51-year-old census worker Bill Sparkman was found this month with the word "fed" scrawled on his chest, hanged from a tree near a cemetery in Daniel Boone National Forest. The FBI is investigating whether he was a victim of anti-government sentiment, and the Census Bureau has suspended door-to-door interviews in rural Clay County, where the body was found.

A battle is brewing between the state and federal governments over a Census taker arrested in Puna for misdemeanor trespassing.

census workers — from the head of the Bureau and the Secretary of Commerce (its parent agency) down to the lowliest and newest Census employee — are empowered under federal law to actually demand access to any apartment or any other type of home or room that is rented out, in order to count persons in the abode and for “the collection of statistics.” If the landlord of such apartment or other leased premises refuses to grant the government worker access to your living quarters, whether you are present or not, the landlord can be fined $500.00.

From Bob Barr's blog -- "What many Americans don’t realize, is that census workers — from the head of the Bureau and the Secretary of Commerce (its parent agency) down to the lowliest and newest Census employee — are empowered under federal law to actually demand access to any apartment or any other type of home or room that is rented out, in order to count persons in the abode and for “the collection of statistics.” If the landlord of such apartment or other leased premises refuses to grant the government worker access to your living quarters, whether you are present or not, the landlord ca

For those of us who are demographic buffs, Christmas came four days early when Census Bureau director Robert Groves announced on Tuesday the first results of the 2010 census and the reapportionment of House seats (and therefore electoral votes) among the states.

Has anyone heard anything about identity theft via census? The local census-takers are calling us on the phone, wanting to fill out the census over the phone. That's INCREDIBLY ripe for identity theft.

I'm the cleaning person at church and was working there a week ago, the phone rang and a woman saying she was working for the US Census Bureau Burlington VT office was asking churches how many people attend. I went and told her but then brought up the Constitution which says they're only authorized to ask heads of households how many live there and that her question is wrong since I felt is goes against the seperation of church and state. She didn't care to here all that and gave me a curt thank you and goodbye.

Nearly one in three Americans failed to return their census questionnaires by Friday’s official deadline, the Census Bureau said.