Thread: White House Nabs Political Control Over Census (w/Updates)

I believe this information may already have been posted in a shorter form.

White House Nabs Political Control over Census
Sunday, February 8, 2009 10:22 AM

The Obama administration is ending the Census Bureau's traditional autonomy – a move that has Republicans outraged over the White House's politicization of counting Americans.

Last week, an administration official revealed that the yet-to-be-named director of the Census Bureau will report to the White House rather than Commerce Secretary nominee Judd Gregg, a Republican.

That prompted a blistering response from two key Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

"Any attempt by the Obama administration to circumvent the census process for their political benefit will be met with fierce opposition as this ill-conceived proposal undermines a constitutionally obligated process that speaks to the very heart of our democracy," California Rep. Darrell Issa wrote in a letter to President Barack Obama. The letter was co-signed by North Carolina Rep. Patrick McHenry.

"Requiring the census director to report directly to the White House and placing responsibility for administration of the Bureau outside the Department of Commerce may even violate federal law," the letter stated. "According to Title 13 of the U.S. Code, the Bureau is to be administered 'within, and under the jurisdiction of, the Department of Commerce.' According to U.S. Code, the Executive Branch is limited to providing support for the Bureau in the form of information and resources."

The census counts all Americans every 10 years, and the results are used to allocate congressional seats (redistricting), electoral votes, and some government funding. With congressional elections coming in 2012, the fear is that the 2010 census will be manipulated in a way that results in positive redistricting for Democrats.

The census firestorm erupted after Congressional Quarterly reported that “The decision [on the census director] came after black and Hispanic leaders raised questions about Commerce Secretary nominee Judd Gregg's commitment to funding the census." In 2000, Gregg opposed emergency funding for the census.

According to Politico, "sources on the Hill close to these negotiations say the census would, more or less by default, would fall under the jurisdiction of Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.â€

I just heard about this on Glenn Beck.

Rahm Emanuel?!?! This guy hates Republicans. I heard he sent one a dead fish once. The guy is scary!

I think the Republican party is doomed.

GOP Sounds Alarm Over Obama Decision to Move Census to White House

A number of Republicans are joining the fight to put the census issue into the political spotlight "before it's too late."

FOXNews.com
Monday, February 09, 2009

Utah's congressional delegation is calling President Obama's decision to move the U.S. census into the White House a purely partisan move and potentially dangerous to congressional redistricting around the country.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, told FOX News on Monday that he finds it hard to believe the Obama administration felt the need to place re-evaluation of the inner workings of the census so high on his to-do list, just three weeks into his presidency.

"This is nothing more than a political land grab," Chaffetz said.

Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, told the Salt Lake Tribune that the move "shouldn't happen." He and Chaffetz are trying to rally Republicans "before its too late."

"It takes something that is supposedly apolitical like the census, and gives it to a guy who is infamously political," Bishop said of Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who would be tasked with overseeing the census at the White House.

The U.S. census -- a counting of the U.S. population -- is conducted every 10 years by the Commerce Department. Its results determine the decennial redrawing of congressional districts

As a matter of impact, the census has tremendous political significance. Political parties are always eager to have a hand in redrawing districts so that they can maximize their own party's clout while minimizing the opposition, often through gerrymandering.

The census also determines the composition of the Electoral College, which chooses the president. If one party were to control the census, it could arguably try to perpetuate its hold on political power.

The results of the census are also enormously important in another way -- the allocation of federal funds. Theoretically, a political party could disproportionately steer federal funding to areas dominated by its own members through a skewing of census numbers.

At this point the White House doesn't seem willing to say what Emanuel's role will be in overseeing the census, and White House officials say census managers will work closely with top-level White House staffers, but will technically remain part of the Commerce Department.

But critics say the White House chief of staff can't be expected to handle the census in a neutral manner. Emanuel ran the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in the 2006 election, and he was instrumental in getting Democrats elected into the majority.

"The last thing the census needs is for any hard-bitten partisan (either a Karl Rove or a Rahm Emanuel) to manipulate these critical numbers. Many federal funding formulas depend on them, as well as the whole fabric of federal and state representation. Partisans have a natural impulse to tilt the playing field in their favor, and this has to be resisted," Larry Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, told FOX News in an e-mail.

Critics note that the method of counting can skew the census. Democrats have long advocated using mathematical estimates, a practice known as "sampling," to count urban residents and immigrants. Republicans say the Constitution requires a physical head count, which entails going door-to-door.

In 2000, Utah, which has three congressmen, was extremely close to landing a fourth House seat based on U.S. Census numbers, but the nation's most conservative state fell short by a few hundred votes because the Census Bureau wouldn't count Mormon missionaries from Utah serving temporarily overseas.

The GOP took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, but was ultimately unsuccessful. Utah leaders had hoped the 2010 census would rectify the problem, but now worry that they will lose again if the census is managed by partisans.

When Obama nominated New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson to be commerce secretary -- he was later forced to withdraw -- he indicated that Richardson would be in charge of the census.

The decision to move the census into the White House was announced just days after Obama named New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg, a Republican, to be his commerce secretary. Gregg has long opposed "sampling" by the census and has voted against funding increases for the bureau.

Sabato said moving the census "in-house" will likely set up a situation where neither the Commerce Department nor the White House will know exactly what is going on in the Census Bureau. He said the process is "too critical to politics for both parties not to pay close attention."

"I've always remembered what Joseph Stalin said: 'Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.' The same principle applies to the census. Since one or the other party will always be in power at the time of the census, it is vital that the out-of-power party at least be able to observe the process to make sure it isn't being stacked in favor of the party in power. This will be difficult for the GOP since I suspect Democrats will control both houses of Congress for the entire Obama first term," Sabato said.

FOX News' Bill Sammon and Shannon Bream contributed to this report.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first10 ... ite-house/

They are taking over!!! This is the worst thing I have seen so far, They will manipulate Illegal Alien numbers to show that with an amnesty it won't give out as many free rides. SUPER SCARY!!

LA RAZA, MALDEF and LULAC were furious because they were afraid illegals would not be counted in the 2010 census... that's why it was "yanked".... read below...

Obama Administration Politicizes the 2010 Census by Stripping Commerce Dept. of Oversight

Responding to special interests, last week President Obama ordered that the oversight of the Census Bureau be transferred from the Secretary of Commerce to the White House. The action came after special interest groups - including the National Association of Latino Elected Officials (NALEO), an organization that openly advocates amnesty for illegal aliens - expressed concern about Obama's new nominee to fill the Commerce Secretary position, Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH). (CQ Politics, February 5, 2009).

Concerns over whether or not illegal aliens will be counted in the census - and therefore count towards congressional reapportionment - have mounted as the 2010 census approaches. (See FAIR's Report Who Represents Illegal Aliens?

White House Census Power Grab May Violate the Constitution

February 09, 2009 02:51 PM ET
By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

In an earlier blog post I noted that Republican Judd Gregg, if he is confirmed as secretary of commerce, will have jurisdiction over the Census Bureau. Some Democrats noticed, including, I suspect, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

So now it's been announced that the White House will oversee the Census. Of course, the president has ultimate authority over cabinet officers (that's the unitary presidency theory that Democrats hated up to but not beyond January 20), and I am not prepared to charge that Emanuel or anyone else in the White House is determined to diabolically cook the Census books in search of gains for the Democratic Party or the Black or Hispanic caucuses. And we have the integrity of Census statisticians to rely on; they favor sampling on grounds that commend themselves to academic statisticians, but also have shown, in the 2000 Census, that they will adhere to those standards in the face of political pressures to the contrary. Nonetheless, as someone who got great joy when my parents in 1951 (when I was 7) bought a set of encyclopedias with the 1950 Census figures (I had only had access to the much outdated 1940 Census figures), I'm going to keep an eye on this one.

Here's an argument that it's unconstitutional for the president to take over the Census from the secretary of commerce. It goes like this: Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution provides for an "actual enumeration" and a statute passed by Congress provides that the duties under this clause are to be performed by the secretary of commerce. Article I (as Joseph Biden didn't know in debate) is about the legislative, not the executive branch. Hence, it is argued, the president can't substitute a sampling for the enumeration required to be done by the secretary.

However, it is undoubtedly true that the president can fire the secretary of commerce for any reason, including failure to conduct the Census the way he wants the Census conducted. An acting secretary could conduct the Census the way the president wanted, even if the Senate refused to confirm a new secretary of commerce who would. And who would have standing to challenge the constitutionality of the Census taking? Perhaps the state that, under the statutory formula apportionment House seats among the states, got the 436th rather than the 435th seat, i.e., came close to getting another seat but didn't get it.

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/barone/2009 ... ution.html

Related:
http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-145826.html

February 6, 2009, 5:55 pm
The Census: Phantom Constituents
By Brent Staples

There are many ways to hijack political power. One of them is to draw state or city legislative districts around large prisons — and pretend that the inmates are legitimate constituents.

Which, of course, they are not. Prison inmates are stripped of the right to vote in all but two states. They often live hundreds of miles from the prison town — where they may never even see the local streets. Once released, they are hustled onto buses and driven halfway across the state to their actual homes.

Why, then, does the census bureau count inmates as “residentsâ€