Dear Resident:
About one week from now, you will receive a 2010 Census form in the mail. When you receive your form, please fill it out and mail it in promptly. Your response is important. Results from the 2010 Census will be used to help each community get its fair share of government funds for highways, schools, health facilities, and many other programs you and your neighbors need. Without a complete, accurate census, your community may not receive its fair share. Thank you in advance for your help.
Sincerely, Robert M. Groves
Director, U.S. Census Bureau
We, along with an estimated 90 percent of the residential households across this great nation, received the above letter in our mail last week. After a brief head shaking, we looked on the back of the page to see if it was just a joke. Then we re-examined the return address. There seemed to be no doubt that the U.S. Census Bureau was warning us that we were going to receive our census form soon.
In another example of wasting our tax money and justifying their existence, the government bureaucrats have outdone themselves. This brief plea for cooperation could have just as well been disseminated as a preamble to the actual census form, but we think the letter deserves a little more attention.
The people who have their hands the deepest in the government coffers know full well that the whole purpose of the census has been corrupted. The Constitution of the United States provides only for the “enumeration” of residents. There is nothing in that great document that authorizes the government to collect funds for highways, schools or health facilities. The 16th Amendment, which provides for the collection of taxes, states that the collection of those taxes be done “without census or enumeration.”
It seems to us that justifying this letter by telling us that it will ensure more participation is a somewhat weak argument. We think the letter falls more into the “make them feel guilty” category, with a strong secondary message of “we need to get what is coming to us.”
The letter implies that we could be personally responsible for a lack of funding for educating our children if we do not sit down immediately and answer every question of the form. It is typical of the type of guilt mongering we have become all too used to.
We wonder (just wonder – we are not suggesting) what would happen if we sent the IRS a similar letter:
Dear IRS people:
In a few weeks you will receive a check for the balance of my income tax liabilities, which according to your records is duly owed you for redistribution for the funding of highways, schools, health facilities and many other programs my neighbors and I need.
I believe I am more qualified than you to determine exactly what my neighbors and I need, but given the current tax collection tactics, I trust you to do the right thing.
Your diligent use of these funds is important. Without proper distribution, my neighbors and I will likely see unemployment increase, or property values decline and we may not receive our fair share of our money in return.
Thank you in advance for your cooperation.
Resident taxpayer
