[Vision2020] Strategic Ignorance

[Art Deco]

  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>

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May 24, 2013
Strategic Ignorance By THE EDITORIAL
BOARD<http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/opinion/editorialboard.html>

In an age when knowledge is power, restricting knowledge is a power grab,
creating the conditions of ignorance that allow bias, ideology and
propaganda to flourish, unchallenged and unchecked.

So it is with two pending Republican bills that seek to curtail or end
vital surveys by the Census Bureau and that could advance as early as next
month, when lawmakers consider the annual appropriation for the Commerce
Department, which includes the bureau’s budget.

One bill <http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c113:H.R.1638:>, introduced
in the House by Jeff Duncan of South Carolina, would effectively end all
surveys by the bureau, except for the decennial census, and even that would
be limited to counting noses — a silly interpretation of the census’s
mandate. Banning the surveys would make it impossible to compile reliable
data on employment, productivity, health, housing, poverty, crime and the
environment, to name a few of the affected fields.

This bill would be too wacky to worry about, but its lunacy makes the other
know-nothing bill look moderate. That
bill<http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d113:h.r.1078:>,
introduced in the House by Ted Poe of Texas and in the Senate by Rand Paul
of Kentucky, targets the American Community Survey. Started in
2005<http://www.census.gov/history/www/programs/demographic/american_community_survey.html>to
replace the long-form census, the survey is the indispensable source
of
information on factors that define American life, including family
configurations, education levels, work and living arrangements, income and
insurance coverage. Credible information is the basis for a responsive
government, an efficient economy and, by extension, a functional society.
It also gives American policy makers and businesses a competitive edge,
because it encourages decisions based on hard data as opposed to guesses or
other faulty rationales that dominate in the absence of credible data.

About three million people receive the survey every year, and, as with the
census, answering it is required by law. Mr. Poe and Mr. Rand want to make
it voluntary, which would make the results less reliable, and potentially
worthless, because fewer people would answer and those who did would not be
a representative sample.

Canada recently replaced its mandatory long-form census with a voluntary
survey — and now lives with the sorry results. To try to get an adequate
level of response, the voluntary survey was sent to one in three Canadians
instead of one in five, which increased costs. The response rate plunged
anyway, from 94 percent to 68 percent. In a staggering one-fourth of
Canadian communities, not enough people responded to make the data usable.

It may be months before President Obama’s nominees for Commerce secretary
and Census Bureau director are confirmed; in the meantime, there is no one
to defend the survey. That increases the chances that the bill to make the
survey voluntary could be slipped into the Commerce Department
appropriation or other legislation. The White House needs to put someone
prominent in charge of the issue now, or risk being caught off guard later.


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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