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Where they stand depends on where they sit. Census Hypocrisy? Count on It.By Rick Horowitz Had it up to here with the high-flown rhetoric? Looking for a handy way to cut through the fog and distinguish principle from partisan puffery? Consider life in The Alternate Universe. In The Alternate Universe, the bureaucrats are troubled. The time is fast approaching for the next national census, and the bureaucrats want to do the very best job they can. It's an historic job, conducting a national census. It's right there in the Constitution: a census every 10 years. It's an important job, too. The numbers the bureaucrats come up with every 10 years help determine many crucial things, like who gets how much government money, and who gets how many representatives in The Alternate Congress. And it's a difficult job. Counting every man, woman and child in a great big country is no simple thing, even in an Alternate Universe. In fact, that's what has the bureaucrats so worried. They didn't do a very good job of counting last time, and they're afraid they'll do an even worse job this time. What's the problem? We're glad you asked. In The Alternate Universe, they missed millions of people last time -- people who didn't send back their census forms, people who didn't answer their doorbells when the bureaucrats came calling. People who didn't have doorbells. The bureaucrats knew these people were out there. They wanted to count them. But if these people didn't send back their forms or answer their doorbells, they couldn't count them. There went the government money. There went their representatives in The Alternate Congress. So this time around, the bureaucrats want to do it differently; they want to use something called "sampling" to fill in the blanks. They'd still do an actual count of most of the people in The Alternate Universe, but then they'd use sophisticated statistical analysis to figure out the people they'd missed, and count them, too. "Wait a minute!" cry the politicians from one of the parties in The Alternate Universe. It wouldn't be fair to count the missing people. It wouldn't be legal. If they haven't been counted the regular way, it's their own fault -- and their own tough luck. There's a principle involved. The politicians even manage to convince some judges to see it their way. This is a great victory for the people, the politicians announce. A victory for principle. The other party's politicians vow to appeal the judges' decision to the highest court in the land. "Wait a minute!" you cry. That's not The Alternate Universe -- that's our universe! We're the ones with all those uncounted people: blacks in the inner cities, Hispanic immigrants in the Southwest, young people, poor people. People who might have been inclined to vote for the other party, to tip the balance the other way. Not quite. In The Alternate Universe, things are a little bit different. In The Alternate Universe, you see, the uncounted people were cruising in the islands when the mail arrived, and when the bureaucrats came to call. They were dancing at the club, or striding down the fairway, or relaxing at the summer place, or getting ready for cotillion. They never got around to filling out the forms, to answering the questions. Millions and millions of them -- the well-bred and the well-fed -- simply slipped through the census net last time around, and they'll do it this time, too. People who might have been inclined to vote for the party that's been raising all the objections. Or do you think the party might have taken a slightly different position? There's principle, and then there's self-preservation. Posted
8/28/98. Fresh stuff right here twice
weekly!
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