Indiana census warehouse evacuated, substance found

Not. Going. To. Say. It. But I will update as soon as I get more.

JEFFERSONVILLE, Ind. (AP) — A U.S. Census Bureau official says a census bureau warehouse in southern Indiana has been evacuated following the discovery of a red, powdery substance in its mail.

U.S. Census spokeswoman Latoscia Mason tells Louisville, Kentucky, television station WAVE that between 200 and 300 employees at the warehouse in the Ohio River city were evacuated after workers found the substance in incoming mail about 8 a.m. Tuesday.

A Jeffersonville hazardous materials team is at the scene taking air samples

Update- Sounds like someone wanted to put a scare in the workers. Didn't they realized that they most probably would be identified by the census form they sent in? Oy.

Hackbarth said a worker opening returned Census survey forms found a red, powdery substance in one of the envelopes about 8 a.m. He said a hazardous materials team determined the powder was not dangerous, but is still working to identify it.

Hackbarth said the building is the Census Bureau's only permanent processing center and both mails out and sorts returned Census forms.

New RNC site: Obama v. Constitution, including ominous music!

By GottaLaff



You simply must link over to this ridiculous site just to hear the oooommminnous music:

If you run your mouse over the amendment in question it indicates an Obama judicial nominee and a decision that allegedly supports the claim [...]

“Please help the Republican Party stop President Obama’s judicial nominees from rewriting the Constitution. Donate today!” the site says, calling for contributions of up to $1,000.

And that's what it's really all about: Donations.

(click on image to enlarge)

Defacing the U.S. Constitution should be a real winner for them. Even better than the fake census forms!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Gravely Old Pathetic party.

Man fires shotgun when Census worker visits home

Where do these guys get their ideas? Via Ministry Of Truth.

ST. MARIES, Idaho (AP) - A northern Idaho man who police say fired his shotgun near a U.S. census worker who was trying to deliver a census form has been cited for exhibition of a deadly weapon, a misdemeanor.

Fifty-4-year-old Richard L. Powell of St. Maries faces up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

The Benewah County Prosecutor's office says that on March 3 Powell told the census worker to get off his property and then fired a shotgun into the air.

Gov Pawlenty (R-MN) hasn't responded to census

Yeah, the great fiscal conservative is making it so the Federal government now has to pay to send someone out to count him. Hope someone notes this for the next time he bitches about spending. Asshat.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty says he hasn't filled out his census form, which was due more than a week ago.

Pawlenty made the comment on his weekly radio show on WCCO Radio on Friday.

(center)

Pawlenty says, "I'm going to fill it out in a timely manner."

April 1 was the deadline for completing and mailing census forms. Census workers are set to visit homes that don't respond. Federal law requires people to participate in the census.

Cartoon of the Day

Click to enlarge, via.

AUDIO: RNC fake "census" mailer provides phone sex number by mistake

By GottaLaff

(Click on image to enlarge; via)

This is barely audible, and awfully ickworthy. Listen at your own risk:



Can these people do nothing right? And why do their little mishaps always involve sexcapades, even inadvertent ones? The RNC gives new meaning to Murphy's Law:

The Republican National Committee sent a fundraising mail piece earlier this month with a return number that leads to a phone-sex line offering "live, one-on-one talk with a nasty girl who will do anything you want for just $2.99 per minute."

Oops, that was supposed to be a 202 area code! But a Minnesota resident called the 800 number to complain about using a fake census form to entice donations. Surprise! Cringe Factor: 100.

It's not nice to deceive voters, RNC. When will they ever learn?

Not to mention, donations will likely suffer. Who wants to give money to the so-called Family Values party when they can't seem to adhere to their own standards?

But the Minnesotan was instead directed to a second toll-free number that greets callers as "sexy guy" before offering them the chance to talk with "real local students, housewives and working girls from all over the country."

The caller then sent the form to his Democratic congressman, who let the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in on it.

The RNC won't reveal how many mailers went out. But, hey, check phone records to see if there was an uptick in calls to Miss XXX. That should provide a rough idea... then check to see who called back.

Oh, but I kid...

That's all for now. Stay tuned for the next episode of How the RNC Rolls. But first, hide the kids.

Could Winger Fear of Census Cost Republicans Congressional Seats?

Oh the shadenfreudey goodness streaming thru my bones right now. h/t First Read.

WASHINGTON — Texas is counting on the 2010 Census to deliver four new congressional districts, four new Electoral College votes in presidential elections, and millions of dollars in additional federal aid. But, as some elected officials are starting to worry, Uncle Sam can't deliver anything to the rapidly growing Sun Belt state unless Texas residents deliver their forms back to the government.

As of Friday afternoon, only 27 percent of Texas households had filled in and returned their census forms — well below the national average of 34 percent — according to computer data from the U.S. Census Bureau. In Harris County, the response rate is 23 percent. Houston's returns are running at 21 percent.

Contrary to historical trends, some of the toughest challenges facing the agency responsible for measuring the nation's population are not from counting the traditionally undercounted groups such as African-Americans and Latinos. Instead, a new and growing threat to an accurate national head count is coming from anti-government conservatives who may not fill out their forms to protest against “Big Brother” in Washington.

(snip)

Polling by the Pew Research Center finds Democrats are more likely than other Americans to view the census as “very important” to the country. Seventy-six percent of Democrats call this year's count very important, compared with 61 percent of Republicans and independents.

In Texas, some of the counties with the lowest census return rates are among the state's most Republican, including Briscoe County in the Panhandle, 8 percent; King County, near Lubbock, 5 percent; Culberson County, near El Paso, 11 percent; and Newton County, in deep East Texas, 18 percent. Most other counties near the bottom of the list are heavily Hispanic counties along the Texas-Mexico border.

There is a reason for the enthusiasm gap on the census: A number of prominent conservative and libertarian Republicans have been blasting the census for months.

Quickie: Which States Will Gain Power After Census?

By GottaLaff

Today's Quickie:

"The next round of redistricting following the census will re-allocate congressional districts and electoral votes among the states." [...]

The big winners: Texas, California, Florida, Georgia and Arizona.

That was today's Quickie. Will you still respect me in the morning?


More details here.

Impersonators distributing bogus census forms

By GottaLaff

NonCensus:

Scam artists impersonating U.S. Census workers are distributing bogus forms seeking Social Security numbers of some Oklahoma residents, the local census office warned Wednesday. [...]

One man said the form was left by a woman wearing a T-shirt with the census logo and driving a car with a census sign on it.

Identity theft is the main worry.

IMHO, another worry is the further damage this kind of thing does to the Census efforts.

Census hiring blitz of 750,000 to cut jobless rate, boost to Obama

By GottaLaff

750,000 is nothing to sneeze at:

The U.S. Census Bureau expects to add up to 750,000 workers to its payroll by May, a hiring binge that could knock the unemployment rate down by as much as a half-point.

The once-a-decade census is coming at the best possible time for President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats, who have taken political lumps for more than a year over a jobless rate that stands at 9.7 percent. [...]

“This is the best-timed census you could ever dream of,” said Heidi Shierholz, who tracks the labor market at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. She believes the March unemployment report will show the economy added jobs instead of subtracting them.

Wendy Button, chief of the decennial recruiting branch of the Census Bureau:

“This is in no way going to solve our unemployment situation [...] It’s going to be a blip. A big blip, but it’s going to be a blip.”

Still, it’s a blip that could help Obama and Democrats.

And that's the kind of blip we like.

Besides, if 750,000 people can make some money, that's good news.

More Americans call selves multiracial

Someone make sure that Buchanan and Tancredo have their "nerve pills" on them, ready to go.

WASHINGTON, March 3 (UPI) -- The number of U.S. residents classifying themselves multiracial in the U.S. Census is expected to climb, officials say.

The 2010 census forms go to 135 million households at a time when the country has grown more ethnically and racially diverse because of immigration and a growing number of interracial marriages, USA Today reported Wednesday.

(snip)

The Census Bureau first allowed people to choose more than one race in the 2000 census, and this year's census will enable some of those who were children identified as one race by parents to choose more than one now that they're adults.

The bureau predicts by 2050, there will be no racial or ethnic majority as the proportion of non-Hispanic whites slides below 50 percent.

Video- Malkin on census: "indoctrination," "Alinskyite," "way to ensure a permanent [Dem] ruling majority"

Report: Ohio could lose two seats in Congress

By GottaLaff

Report: This report is reporting a report:

Ohio could lose two seats in Congress as a result of waning population growth according to Census numbers.

End of reporting on the report.

This has been Laffy, reporting from California.

BREAKING- Kentucky state police: Census worker found hanging killed himself

By GottaLaff

How did he do that with his body bound in duct tape? Nevertheless, MSNBC's headline banner says:

Census worker found hanging killed himself, Kentucky state police say

Waiting to hear more.

UPDATE: It was for insurance money:

Census worker Bill Sparkman committed suicide and deliberately made it look like murder as part of an insurance scam, Kentucky state police have concluded.

The Michele Bachmann File: Pants on Fire!

By GottaLaff

This pretty much goes without saying, but it is fun to see the visuals:

Recent statements involving Michele Bachman:

Page 92 of the House health care bill "says specifically that people can't purchase private health insurance after a date certain."

She should read the other 1,989 pages

Ezekiel Emanuel, one of President Obama's key health care advisers, "says medical care should be reserved for the nondisabled. So watch out if you're disabled."

Academic musings make easy targets for opponents

ACORN will be a paid partner with the Census Bureau and "they will be in charge of going door-to-door and collecting data from the American public."

ACORN not getting money, not collecting data

Says the Constitution only requires her to tell the census "how many people are in our home."

Bachmann's claim wrong, and illegal

ACORN "could get up to $8.5 billion more tax dollars despite being under investigation for voter registration fraud in a dozen states."

"Access to" and "actually getting" are two very different things

Senate Kills Vitter Census Amendment

By GottaLaff

How did David Vitter get elected? I keep blocking that out.

His appropriations bill amendment would have "stopped the U.S. Census from taking place without an additional question about each individual’s citizenship and immigration status":

Vitter had claimed that counting illegal immigrants in the Census would allow Democrats to gain more seats in Congress than they’re entitled to have, but previous census directors and experts had warned that changing the census questions at this stage of the process would be extremely costly and basically impossible.

We Dems and our "illegal immigrant" friends sure do raise a lot of hackles.

Indicted: Man Who Threatened To Kill Obama, Scrawl "Fed ..." On His Chest

By GottaLaff

(click to enlarge, but warning, strong language... entire document here)

TPM has a scary-as-hell story about someone who apparently considered the Census Bureau Worker "Fed" Killer a role model:

[A] California man has been indicted by a federal grand jury after allegedly writing a deranged and racist email screed that urged recipients to "kill the 'president,'" and seemed to invoke the recent death of a Census Bureau worker in an apparent act of anti-government violence.

The scoffers who ridicule those of us who find the increasing crescendo of public hate speech and threats terrifying and worthy of reporting to the Secret Service, read this indictment in full.

It's pretty obvious that acts of violence trigger more acts of violence, that hate speech can push an unstable person into committing a crime, and that we're headed in a very wrong, very worrisome direction.

This has to stop. Memo to public officials: Let Americans know that it's time to tone down the toxicity. Now.

Republican Senators want illegals kept off census rolls

This is obviously just a play for the base, there's no way it's anywhere near possible. Plus, I thought one of the reasons behind having a census is so federal monies can be allocated for social services, and those social services are needed for legal as well as illegal residents yes?

WASHINGTON, Oct. 14 (UPI) -- The U.S. Census Bureau would ask whether people are in the United States legally under an amendment being considered Wednesday, its sponsors say.

The measure's authors, Republican Sens. David Vitter of Louisiana and Bob Bennett of Utah, say it is meant to ensure that illegal immigrants are not counted in the 2010 Census, which will be used to determine the allocation of congressional seats and representation, USA Today reported.

"Illegal aliens should not be included for the purposes of determining representation in Congress, and that's the bottom line here," Vitter told the newspaper.

(snip)

"It's operationally impossible," Steve Jost, Census associate communications director, told USA Today, saying adding new questions at this point would require the forms to be redesigned. "The forms are printed, folded. We have bilingual forms. ... We're printing 1.5 million forms a day."

Witness Says Census Worker Was Naked, Bound

You've probably seen or heard this already, but if you haven't... Don't know quite what to think about it yet.

BIG CREEK, Ky. (AP) -- A part-time census worker found hanging in a rural Kentucky cemetery was naked, gagged and had his hands and feet bound with duct tape, said an Ohio man who discovered the body two weeks ago.

The word ''fed'' was written in felt-tip pen on 51-year-old Bill Sparkman's chest, but authorities have released very few other details in the case, such as whether they think it was an accident, suicide or homicide.

Jerry Weaver of Fairfield, Ohio, told The Associated Press on Friday that he was certain from the gruesome scene that someone killed Sparkman.

''He was murdered,'' Weaver said. ''There's no doubt.''

(snip)

''The only thing he had on was a pair of socks,'' Weaver said. ''And they had duct-taped his hands, his wrists. He had duct tape over his eyes, and they gagged him with a red rag or something.''

Two people briefed on the investigation said various details of Weaver's account matched the details of the crime scene, though both people said they were not informed who found the body. The two spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case.

''And they even had duct tape around his neck,'' Weaver said. ''And they had like his identification tag on his neck. They had it duct-taped to the side of his neck, on the right side, almost on his right shoulder.''

Census worker hanged with 'fed' on body

Man oh man. As WaterTiger points out, some people have been demonizing the Census workers with a passion lately. I mean, if you think the Federal Census worker is going to put you in a Internment camp similar to the ones we put the Japanese in, well, what would you expect?

WASHINGTON — The FBI is investigating the hanging death of a U.S. Census worker near a Kentucky cemetery. A law enforcement official says the word "fed" was scrawled on his chest.

The body of Bill Sparkman, a 51-year-old Census field worker and occasional teacher, was found Sept. 12 in the Daniel Boone National Forest in rural southeast Kentucky.

Investigators have said little about the case. A law enforcement official, who was not authorized to discuss the case and requested anonymity, tells The Associated Press the word "fed" was written on the dead man's chest.

FBI spokesman David Beyer said the bureau is helping state police determine if Sparkman's death was the result of foul play, and if so, whether it was related to his census work.