Ron Paul Reminds Us that He is Crazy!

In an op-ed titled, “Why I voted against encouraging people to complete Census form,” Congressman Ron Paul of Lake Jackson justifies why he voted “No” on a Congressional resolution intended to encourage participation in the 2010 census.

Paul claims that the census “has grown far beyond what the framers of our Constitution intended.” He notes, “The invasive nature of the current census raises serious questions about how and why government will use the collected information.”

Ron Paul then goes onto cite Article 1, Section 2 of the United States Constitution, which, “calls for an enumeration of citizens every ten years, for the purpose of apportioning congressional seats among the various states.” Paul interprets this to mean, “the census should be nothing more than a headcount.”

Although the Constitution’s main goal is to figure out the state population for representation purposes at a Federal level. Paul makes the logical fallacy of assuming that the Constitution limits the census to only collecting certain data and not other information that our government currently collects.

He also incorrectly asserts that census only counts “citizens” when in fact it counts residents of the state regardless of their citizenship status. Paul claims that the census “was never intended to serve as a vehicle for gathering personal information on citizens.” It is unclear how Paul came to this realization because the Constitution does not state what information the census should or should not collect.

Then, Paul attempts to scare the living daylights out of people when he claims that, “the 2010 census state employees recorded GPS coordinates for every front door in the United States so they could locate individuals with greater accuracy!”

That’s scarier than Kazaam! Someone should tell Paul that if he fires up the Google and looks at the “Maps” feature he is going to think that you hacked into the Neo-Cons top-level satellite footage of the whole wide world. Just don’t show him the “Street View” feature … or he will faint on location.

But, let’s get to the root of the issue … the questions … the ones that Paul is so opposed to you answering. Paul states, “Individuals are asked detailed questions concerning their name, address, race, home ownership, and whether they periodically spend time in prison or a nursing home – just to name a few examples.”

Oh the horror … except for the fact that those questions are legitimate. Ron Paul must have forgotten what kind of information is asked on applications … like employment, credit or education. In a society where we share much more personal information on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter or YouTube … ten questions about your household are not intrusive. College students disclose more personal information than the census asks and they do it for a t-shirt.

Congressman Paul should be ashamed of himself for stirring up fear of the perceived intentions of the census. The census uses the information collected to allocate funds for infrastructure projects, schools and government facilities, etcetera. Whether the government has abused the confidentiality of information obtained via the census in the past … that does not mean that they are guilty of such actions today. Failure to comply with the census not only lands you a hefty fine of $5000.00 but it also denies the State of Texas and the City of Houston of money that we as tax payers have contributed to the nation.