Team Obama’s Census Bureau Employment Tricks: What Looks Alot Like a Scam to Boost “Government Jobs Created” with Census Hires, Plus More Gov’t Census Waste
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on May 27, 2010
New York Post reporter John Crudele has unearthed a cute trick that Team Obama is pulling, using Census Bureau hires.
“Cute” — as in falsifying employment statistics and grossly exaggerating government jobs created by this administration.
From John Crudele, NY Post, Two more Census workers blow the whistle:
You know the old saying: “Everyone loves a charade.” Well, it seems that the Census Bureau may be playing games.
Last week, one of the millions of workers hired by Census 2010 to parade around the country counting Americans blew the whistle on some statistical tricks.
The worker, Naomi Cohn, told The Post that she was hired and fired a number of times by Census. Each time she was hired back, it seems, Census was able to report the creation of a new job to the Labor Department.
Below, I have a couple more readers who worked for Census 2010 and have tales to tell.
But first, this much we know.
Each month Census gives Labor a figure on the number of workers it has hired. That figure goes into the closely followed monthly employment report Labor provides. For the past two months the hiring by Census has made up a good portion of the new jobs.
Labor doesn’t check the Census hiring figure or whether the jobs are actually new or recycled. It considers a new job to have been created if someone is hired to work at least one hour a month.
One hour! A month! So, if a worker is terminated after only one hour and another is hired in her place, then a second new job can apparently be reported to Labor . (I’ve been unable to get Census to explain this to me.)
Here’s a note from a Census worker — this one from Manhattan:
“John: I am on my fourth rehire with the 2010 Census.
“I have been hired, trained for a week, given a few hours of work, then laid off. So my unemployed self now counts for four new jobs.
“I have been paid more to train all four times than I have been paid to actually produce results. These are my tax dollars and your tax dollars at work.
“A few months ago I was trained for three days and offered five hours of work counting the homeless. Now, I am knocking (on) doors trying to find the people that have not returned their Census forms. I worked the 2000 Census. It was a far more organized venture.
“Have to run and meet my crew leader, even though with this rain I did not work today. So I can put in a pay sheet for the hour or hour and a half this meeting will take. Sincerely, C.M.”
Click here to read more of Crudele’s post that includes similar letters of the games the Census Bureau is playing with hiring/firing/rehiring Census workers.
More on the US Census…
Conservative journalist and blogger Michelle Malkin has started a series of posts — topic: exposing the US Census. She’s providing some of the many emails she’s received from people across the country who have worked for the US Census… here are but three links to posts she’s written over the past few months… there are more on her site:
E-mail of the day: Confessions of a Census worker
Today’s unemployment figures — and more Census workers’ true confessions
Yes, it’s just as bad as you’d assume. Here’s just one email that Michelle received, exposing the wasting of tax payer dollars and the inefficiencies of our government. Be sure to check them out on Malkin’s site.
From reader X:
I’ve noticed the last couple of days census workers have been confessing the inner details and I too am compelled to share my story. First, I ask for anonymity because I have been without work and am in need of a job, but I have been working with the census for 2 weeks and everyday I shake my head at the blatant inefficiency, and deliberate misuse of taxpayer money. Specifically, we have been doing enumeration for those who do not have a home, the homeless in shelters, soup kitchens and in targeted nonsheltered outdoor locations, such as parks, subway stations, etc. I personally have been sent to check on shelters that were already determined to be day programs only during the preceding round of quality control, yet they pay me the mileage and hourly wage to go back and make sure that they are still only day programs. I walked through parks and parking lots looking for homeless people to enumerate, not even by talking to them, but just by observing their race, sex, and approximate age.
I have indirectly been told to not work too fast, that each operation is budgeted to last until a certain date and that there is no reason to move faster and end before the scheduled time. The inefficiency of the materials and the redundancies in the process of taking a form, giving it to a respondent and having them seal it in an envelope, then give the envelope to me where I open it and verify the census form is complete, then reseal the form in a new envelope and give it to my crew leader. Then my crew leader opens this envelope, checks that I have marked the form complete, and then reseals it in yet another envelope. Where it then goes to the local census office, and is once again opened, and inputted into the computer system. And those three envelopes? They end up in the shredder along with the form. Just a complete waste of resources.
I would not say that this is the fault of any of the people I work with directly; I have met chefs, med students, retired professors and teachers, accountants, college students- these people are all hardworking and excited to be doing what they believe to be civil service to country. I myself am a secondary education major at West Chester University with a specialization in History and Civics, and I applied to the census because I was thrilled to be able to gain the experience of civil service. I still am trying to believe that what I’m doing is in some way important, but I’m doubting that now. The way the process has been setup by government bureaucracy is so backwards and prevents a person who is industrious and efficient from being able to work freely. Its like it is deliberately setup and complicated in process so that it forces you to work slower and equalize the amount of work that each employee produces everyday. I’m used to the situation being the harder and faster you work, the better you show yourself as a worker. This is the first job where I am encouraged to be slow and inefficient.
Thank you Michelle for reading this and for opening this subject up. It is important that the taxpayers in this country know where their money is going!
Hopenchange lives!
Census 2010 fortune cookies... what WILL Team Obama think of next?
Additional reading on unemployment, the deficit, and the 2010 Census:
Frugal Café Blog Zone: Ohio Unemployment Funding Is Dead Broke… More Hopenchange! and Gallup: All-Time Low for Americans’ Satisfaction of Gov’t in Three Decades, Democrats “Clearly Vulnerable” in November Elections and Seneca Indians Once Again Betrayed by the US Government, More Native American Jobs Lost Because of Obama… THANK YOU, Mr. President and Fortune Cookies Are Latest Tools in Team Obama’s Arsenal for Census 2010 and Jon Voight’s Letter to America… Obama’s Lies and America’s Plunge to Disaster (video) and Disastrous National Debt Chart: Obama’s Federal Debt about to Skyrocket
The Powers That Be: The Government’s ‘New Jobs’ Sleight of Hand With the Census
Stephen Robert Morse, Big Government: The Census Bureau’s Recent History of Throwing Billions of Dollars Down the Drain
Publius, Big Government: ABC: Conservative Filmmaker James O’Keefe Goes Undercover to Target Census Bureau
Riehl World View: Econ 101: Here Comes The Pain
GayPatriot: Boxer Fundraiser Costs California Workers Paycheck and Americans’ Negative View of Obama’s New Kind of (Chicago) Politics and No Wonder the “Stimulus” Didn’t Create Jobs…
Gateway Pundit: More Good News… Unemployment Expected to Surge Above 10% Again and Obama Economy Lost 63,600 Manufacturing Jobs in April – Gained 66,000 Temporary Census Jobs and St. Louis Man Bitten In Stomach By Census Worker’s Rottweiler (Video) and Change! Obama Census Worker Rapes & Beats Handicapped Woman (Video) and Dora the Explorer Pushes Census to Little Kids So They Can Get Stuff and Obama Slashes $42 Million From NYC Anti-Terror Funding… But Will Bail Out Greece and Pelosi: We Are 1 Pillar Away From Completing Obama’s Blueprint For America
Susan Anne Hiller, Big Journalism: Think the Census Is Hinky? Here’s One Of the Reasons Why
Citizen Wells: Budget deficit widens, Largest April deficit ever, $82.7 billion shortfall, Record 19th straight monthly shortfall, Risk of higher interest rates
Greg Gutfeld, Big Hollywood: Daily Gut: The New Extremism
Betsy’s Page: The Obama Pity Party
Diary of a Mad Conservative: When even Fox isn’t getting it, we have a message problem
Tom Rowan, American Thinker: The ‘Thank Obama Brigade’
Nick Gillespie, Big Government: Reason.tv: Sweden’s March Toward Capitalism – Economist Andreas Bergh on the Capitalist Welfare State”
Nice Deb: Wake Me Up From This Nightmare and Saturday Reads
Seattle Times: Millions of unemployed may never recover
Dr. Zero, Hot Air Green Room: Representation Without Taxation
The Hill: Survey: Four in 10 Tea Party members are Democrats or independents
Pajamas Media: ‘Left’ Behind: Tolerance and the Tea Party
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