Big Brother's Survey

Communications demanding that I fill out the American Community Survey.

Last year I was forced to fill out the American Community Survey.

I had been carrying around a copy of this blasted survey in my briefcase for over one year, anticipating this post, and figured that now would be a great time to voice my frustration about it now that I started the Money Mensch blog.

Also, I am sick of lugging around hundreds of pages of documents that I plan on blogging about, expired coupons, and financial papers that I am yet to file in my briefcase day after day.

Ostensibly, the government claims that this data is "used to decide where to locate new highways, schools, hospitals and community centers: to show a large corporation that a town has the workforce the company needs; and in many other ways."

According to a New York Times article by Catherine Rampell in 2012, "each year the Census Bureau polls a representative, randomized sample of about three million American households about demographics, habits, languages spoken, occupation, housing and various other categories. The resulting numbers are released without identifying individuals, and offer current demographic portraits of even the country’s tiniest communities."

Also, reading the FAQ flyer that the Census Bureau sent to me three times (third try is the charm?) before I filled it out, "your response to this survey is required by law" and "Section blah blah blah imposes a penalty for not responding."



As I do with all surveys sent to me, at least the first time, I threw the documents straight into the recycle bin with a thought in my head like "F*** filling out the government's G*d-damned survey."

A few weeks later, I get another one with a letter urging me to fill it out, with the claim "Your Response is Required By Law" written boldly on it.

What?!  You mean that I can murder or maim, sell drugs on nearly any corner in Chicago that I want to, burglarize homes in my suburb with impunity and zero chance of arrest, but somehow I am going to get in trouble for not revealing everything about my family on some f-ing survey?!  F that!  I threw it in the recycle again, because I am big on recycling and would never throw that much paper in the garbage.

I recycled the survey twice.

Being the big government, I began getting more stern warnings by letter, along with a link to the form https://respond.census.gov/acs urging me to comply.

After three or four more of these, I halfheartedly went to fill out the form online, provided way too much and way too personal information, but stopped filling it out in disgust when the f-ing form wanted to know what time my children leave for school and what grades they are in.  The answer to that is none of their f-ing business.

How much schooling my wife and I had, how much we each earn, where we work, how long we commute, etc., is information that the government already has through the IRS.  I was not and am not comfortable providing a wealth of information about our children to the federal bureaucracy, staffed mostly by morons, for any summer intern there to peruse or for someone to use against us in the future somehow.

Do I sound paranoid to you or just reasonable?

Other questions require the respondent to tell the federal government about your race, the type of plumbing in your dwelling, if people in the dwelling access the Internet, the fuel most often used for heating in the dwelling, monthly rent, level of education, any “serious difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions,” issues climbing stairs, if an occupant of the dwelling has “difficulty dressing or bathing,” how many times they have been married, and how they get to work.

By the way, all four of us use the Internet daily and have our own Wi-Fi, as most other families have, and we do have two toilets.

Anyway, I stopped filling the damned thing out online, and then got another stern letter basically demanding me to comply.

I attempted to log on again, but had thrown out the postcard with the log on number on it, thus had to phone the Department of the Census to explain the issue to the schmuck who has to answer the phone for such questions about these things.  It was a young guy and he gave me a new code number to enter into the system in a day or so.

A day later, my new logon code worked and I started from scratch, revealing personal information about myself, my wife and my children. The paper form is 28 pages long, with each page having about 12 questions. Looking through it tonight, it is pissing me off again, seeing questions about how much we pay for utilities, what type of health insurance we have, and about any physical, mental, or emotional conditions we may have.

Seriously?!  You want someone to check a box stating that they have an emotional condition that causes difficulty in making decisions?!  Also asking how well each person speaks English?  Even though both my wife and I are college graduates and our two children are top students in highly rated schools, again I think it's none of their f-ing business if none of us speaks a word of English.

Do you think the illegal immigrants who dwell in the massive apartment complex just a few hundred feet west of our house fill these forms out? No, they would rather demand that one of the few college educated families in our working class neighborhood fill this damned thing out.

Googling the American Community Survey just now, I found a great article about it by Daniel Freedman in 2010 in the weekly Standard, in which he details the "Downright Orwellian" survey: "Even more invasive are the personal questions. The questionnaire asks how many people live with you and their relationship to you, along with their names, ages, gender, and race. Most creepy of all are the questions about your daily routine. The ACS wants to know where you work, what time you leave for work, how you get to work, how long it takes you to get to work, and how many people travel with you."

His experience was worse than mine, with a ACS representative stalking him at his home, showing up unannounced, and threatening him with a $5,000 fine.  Government at its best.

Now there is no turning back.  I just read a few more articles about how the ACS has become a partisan issue, with Republicans basically wanting to repeal it for several of the reasons stated above.
I was not thinking Democrat or Republican when dealing with this survey, just thinking that this is definitely government overreach.