George Bush, trying to dip into disaster relief for fishermen to pay for money they fucked away elsewhere. I hope the farm bill veto and subsequent override probably makes this a "win" (and by win I mean poorly mitigated catastophic loss) at this point. Around here, being able to rely on the river for a little bit of food on the table was what our entire standard of living was based on. No jobs, just fish, unemployment is in excess of 50%, you could not afford to commute to a job in the city even before the GWB. Im sure you all know that we feel we wouldn't be in this mess if not for that crazy MF'er Cheney, shutting off our water.

I received an exciting letter today from the RNC!

Dear Fellow Republican,

You are among a select group of Republicans who have been chose to take part in the official 2008 CENSUS OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.

Enclosed is your new 2008 GOP CENSUS DOCUMENT, which was assigned and prepared especially for you as a representative of all Republicans in your voting district.

Your answers will be used to develop a NEW BLUEPRINT for the Republican Party for the next 10 years, a BLUEPRINT to strengthen our Party.

10 years? How about 100 years of permanent Republican Majority!

What happens in 2011? One word - Redistricting.

I loved the television series Connections. Narrated by science historian James Burke, this BBC series took an interdisciplinary approach to the history of science and invention, demonstrating how various discoveries, scientific achievements, and historical world events built off one another in an interconnected way to bring about particular aspects of modern technology. Burke's impeccable narration and dry humor, the historical reenactments, intricate working models, and location shots were inspiring.

Burke also produced and narrated The Day the Universe Changed, a BBC documentary television series originally broadcast in 1985.The series' primary focus is on the effect of advances in science and technology on western philosophy. To illustrate this idea, James Burke tells the various stories of important scientific discoveries and technological advances and how they fundamentally altered how western civilization perceives the world. The series runs in roughly chronological order, from around the beginning of the Middle Ages to the present.

From a friend who is a long-term GOPer who is supporting Barack Obama. I tossed the survey in the shredder before I realized what else was in the envelope. Contents show no date or copyright, FYI.

||||||break|||||||
means an edit of the fundraising letter. Nothing has been resequenced.

Take note of the tone - we need to put the party back together. Use of 'grassroots.' And other keywords / buzzwords sprinkled throughout.

PS, they note it costs .40 cents each survey, for a total of 6.2 million sent at a cost of $2.48 million. And they need them back in seven days.

To paraphrase an old saying, a billion here and a billion there and soon, you're talking about real money".

Billion-dollar IT failure at Census Bureau

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 7:51 pm

The US Census Bureau faces cost overruns up to $2 billion on an IT initiative replacing paper-based data collection methods with specialized handheld devices for the upcoming 2010 census. The Bureau has not implemented longstanding Government Accountability Office (GAO) recommendations and may therefore be forced to scrap the program. Harris Corp., the contractor associated with this incompetently managed initiative, was awarded a $600 million contract to develop the handhelds and related software.
. . .
Computer World blogger, Frank Hayes, summarized the situation succinctly, "The fancy custom handhelds might work. But if they don't, the Census Bureau will use paper instead."

fair usage quote, rest at the URL

Hard-core political numbers junkies sprouted a few extra gray hairs earlier this month. The cause of their grief wasn't the perpetually suspect electronic voting machines or mind-numbing campaign finance reports. It was a sedate and relatively obscure government agency with the capacity to set off a whole lot of political mischief.

While the following is pretty much posted at Captain Plaid I'll use the poll feature to get some feedback  plus use Daily Kos for some unabashed blogwhoring.  It appears that this very worst administration can't get much of anything right. The news is that the Census Bureau's slick new electronic gadgets to replace pen and paper are way behind schedule. And I'll go ahead and figure that here on the Great Orange Satan we'll blame Bu$hCo and try to pose the questions to get some clear patterns.  I'll leave an out for those trolling for Dear Leader and the right wing. Does what little they get right involve lining the pockets of those that support the GOP?  Is it dance with the ones what brung you?  Is it mere incompetence?  Is it a sneaky way to muddy up redistricting? Is is ... ?

In today's mail I received a letter-sized envelope (with return address of "Republican National Committee, 310 First Street SE, Washington DC 20003) with a boldface label immediately above the clear window addressed to me personally:
"REPUBLICAN CENSUS DOCUMENT ENCLOSED"

I happen to live in one of the more strongly republican-leaning voting precincts in Raleigh, NC, about 70% of my surrounding neighbors going a block or so in each direction are registered GOP [which fact I gleaned by cross-referencing the neighborhood directory with our county board of election's electronic-searchable voter registration database]...and the predecessor residents of the house we bought 2 yrs ago were GOP.  What was curious was that this "census document" purported to be "census documents registered to [my name] with registration number 1978-0725 (top line) 552399465 (next line)...which of course does not match my county voting registration ID, and it would be hard to miss that I'm a registered "DEM".  It contained a postage prepaid envelope addressed to the RNC for me to return my "census" form to.  Now, looking at the "census document" itself:

(crossposted in EcuProphets under my revdbh screen name)

Looking at a map of New York State's prisons (click here) is to get a clear picture of the politically engineered "population infusions" to ever-shrinking upstate, courtesy, largely, of six or seven zip codes in New York City. Several rural upstate counties have large prisons and the inmates are counted as local residents for the purposes of redistricting and by the Census bureau.

In 1980, an African-American was equally likely to be either living in a college dorm or living in prison.  Not anymore.  In the last twenty-six years, we have made remarkable progress.

Yesterday, the Census Bureau released a study showing that American blacks are more than three times as likely to live in prison than in a college dorm.

And the study has more good news as well.  Hispanic Americans in 1980 were more likely to live in college dorms than in prison.  Now, there are 2.7 Hispanics in prison for every Hispanic in a college dorm.

After learning that my state was the seventh most impoverished state in the nation, it made me wonder, could political leadership have a correlation to the number of people in poverty. The answer I found was yes.

Well, it’s official. I have officially lost my sense of humor. I laughed when the Ted Haggard story came out; he was a top political evangelical with access to the White House. When they caught McCain’s Florida campaign chair offering that undercover cop a twenty to let him blow him, I did a very funny piece on it. When they caught the newly elected chair of the GOP trying to blow a guest while he slept on the couch, I did a funny piece on that.  (continued)

Come and get your median income here!

We're number one, sorta.  The median income for my state is 65,144. For the US, its 48,451. For the state, the median is about 34% higher than the US median.

For my town, tho, the median is about 36,031 or about 25% lower than the US median income and its about 55% of the state median income.  

About 42% of the Baltimore City population does not make 200% of the federal poverty limit; 19.5% of the population lives on less than the federal limit.  

(Revised, with many thanks to mbayrob)
The U.S. Census Bureau had a press conference yesterday morning releasing new data on poverty/income and health insurance.  The MSM covered it to some degree.  What they missed out on completely is the fact that the number of children ages 0 through 18 without health coverage rose by more than 700,000 from 2005 to 2006.  There was an increase the year before also, but this most recent number is double the previous increase.  That means that one million more children are now uninsured than were uninsured 2 years ago.*

The numbers boggle the mind.

Forty-seven million Americans went without health insurance in 2006, an increase of 2.2 million people from the year before, according to a report issued by the U.S. Census Bureau Tuesday (Aug. 28). It marks the sixth consecutive year the ranks of the uninsured have grown.

http://www.stateline.org/...

And it is both fitting and ugly that these new numbers from the census bureau are released the same day as an editorial in the Boston Globe entitled We Are All Uninsured Now, which teacherken and sobermom brought to my attention.

The American healthcare catastrophe--the national shame and disgrace of our nation has burrowed deep into the middle class.

The crisis is also wreaking havoc on more privileged Americans. Americans you might expect would be immune to the hardships inflicted on the  rest of us by the Murder By Spreadsheet for-profit insurance industry.

A story about the poverty rate declining significantly was just posted over at yahoo news.

http://news.yahoo.com/...

At first blush, you get the impression, especially since we are past the mid-point of 2007, that poverty has taken a sharp drop this year and things must be looking up.  But I found this especially important to note.

The Census Bureau reported Tuesday that 36.5 million Americans, or 12.3 percent — were living in poverty last year. That's down from 12.6 percent in 2005.

crossposted from unbossed

It's not just about the War in Iraq. Or corruption.  It's about everything we need to know in order to make informed decisions. It's about no compassion for the least among us, the poor, the disenfranchised. If we don't know, the "thinking" goes, there is no problem.