Dictatorship By Other Means: Chicago at the White House

Back a while ago, I placed a comment with AB which is worth repeating here.

Goes to show you that the Left doesn’t really give a crap about the Cabinet.

The game is played with White House “Advisers” and “Czars,” not Cabinet. (1/22/09)

Why "worth repeating here"?

Because Politico came to the same conclusion, and CQPolitics has a much more disturbing report on the same general topic.

The director of the Census Bureau will report directly to the White House and not the secretary of Commerce, according to a senior White House official

The decision came after black and Hispanic leaders raised questions about Commerce Secretary nominee Judd Gregg ’s commitment to funding the census

But as Blumer of NewsBusters reports, it's not really about "funding" the Census. It's about manipulating the numbers. Quoting the LATimes story on the Clinton/Gregg dispute, he relays:

Actually, the once-a-decade exercise of counting America’s heads has turned into a fiercely partisan matter. The Democratic White House wants to introduce statistical projections into the year 2000 census and not depend solely on counting individuals one by one.

Republicans generally have assailed the proposal as a violation of the Constitution, which calls for “actual enumeration,” and a ploy by Democrats to bolster their standing when districts are redrawn after the census.

What's the big deal? Blumer has more, this time from NPR.

In 1999, the Supreme Court had settled one part of the issue, ruling that sampling adjusted figures could not be used to apportion seats in Congress. But it left the door open for other uses, like redrawing congressional districts within a state and allocating federal funds.

Blumer again:

Which brings us to a variation of an old accounting joke -- When asked by his boss how much 2+2 is, the accountant replies with his own question: "What do you want it to be?"

With the next Census, the question will be "How many people were there in the US in 2010?" It appears that the answer will also be another question, and a very long one, "Do you want the enumerated count, or the apportionment count, or the welfare count, or the Food Stamps count, or the .....?"

I can smell Chicago from here.