I pit Obama and what he is doing with the census

The BBQ Pit
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Please cite for me the portion of legal precedent that makes it easier to invoke executive privilege to prevent the subpoena or statutorily required report of the Secretary of Commerce when the White House Chief of Staff plays a larger oversight role.

In the absence of such a citation, I don’t think that we should believe you that as a matter of law the exercise of oversight by the White House on a given issue makes one bit of difference for executive privilege purposes. Executive privilege protects information about advice given the President about his duties.

If the assertion is that Obama, like Bush, might invoke executive privilege where it ought not be invoked, then that’s a whole different thread. He might do so whether he exercises more oversight over the census or not. But if your claim is that his legal position for claiming executive privilege is made stronger by having his Chief of Staff directly involved with the census, back it up.

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Where many Republicans like to imagine white men: in an oppressed minority.

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By a Republican Secretary.

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I’ll back up **Mr Moto **on this one. Gregg may be a Republican but Obama appointed him. If Obama doesn’t trust him then he should have picked someone else.

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ISTM Obama indeed doesn’t trust him, but that’s why he was a safe choice for a backwater department. His appointment seems to have been about getting a 60th Dem Senator, and he was forced by premature publicity into proceeding with the nomination even after it became clear that it wasn’t going to happen that way.

Such idealistic thoughts are truly touching, though. They give me hope for America’s future.

86

For those not familiar, the Census is a very fluid thing, meaning that it often asks very different questions from one Census to the next. (Genealogists really know this: the 1900 Census asks questions that aren’t on any other such as month/year of birth [a godsend for trying to pin down somebody’s age], the 1930 asks about radio ownership and value of the house and do they rent or own, 1850 and 1860 had slave schedules, the 1890 census [which is no longer in existence- first government undertaking done by electronic computers, but it burned in a fire] asked detailed questions about military experience.

The reason is that the Census reflects the information needs of the nation in any given year ending with 0. For example, in 1990- due to constant letters to their representatives and to government agencies from grandparents who were custodians of their grandchildren and had complex legal issues (non parental rights, ineligibility for financial assistance in many cases, etc.) the Census began asking about non-traditional families in general particularly grandparents raising their grandchildren. In 2000 they asked for the first time about same-sex coupels and other non-married couples who shared homes. There are other things as well, but these are some of the major changes.

Also, the census is ongoing and taken constantly every year; hospitals report births/deaths/diseases/etc. to government agencies that report them to the census, the IRS reports income information each year to the census, etc.) but the decennial census is the Big 'un, and that’s the one on Obama’s watch.

A good bit has changed in the past 10 years: the role of the Internet, immigration issues, a war or two, computer usage, gay marriage debates, etc.- all these things were issues 10 years ago, but hard to argue that they’re all moreso now. Then there’s the little MAJOR financial crisis (the credit crunch and bailouts and foreclosures, perhaps you’ve heard about them).
So, we have a new president who is known for being extremely analytical, and he comes into office at a time of incredible financial crisis and major social change, and the year before the Census is taken. (It’s luck of the draw- Bush was president 8 years but never had a decennial census, while Clinton had one but at the very end of his term.) The Census is the absolutely without compare most important source of information on the USA for reasons I’ve mentioned (i.e. it’s about a helluva lot more than how many people live in Norman Oklahoma and Shamrock Texas, it’s about EVERY THING THAT GOES ON IN THOSE AND EVERY OTHER CITIES from family relationships to immigration to financial matters to development to health to you-name-it).

Things the Census cannot ask, incidentally: religion, political persuasion, sexual orientation (except for same-sex couples who choose to self-identify and share a home and that’s only from 2000),

So the reason that Obama wants the White House to be more directly involved with the Census rather than working through bureaucracies with a brand new Secretary of Commerce that he himself appointed is most likely one of two things:

1- he wants access to the most up-to-date detailed information on America and its people and resources while working with appointees and experts to fix a hopelessly nebulous and interwoven knot of problems that is unparalleled in history in such a way as to do the most good and the least harm

or

2- he wants to change around the numbers so that 2 years from now suddenly Mississippi only has one representative while low and behold there are 7 liberal California districts where before there were 1.

Of course 2 is kind of risky since redistributing the population is easily checked by everything from property tax records to income tax reports to housing censuses to bank accounts to transportation counts to state censuses (many states perform their own censuses independent of the Fed) to common sense, but Obama is power mad and determined to make the population of the United States suddenly become 82% non-white and 98% in blue states.
So I’m thinking the answer is 2.

Oh wait, I meant to say, get a fucking grip and if you don’t want to pick up a fucking civics book then at least look at the wiki on the Census. If Obama tried to cook the numbers he’d be caught before he hit save on the Excel spreadsheets in his secret lair 8 miles below D.C…

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Does anyone ever ask what the Census wants? Does anyone ever think about his feelings? No, I didn’t think so.

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PS- Obama probably sees the Decennial Census as an Allah-send, because it’s the single greatest and most detailed source of information on the American economy, population, housing market, businesses, etc., at the time when he needs the most reliable and current information most. It makes me like him better for seizing the opportunity to have it reported immediately and directly to him.

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Well, at least you’ve got an open mind, and consider your position falsifiable.

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Wasn’t this whole issue of who the Census would report to caused by left-side fears that the Republican nominated to run Commerce, having questions the Census methodologies in the past would therefore in some way undermine the correct (from the view of those alarmed by his presence) count of minorities and other left-leaning hard-to-count groups? And so the president said “hey, we’ll be involved so we’re confident of no hanky panky so you can leave us alone.”

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That would be too obvious. Obama probably won’t even get it up to the real numbers of 21.2% non-hispanic black, 34.4% hispanic, 0.0005% Asian, 42.9% other, as the truth would be too shocking to believe.

(OK, I made up those numbers, but in principle, if we have been undercounting massively, & something like those numbers are real, they’re too unexpected for Obama to acknowledge.)

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United States v. Nixon. This unquestionably protects high-level communications within the Executive Branch, which would include many communications not involving the president directly. And while this protection is not absolute, it is there.

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If the House Republicans are outraged then I am all for it.

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Excuse me? Are you actually warning us about Obama using executive privilege? Really?!

Where have you been the last eight years?

While I’ve been made somewhat wary of executive privilege claims thanks to the last Republican(!) president’s shenanigans, I recognize that there are legitimate uses for the privilege. Until Obama actually starts using EP for the purposes of preventing embarrassment to himself or his administration, or to prevent criminal executive actions from coming to light, I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt.

And no, that isn’t hypocritical. Bush’s EP claims were just incredible, in both number and circumstance. There wasn’t much that his administration did that wasn’t considered covered under EP as long as questions were being asked about it. Until Obama even approaches that level, he gets the benefit.

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Right. You do realize there was a Democrat who was president before Obama, right? And you do realize that many of his executive privilege claims were somewhat, er, controversial.

Would it have been a great idea in hindsight to give Bush the benefit of the doubt, in your opinion, based solely on the Clinton experience?

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Oh, he doesn’t neccessarily have to completely fake the numbers. It wouldn’t be too hard to slow down (on paper) the migration of population from some Blue States to some Red States, a trend which promises to shift several congressional seats in the next election.

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Not too hard, except for the fact that it’s certain ruin for his presidency if he’s caught and the odds of getting caught are near 100% due to tax/residency/real estate/employment/city & state census/hospital/bank/and many other records, besides which migration from blue states to red states can be an excellent thing for a Democrat, especially if the blue states aren’t battleground and the red states are.

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The idea that Obama would or could claim Executive Privilege regarding census reports is ludicrous. This whole conspiracy theory is through the looking glass.

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[shrug] No, since the sense of the consensus is that the Census’ senses are insensate. Sincerely.

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I’m pretty sure Obama wanted Gregg even after Gregg insisted that his replacement be a Republican, and that this wasn’t public knowledge for a while.