The count matters; the tactics suck

While sipping on a cup of morning gasoline, the Crackpot noticed this story from the AP, wherein a U.S. Census worker decides to trespass onto a private citizen's property and insists on not leaving the property owner alone after being told to leave.

The Crackpot understands that every ten years, the federal government is required to conduct a census under the law, but at the same time where is the line drawn between what the ever-intruding-in-your-life government wants and the privacy from the government the people want to enjoy, especially in a time where there is an anti-government sentiment in the nation.

According to the story, census worker Russell Haas said he was trained to be persistent by the census bureau. Do they train you to trespass and badger? Is that where your tax dollars are going?

"Dude, you have to be in the Census," Haas said, to the property owner, an off-duty police officer, who presented his badge to Haas.

Haas' claim to the property owner is so Atlas Shrugged, and it seems that he should told him, "It's your patriotic duty to comply. It's for the good of the people."

Celeste Jimenez, of the Los Angeles Regional Census Center, said it's important for residents to participate.

"It affects how over $400 billion of federal funding are allocated each year to states for infrastructure and services such as hospitals, job training centers, schools, emergency services," she said.

Well, that's good and all, but the the larger question is how much government needs to be in our lives? Why does it feel that it needs to keep expanding by giving money to these matters? That sounds bad, but everything is underfunded as it is, and no matter how much money is thrown at something, people are going to claim that more is needed for it to work. The government certainly can't manage very effectively the things that are on it's plate, and there redundancies in departments and redundancies between agencies; wars drag on; nonsense spending at our expense.

The Crackpot seems to have digressed here and strayed from the topic. To get back on track, the Crackpot hopes the judge throws the book at Haas to make an example of him. The federal government can't do as it pleases "in the name of the public good." This country's founders gave its citizens the right to privacy from the government.

Now, the Census Bureau showed up with a court order and the resident comply, that would be different, and that's another discussion all together. But in this case, the government overstepped its bounds.