Text 31, 132 rader
Skriven 2004-09-16 23:54:47 av Steve Asher (3:800/432.0)
Ärende: "New Orwellian Survey"
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The Thought Police and the American Community Survey

by John W. Whitehead, The Rutherford Institute

There is a permanent government in Washington, D.C., that consists 
of people whose power does not depend on election results. The largest
part of the permanent government is the bureaucracy, which has
approximately three million federal civilian employees. And believe it
or not, ten times that number is funded by American taxpayers through
government contracts and other venues. Thus, with one in ten of our
citizens working for the government, it is not surprising that the
bureaucratic presence is increasingly dominant in our lives.

Everywhere we look these days, we are either being watched, taxed or
some bureaucrat is placing another bit of information in our
government files. And now with the American Community Survey, the
latest census form that hits various households on a continuous basis,
the federal bureaucracy is thrusting its expansive tentacles toward us
in an attempt to invade every aspect of our lives.

Unlike the traditional census, which collects data every ten years,
the American Community Survey is taken every year at a cost of
hundreds of millions of dollars. And at 24 pages, it contains some of
the most detailed and intrusive questions ever put forth in a census
questionnaire. These concern matters that the government simply has 
no business knowing, including a person's job, income, physical and
emotional health, family status, place of residence and intimate
personal and private habits.

The questions, as Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) has said, are "both
ludicrous and insulting." For example, the survey asks how many
persons live in your home, along with their names and detailed
information about them such as their relationship to you, marital
status, race and their physical, mental and emotional problems, etc.
The survey also asks how many bedrooms and bathrooms you have in your
house, along with the fuel used to heat your home, the cost of
electricity, what type of mortgage you have and monthly mortgage
payments, property taxes and so on. This questionnaire also demands 
to know how many days you were sick last year, how many automobiles 
you own and the number of miles driven, whether you have trouble 
getting up the stairs and, amazingly, what time you leave for work 
every morning. With the power of government agents under the USA 
Patriot Act to secretly come into your home and rifle through your 
personal belongings without a search warrant, it is dangerous to 
let the government know when you will not be at home.

However, that's not all. The survey combines asinine questions with
highly detailed inquiries about your financial affairs. And the survey
demands that you violate the privacy of others by supplying the names
and addresses of your friends, relatives and employer. The
questionnaire also demands that you give other information on the
people in your home, such as their educational levels, how many years
of school were completed, what languages they speak and when they last
worked at a job, among other things.

In other words, you are being told by the government to inform and spy
on your family and friends - much like that described by George Orwell
in his futuristic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. "The family," writes
Orwell, "had become in effect an extension of the Thought Police. It
was a device by means of which everyone could be surrounded night and
day by informers who knew him intimately."

While some of the questions may seem to be fairly routine, the real
danger is in not knowing why the information is needed or how the
government will use it. One obvious concern with all this information,
especially that of a financial nature, is when the survey information
is matched against the information you have given the Internal Revenue
Service on your tax returns. Any discrepancies, intentional or not,
will most likely result in an IRS audit of your finances.

Unfortunately, the survey is not voluntary. Answering the questions is
not a polite request from the Census Bureau. You are legally obligated
to answer. If you refuse, the fines are staggering. For every question
not answered, there is a $100 fine. And for every intentionally false
response to a question, the fine is $500. Therefore, if a person
representing a two-person household refused to fill out any questions
or simply answered nonsensically, the total fines could range from
upwards of $10,000 and $50,000 for noncompliance.

Rep. Paul recently introduced an amendment that would have eliminated
funds for this intrusive survey in a spending bill. He explained on
the House floor that such information gathering went much too far in
violating the privacy of American citizens: "The amendment," Paul has
said, "was met by either indifference or hostility, as most members of
Congress either don't care about or actively support government
snooping into the private affairs of citizens."

There is also another concern with such an intrusive survey. It
represents a form of corporate welfare as well as a dangerous wedding
of government and business interests into the corporate state. This is
true in light of the fact that personal data collected on hundreds of
millions of Americans by the government is sold to private businesses.
The corporations that pigeon-hole us and hound us at home and the
office obviously enjoy such extensive information available from the
government. However, it is clearly not the duty of the government, 
and most taxpayers do not want to subsidize the cost of such market
research.

Article I of the U. S. Constitution makes it clear that the census
should be taken every ten years for the sole purpose of congressional
redistricting. What the founders intended was a simple head count of
the number of people living in a given area so that numerically equal
congressional districts can be maintained. The founders never
envisioned or authorized the federal government to continuously
demand, under penalty of law, detailed information from the American
people.

However, the founders did not anticipate a massive and meddlesome
federal bureaucracy or the daily onslaught of media images and
governmental scare tactics that the modern American faces. As a
consequence, they did not envision a nation where people would submit
to every government demand. Sadly, Americans have become so distracted
by the entertainment industry and the political maneuverings of the
government that many either do not seem to care or see no hope in
resistance.

But free government cannot survive if we do not rekindle the same
impulses that drove our forefathers to resist, strive for freedom 
and draft a Bill of Rights. At the minimum, we have to call our
representatives to task and demand that they stop the federal
bureaucratic onslaught before it's too late.

                            -=<*>=-

Source: Raiders News Updates...
http://www.raidersnewsupdate.com/lead-story32.htm


Cheers, Steve...

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