That didn't take long. The Supreme Court heard argument this morning on the issue of whether or not the 2020 census can ask people if they are American citizens, and the media is flooding the zone with "experts" who are opining that allowing that question would be catastrophic.
I'm not kidding. USA Today just published a column claiming that including a census question would do terrible damage to every American for many decades to come. The argument is basically that the census is important. That's something to which nearly all Americans would agree. It's important.
What the report in USA Today doesn't do is offer any evidence to show that including the citizenship question would make the census inaccurate. Indeed, that key point is never "proven" in any of the arguments; rather it is assumed. Even at today's Supreme Court hearing, Justice Sotomayor said that it was "obvious" that including the question would mean millions of people would not answer the census. Why is that? The truth is that we don't know that. Indeed, Congress gave the Secretary of Commerce power to decide questions like that one, and Secretary Ross ruled that the census question ought be included.
In may respects, this argument reminds me of global warming. For the last 30 years, we've been told that computer models that predict global warming say that time is running out. We have ten years left to act. We have 12 years left to act. We have 4 years left to act. Then it will be too late. Of course, all these predictions of imminent disaster never came to pass. The computer models predicted a certain level of temperature increases that never happened. It's not just that the precise temperature rise didn't occur, but rather that the actual temperatures were so different from those predicted by the models that mathematically the models were shown to be INCORRECT. But it doesn't matter. No one can explain why the computer models were so wrong, but the global warming crowd still follows them. It has become an act of faith, not of science or logic.
The truth is that we don't know if the citizenship question will affect the number of people responding to the census. All we know is that Congress designated the Secretary of Commerce to make that decision, and he did. That should be the end of the matter.
I'm not kidding. USA Today just published a column claiming that including a census question would do terrible damage to every American for many decades to come. The argument is basically that the census is important. That's something to which nearly all Americans would agree. It's important.
What the report in USA Today doesn't do is offer any evidence to show that including the citizenship question would make the census inaccurate. Indeed, that key point is never "proven" in any of the arguments; rather it is assumed. Even at today's Supreme Court hearing, Justice Sotomayor said that it was "obvious" that including the question would mean millions of people would not answer the census. Why is that? The truth is that we don't know that. Indeed, Congress gave the Secretary of Commerce power to decide questions like that one, and Secretary Ross ruled that the census question ought be included.
In may respects, this argument reminds me of global warming. For the last 30 years, we've been told that computer models that predict global warming say that time is running out. We have ten years left to act. We have 12 years left to act. We have 4 years left to act. Then it will be too late. Of course, all these predictions of imminent disaster never came to pass. The computer models predicted a certain level of temperature increases that never happened. It's not just that the precise temperature rise didn't occur, but rather that the actual temperatures were so different from those predicted by the models that mathematically the models were shown to be INCORRECT. But it doesn't matter. No one can explain why the computer models were so wrong, but the global warming crowd still follows them. It has become an act of faith, not of science or logic.
The truth is that we don't know if the citizenship question will affect the number of people responding to the census. All we know is that Congress designated the Secretary of Commerce to make that decision, and he did. That should be the end of the matter.
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