Stupid Census Commercial

I heard the same radio commercial about three times in one hour, pushing the 2010 census. It has a homey, folksy guy explaining how in his community they had 100 kids in the school and 5 teachers and everything was fine. BUT, if the community grew, and the number of kids went up too much, there wouldn't be enough teachers, space, books, money, patience, etc. The meat of the argument is then brought out, that without the census, we wouldn't know how much things had grown, and how money needed to be apportioned.

BULLSHIT.

Are you that stupid that you need a federal census to figure out how many people live in your town? I'd think that all the people moving in might have been noticed by somebody. Second, the census occurs every 10 years. If growth started 10 years ago, the census is going to be a little late in catching up to it, and we return to my original thesis, the people who live in your town should have noticed this already. Finally, apportioning money. The people in your town make money and pay taxes (at least some of them do). If your town is growing and attracting new people, it's either because there are lot of jobs there, or it's a refugee camp. If it's economic growth, the money is already there to pay teachers, buy books, and build buildings. That's how schools usually operate, on the local level, with money collected and spent by the local government that can see, first-hand, what's going on.

I said it before, the CONSTITUTIONAL basis for the census is to apportion representatives and direct taxes, and since the 16th amendment eliminated the direct tax issue, there is only one valid reason for the federal government to do a head count, and only a head count. The end.