Wednesday, May 5, 2021

Yet Another Government Action Undermining Our Republic

There is an article over at Rasmussen discussing the 2020 census and the "updates" that have been applied by the Biden Administration.  While this is written as an opinion piece, it is being hosted over at Rasmussen; a serious polling firm that tries to do polling correctly and accurately.

The Biden Administration has inexplicably "adjusted" the population counts for several Democrat-leaning states.   The obvious result is that those states will not lose as many seats in the US House of Representatives.  The flip side of that is that there are Republican-leaning states that will not gain as many seats in the US House.

My many friends on the left that wonder why I distrust their version of expansionist government should refer back to this issue in the coming years.

There is an extensive and well-documented trend of people moving out of Democrat-leaning states and into Republican-leaning states.  Adjusting the census values to minimize that trend is questionable.  The fact that all of the adjustments run in one political direction is also questionable.

Highly questionable.

While I am not a big fan of "deep state" conspiracy theories, I do think there are cultural issues in play.  The civilian employees have a preference in terms of their working conditions and the operations of their respective agencies.  Generally, the larger the agencies, the better the employee's chances for advancement and the less their chance of being laid off.

People living in majority Democrat places tend to expect more government services and support the politicians that advocate for funding those services.  

There is a bit of symbiosis between Democrat politicians and government employees.  This isn't a purposeful conspiracy but rather is just the natural alignment of groups with objectives that complement one another.

Here's the problem.  If Donald Trump had won the 2020 election and had his administration "adjusted" the census count to enhance Republican representation in the US House without sufficient justification, then wouldn't the Democrats have screamed bloody murder?  Impeachment?  Hell, they would have howled even if the justifications were documented and reasonable.

The mainstream media, ever a leftist-friendly group, would have come unglued.  Allegations of vote fixing would be broadcast 24 hours per day.  It would have been presented as an abridgement of the voting rights of the citizens of those Democrat-leaning states.  Other speculation would have been offered with wild abandon.

I predict that none of these people will have any issue with the Biden Administration's attempt to manipulate the census for political objectives.  I also predict that they will look at anyone that questions these "adjustments" as if they had grown a third eye in a prominent location.

The lack of a critical media response is just the latest example of how our demonstrably biased media is undermining our great Republic.

The following are from the article.  Read the whole things for additional context.

No. 1: New York -- We've been tracking the annual population/migration changes between states since the last census in 2010. Over the past decade, New York LOST about 1.3 million residents on net to other states. (This does not include immigration, births and deaths.) Still, this is a population loss that is the equivalent of two, maybe three, lost congressional seats. But the final numbers ADDED approximately 860,000. That's roughly twice the population of Buffalo and Rochester -- combined. This is the state that has lost by far the largest population over the past decade.

No. 2: Many deep-blue states had 2020 census numbers significantly revised upward from their December estimates: Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont.

No. 3: Many red states had 2020 census numbers lower than their 2020 estimates: Arizona, North Carolina and South Carolina.

No. 4: Going back to the 2010 Census, the final head count in every state was within 0.4% of the original estimate, and 30 of them were within 0.2%. This time around, 19 states were more than 1% off, 7 were more than 2% off, NY was more than 3.8% off, and NJ was more than 4.5% off.

No. 5: Virtually every one of the large deviations from the estimates favored Democrats. Just five states in the 2020 census were within the same margin (0.41%) that all states were within from the 2010 census.