ACORN Is Out of the Census Business? Not so much!

Here is a partial list of census partners, according to the Census website. I spent a couple minutes looking at this list and noticed how close the ties were between those listed below and ACORN and/or the White House. Even without the direct ACORN involvement in gathering census information, the 2010 census could be a valuable organizing tool for the liberal organizations.

• AARP - You know where they are in the healthcare debate.... they're doing like GE - getting on the Obama bandwagon (Or snuggling up to the liberals, if you prefer) so that they can get Presidential privilege that other similar organizations won't have.
• A. Phillip Randolph Institute
• AFL-CIO (ACORN Associate)
• American Federation of Government Employees
• AFSCME has 1.6 milion members including health care workers, corrections officers, child care providers, educators , and sanitation workers. From a statement of AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee on the 2008 Election: "With Barack Obama and Joe Biden, we will have a team of proven fighters committed to providing state and local fiscal relief, fully funding and supporting public services and the workers who provide them, and guaranteeing that everyone in our country has quality, affordable health care they can count on...We knocked on 10 million doors, made 70 million phone calls, and distributed more than 27 million workplace flyers focusing on economic issues. AFSCME alone spent $67 million on political activities, including our aggressive independent expenditure campaign which played a key role in the most competitive House and Senate races. Forty-thousand AFSCME members volunteered along with more than 500 staff because we all knew we could not afford four more years like the last eight."
• American Federation of Teachers
• Coalition of Labor Union Women
• Coalition of Black Trade Unionists
• Community Action Partnership
• Families USA
• International Brotherhood of Teamsters
• Labor Council for the Latin American Advancement
• League of Women Voters of the United States
• National Black Justice Coalition
• National Council of La Raza (ACORN Associate)
• National Education Association (ACORN Associate)
• Pride at Work
• Rainbow Push Coalition (ACORN Associate)
• Service Employees International Union (SEIU) (ACORN Associate)
• Southern Coalition for Social Justice
• United Workers

Most of these groups listed above are politically active and most, if not all, are left-leaning. Many of the ones I haven't noted here still have ties to ACORN. But more disturbing to me is that in one instance, prisoners in jails and half-way houses were hired to take the census. If this is representative of the types of people who are being hired, do you really want these people having access to the most detailed census information to date? Who's to say that these groups won't gather and use that information for recruiting for their causes? Do you really want them having the ability to collect personal information from the census surveys for their own political organizing or other such use?

The White House statement on who runs the census reads: "There is historic precedent for the director of the census, who works for the commerce secretary and the president, to work closely with White House senior management, given the number of decisions that will have to be put before the president. We plan to return to that model in this administration."

If it is a concern to you who conducts the census, contact the Census Bureau, the White House, and the Commerce Secretary and tell them you want their politics kept OUT of the 2010 Census.