Chaffetzing: Wrong on Census, ACORN, and USPS

Holly on the Hill has coined a new term:

retty soon, his name will become a verb and people will talk about “Chaffetzizing” or simply “Chaffetzing” when they mean a politician who actually stands on principle and brings forward workable solutions.

However, here's the real definition of the term: Pulling stuff out of your rear end when you need to be in front of the cameras.

Take the recent proposal that got Holly coining the term:

Congressman Jason Chaffetz is proposing another common-sense idea, this time regarding data collection and the census. Instead of hiring an additional 750,000 ACORN activists, why not utilize the 760,000 post office folks who already know the neighborhoods, are already in place and are not a partisan political group?

[...]

Rep. Chaffetz’ bill will create a “postal holiday” on the “Census Day” to allow the collection of Census information rather than the delivery of mail.

Well, this make perfect sense if you don't know anything about the census, the Postal Service, nor the ACORN controversy.

First, let's get this ACORN thing out of the way.

Back in 2008, a group called ACORN went out and registered people to vote. Actually, they paid people to register to vote, and paid them based on how many people they registered. Since they were being paid on commission, some people registered fake people. ACORN flagged those registrations when they turned them into the county clerks. They turned them in because they are reuired by federal law to do so.

Of all the fake registrations turned in by ACORN, there has only been one employee chrged with voter fraud. He registered himself at four different addresses, and voted at three of them. For Republicans.

But, if you are Chaffetzing, don't let the facts get in you way.

Second, let's look at the Postal Service. As Rep Chaffetz says, there are about 750,000 postal workers, which happens to be about the same number that will be hired by the census. Rep Chaffetz says that we should just use the postal workers, because they know the neighborhoods.

Well, about half of them do. There are about 350,000 Letter Carriers. Those are the people who put the mail in your mailbox. The rest of the postal workers are clerks, drivers, or work in processing and data entry.

But, if you are Chaffetzing, don't let the facts get in you way.

Last, let's look at the census. Early next year, you will get a packet in the mail from the Census Bureau. You will be asked to fill it out based on how your household will look on April 1. Then, you mail it in.

After April 1, many of the 700,000 people hired by the Census Bureau will be going to the doors of the people who didn't fill their out to get them to fill it out. As anyone who has knocked on doors(whether in politics or on a mission) can tell you, it's hard to find people at home, so they'll likely have to make many visits to homes. After that, there will be a massive tabulation process (again conducted by some of those 700,000 people). The results will be presented to President Obama before December 31.

To think that this process could be handled by the Postal Service in just one day is...

well...

I need a word...

Chaffetzing.

And, if you are Chaffetzing, don't let the facts get in you way.

-Bob

P.S. And, am I wrong, or is Congressman Chaffetz advocating AGAINST putting 700,000 Americans to work?