In which Orson Scott Card demonstrates tunnel vision

[unixronin]

From an article in the Greensboro, NC Rhinoceros Times:

One Party Rule Forever!

Because the mainstream press refuses to see anything wrong in the Obama administration, even the most outrageous actions are given astonishingly gentle treatment -- if they get any treatment at all.

So of course we hear almost nothing about the coup d'etat that is under way in the White House.

OK, you can probably tell the general drift of the article from those first couple of paragraphs.  Card's basic point is that the Obama administration plans to steal the next election, and all subsequent ones, by gerrymandering based upon falsified census numbers that use padded "estimated" numnbers for the poor, the homeless and illegal immigrants.  (I'm not quite sure how he thinks padding the numbers of illegal immigrants is relevant to election theft via gerrymandering, since they can't vote anyway.)

But the point that caught my eye here is about two thirds of the way down the article:

Remember how, when the Patriot Act was passed, we were flooded with outraged stories in the press about how Americans' rights were going to be trampled on?

None of it came true.

... Uh, wait a minute here.  Run that last bit by me again?  None of it came true?

Funny, I thought Card lived in the same US that I do.  Show of hands, please, if YOU think nobody's rights got trampled on as a result of, or in manners enabled by, the USA-PATRIOT Act.

(That said, I am in basic agreement with Card's point that basing the census on "estimates" is a pretty questionable practice.  I don't happen to agree with him that it's part of a coup d'état though.)

Comments

Padding the Census numbers

[rain-manpnw.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what OSC means, but it sounds to me like he's confusing statistical sampling w/ guessing.

It's a practical impossibility to accurately count all the homeless and illegal immigrants in this country. Too many factors, from distrust of anyone associated with the governement, to just movement, will combine to make it necessary to use sampling and estimate.

That said, it is possible to skew the estimates if the sampling method is biased. I worked in the 1990 census, and IMO that is what the Bush Admin. did - deliberately skew the sampling method to undercount the number of homeless. Details if desired.

Re: Padding the Census numbers

[lebo-superman.livejournal.com]

I know that the Census is supposed to be as accurate as possible, but from what I've read the Obama administration isn't even trying for accuracy. Their statistical sampling has placed the majority of homeless and illegals within districts that are mostly Democrat. Obama wants to deliberately OVER ESTIMATE the number of homeless and illegals within those areas, to increase the number of elected officials they are eligible for. Which would of course increase the majorities of the Democrats in the House - permanently (or he seems to hope).