US Republicans mimic Harper’s disdain for the census

The ultra-conservative US Tea Party movement is taking a page from Stephen Harper’s playbook: gutting the census. Last week, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed an appropriations bill that would shutter several Census Bureau projects and programs. Robert Groves is the Bureau’s director:

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My mother, a school board member in her tiny Maine town, had a bumper sticker that read, “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” You might equally, if less pithily, say, “If you think the census is expensive, try not knowing what’s happening to your country’s population.”

Gathering statistical information about a country’s demographics has been a hallmark of civilized countries for centuries. The requirement for a  decennial census is embedded in the US Constitution. Nothing better illustrates the no-nothing arrogance of neoconservatives, US and Canadian, than their contempt for evidence that might betray flaws in their ideology.

H/T: Nathan Yau