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"The lesson of the history of the U.S. census is this: Any power ceded to a government will be abused, given time. Today, the long-form of the census asks for details of your life that you would never tell a neighbor or a private business."   ~Lew Rockwell February 8, 2010    This almost makes one pine for the Articles of Confederation.      "In the Articles of the Confederation, drafted in the days of full revolutionary liberty, each state had one vote, no matter how many representatives it sent to Congress. There was no demand for a census because the central government, such as it was, had no power to do much at all."    This was written ten years ago by Lew Rockwell.  With the census taker about to knock on our respective doors again you might find it interesting to learn how the U.S. Census began and how it grew.  And grew.  And grew!!   The Census         Why did the Census Bureau blow $2.5 million of taxpayer money on a 30-second promo in the Super Bowl telecast?  Why does a national nose-count need such expensive advertising?      "The U.S. Census Bureau  squandered  $2.5 million on a half-minute Super Bowl ad starring D-list celebrity Ed Begley, Jr., plus two pre-game blurbs and 12-second “vignettes” featuring Super Bowl anchor James Brown. It’s a drop in the Census boondoggle bucket (otherwise known as the tax-subsidized National Democrat Future Voter Outreach Drive). The Obama White House has allocated a total of  $340 million on an 'unprecedented' promotional blitz for the 2010 Census. That’s on top of $1 billion in stimulus money siphoned off for increased Census 'public outreach' and staffing. In all, the Census will triple its total budget from 2000 to $15 billion."  Census Boondoggle        Said Sarah Palin to Tea Party conventioneers in Nashville, "The Republican Party would be very smart to try and absorb as much of the tea-party movement as possible,  because the tea-party movement is the future of politics."        This is good advice for the Republican Party but not good for the Tea Party movement.    All is lost if it is absorbed into either the Republican or Democrat parties.  Speaking of advice....Sarah, you're flaunting too much hair.  Your visage doesn't require such an abundance of untamed locks.  Change hairdressers.   America's Drunkest Cities 1.) Fresno, CA   F 2.) Reno, NV   F 3.) Billings, MT  F 4.) Riverside, CA  F 5.) Austin, TX    F 6.) St. Louis, MO  F 7.) San Antonio, TX   F 8.) Lubbock, TX   F 9.) Tucson, AZ          F 10.) Bakersfield, CA  F 11.) Las Vegas, NV  F 12.) Modesto, CA   F 13.) Columbia, SC  F 14.) Nashville, TN   D- 15.) Madison, WI  D- 16.) Colorado Springs, CO  D- 17.) Denver, CO          D- 18.) Phoenix, AZ   D- 19.) Cheyenne, WY  D- 20.) Sacramento, CA   D-    Our town, Columbia, SC, distinguishes itself again!   <   This time we show up on Health Magazine's "Top 100 Drunkest Cities" list.  There we are...#13!       The editors drew  upon such data as death rates from alcoholic liver disease, booze-fueled car crashes, frequency of binge-drinking in the past month, number of DUI arrests, and severity of DUI penalties.       Come on, fellow Columbians.  We can do better than that.  Just hang out at the bar a little longer,  pick up an extra six-pack from the grocery store, host more wine tasting parties....we can make it to NUMBER ONE!        A report from the Congressional Budget Office shows that for the first time in 25 years, Social Security is taking in less in taxes than it is spending on benefits.           Instead of helping to finance the rest of the government, as it has done for decades, our nation's biggest social program needs help from the Treasury to keep benefit checks from bouncing -- in other words, a taxpayer bailout. Social Security hasn't been cash-negative since the early 1980s, when it came so close to running out of money that it was making plans to stop sending out benefit checks.  (What calumny is this?  How dare anyone suggest there's one teeny thing wrong with long-range Social Security funding?  just for the heck of it, though, we'd better keep an eye on whether or not FICA taxes can keep up with the outgo.)    Social Security Bailout?                                           RETIREMENT ARMAGEDDON                           We recommend this highly to seniors AND their offspring.    "The U.S. government has a nasty surprise for tens of millions of retirees: a now-empty piggy bank," writes economist Gary North.  "Two of them, actually: Social Security and Medicare."  North is quite right about this.  The government has recently announced it is paying out more Social Security money than it is taking in from FICA taxes.       "Congress will soon have a nasty surprise for voters: a larger deficit than announced to fill these now-empty piggy banks."  There is no way around this embarrassment because voters will destroy any politician who cuts back on costly entitlement programs.     "The Federal Reserve System will also have a nasty surprise for investors: newly created digital money to fill up the empty piggy banks when the Treasury cannot sell any more debt at low interest rates."   Also true.  When potential lenders demand much higher interest rates on those securities Treasury peddles the Fed'l Reserve must step in to save the day with money it can create from nothing. .     "The free market will have a nasty surprise for everyone: rising prices in response to the Federal Reserve's digital money."  Probably.  The jury is still debating the effect of cascading defaults on the inflating money supply.  ie; If the Fed injects $100.00 of fresh money into the system, and bad debt erases $200.00 from the ledgers, it's difficult for the price inflation effect to take place.       "Medicare will have a nasty surprise for physicians who treat Medicare-funded patients: limits on payments per service that are set below urban costs (price controls).  All too true.       "Physicians will have a nasty surprise to patients: longer waiting periods (rationing by sitting in an office). The days of wine and roses are over. The era of nasty surprises has begun."  Alas, North seems to have this right, too.  Read on:  Retirement Armageddon ITEM:  HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -- A federal U.S. judge ordered jet engine maker Pratt & Whitney to halt its plans to move 1,000 jobs out of Connecticut and to Japan , Singapore and the state of Georgia.     U.S. District Judge Janet C. Hall in Bridgeport issued a permanent injunction, stopping the company's plans to shift the jobs.   Who "owns" the jobs?  < In effect the labor union told Pratt & Whitney that despite the fact  the company can't economically keep the Connecticut operation staffed at former levels, it can't shift 1,000 jobs elsewhere in order to bring costs under control.       The union is saying  the unionized worker "owns" the job, not Pratt & Whitney.  This flies in the face of the adage "He who owns the tools owns the job."  Pratt has one ace up its sleeve.  It can close.  And it will if the union forces it to lose money.      It's true President Obama mispronounced "corpsman" in a recent speech at The National Prayer Breakfast.  There are lots of words like that which trip up people in all walks of life, but columnist Mark Steyn wonders why Obama's staff didn't anticipate it.        "It’s revealing that nobody around him in the so-called smartest administration of all time thought to spell it out phonetically for him when the speech got typed up and loaded into the machine. Which suggests that either his minders don’t know that he doesn’t know that kinda stuff, or they don’t know it either. To put it in Rumsfeldian terms, they don’t know what they don’t know." Unsustainable      In his State of the Union speech President Obama stated that “We find unity in our incredible diversity, drawing on the promise enshrined in our Constitution: the notion that we are all created equal….”    The Constitution says nothing about equality.  That "notion" is in the Declaration of Independence.      Yesterday we caught sight of a politician on TV flashing a booklet containing the text of the Constitution.  He assured viewers that it begins with "We the people....."  It doesn't, of course.   That phrase is also from the Declaration of Independence.   <  If prominent politicians are confused about the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution what must be going on in the minds of Joe and Josephine Twelvepack concerning the founding documents of the U.S.?        Perhaps there should be one day each year, say in all American 5th grades, when the principal subject for the day is instruction on the purposes of the Declaration and the Constitution.  No need to comb through the entire documents word for word, but Americans...from the president on down...need to have the confusion cleared up.