Makes No Census

Difficult to express how stupid this is:

But last week, the Republican-led House voted to eliminate the survey altogether, on the grounds that the government should not be butting its nose into Americans’ homes.

“This is a program that intrudes on people’s lives, just like the Environmental Protection Agency or the bank regulators,” said Daniel Webster, a first-term Republican congressman from Florida who sponsored the relevant legislation.

“We’re spending $70 per person to fill this out. That’s just not cost effective,” he continued, “especially since in the end this is not a scientific survey. It’s a random survey.”

In fact, the randomness of the survey is precisely what makes the survey scientific, statistical experts say.

Only Doing His Job

No. I’m no birther. But some people in my stare are, and — Heavens to Betsy! — I can’t just ignore them:

According to Bennett, his request for officials in Hawaii to verify the existence of Obama’s birth certificate has gone unanswered for eight weeks. Bennett said he was surprised by the lack of response, but it is worth mentioning that Hawaii hasn’t expressed the greatest fondness in being the primary recipient of incessant birther demands.

In 2010, before the release of Obama’s long-form birth certificate, the flood of birther activity became so distracting that Gov. Linda Lingle (R) signed a bill allowing state officials to ignore requests for copies of the document.

Bennett even admitted that Hawaiian officials told him they were “tired of all the requests,” but the secretary of state didn’t appear deterred.

Bennett’s move is just the latest birther bustle in Arizona, which has been a hotbed for Obama eligibility conspiracy theories over the past few years. Clamor over a bill meant to address the issue was temporarily silenced last year when Gov. Jan Brewer (R)vetoed the measure, calling it “a bridge too far.”

From the WTF Department

Our republic can’t work if people are stupid:

After nearly four years in the Oval Office, President Obama is incorrectly thought to be Muslim by one in six American voters, and only one quarter of voters can correctly identify him as a Protestant, according to a new poll.

Kar Kulture

Cars kill community connections for kids:

It turns out vehicular traffic does something else, too, more subtle but equally pernicious: It changes the way children see and experience the world by diminishing their connection to community and neighbors. A generation ago, urbanist researcher Donald Appleyard showed how heavy traffic in cities erodes human connections in neighborhoods, contributing to feelings of dissatisfaction and loneliness. Now his son, Bruce Appleyard, has been looking into how constantly being in and around cars affects children’s perception and understanding of their home territory.

Lipstick On A BM

Social media, PR, and mad men at McDonald’s:

It was a simple plan. McDonald’s would pay to appear at the top of the trends list on Twitter’s home page, using the social-media site to drive people to its new commercials highlighting some of the real-life farmers and ranchers who supply McDonald’s with its ingredients. Executives at the fast-food company loved the commercials; the word in-house was “authenticity.”

Falling Ever Farther Behind

Productivity is up! Wages are down! Makes perfect sense:

Economic fairness is one of the persistent themes of the 2012 election, and in that spirit the liberal Economic Policy Institute is revisiting the plight of the U.S. worker over the last several decades.

Many of the institute’s findings, which will be presented in greater detail in the forthcoming edition of “The State of Working America,” will be familiar to economists who study income inequality. But they provide a stark illustration of the fact that the vast majority of workers have been closed out of the country’s gains for nearly 40 years.

Particularly striking is the fact that for years leading up to the 1970s, productivity gains were broadly shared, as theory predicts. Then the linkage abruptly broke. What explains the shift?

“The big shift is really in the ’80s, which I would attribute to [Fed Chairman Paul] Volcker’s recession in 1980-82, which killed workers,” said Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, who has conducted similar studies. “A high dollar in the mid-80s amplified this effect. You also had the anti-union policies of the Reagan administration.”

Self-righteous Avoidance of Judgment

What happens when people follow rules without thinking? Even worse stuff that this:

“She was kicking and screaming and fighting and in hysterics,” Croft said. “At that point my daughter ran up to her against TSA’s orders because she said, `My daughter is terrified, I can’t leave her.’”

The incident went on for maybe 10 minutes, until a manager came in and allowed agents to pat the girl down while she was screaming but being held by her mother. The family was then allowed to go to their next gate with a TSA agent following them.

Croft said that for the first few nights after coming home, Isabelle had nightmares and talked about kidnappers. She said TSA agents had shouted at the girl, telling her to calm down and saying the suspect wasn’t cooperating.

“To a 4-year-old’s perspective that’s what it was to her because they didn’t explain anything and she did not know what was going on,” Croft said. “She saw people grabbing at her and raising their voices. To her, someone was trying to kidnap her or harm her in some way.”