INCENSED !&%$#@*&!!??*&%$

Just a quick comment about the 2010 census, seeing as it is that time of year to render unto Caesar. Whenever I am asked to fill out a survey or respond to a poll I never answer the question regarding my race or ethnic origin. If we are to believe, as I do, that a person's race should not be a relevant factor to almost anything except race itself or perhaps a person's physical description in the same way that hair color or stature is why are we being asked what our race is on the census? Out of only 10 questions 2 of them have to do with race. So much for a color blind society. I was going to try and stick to my guns on this and not answer 20% of the ten minute census but according to the government all the questions must be answered fully and truthfully under penalty of law. I checked the law and the census people appear to be right. Neglecting to answer any of the mere 10 questions can be punishable by a $100 fine. A deliberate wrong answer will earn you a $500 penalty. The law does not specify if the fine is for each question in violation or for the entire "test". Misleading answers can possibly amount to a price tag of $5,000 per person. If there are 10 people in one household and the respondent lies about every one of them that could potentially amount to $50,000! I thought the government just wanted to know how many people there are. I doubt that the law which enacts a fine for failure to answer a census question would hold up against the Supreme Court, well let me take that back, at least Antonin Scalia would probably agree with me that it is unconstitutional. The Constitution only requires an enumeration once every 10 years. It does not require anyone to answer any questions. Although I believe this to be true I am not a lawyer or a gambler either for that matter, and I am not willing to bet possibly as much as $600 plus legal fees, etc., to see if I could take this matter to the Supreme Court. Besides, that would take a lot longer than the 10 minutes that the census people say it should take to fill out the form! There's a whole lot of other problems and issues with the census that have stirred up a bunch of controversy. For example the hand held computer devices for the census takers to use do not work with the central computer system, so the people finders will be roaming the streets with a pad and pencil instead. (http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20080403_9574.php)Being a nostalgic kind of guy, I actually kind of like that....the pad and pencil that is, not the waste of 2 billion $$$$. Closer to home in Connecticut there was a problem with people in East Haven being lumped in with New Haven. (http://www.wtnh.com/dpp/news/new_haven_cty/east-haven-census-confusion) Even closer to home, my home in fact, I would have mistakenly counted my college student son had I not read the census instructions first. I almost never read the instructions for anything whether it is fixing a garage door opener or filing my tax return, but this time something told me I should give the form a precursory glance before filling it out. It actually said not to count a household member who is away at college. Somehow I doubt that my son will be filling out his own census while away at college. This one item alone has a potential to screw things up by double counting college students or not counting them at all. Why not just count people by their primary residence? By the way, what happened to all the people in South Haven? Maybe they all went to jail for not filling out their census forms!