The danger of restricting information
Strategic Ignorance
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD, NYT
In an age when knowledge is power, restricting knowledge is a power grab, creating the conditions of ignorance that allow bias, ideology and propaganda to flourish, unchallenged and unchecked.
So it is with two pending Republican bills that seek to curtail or end vital surveys by the Census Bureau and that could advance as early as next month, when lawmakers consider the annual appropriation for the Commerce Department, which includes the bureau’s budget.
One bill, introduced in the House by Jeff Duncan of South Carolina, would effectively end all surveys by the bureau, except for the decennial census, and even that would be limited to counting noses — a silly interpretation of the census’s mandate. Banning the surveys would make it impossible to compile reliable data on employment, productivity, health, housing, poverty, crime and the environment, to name a few of the affected fields.
This bill would be too wacky to worry about, but its lunacy makes the other know-nothing bill look moderate. That bill, introduced in the House by Ted Poe of Texas and in the Senate by Rand Paul of Kentucky, targets the American Community Survey. Started in 2005 to replace the long-form census, the survey is the indispensable source of information on factors that define American life, including family configurations, education levels, work and living arrangements, income and insurance coverage. Credible information is the basis for a responsive government, an efficient economy and, by extension, a functional society. It also gives American policy makers and businesses a competitive edge, because it encourages decisions based on hard data as opposed to guesses or other faulty rationales that dominate in the absence of credible data.
(More here.)
In an age when knowledge is power, restricting knowledge is a power grab, creating the conditions of ignorance that allow bias, ideology and propaganda to flourish, unchallenged and unchecked.
So it is with two pending Republican bills that seek to curtail or end vital surveys by the Census Bureau and that could advance as early as next month, when lawmakers consider the annual appropriation for the Commerce Department, which includes the bureau’s budget.
One bill, introduced in the House by Jeff Duncan of South Carolina, would effectively end all surveys by the bureau, except for the decennial census, and even that would be limited to counting noses — a silly interpretation of the census’s mandate. Banning the surveys would make it impossible to compile reliable data on employment, productivity, health, housing, poverty, crime and the environment, to name a few of the affected fields.
This bill would be too wacky to worry about, but its lunacy makes the other know-nothing bill look moderate. That bill, introduced in the House by Ted Poe of Texas and in the Senate by Rand Paul of Kentucky, targets the American Community Survey. Started in 2005 to replace the long-form census, the survey is the indispensable source of information on factors that define American life, including family configurations, education levels, work and living arrangements, income and insurance coverage. Credible information is the basis for a responsive government, an efficient economy and, by extension, a functional society. It also gives American policy makers and businesses a competitive edge, because it encourages decisions based on hard data as opposed to guesses or other faulty rationales that dominate in the absence of credible data.
(More here.)
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