The Morning Dispatch: Grading the Census

An internal check finds the COVID-complicated count likely missed the mark in 14 states.

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Happy Monday! Your Morning Dispatchers are incredibly grateful last night’s thunderstorms wiped away the near record-high heatwave D.C. experienced this weekend. Thank you as well to Willis Carrier, for inventing air conditioning 120 years ago. 

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

  • Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu claimed Russian forces completed their “liberation” of the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol on Friday, taking control of the last stronghold of Ukrainian resistance in the city. Ukraine has not yet confirmed the complete fall of the southeastern port city; Russian state media reported 2,439 Ukrainian soldiers holding the steel plant surrendered last week, many of whom were taken to a former penal colony as prisoners. President Joe Biden on Saturday signed into law the $40 billion aid package for Ukraine passed by Congress last week, and finance ministers of the Group of 7 nations agreed to provide $19.8 billion to support Ukraine’s economy over the coming months.

  • District Judge Robert Summerhays of Louisiana granted a preliminary injunction on Friday blocking the Biden administration from moving forward with its planned termination of Title 42, the pandemic-era immigration policy that allowed officials to quickly turn away migrants at the United States’ southern border. The administration had planned to lift the policy today, and a Justice Department spokesman said the agency intends to appeal the decision, arguing the CDC determined the measure was “no longer warranted.”

  • Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison conceded defeat Saturday as voters cast out the conservative Liberal-National Coalition (LNP) after nine years in favor of Anthony Albanese and the progressive Labor Party. A handful of races remain too close to call, but Labor has already won enough seats in Parliament to form a coalition government, despite securing only 33 percent of the total vote, compared to the LNP’s 36 percent. 

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  1. Avatar photo
    Michael Darwin

    Maybe go back to doing the census as Constitutionally mandated: head count for apportionment. There are lots and lots of data services that can proved the government with better estimates of more specific details (race, age,etc), likely at a fraction of the cost, and more frequently. Keep the census simple.

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  2. Avatar photo
    PJ

    The archbishop in San Francisco amuses me with his self-importance. Grateful I am not part of the god delusions.

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  3. Deanjens

    I feel like I've been getting "inadequate political representation" for a while, but I suspect he means something different.

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  4. CatoTheElder

    “The U.S. Census Bureau reported last week it likely over- or undercounted 14 states by a statistically significant number in the 2020 census, compared to no statistically significant over- or undercounts in the 2010 census, and an estimated 23 in the 2000 one. (The Bureau has changed exactly how it calculates these count estimates, so it’s tough to draw one-to-one comparisons.)”

    Any responsible reporting about the Census Bureau’s report that there were likely about 14 miscounts in the 2020 census needs to be able to provide reasonable comparisons to past performance, explain why comparisons to past performance of the decennial census are spurious, or both. To do no more than include a parenthetical statement, after having already drawn comparisons, stating that “it’s tough to draw…comparisons” is…lazy, at best.

    Generally speaking, reading reports of the apparent miscounts suggests that the census was probably a bit more sloppy than is acceptable, even given the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Evaluation of this notion requires comparison with past performances, as there are few in any other useful measures by which to grade the work done. But if one is comparing apples to…some other fruit, it would be nice to know something about the other kind(s) of fruit. Are we comparing apples to pineapples, kumquats, pears, or strawberries? Or do we not even know what kind of fruit the census of, say, 1970 even was, in this metaphor?

    We’re quietly informed by the above that the processes were different for the count estimates, and we already know that the processes for performance of the census itself are variable at the federal level and at the state level, as illustrated by the fact that Mississippi spent $400,000 helping to aid the count in 2020, whereas California spent nearly 500 times that amount. We’re not told how stable state spending in support of census operations tends to be (I suspect “not very” would be a common descriptor), nor what the variables that they do obliquely wave at actually are.

    Reporting on polling and statistics and the like being what it is, and the partisan desires to shape the story what they are, I think about all that can reasonably be concluded is that the 2020 census was less than perfect, and that the imperfections will now be used as cudgels in the ongoing party wars.

    Please pass the pretzels and ask the waitress to bring me another beer. The game’s about to start.

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  5. Avatar photo
    SandyG

    QOTD: Who does what in a public health emergency like the pandemic? Is it all HHS (Dept of Health and Human Services) which includes CDC and FDA? What is the role of the CDC and the FDA? Is there a role in the White House? How does HHS interact with State departments of public health?

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  6. Avatar photo
    BrettH

    Somebody needs to inform Texas Rep. Veasey that the American public writ large, let alone Texas, has not had adequate representation in Congress for quite some time.

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    John Peabody

    QOTD - Given the pending SCOTUS case looking at WOTUS, and the incredibly complex decision in Rapanos, it would be good to start preparing a story on WOTUS, which has major impacts for permits related to wetlands nation-wide. I used to work in Corps of Engrs Hqs and would be happy to help, if interested.
    Cheers.

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  8. Kara

    I really appreciate these explainers. Broadly, I’d love to learn more about what people mean when they say the Administrative State. In a former role, I interacted with the Department of Energy on appliance efficiency standards, and it was eye opening. I suspect that most people do not know anything about that. I on the other hand don’t know anything about how things like OSHA or the NLRB work.

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  9. Avatar photo
    Dexember

    And the idea that a census in the Roman client state of Judea asked people to return to their birthplace to be counted is shown for the absurdity it is. The nativity stories, there are two completely different and contradicting set of facts in the tall tales, were always bad attempts to shoehorn the socially radical, apocalyptic cult leader that was Jesus into badly interpreted readings of Jewish prophets who themselves were also not actually talking to invisible men in the sky.

    God, that opening line is either sarcastic and I’m surprised the Dispatch would take that tack with religion. Or it’s serious, which is absurd, as there is no corroborating evidence that hundreds or thousands of people were displaced for a census at that time.

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    1. Avatar photo
      Mudskipper

      As a fellow atheist, I have three reactions here:

      --You are right: there is no evidence that ANY Roman census was conducted in that manner and there are many practical, pragmatic reasons why it wouldn't make sense to do a census that way.

      --I hoped it was a bit of whimsy and not an attempt to relate a historical fact.

      --Your tone sucks.

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      1. Avatar photo
        Dexember

        Shitty tone acknowledged and criticism of it accepted.

        Still don’t see the whimsy:

        My mother, a devout Christian, would take it as a funny comment about censuses being bad as far back as Jesus’ day. Not whimsical though, a joke from one believer to the next.

        For all others, well, not whimsical as constructed. If they’d written something more like: “people complaining about the census for over 2000 years” then maybe it wouldn’t have come off as “a tire screeching stop” as I felt it. It was stated as fact.

        Bad joke? Whimsical attempt at brevity? Both would not be the interpretation of a believer and might be offensive if the Dispatch actually said it was whimsical with no difference from Greek myths.

        If you don’t want me to point out the bullshit of believing in the nativity story then don’t state it as a fact. I’d feel the same way if they “whimsically” wrote that 1400 years ago Mohammad ascended a golden ladder to heaven before a piece on supply shortage of ladders.

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        1. Avatar photo
          Mudskipper

          I found it jarring as well.

          However, here's the thing: many people DO believe that this is a historical fact, even people who aren't Christians or who don't take the bible literally. Here, for example, is a website from the UK government (the office that does the census, no less) that accepts it as fact:

          https://www.ons.gov.uk/census/2011census/howourcensusworks/aboutcensuses/censushistory/censustakingintheancientworld

          It is quite possible to be an educated, knowledgeable person who has never, in their information travels, picked up on the fact that the census story is untrue. And it is very likely that most people accept it at face value and don't take the time to think about it enough to realize how utterly impractical it would be to conduct a census in this manner.

          So I'd personally cut the TMDers some slack. It think BillB handled it well when he simply mentioned that they could use a fact check on this one.

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          1. Avatar photo
            Dexember

            I cut them slack as in I’m still giving them my money and will forget this tomorrow. I’ve worked in the south enough to pretend to be Christian to not ruffle feathers at certain jobs.

            But anyone wanting some good reading on these issues should check out Bart Ehrman, and he has lots of debates on youtube with more believing scholars to find arguments for and against.

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  10. Avatar photo
    Mike Kupfer

    QotD: I'd like to understand better what the State Department does in foreign countries. When I was in college, I knew someone who got a summer internship at the US consulate in West Berlin. (Yes, this was before German reunification.) If I remember correctly, she said much of her job was reading local publications and passing up articles that seemed noteworthy. She might have even told me what she was looking for, but I don't remember the details. So they keep tabs on what's happening locally, and they provide assistance to US citizens in that country. What else do they do? (And what are the sorts of things they keep tabs on?) When the offices are not properly staffed, are there concrete examples of how that harms US interests?

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