George W. Bush should know better. His wife is a librarian, for goodness' sake. Any librarian knows the value of the United States census. When it comes to usefulness, it's hard to find a more valuable reference book than the Statistical Abstract of the United States. Most of the information in the Statistical Abstract comes from the United States census. If that weren't enough, the considerable genealogical work that we do for our patrons would be impossible without the census rolls of the past two-and-a-half centuries. More than any other set of data, the census tells us about our past, present, and future. Indeed, it's one of the few constitutionally ordained administrative functions of the federal government. If anything is sacred to a librarian, it is the census. But just as census officials were pleading with the public to answer all the questions on their forms, along comes Laura Bush's husband complaining that this year's census form is too long and too intrusive. In fact, he declared that he was not sure if he was even going to fill his form out. Shame on you, George W., to set such a poor example for your fellow Americans. As a good librarian, why didn't Laura Bush explain to her husband that the data produced from the census is used to solve problems in the areas of poverty, education, urban sprawl, mass transit, and services to the elderly? My guess is that George W. is not really very interested in those issues. He's more interested in being elected president, and he cynically figures that bashing the census bureaucracy will score points with the antigovernment apes who tend to congregate in the corner tavern, the Main Street barber shop, and the local Republican precinct meeting room. Maybe it's because I am a librarian, but I actually like to fill out federal government forms. For instance, I see Form 1040 as an opportunity to establish a personal dialogue with the folks at the Internal Revenue Service.
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