It's Saturday!

Hope you all are having a great weekend! I am enjoying myself. Went out to my son's school carnival/fundraiser near Coral De Tierra (Highway 68) for most of the day. My children are growing up fast. They are a complete joy in my life, though sometimes a challenge. They are totally worth the effort!

I hope you enjoyed the West Wing episode ("Mr. Willis of Ohio") . There were a number of important points at play. The census is counted every ten years in the United States. It is used to determine the number of congressional seats in the House of Representatives. Additionally, federal funding and other important matters are determined by a state's population. Nearly 1 million Americans count the +350,000 million, plus or minus in our population. The homeless, recent immigrants, and inner-city minority groups often go uncounted and thus, unrepresented. These groups tend to vote more for the Democratic Party so that is why in the episode, the Bartlett administration wanted to make sure that sampling continue to be an option for the next election cycle. By the way, this episode imitated a real life event (see: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/daily/aug98/census25.htm
As it stands the US Supreme does not allow for statistical sampling to completely replace the traditional "head count" method. There are simply too many chances for bias in a sampled survey. Many would argue (as Toby Ziegler did in the episode) that to allow sampling as the official method of census taking would set a bad precedent and would be undemocratic. See you on Monday.