{"id":848,"date":"2000-04-03T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2000-04-03T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/multiracial.com\/wp\/index.php\/2000\/04\/03\/just-say-no-to-nosy-census-questions-campaign-generates-national-media-coverage\/"},"modified":"2017-03-27T16:01:26","modified_gmt":"2017-03-27T16:01:26","slug":"just-say-no-to-nosy-census-questions-campaign-generates-national-media-coverage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/2000\/04\/03\/just-say-no-to-nosy-census-questions-campaign-generates-national-media-coverage\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Just Say No To Nosy Census Questions&#8221; campaign generates national media coverage"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><center><\/p>\n<h3>Libertarian Party Press Release<br \/>\n03 April 2000<\/h3>\n<p><\/center>===============================================<br \/>\nADVISORY FROM THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY<br \/>\nNews from the National LP headquarters for<br \/>\nmembers &amp; supporters of the Libertarian Party<br \/>\n===============================================<br \/>\nWatergate Office Building<br \/>\n2600 Virginia Avenue, NW, Suite 100<br \/>\nWashington DC 20037<br \/>\nWebsite: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.LP.org\">http:\/\/www.LP.org<\/a><br \/>\nPhone: (202) 333-0008 Ext. 222<br \/>\nFor information about the party: (800) ELECT-US<br \/>\n===============================================<br \/>\nApril 3, 2000<br \/>\n===============================================<\/p>\n<p><b>&#8220;Just Say No To Nosy Census Questions&#8221; campaign generates national media coverage<\/b><\/p>\n<p>WASHINGTON, DC &#8212; Headline in the Washington Post: &#8220;Census Flap Intensifies; Director Pleads for Compliance.&#8221; (Page 1, March 31, 2000).<\/p>\n<p>Why is Census Director Kenneth Prewitt pleading? Because the &#8220;Boycott the Census&#8221; movement is making headlines, burning up the phone lines of radio talk shows, spreading like wildfire on the Internet, and putting the Census Bureau&#8217;s $7 billion campaign at risk.<\/p>\n<p>Who started it all? The Libertarian Party. Here is some of the media coverage we&#8217;ve generated with our call to &#8220;Just Say No To Nosy Census Questions.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Initially, it was the Libertarian Party that denounced the 53-question census form as being &#8220;too intrusive.&#8221; Leaders of the party, which has 200,000 registered voters, urged Americans to ignore all but the first question on the form, which asks how many people live in their household. &#8221;<br \/>\n&#8212; <u>The Washington Times<\/u>, March 31, 2000<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Noting the real purpose of the long form&#8217;s queries, Libertarian Party National Director Steve Dasbach made headlines recently when he stated, &#8220;Census information is used to forge the chains that bind Americans to failed government programs, meddlesome bureaucracies, and a sky-high tax rate.&#8221;&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8212; <b>Lawrence Reed<\/b>, <u>The Detroit News<\/u>, March 19, 2000<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The Libertarian Party is urging citizens to fill out the first question and leave the rest blank. Risk the [$100] fine, urged George Getz, a Washington D.C.-based spokesman for the party. &#8220;A lot of people wonder what they&#8217;re going to do with the information. We don&#8217;t know,&#8221; Getz said. &#8221;<br \/>\n&#8212; <b>Associated Press<\/b>, March 27, 2000<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The Libertarian Party said in Washington on Monday that Americans have a unique opportunity to say &#8220;yes&#8221; to the Constitution and &#8220;no&#8221; to what the party calls &#8220;busybody bureaucrats in Washington DC&#8221; by refusing to answer most Census 2000 questions. Officials of the House Subcommittee on the Census had no comment on the Libertarian Party statements when contacted by CNSNews.com. &#8221;<br \/>\n&#8212; <b>Conservative News Service<\/b>, March 20, 2000<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;&#8221;This big, bossy, busybody government is trying to ask questions they have no business asking,&#8221; says George Getz, the Libertarian Party&#8217;s press secretary. According to Getz, Libertarians oppose answering census questions beyond those that fulfill the basic function mandated in the Constitution. &#8221;<br \/>\n&#8212; <u>The Utne Reader<\/u>, March-April 2000<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The fact is, innumerable residents across the country are refusing to participate in the census, beyond a simple head-count. Steve Dasbach, leader of the Libertarian Party, is actually encouraging the practice. &#8220;The U.S. Constitution says the purpose of the Census is to make an enumeration; that is, to take an accurate count of Americans for the purpose of apportioning Congressional districts,&#8221; he said. &#8220;But the federal government has gone far beyond that Constitutional mandate, and uses the Census to ask dozens of probing questions.&#8221; &#8221;<br \/>\n&#8212; <b>WorldNetDaily.com<\/b>, March 22, 2000<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In January, Steve Dasbach, the Libertarian Party&#8217;s national director, called for Americans to answer only how many people live in their houses. &#8220;For once, we find [the government] doing something that is actually constitutional &#8212; conducting a census &#8212; and we think people should participate and answer that one question that the Constitution requires, which is how many people live in your home,&#8221; said George Getz, the party&#8217;s national press secretary. &#8221;<br \/>\n&#8212; <u>The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette<\/u>, March 16, 2000<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The Libertarian Party and others object [to nosy Census questions]. The national party is advising people to answer just one question &#8212; in order to apportion the House seats &#8212; and return the remainder blank. &#8220;It&#8217;s a huge privacy invasion; some of these questions the government simply has no business knowing,&#8221; said press secretary George Getz in Washington, D.C. &#8220;Do you have any difficulty bathing? And do you get to work by ferry boat? We don&#8217;t think government has any business, and no constitutional authority, to be asking people about their personal habits.&#8221; &#8221;<br \/>\n&#8212; <u>The Oregonian<\/u>, March 12, 2000<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The Libertarian Party put out a press release last week that read: &#8220;Strike a blow for privacy: Refuse to answer nosy Census questions!&#8221; They recommend just answering the one question that the Census Department has Constitutional authority to ask: the one about how many people live in your home. &#8221;<br \/>\n&#8212; <u>The Manchester Union Leader<\/u> (NH), March 22, 2000<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Convinced that the Census Bureau will not prosecute boycotters, the National Libertarian Party is encouraging people to skip everything but the first question on household population. &#8220;Count the people to make sure that there are an equal number of people in every congressional district &#8212; we Libertarians support that,&#8221; said George Getz, the party&#8217;s press secretary. &#8220;We would like to see 100 percent compliance if that&#8217;s all the information is going to be used for. The problem is that the government has corrupted [the Census] into another big government program.&#8221; &#8221;<br \/>\n&#8212; <b>APBnews.com<\/b>, March 30, 2000<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The Libertarian Party is encouraging people to answer just one question on the census. The Constitution demands asking only the question about the number of people living in a household, said George Getz, a Libertarian spokesman. &#8220;What else does the government need to know?&#8221; Mr. Getz said. &#8220;Why should we trust these government agencies?&#8221; &#8221;<br \/>\n&#8212; <u>The Dallas Morning News<\/u>, March 13, 2000<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Now, [the government&#8217;s] appetite for details of our private lives is insatiable. How old are you? What&#8217;s your race? There are 15 choices here. George Getz, the Libertarian Party&#8217;s spokesman, sardonically notes that South Africa&#8217;s apartheid government had only four racial classifications. &#8221;<br \/>\n&#8212; <b>Don Feder<\/b>, <u>The Boston Herald<\/u>, April 3, 2000<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Libertarian Party Press Release 03 April 2000 =============================================== ADVISORY FROM THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY News from the National LP headquarters for members &amp; supporters of the Libertarian Party =============================================== Watergate Office Building 2600 Virginia Avenue,&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4171,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[103],"class_list":["post-848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-press-releases","tag-press-release"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p89tuq-dG","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Press-Releases.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=848"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5859,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848\/revisions\/5859"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multiracial.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}