Tuesday, April 15, 2014

According to a report in The New York Times, the Census Bureau has been directed to change the wording of its questions relating to health care coverage so that they can no longer be checked against the past three decades of data.

Yet Another Crazy Conservative Conspiracy Theory Proven Correct - Noah Rothman/Mediaite

In 2009, in the earliest weeks of President Barack Obama‘s administration, the White House made the controversial decision to take the unprecedented step of moving the Census Bureau from control of the commerce secretary over to the White House ahead of the decennial 2010 census.

Conservatives sounded alarm bells. “It takes something that is supposedly apolitical like the census, and gives it to a guy who is infamously political,” said Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT) of then White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

“Requiring the Census director to report directly to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is a shamefully transparent attempt by your administration to politicize the Census Bureau and manipulate the 2010 Census,” read a letter addressed to Obama authored by Reps. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Patrick McHenry (R-NC)....

According to a report in The New York Times, the Census Bureau has been directed to change the wording of its questions relating to health care coverage so that they can no longer be checked against the past three decades of data. According to the nonpartisan analysts and census officials The Times spoke with, this change will make it nearly impossible to accurately assess the effects of the Affordable Care Act has had on the number of Americans who have health insurance....

Policy analysts and columnists, who are not reflexively friendly to conservative causes, called the debasement of a formerly neutral agency to achieve a political end “insane” and “inexcusable.”

And, thus, another crazy conservative conspiracy theory is proven to not be so crazy after all.