A Little bit of everything

This story has something for everybody. First, let's not the complete bureaucratic failure over here at the Census Bureau:

Big worries for the nation's first high-tech census should have been obvious when tests showed some of the door-to-door headcounters couldn't figure out their fancy new handheld computers.

Now, officials say, technology problems could add as much as $2 billion to the cost of the 2010 census and jeopardize the accuracy of the nation's most important survey.

Census officials are considering a return to using paper and pencil to count every man, woman and child in the nation.

Well, I'm glad the bureau spent so much time verifying the necessity, usability, and function of the products they spent billions to buy before buying them. That seems like a great use of taxpayer dollars. Read the entire story to show the wackiness of how this money got to be spent in this fashion.

Of course, it wouldn't be a real story unless we had a congresscritter saying some asinine:

"What we're facing is a statistical Katrina on the part of the administration," said Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-New York.

I'm not sure how bureaucratic failures in the Census Bureau equate the deaths of 1,200 plus people due to bumbling by the Louisiana and New Orleans governments, but what do I know, right?

The real problem here is the fact that the census is taken every ten years. It's not like they didn't know it was coming. So how come here in March 2008 they realistically still have no idea how in the world they are going to get the job done?

Once again, federal bureaucracy finds examples to give us that provides us with insight as to why we must continue to shrink, not expand, the size of government....