Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Massachusetts lawmakers look for ways to boost population figures

Just so you know, some legislators in Massachusetts are determined to have a high population count in the 2010 Census, and are lining up ways to get there. Right now there's apparently a focus on making sure college students, low-income people, and immigrants ("documented and undocumented", according to a quote attributed to Marc Draisen, the Metropolitan Area Planning Council's executive director) are tracked down and counted. See Bay State wants everyone to count:Lawmakers earmark funds for US Census (Andrea Estes, Boston Globe, July 4, 2006).

(Via Ed Lasky at The American Thinker, who points out that Massachusetts could be addressing the reasons it tends to have population stagnation, instead of proposing to fund research into ways to generate a bigger count.)

And yes, I realize that this article on a plan to, amongst other things, include as many noncitizens as possible in a national census for the stated purposes of ending up with more congressional seats and getting more federal funds was published on July 4 just begs for some sort of commentary, but well... 'Nuf said.

The article stated that Governor Mitt Romney has not said whether he will approve the measure. A spokesman said that the governor is not going to comment on any specific aspect of the budget until the budget review is complete.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was impressed that Mr. Lasky allowed us to draw our own conclusions about the whole "get out the illegal vote" thing. It made me feel intelligent to have figured that one out. And now that you mention it, I know I'm in good company.

Kathryn Judson said...

Bookworm, I'm not sure I thought ahead to any "get out the illegal vote" thing. The article mentioned making sure not to lose seats in the U.S. Congress, plus getting lined up to rake in more federal funds. As I understand it, they don't need any voters for that, just high head counts.