April 13, 2008

The Commerce Department has decided to rely mostly on pen and paper for the 2010 census. It has hoped to use new electronic hand-held computers which don’t work. Naturally, the government has already spent millions of our tax dollars on this before reverting to a system that was used in the first census in 1790.

Now here’s my question: why aren’t the presidential candidates discussing what they will do to streamline government and make it more efficient? Instead we get talk about government doing more, not less. But if government does more inefficiently, how is that helpful?

Former speaker Newt Gingrich has a new book called “Real Change.” In it and on his American Solutions web page he writes about things that really work. He likes to use the analogy of package delivery companies and the federal government. The package delivery people know where everyone lives. Let them do the census. They have people in place and it surely would cost a lot less and bring more accurate results than continuing the farce we have before us.

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Cal Thomas is a nationally syndicated columnist based in Washington, D.C.