There was a distinct impression in the Philadelphia office of the Census Bureau that someone wanted the unemployment rate to drop in the months before the 2012 presidential election, according to a source who has already been interviewed by Congress.
And this was a first.
“It’s never come up prior to this administration,” said my source, who has worked through both the Bush and Clinton presidencies.
This source, whom I have not identified, was questioned two weeks ago by the House Oversight Committee headed by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.).
The Census Bureau, which is part of the very partisan Commerce Department, is tasked every month with determining how many people in this country are unemployed. It produces the jobless rate that the Labor Department publicizes, usually, on the first Friday of the month.
Labor itself handles the surveys that determine the number of new jobs produced monthly.
The Oversight Committee this week is continuing to question workers from the Philadelphia Census office.
Strangely, neither the Democrats nor Republicans on the committee asked about the actions in Philadelphia before the last presidential election. Both parties instead have been limiting their questions to a 2010 cheating scandal that came to light after a series of columns I produced last year.
As readers know, I reported that an enumerator — or data collector — in Philadelphia named Julius Buckmon was caught in 2010 filing phony surveys forms.
Buckmon only surveyed Washington, DC, neighborhoods, but because Census uses a scientific poll that projects the responses of a small sample size onto a bigger population of citizens, his actions could have caused misleading results for 500,000 households a month.
Buckmon’s antics in particular are what the committee is been focused on. But it hasn’t yet touched on any shenanigans that allegedly occurred in 2012 — which, of course, are of much greater significance because that was when President Obama was seeking re-election.
Buckmon, who was never fired, left Census in 2011 under unclear circumstances. As he was leaving, Buckmon alleged in a race- and age-discrimination suit he filed against Commerce that superiors at Census told him to falsify data.
None of the supervisors he named were ever disciplined, even though a similar transgression at the very same time at the Census’ Brooklyn office led to immediate dismissals.
Because Buckmon stopped working at Census, he wasn’t available to falsify unemployment data in advance of the 2012 election. But, my source says, others were picking up the slack.
“There are more Juliuses out there,” said my source. “It’s still going on, and [Census officials] know it.”
What happened to the unemployment rate right before the last presidential election was pretty dramatic. In August 2012, the jobless rate fell dramatically, to 8.1 percent from 8.3 percent, eliciting howls from Republicans.
This drop occurred right after Obama had, by most accounts, whiffed in his first debate against Republican Mitt Romney.
In the Philly office, I’m told, the manipulators were up to the challenge. Messages like “we need the unemployment rate to stay low because it’s election time,” were being disseminated by supervisors, according to my source.
The big question is, did any of these supervisors actually put orders like that into e-mails or other communications? I’ve requested e-mails from Philly supervisors, and the committee is waiting patiently for Commerce’s general counsel’s office to turn over documents.
Commerce’s Office of Inspector General is also investigating.
So why is the committee steering clear of asking the most important questions about 2012? Nobody from the committee would speak to me, so I’ll just have to guess.
The committee could be waiting to get Commerce documents in hand. Or — and this is the more intriguing possibility — it could be trying to stall disclosures that bad things happened before Obama’s re-election until a more opportune time.
Very important congressional elections are coming up in November, with control of the House and Senate at stake. If the Census investigation turns into a bombshell — and I said “if” — it would be more useful for the Republicans later on than now.
So now you know. If the Republicans are playing politics, I just burst their bombshell. Let’s get on with it, guys!
You’d think the world is about to end the way the media have reacted to the recent drop in the stock market. So let me put it into perspective.
Since Dec. 31, the Dow Jones industrial average has fallen just over 4 percent. More than half that decline has come in the last week or so.
Declines of 10 percent to 20 percent are normal throughout the history of markets.
They are called corrections — the point at which some people claim their profits, while others decide that they see a “buying opportunity” because prices have dropped too much.
This is — again — normal.
A 10 percent Dow correction would equal a decline of 1,658 points; 20 percent would be a loss of 3,316 points from the Dow’s close of 16,576.66 last Dec. 31.