John Crudele

John Crudele

Business

Trying to make Census of false-info probe

The head of the Census Bureau assured an investigative committee of Congress that nobody could falsify data without getting caught — at the very same time someone was doing just that with the help of Census superiors who seemed to be covering it up.

I’ve already written about the case of Julius Buckmon, a Census enumerator (or data collector) who in 2010 was caught fabricating interviews with households. Census, as it does every month, was doing work for the Labor Department, and Buckmon allegedly falsified hundreds of interviews each month.

Buckmon, who was working out of the Philadelphia Census office, claimed that superiors told him to fake the interviews. But there was never an investigation by Census of his claims.

In fact, the only reason any details emerged was that Buckmon later sued Census and the Commerce Department for racial and age discrimination.

And it now appears that Buckmon was never fired. He was simply allowed to disappear from the Census payroll.

Buckmon’s chicanery took place during the summer of 2010. A source with knowledge of the situation, however, says this sort of behavior has been carried on by other enumerators right up to the present day.

The Buckmon matter is now being investigated by the Inspector General at Census, the Joint Economic Committee of Congress and the House Oversight Committee. (And, as you know, I’m also looking into it.)

The Oversight Committee, in particular, has a bone to pick with Census.

In July 2010, Robert Groves — then director of the Census Bureau — appeared before the Oversight Committee and said, “We also are confident that our quality-control operations will identify instances where enumerator data are falsified or procedures are not being followed.”

Remember, this is precisely the time that Buckmon was snagged in Philly faking surveys. Did Groves not know what was going on? Or was he also covering up?

Groves and New York Regional Director Tony Farthing were testifying before the Oversight Committee for a reason. At the same time Buckmon was doing his thing, two supervisors in the Brooklyn office of Census were also caught taking shortcuts that corrupted surveys.

In the Brooklyn case, the supervisors were messing with the 2010 Census, not the numbers being put together for Labor. Among other things, the Brooklyn office was using a software package called Fast Data “to obtain information about households they were supposed to be interviewing,” according to Groves testimony to the Oversight Committee.

“This is deeply troubling; I find it abhorrent to all the principles underlying the work of the Census Bureau,” Groves added.

Then why weren’t Buckmon’s actions in Philly looked into more carefully? Certainly the monthly employment report is the most important economic data provided by the government, especially when the numbers were coming out right before the major 2010 congressional elections.

So my point is: Who was in charge of the Philly conspiracy to alter the unemployment rate? And how high up did it go?


OK, so the economy started to obviously suck again in December. What are we going to do?

We could just continue to watch business conditions languish. Or maybe Washington should finally try my idea — stimulate the economy through a change in the rules that will allow people to tap into their retirement savings.

If we don’t come up with something new, five years from now we are still going to be discussing whether or not the economy has recovered from the 2008 recession.


As you no doubt know by now, the December employment numbers were awful.

But let me say this: I don’t trust Labor’s statistics when they are upbeat, and I don’t trust them when they are downbeat.

Here’s a for instance: Labor reported that only 74,000 jobs were created in December. But it also reported that all 74,000 of those jobs and then some went to women.

In fact, Table B-5 of last Friday’s news release says that jobs held by women increased to 67.681 million in December from 67.606 million in November — a 75,000 increase.

Seriously? Does anyone really believe a figure like that?


I don’t know why, but Insurance.com compiled a list of the best songs for driving. The list is topped by Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing.” Following that was Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” and Tom Cochrane’s “Life Is a Highway.”

“Who Let The Dogs Out,” by The Baha Men was rated the worst.

Not so! “Dead Man’s Curve” by Jan and Dean has to be the worst driving song — especially if you’re looking at it from an insurance standpoint.

Singer Jan Berry, who died a couple of years ago, suffered brain damage when his Corvette rammed into a truck in Beverly Hills in 1966.

There’s no information about what song he was listening to at the time of the crash.