More Waisted Tax Money 2010 Census
 

So I'm looking through the mail last night and I see that I have my 2010 census in the mail so I open it up. What I find is a letter telling me that they will be mailing my census form in about 10 days. Why in the he!! are they mailing me this instead of just mailing out the census form? Is the goverment really that stupid that they think its smart to pre-mail every house hold to let them know their census is coming? What a waist of tax dollars from a goverment that is out of money. They just don't get the problem and never will. Now that I think about it maybe its a stimulas for the Post Office sense they are going broke.

Re: More Waisted Tax Money 2010 Census
 

The [B]waist[/B] is the part of the abdomen between the rib cage and hips.

[B]Waste[/B] (also referred to as rubbish, trash, refuse, garbage, or junk) is unwanted or unusable materials.

;)

Re: More Waisted Tax Money 2010 Census
 

What you think I'm going to start a thread without any spelling errors.

Re: More Waisted Tax Money 2010 Census
 

[quote=Mattyk;671509]The [B]waist[/B] is the part of the abdomen between the rib cage and hips.

[B]Waste[/B] (also referred to as rubbish, trash, refuse, garbage, or junk) is unwanted or unusable materials.

;)[/quote]

Another example of [B]Waste[/B], firstdown.

Re: More Waisted Tax Money 2010 Census
 

I knew it was coming from the TV, radio and internet ads I see every 10 minutes. (more waste)


You really have to be suspicious when the White House takes over the census and pushes it this hard.

I'll tell them how many people are in my house and that's all they need to know. It's to count people for our voting districts...THAT'S IT. Whatever else they're collecting is unnecessary and I don't trust them with it. After they took over the customer data in the car dealers' computers in the failure Cash for Clunkers program, they can't be trusted.

Re: More Waisted Tax Money 2010 Census
 

Something about the parking lot that brings out the spelling bee champ in all of us.

Re: More Waisted Tax Money 2010 Census
 

[quote=Buster;671532]I knew it was coming from the TV, radio and internet ads I see every 10 minutes. (more waste)


You really have to be suspicious when the White House takes over the census and pushes it this hard.

I'll tell them how many people are in my house and that's all they need to know. It's to count people for our voting districts...THAT'S IT. Whatever else they're collecting is unnecessary and I don't trust them with it. After they took over the customer data in the car dealers' computers in the failure Cash for Clunkers program, they can't be trusted.[/quote]

Well it might not sound like much but people have to remember that there are over 114 million house holds they probably mailed this letter to.

Re: More Waisted Tax Money 2010 Census
 

[quote=mredskins;671524]another example of [b]waste[/b], firstdown.[/quote]
fu d&%@ h@*%

Re: More Waisted Tax Money 2010 Census
 

[quote=firstdown;671500]So I'm looking through the mail last night and I see that I have my 2010 census in the mail so I open it up. What I find is a letter telling me that they will be mailing my census form in about 10 days. Why in the he!! are they mailing me this instead of just mailing out the census form? Is the goverment really that stupid that they think its smart to pre-mail every house hold to let them know their census is coming? What a waist of tax dollars from a goverment that is out of money. They just don't get the problem and never will. Now that I think about it maybe its a stimulas for the Post Office sense they are going broke.[/quote]

I got the same letter and thought the same thing.

Re: More Waisted Tax Money 2010 Census
 

i got the letter the other day. still havent taken it out of the mailbox.

is it really just a notice that the census will be sent out soon? dang, that does seem stupid to waste time, money and paper.

freak, im gonna claim a bunch of people.

Re: More Waisted Tax Money 2010 Census
 

[quote=mredskins;671524]Another example of [B]Waste[/B], firstdown.[/quote]

LOL hilarious....but great point firstdown

Re: More Waisted Tax Money 2010 Census
 

When you keep money in a moneybelt, that is "waisted" money.

Re: More Waisted Tax Money 2010 Census
 

[quote=Lotus;671597]When you keep money in a moneybelt, that is "waisted" money.[/quote]
No that's just gay.

Re: More Waisted Tax Money 2010 Census
 

I was quite shocked how small the Census was until I opened it up and thought the same thing.

Re: More Waisted Tax Money 2010 Census
 

It's a way to funnel some much needed cash to the post office. Or it could be that there is [URL="http://www.kyw1060.com/US-Census-Bureau-Explains-Its-Pre-Mailing-Mailing/6533512"]real benefit[/URL] to sending these letters:

[QUOTE]We actually get a 6 to 12 percent bump in mailback increase. And for us, having people mail back their questionnaire is really the most cost-saving measure. It actually saves the taxpayers $85 million for every one-percent increase we have in people who mail back their questionnaires."

For every household that does not return its Census form, it costs the Bureau $57 to send out a census taker. [/QUOTE]

Re: More Waisted Tax Money 2010 Census
 

[quote=saden1;671623]It's a way to funnel some much needed cash to the post office. Or it could be that there is [URL="http://www.kyw1060.com/US-Census-Bureau-Explains-Its-Pre-Mailing-Mailing/6533512"]real benefit[/URL] to sending these letters:[/quote]


I did some work with a direct mail company once and they have some strange methods but they get results.

Re: More Waisted Tax Money 2010 Census
 

The SB commercial is what got me. Are you serious that the government needs to take out a 30 second commercial of the most expensive tv airtime?

Re: More Waisted Tax Money 2010 Census
 

Yes this certainly seems like something to get bent out of shape about.

Re: More Waisted Tax Money 2010 Census
 

[quote=saden1;671623]It's a way to funnel some much needed cash to the post office. Or it could be that there is [URL="http://www.kyw1060.com/US-Census-Bureau-Explains-Its-Pre-Mailing-Mailing/6533512"]real benefit[/URL] to sending these letters:[/quote]

Ok, I knew someone would point out that when you send more then one letter you get a better response. Then why the he!! don't they just mail the census out twice which makes more sense.

Re: More Waisted Tax Money 2010 Census
 

Sure, attacking the messenger, not message.


That's how we got in this current mess. :D

Re: More Waisted Tax Money 2010 Census
 

[quote=CRedskinsRule;671626]The SB commercial is what got me. Are you serious that the government needs to take out a 30 second commercial of the most expensive tv airtime?[/quote]

It was a brilliant move. If the objective is to inform every American about the Census the SB is the perfect venue for the government to advertise on. I would even wager that the government got the most bang for its buck among all SB advertisers.

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[quote=firstdown;671633]Ok, I knew someone would point out that when you send more then one letter you get a better response. Then why the he!! don't they just mail the census out twice which makes more sense.[/quote]

Why waste more paper than you have to?

Re: More Waisted Tax Money 2010 Census
 

[quote=saden1;671639]Why waste more paper than you have to?[/quote]
Your not. You send a reminder copy to the people who do not respond to the first mailing. So if 50% respond then your mailing 50% less on the second try.

Re: More Waisted Tax Money 2010 Census
 

[quote=firstdown;671649]Your not. You send a reminder copy to the people who do not respond to the first mailing. So if 50% respond then your mailing 50% less on the second try.[/quote]What about the idiots who fill out both forms? Then you need someone to go through every form to make sure you don't have duplicates.

Re: More Waisted Tax Money 2010 Census
 

[quote=saden1;671636]It was a brilliant move. If the objective is to inform every American about the Census the SB is the perfect venue for the government to advertise on. I would even wager that the government got the most bang for its buck among all SB advertisers.[/quote]

BS and if Bush had done it you would have hated it. The census gets free advert through the schools, and public health organizations. Glad you support the initiatives, but I wouldn't have expected otherwise.

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[quote=Schneed10;671631]Yes this certainly seems like something to get bent out of shape about.[/quote]
Well they are spending 14,000,000,000 at over $45.00 per person to do the census. I guess a few billion wasted here and there is no real big deal any more. I'll also bet that they have cost over run driving the cost to more like 19 billion because the goverment usually is off by 33% on most everything they do.

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[quote=ArtMonkDrillz;671651]What about the idiots who fill out both forms? Then you need someone to go through every form to make sure you don't have duplicates.[/quote]

Or the people who don't fill out the second form. You got to do the full math really to figure out the real cost of these scenarios but I cant't imagine it being lower than sending a single page at bulk mail rate with 6 to 12 percent uptick in returns.

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It just pisses me off when the gov't waists money. Sense Obama passed the stimulas the country's been going to he!!. Than Obama tryed to pass Health Care and that's a waist.

and moneybelts are gay

:)

Re: More Waisted Tax Money 2010 Census
 

[quote=ArtMonkDrillz;671651]What about the idiots who fill out both forms? Then you need someone to go through every form to make sure you don't have duplicates.[/quote]
Saden your better then that. We mail one out to everyone. If we do not receive one by a given date we send out another census. All info goes into the system by address (we have allready spent the money to have ever homes GPS reading [url=http://gps.about.com/b/2009/04/06/us-census-gps-in-neighborhoods-now.htm]US Census GPS in Neighborhoods Now[/url]) So if we get two with the same address the computers would know.

Re: More Waisted Tax Money 2010 Census
 

[quote=Slingin Sammy 33;671669]It just pisses me off when the gov't waists money. [B][U]Sense[/U][/B] Obama passed the [B][U]stimulas[/U][/B] the country's been going to he!!. Than Obama tryed to pass Health Care and that's a waist.

and moneybelts are gay

:)[/quote]

i know i'm the last one that should point out spelling and grammar errors but...

they have been pushing the ads on tv like crazy around northern va and it's not like the will ever get a true number on the people in the metro area because half the people in northern va are scared of getting deported. if they ever want a real number they should figure out a way to get people to become legal citizens

Re: More Waisted Tax Money 2010 Census
 

[quote=mlmdub130;671691]i know i'm the last one that should point out spelling and grammar errors but...

they have been pushing the ads on tv like crazy around northern va and it's not like the will ever get a true number on the people in the metro area because half the people in northern va are scared of getting deported. if they ever want a real number they should figure out a way to get people to become legal citizens[/quote]

If you were truly a grammar expert, you would have also noticed that "tryed" should be "tried". You also missed the sarcasm of his post.

:goodjob:

Re: More Waisted Tax Money 2010 Census
 

prelim mailings are done to increase sendback rate, it works

it's also to open your eyes up to potential scams.. so if someone in a month comes by.. or you've already done something, etc

Re: More Waisted Tax Money 2010 Census
 

[quote=Buster;671702]If you were truly a grammar expert, you would have also noticed that "tryed" should be "tried". You also missed the sarcasm of his post.

:goodjob:[/quote]

If you were truly a language expert you'd know that that would be spelling and not grammar. ;)

Re: More Waisted Tax Money 2010 Census
 

[quote=tryfuhl;671720]prelim mailings are done to increase sendback rate, it works

it's also to open your eyes up to potential scams.. so if someone in a month comes by.. or you've already done something, etc[/quote]

Not so sure about stopping scams but I guess next time I do a mailing I'll send a mailing prior telling the customer I will be doing a mailing. Then I will send the mailing refering to the prior mailing and if I do not get a response I will send a reminder mailing about the other two mailings. Before any of the mailings go out I will send an employee to get their GPS location and confirm their location. Then if none of this works I will send another employee out to get the survey done in person which could have been done by the guy who went to get their GPS location before any mailing went out. Boy just wait until we get federal health care. I guess I'll have to mail them a claim notice prior to myself getting injured or sick.

Re: More Waisted Tax Money 2010 Census
 

[quote=firstdown;671731]Not so sure about stopping scams but I guess next time I do a mailing I'll send a mailing prior telling the customer I will be doing a mailing. Then I will send the mailing refering to the prior mailing and if I do not get a response I will send a reminder mailing about the other two mailings. Before any of the mailings go out I will send an employee to get their GPS location and confirm their location. Then if none of this works I will send another employee out to get the survey done in person which could have been done by the guy who went to get their GPS location before any mailing went out. Boy just wait until we get federal health care. I guess I'll have to mail them a claim notice prior to myself getting injured or sick.[/quote]

[IMG]http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/3900/ei8bdd.gif.ban[/IMG]

Re: More Waisted Tax Money 2010 Census
 

[quote=firstdown;671731]Not so sure about stopping scams but I guess next time I do a mailing I'll send a mailing prior telling the customer I will be doing a mailing. Then I will send the mailing refering to the prior mailing and if I do not get a response I will send a reminder mailing about the other two mailings. Before any of the mailings go out I will send an employee to get their GPS location and confirm their location. Then if none of this works I will send another employee out to get the survey done in person which could have been done by the guy who went to get their GPS location before any mailing went out. Boy just wait until we get federal health care. I guess I'll have to mail them a claim notice prior to myself getting injured or sick.[/quote]

That could be cost effective for you but you got to figure out if that's true for you. Let's do some rough math to figure out whether it's worth it for taxpayers to pay for sending out these notification letters.

Given:
1. The government [URL="http://2010.census.gov/news/releases/operations/2010-census-ad-campaign-positioned-to-save-taxpayers-millions-helping-boost-mail-back-participation.html"]saves 85 million[/URL] for every 1 percent of forms returned.
2. The [URL="http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:qrDGHO1wIhIJ:www.census.gov/prod/1/pop/p25-1129.pdf+number+of+houses+in+the+united+states&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESgfO6vop6_4-L_xcXOoj6A3-PZ_570gTmADQY070UhCkLL6VYI_xVdKhaQVOL2Z3LzaNa87WekriEGek0swSW19gDmEKH0ZmlpXsJUJ7wsz-AqkXnVxzjjrqnPMnNXXWU_smnvN&sig=AHIEtbRoQqTfe8W_V104xaG-4toXsP8pcw"]current estimate[/URL] of the number of households in the united states is 115 million which implies 115 million notification letters will initially be sent out (assuming since we really don't know if everyone was sent a notification letter).
3. The [URL="http://dbcalc.usps.com/CalculatorSetPage.aspx"]USPO bulk mail rate[/URL] is $0.233 per mail (this number is conservative).

If you do the math it costs the government $26,795,000 (115 million * 0.233) to send these notification letters. At cost of ~27 million and the potential of saving 510 million to 1.02 billion sending these notifications is a no brainer even if you don't take into consideration printing cost. Hell, if sending these notification gets 0.5% more people to respond you should send them out!

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Nice, actually kicked the numbers out. I love when people think that they're smarter based on opinion vs those who are actually paid to project these things.

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[quote=saden1;671836]That could be cost effective for you but you got to figure out if that's true for you. Let's do some rough math to figure out whether it's worth it for taxpayers to pay for sending out these notification letters.

Given:
1. The government [URL="http://2010.census.gov/news/releases/operations/2010-census-ad-campaign-positioned-to-save-taxpayers-millions-helping-boost-mail-back-participation.html"]saves 85 million[/URL] for every 1 percent of forms returned.
2. The [URL="http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:qrDGHO1wIhIJ:www.census.gov/prod/1/pop/p25-1129.pdf+number+of+houses+in+the+united+states&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESgfO6vop6_4-L_xcXOoj6A3-PZ_570gTmADQY070UhCkLL6VYI_xVdKhaQVOL2Z3LzaNa87WekriEGek0swSW19gDmEKH0ZmlpXsJUJ7wsz-AqkXnVxzjjrqnPMnNXXWU_smnvN&sig=AHIEtbRoQqTfe8W_V104xaG-4toXsP8pcw"]current estimate[/URL] of the number of households in the united states is 115 million which implies 115 million notification letters will initially be sent out (assuming since we really don't know everyone was sent a notification letter).
3. The [URL="http://dbcalc.usps.com/CalculatorSetPage.aspx"]USPO bulk mail rate[/URL] is $0.233 per mail (this is number is conservative).

If you do the math it costs the government $26,795,000 (115 million * 0.233) to send these notification letters. At cost of ~27 million and the potential of saving 510 million to 1.02 billion sending these notifications is a no brainer even if you don't take into consideration printing cost. Hell, if sending these notification gets 0.5% more people to respond you should send them out![/quote]

So there's a method to the madness... amazing

Re: More Waisted Tax Money 2010 Census
 

[quote=CRedskinsRule;671660]BS and if Bush had done it you would have hated it. The census gets free advert through the schools, and public health organizations. Glad you support the initiatives, but I wouldn't have expected otherwise.[/quote]

[LIST=1][*]I don't believe you know me well enough to know that I would have hated it if Bush had done it.[*]There is no such thing as free advertising. I'm confidant you're aware of this.[*]You don't address the issue of cost effectiveness of the ad. You look at the 2.4 million price tag like a Neanderthal would and pound your chess while screaming "oga-buga" with glee and ignorance.[/LIST]
Check this out, yeah, according Nielson the SB had [URL="http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/playoffs/2009/news/story?id=4897094"]105.97 million viewers[/URL]. At [URL="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/02/03/taxpayers-fork-million-single-census-ad-super-bowl/"]2.5 million price tag[/URL] the cost of the ad per viewer is ~0.024 cents. Bang!

Re: More Waisted Tax Money 2010 Census
 

[quote=Mattyk;671952]So there's a method to the madness... amazing[/quote]

It is only madness if you don't understand...to understand is to ask why. Unfortnatly many folks seem content with their madness.