The Next Decade of April Fools

In the news today, President Obama claimed that the U.S. would go bankrupt without his massive $1.3 trillion healthcare reform.

Since many of the reforms and most of the costs are going to be phased in during the latter stages of his 10-year plan (the better to help voters forget the fiasco during the next couple of elections), he’ll probably assign his crack team from the U.S. Census Bureau to oversee these healthcare reforms. Since the senseless census only comes around every 10 years anyway, Obama won’t have to lay off any government employees and they can go right back to work on the next census after fulfilling their healthcare reform duties.

The Census Bureau seems to have the right stuff when it comes to government intrusion into our daily lives. They sent me a postcard to tell me they would send me the official census form the following week. They spent millions of dollars in advertising to encourage illegal immigrants to fill out their census forms. They mailed me the official census form. A week later, they sent me a card telling me that they had sent me the official census form.

Did anyone besides me find it ironic that the census form was supposed to be returned by April Fool’s Day? Being a good citizen my wife returned our census form on April 1. Later that day, we received another official census form in the mail, along with a letter telling us that they hadn’t received our census form back yet (since it was mailed on the day it was supposed to be mailed by). The letter also said that if we had mailed our original census form back, then we shouldn’t send the second official census form in.

Did the illegal immigrants read the letter? Did the illegal immigrants care that they weren’t supposed to return the second official form if they had already returned the first official form? After all, they’re in this country illegally, so we know they don’t exactly follow the law. If they sent in both the first and the second official census forms, will they have more representation in Washington than you and I will? Do they already have more representation in Washington than we do?

And another thing, as a good friend from Michigan recently pointed out to me, how many forests had to be destroyed to send me all of these stupid notifications from the Census Bureau? I thought Obama claimed to be a friend to environmentalists. Did part of our latest stimulus welfare checks go out to loggers and printers? I fully expect to receive another letter in the mail next week thanking me for filling out my official census form and asking me if they can keep in touch every now and then.

Sadly, this is the government at its best. It’s the reason Obama’s healthcare reform will probably be the death of me yet.