April Shower: Shiny Census Turd

If times were not so perilous this would have once been a joy to watch the Globe furiously buff a steaming swirly but not now.

Just cleaning out the drafts before saying goodbye:

"‘Good news for Massachusetts’: Population tops 7 million, as state keeps 9 congressional seats after 2020 Census" by Matt Stout Globe Staff, April 26, 2021

New England will for now maintain its 21-seat clout in the US House of Representatives, where for the first time in a half-century none of its six states lost a seat in the country’s decennial census, according to data released Monday by federal officials.

Massachusetts’ population grew to slightly more than 7 million people last year, enjoying the largest increase of any New England state over the last 10 years at 7.4 percent, helping to retain its nine congressional seats. Rhode Island, now with nearly 1.1 million people within its tightly drawn borders, defied expectations by keeping the two House seats it has held since 1930.

The region’s ability to hold onto its seats stood in contrast to a shifting landscape elsewhere, as New York, Pennsylvania, and California were among seven states to lose a seat. The lost seats continued the steady, decades-long erosion of the Northeast’s influence on Capitol Hill, as more of the House’s 435 seats flowed south and west.

People constantly vote for freedom and against tyranny by voting with their feet!

Is that why the elections were cancelled in Canada?

Texas added two seats, bumping its total to 38, to lead a group of six states that saw their delegations expand while population growth nationwide slowed to its second-lowest rate in the country’s history.

How Republican-led Legislatures in some of those states redraw their boundaries could help eventually reshape the House by potentially making it easier for Republicans to capture districts and ultimately win back control of the chamber, costing Massachusetts’ all-Democratic delegation its own positions of power.

In this age of fraudulent elections, will it really matter? 

Both parties are traitors and controlled by the u$ual $u$pects. The differences are on the fringes only.

Even still, the 7,029,917 people counted as Massachusetts residents exceeded estimates for the state by more than 100,000 people, and the state’s rate of growth far exceeded the 3.1 percent it grew in the decade before 2010, when Massachusetts lost a congressional seat.

I love "even still," especially when it is followed by an "in fact" -- as if my pre$$ had any connection at all to those.

In fact, Massachusetts had lost a seat following three of the previous four census counts, whittling down what was a 12-seat delegation after 1970. It was that census 50 years when New England last avoided losing a seat.

Massachusetts officials largely expected the state to retain hold of its nine seats despite a tumultuous counting process. The census was buffeted by COVID-19-related delays, legal wrangling, and then-President Trump’s attempt to block undocumented immigrants from being included in the count.

In Rhode Island, Representative James R. Langevin, a Democrat who has built up 20 years of seniority after becoming the first quadriplegic to serve in Congress, said in an interview, “the big winners are the people of Rhode Island in terms of maintaining political clout. Having two voices and two votes is much better than having one.”

Monday’s release was only the initial batch of data and did not include more detailed information, such as population counts for specific cities that will help state lawmakers redraw congressional and state legislative districts.

The better-than-expected figures also indicate that census officials were able to use official documentation to count groups such as college students who were otherwise pushed off campuses, and out of reach of census-takers, at the start of the pandemic.....

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Secretary of State William F. Galvin was “relieved [as] . . . . today is good news for Massachusetts,” though he warned of potential challenges in redrawing the state’s political boundaries to account for expected higher growth in the eastern part of the state (how did that happen during a once-in-a-hundred years pandemic, 'eh?).

Related:

"U.S. Population Over Last Decade Grew at Slowest Rate Since 1930s" by Sabrina Tavernise and Robert Gebeloff New York Times, April 26, 2021

Over the past decade, the United States population grew at the second slowest rate since the government started counting in 1790, the Census Bureau reported on Monday, a remarkable slackening that was driven by a slowdown in immigration and a declining birthrate.

The bureau also reported changes to the nation’s political map: The long-running trend of the South and the West gaining population — and the congressional representation that comes with it — at the expense of the Northeast and the Midwest continued, with Texas gaining two seats and Florida one, and New York and Ohio each losing one. California, long a leader in population growth, lost a seat for the first time in history. 

That's why the borders have been thrown wide open.

The data will be used to reapportion seats in Congress and, in turn, the Electoral College, based on new state population counts. The count is critical for billions of dollars in federal funding as well as state and local planning around everything from schools to housing to hospitals.

The numbers are the product of the most embattled census process in decades. The Trump administration tried — and failed — to have a citizenship question added to the census form and to have unauthorized immigrants removed from the count.

The Census Bureau also faced a daunting task of conducting the census during a pandemic. When the Trump administration pushed it last summer to stop the count sooner than planned.

At a news conference on Monday, Gina Raimondo, the secretary of commerce, declared the count to be “complete and accurate,” but questions and potential challenges to the data will most likely surface when the Census Bureau releases the detailed demographic files for each state. Those files, which are due out by Sept. 30, are the basis for redrawing electoral districts, a messy political process that is fought in statehouses.

Want to make a quick $50,000?

Regardless of which party ultimately benefits, the findings appear to solidify a gathering pattern in American life: The South and the West are increasingly the centers of population and power, surging ahead of the Northeast and the Midwest, whose numbers have been stagnating since a high in the first part of the 20th century.

Booming economies in states like Texas, Nevada, Arizona and North Carolina have drawn Americans away from struggling small communities in high-cost, cold-weather states. In New York, 48 of 62 counties are estimated to be losing population. In Illinois, a state that also lost a congressional seat, 93 of 102 counties are believed to be shrinking. In 1970, the West and the South combined for just under half the U.S. population — now they make up 62 percent.

That is shifting political power. In all, six states gained congressional seats: Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina, Oregon and Texas, which gained two. Seven lost a seat: California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia......

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It's a “big deal, and it means the end of American exceptionalism” as the population shift to the Sun Belt has been happening for years, but its political meaning is changing. In decades past, Sun Belt gains often translated to automatic pluses for Republicans in the Electoral College. Now the calculus is more complicated. While Donald J. Trump won the four fastest-growing states — Utah, Idaho, Texas and North Dakota — President Biden won four of the next five on the list: Nevada, Colorado, Washington and Arizona. The once-in-a-decade process of counting all Americans redistributes political power based on where in the country people have moved. States that lose seats are not necessarily losing population, but are growing more slowly than the nation as a whole. That was the case for California. For most of the 20th century, the Golden State was consistently among the fastest growing in the nation. Birthrates were rising and immigrants were moving in, as were people from other states, but over the past 30 years, its growth has slowed, in large part because of an exodus of residents to states with lower costs and booming economies like Texas and Nevada. Then, over the past decade, a falling birthrate and sharp slowdown in immigration caused the state to slip behind the nation. Idaho was one of the fastest growers and much of its growth was fueled by transplants from California, previous data show. When Rachel Abroms and her husband, a psychologist with the Defense Department, began looking at houses a few years ago in Coronado, on a peninsula in the San Diego Bay, even a starter home of about 1,500 square feet cost around a million dollars, so when her husband was offered a position in Boise, Idaho, they decided to move. They eventually bought a house that was twice as big for half the price. “It’s more space,” said Abroms of the house they bought in 2019. As for Boise, “it’s small and it’s manageable, and it’s pleasant.” Another defining feature of the decade was the fall in immigration. The rates of new immigrants had been rising for years, since a modern low in the 1970s, but they mostly leveled off after the Great Recession in 2008, and went into decline during the coronavirus pandemic, said Jeffrey Passel, senior demographer at the Pew Research Center. The tapering of immigration over all has added to population woes in some states. Over the last decade, three had outright population declines: West Virginia, Mississippi and Illinois. Illinois came close to breaking even, but still lost. The Chicago area has been mostly flat in population in recent years, though an exodus of Black families from the city and a decline in immigration has caused alarm. The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, a regional planning group, said in a recent report that Illinois residents leave most frequently for Indiana, Florida, Texas, California and Wisconsin. The final driver of the country’s extraordinarily sluggish growth over the past decade is a stubbornly persistent decline in the birthrate that has surprised demographers and prompted a debate over whether the delay in childbearing is a permanent new fixture in the lives of American women. Aging populations can mean higher burdens for elder care, and slower labor force growth, with broad implications for the economy and the social safety net, but population slowdowns can also mean an improved outlook for the climate, said Professor Lee, who is also an economist, and fertility declines also reflect women’s rising roles as professionals and labor force participants. It is far from clear, Professor Lee said, where the birthrate decline that has taken hold in many rich countries is leading. “It’s uncharted waters,” he said. “The consequences of low fertility are still unfolding.”

I'm sure a smile just crossed the lips of the embattled Bill Gates, wherever he be, and now the last year of culling nursing home people and injecting killer shots into the elderly and others all makes  sense, doesn't it?

What this is really about is political scum and election fraud, and it's getting late.

UPDATE:

Conservatives aim at Census’ method for uncounted households

You have been “imputated,” voter!