Jason Guidry's Shenanigans Blog

Today I got a letter in the mail from the Census Bureau. I assumed it was the actually census. It was in fact a letter simply telling me that in a week or so I would receive my census form and to please fill it out. Are you kidding me? How much money was wasted on that letter? Let’s do some quick math.

• First Class Postage:  $0.44

• One Sheet of Paper: $0.01

• Printing Cost: $0.10

• Envelope: $0.02

• Total Cost for 1 Letter: $0.57

Now 57 cents doesn’t sound like a lot, but multiply that times the total number of households in the USA (which in 2009 was about 113,567,967 according to the Census Bureau) the cost comes out to around $64,733,741. Seriously? Over $64 million dollars wasted just to tell me I’ll get more mail from the Census Bureau next week?

I wish that were the end of it, but almost daily I see Hollywood quality commercials staring ‘B’ actors making we aware of the upcoming Census. How much did that cost? According to one Marketing website, $133 million was being spent on TV advertising. I think that is probably low considering that many of these ads were run during the Winter Olympics and other prime advertising times.

Add those two cost together, and we are approaching $200 million (that’s $200,000,000) on advertising and making the citizens aware of the Census. The two items discussed here haven’t even scratched the surface of the cost of advertising the 2010 Census. If we really looked into it, I’m sure we would find much more spent on radio ads, newpaper ads, flyers, posters, and other useless marketing tricks to get the word out about the Census.

So we are in a budget crisis, and the Census Bureau is spending money on silly advertising campaigns? I’m sure there are a lot of school systems out there who could do a lot with the $200 million. I have to raise the Shenanigans flag on this one! Thanks U.S. Census Bureau! Glad to see our hard earned tax dollars being put to good use!

I find it odd that President Obama called for an increase in nuclear power plants in his State of the Union speech, but completely cut funding for the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository in his 2010 budget. Below is the portion for the budget located here.

TERMINATION: YUCCA MOUNTAIN NUCLEAR WASTE REPOSITORY
Department of Energy
The Administration has determined that Yucca Mountain, Nevada, is not a workable option for a nuclear waste repository and will discontinue the Department of Energy’s program to construct a repository at the mountain in 2010. The Department will carry out its responsibilities under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act within the Office of Nuclear Energy as the Administration develops a new nuclear waste management strategy.