[PRCo] Re: census challenge

[Jerry MATT Matsick]

Pittsburgh with less than 300,000 - so what? look at  New Orleans lost their people thru a Hurricane and
they are down 50% since Katrina, and many not returning, and many companies not returning, it is
what happens, look at all the Northern Rust Belt cities in the North, they are all declining in population and never will regain what they had, and after this cold snap it will lose even more.    Pittsburgh will never be what it once was.  People there will have to make the best of it or get out, I elected to do so 45 years ago, and seems like many in this group are no longer residents there either.   Allegheny county has 1.4 million and the best recommendation is for the city and county is consolidate!   Everywhere you turn in Jacksonville, you run into former Pittsburghers, Clevelanders, Philadelphians, New Yorkians, many
state they HAD to move to live!    Would I return to a Pittsburgh of the 1950s you bet!   
Jerry Matsick



-------------- Original message from Schneider Fred <fwschneider at comcast.net>: -------------- 


> And we used to have a neighbor in Crescent Hills (Penn Hills) who 
> moved there from Toledo for the job opportunities that U. S. Steel 
> presented down in Homestead. 
> 
> Politicians will try to boost numbers. Certainly there is power and 
> money based on population. 
> 
> The primary the census is conducted is to allocate members of the 
> House of Representatives. See article 1, section 2 and amendment 14 
> to the U. S. Constitution. Over the years we have added many other 
> functions to it including the distribution of funds to states. 
> 
> Politicians include, in my mind, people who are friends or supports 
> of certain groups. 
> 
> Ministers often over count the number in church on Sunday. 
> 
> I've seen people quoted telling me the drain from Pittsburgh is 
> over. Then I went to google and tried to see if I could find school 
> enrollment data for Pittsbugh City Schools ... bigger drops than 
> ever. Am I to believe they are all going to private schools at a 
> time when everybody is running out of money? I don't think so. 
> I'll willing to believe Pittsburgh will have fewer than 300,000 in 
> the 2010 census. 
> 
> My absolutely favorite story came from a man who worked for the state 
> employment service in Lancaster and who was a self-proclaimed 
> defender of all the Puerto Ricans in town. Now you understand there 
> is always safety in huge numbers. So Benny was trying to convince 
> us all that there were 10,000 Spanish people in Lancaster. I 
> studied it using school enrollment data linked to national population 
> ratios and told him my best guess was 2,000 to 2,500. He fought 
> like a stuck pig. He told me he had counted all the power records 
> and phone records and these records and those records. I said, 
> "What'ja do Benny, add them all together and count each person five 
> times?" He screamed louder. A few weeks later the 1970 census came 
> out ... 2,075. He proclaimed it was absolutely wrong. "They didn't 
> how to count." Eventually he made so much noise that ... well ... I 
> think he might have been asked if he could find some place else to 
> hang his hat. Two people disappeared. He and his girl friend in 
> the office went to Puerto Rico to live. 
> 
> I can strongly suggest that the sum of local school board censuses 
> done every year for taxation purposes will produce a county estimate 
> more accurate than any estimate the U. S. Census Bureau can do during 
> an intercensal period. The U. S. government can get a pretty good 
> start on a national intercensal number by taking the last census and 
> adding births, subtracting deaths, adding legal immigration, 
> subtracting legal out migration. But how do they handle those 
> people who simply walk across the border? And when it comes down to 
> dividing their number into states and cities, how does the federal 
> government know where to put the people? Are they using the trends 
> of the past years? Are they using local census data and wedging 
> them into the national estimates? I don't know. 
> 
> I think what we can admit to is that the ten year census is probably 
> as good today as it was in 1900 or 1800 and the weaknesses are 
> greatest in the largest cities and among people who don't wish to be 
> counted ... that has never changed. If there is a black family in 
> Kittanning, Pennsylvania, they cannot hide from the census. But 
> such a family in Philadelphia can easily hide. A homeless family in 
> Peters Township, Washington County cannot hide but the same family 
> can hide on Herron Hill or Homewood. So the accuracy is greatest in 
> small towns and worst in big cities. It has always been that way. 
> 
> 
> On Jan 15, 2009, at 1:11 PM, Dennis Fred Cramer wrote: 
> 
> > http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09015/941878-85.stm 
> > Pittsburgh has now dropped to below Toledo, OH according to the 
> > latest census estimates. Obviously every political entity will do 
> > what they can to boost numbers before the 2010 census. Too much 
> > money and political power is in the balance. 
> > 
> > This means the city is now #60 on the chart. 
> > 
> > http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/tables/09s0026.pdf 
> > 
> > Dennis F. Cramer 
> > Trombone 
> > 
> 
>