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Show Als The Salt Lake Tribune OPINION Wednesday, September 9, 1998 It’s Easy to Overlook Urbanites With GOP’s Version of Census er to blockthis. They've filed a lawsuit — financed by taxpayers including me spe the other uncounted millions — andsi far are winningin court They would like thepublic to believe there is a high constitutional principle involvedin makingthe census an‘actual daucieration I haven't been counted. In 1980, the yearof the first census in which I have shown up in the national count, I lived in a New York City ment and never got a form. The people who take pride in want to denyrepresentation to millions of Americans who,byvirtue of going uncounted, voice. accu- rately counting the number of American be affected dramatically by a more accu rate count. But withinthestates, power would shift, and that’s the crux of the By 1990, I was livingin the District of There's something that goes wrong with the census every 10 years, and the numbers crunchers know precisely what it is: People wholive in centralcities are very hard to count. Wherethere is a high proportion of renters, a mobile population, a cacophony of languages spoken, great numbers of unmarried individuals and people who fear for their safety and so resist the pleadings of even the best-intentioned outsiders, there is a nightmare for nosecounters, There’s been an undercount of the population throughout history, according to the Census Bureau, but thestatistical gap had been narrowing through the latter half of the 20th century. Then it started to broaden in 1980. The next cen- ployees, or the agency for which they major motion picture. Rarer still are While reasonable people knowthat FEMA is not part of somesinister plot involving aliens and a government take- over,there likely remain manywho, de- spite our best efforts and the scores of serious natural disasters over the last few years, don’t know exactly what FEMAis or what it does. Since 1979, when it came into being, the FEMA mission has been formally summarized this way: to reduce the loss shamed President The rate at which people were undercounted was much higher in cities and among blacks, Latinos, immigrants and publican lawmakersinstate capitals con: trolling the map-writing. Oncea political Republican) suburbs, there are more Re- man, his longtimeally, may finally have conveyedto Clinton the extent to which others whoaredifficult to count. Blacks, partywields the pencil, it draws congres- for example, wereabout five times more likely to have been missed than were sional districts most beneficial to itself his actions had, in Lieberman's words. ‘compromised his moral author whites. but twice, they effectively disenfranchised me. Add in all the others who Now we're approaching the 2000 Census, with a nation more ethnically diverse and more mobilethanit was a dec- ade ago. Thestatisticians at the Census Bureau — just as they did in 1990 — believe they have a sound mathematical way to address the undercount and want to implement it. Congressional Republi- cans, fearing an accurate count will tip things a bit toward Democratic-leaning cities, are doing everythingin their pow- types of hazards, through a comprehen: sive. risk-based emergency management program of mitigation, preparedness, re sponse andrecovery. While this characstrikingly simple: Before, during andafter disaster, FEMAis there to help. ception seriously confuses the true mission of FEMA, floor last Thursday bright Senate sions about his dalliance with a White terization touches on a number of differ- for Best Federal Agency in a Conspiratorial Role notwithstanding, such a con- Lieberman's speech on the counts giveless powerto (heavily Democratic) cities and more powerto(largely theiractivities consideredpart of a glob- ernment. A possible nod at Oscar time the president tries to “blur the lines of right and wrong ery 10 years andto theextent that census aliens from the general population. In the recent filmversion of the popular “X-Files” television program, the Federal Emergency Management ey, or FEMA, has the dubious distinction of being cast in the role of Evil Big Gov- al conspiracy to hide the presence of quently depicted the tragic cons« quences when someone as important as sus, in 1990, was theleast accurate in tion’s critical infrastructure from all work, find themselves the subject of a elo it’ oflife and propertyandprotect our na- It is not often that government em- man, the Connecticut Democrat, Clintonintosaying “I'mvery sorry about history, with some 5 million peopleleft out ofthe tally. Byfailing to count menot only were missed and mystate and mycities lost representation andmillionsin feder- al aid Since then, I've added another child and, yes, a third toilet. I moved to the suburbs and nowfit the profile of some: onethe Republicans want very much to count. To them, I am finally a full fledged American. They have a perverse interpretation of the Constitutionthat no one ever learned in school ent responsibilities, the core remains With approximately 2,500 full-time employees, FEMAis amongthe smallest federal departments oragencies, To supplement our efforts in a majordisaster response, werely on hundredsof temporary and reserve employees as well as volunteers. These are the people, in some cases your friends and neighbors, who make up much of the agency. Residents and communities who have gotten to know FEMAfirsthand because that govern- ment cannotensure a complete recovery. Yet FEMA's programs — ranging from housing assistancetocrisis andfloodvictims in Fort Collins, Colo., and Grand Forks, N.D., our government, which is often criticized, has madeareal difference Government can sometimes seemmysterious andunresponsive. Whenthat occurs,it reflects a failure on the part of those who are asked to help make it work. Theonly remedyis openness and goingthat extra mile to makesure that people get the help that is available to them. Granted, government cannot make you whole after a catastrophic natural disaster, but it can and should help you eer, S.D. get back onyourfeet It is rare for most of us within FEMA to find ourselves a part, however small andbrief, of popularculture. But while the agency's 15 minutes of Hollywood fameis sureto beshort-lived, our commitmentto helping communitiesrecov from, and lessentheeffects of, disaster loss is not, beit flood, tornado, earthquakeor, yes, evenalien invasion counseling to infrastructure repair — are often vital There are hundreds of thousands of people who, in thelast 10 years alone, have benefited from FEMA's support. In the case of the tornado victims in Spen- Rick Weilandis the regional director for FEMA’s Region VII, which is based in Denver and includesthestates of Col: orado, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming. DAVID BRODER has been wallowing, Sen. Joseph Lieber political stratagem NEWSDAY There’s No Hollywood Glitz in FEMA’s Real Mission BYRICK WEILAND WASHINGTON — In the ery of con sciencethat atleast briefly lifted official Washington out of the morass in which it State legislatures redraw legislative andcongressional district boundaries ev Columbia, having accumulated over the course of the decade a husband, a baby and a secondflushtoilet. So there were three ofus, not to mention the additional toilet, that went uncounted. are robbed of their political It’s not so much that the division of 435 House seats amongthestates would housing units with flush toilets missed me and the single toilet in my one-bedroom Queens apartment. ‘Ten yearslater, they missed me again. Character Rates Above Talent as the Constitution envi- sions. In fact, their motive anti-constitutional and morally bankrupt: They MARIE COCCO might headapart- Politicians, Journalists Learning the next morning — words he had not THE WASHINGTON POST WRITERS GROUP beenabletoutterin his previous discus. House intern andhis attempts to deny the truth. The heartfelt words of Lieber But it is not only the political world that has been wrestlingwith the issues of honestyandcredibility so starkly framed byClinton. The September issue of American Journalism Re lished by the University of Mary aplenty along the road to disaster” that more vigilant editors presumably would haveseen and respondedto. But he concludes that the Cincinnati editor, likethe others, “did what editors ultimately have to do: He trusted his reporter, Because that’s what the system rests on. Sure, you raise questions and challenge assumptions and check facts and put the reporter's work to thetest. But whenit comesto the issueofintegrity, you trust the reporter. If you have serious reason to believe a reporter votes most ofits news coverage : mentaryto thescandals that have might be making things up andlying to newspapers and television in recent his employer. it’s time for that reporter weeks, Both make valid points. There is more criticism of the press today than in the past and, in some instancesat least, the critics are being heeded. It is also true that trust between editors and reporters is an essential ingredient of any good news organization. But it strikes me that asserting those truisms is inadequate a response to the journalistic scandals as Lieberman and others rightly said Clinton’s own response to his acknowledged actions had been raising fundamental questions about the trustworthiness of my busi ness. In a short span of time, we suffered successive blows to our reputation. CNN hadtoretract the charge made inone of its documentaries that American forces had used nerve gas against suspected U.S. deserters in Laos. The Cincinnati Enquirer apologized for, and gave some $10 million to, Chiquita Brands Interna: tional after saying that some of the infor mation in an expose of that company’s practices had come fromillegal its reporter into Chiquita’s voice-mail network. And The Globe rid itself of two prominent loc: | columnists, Barnicle, Patricia Smith and Mike for concocting stories they passed off to the readers as real-life events, Reese Cleghorn, the magazine's presi dentandthed of Maryland's College of Journalism, finds a silver liningin this cloud. “Today, thepress relentlessly ex poses its own bad performances,’ writes in his column. he “Here is something that journalists, amid their current em to be someplaceelse.” In bothpolitics and journalism, there has been a tendency to “blur the line,” especially for those whose talent and ability seemextraordinary. The common thread of these incidents is that they all involved not marginal performers but stars, It was in fact the professional skills theypossessed, the ones that made them so valuable to their organizations, that shielded them when the warning lights flashed. We saw the same thing at The Wash- ingtonPost 18 years ago when oneofthe mostbrilliant reporters evertojoin the staff concocted a phony story about a child being shot up with heroin by her mother’s lover. It blew upinto the most barrassments, may take pride in; A jour nalist may get away with weak journal ismorjust careless reporting. But you can't often get away withdeliberatefal embarrassing retraction any of us have endured. sifications or earth-shattering exposes that have no ‘sbstanee. The press will find y pu out rl editor of the Journal, Rem Rieder, a faculty colleague of Cle; and Bill Clinton were clearly among the most talented politicians of their generations. But their character flaws were well advertisedlong before theyreached the White House. Voters ignored those stance. Hewrites in his column that in all these cases, “there were warning lights great anguish that talent is no substitute horn’s, 12 5= takes a slightly morecritic: Similarly in polities. Richard Nixon warning lights,” only to learn with for character. Ss ee a . LOAN oO = % 0 SAVE ON OUR LOWEST LOAN RATES OF THE SEASON. To celebrate this landmark occasion, Zions Bankis offering super-low rates on manyof its most popular loans. From home equity loans and credit lines to personal loans and credit cards. Not to mention a special deal on conventional home mortgage loans. Just be sure to apply soonbyvisiting anyoffice or calling Teleloan at 1.800.789.LOAN —these rates are good only through October 31, 1998. ZIONS BANK Member FDIC www.zionsbank.com Equal housing lender |