CHICAGO - John Crudele of the New York Post says that Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel may have had something to do with the fake numbers the Census Bureau put out on employment data near the 2012 election.
A congressional investigation is now onto the situation to find out exactly what happened and if the infamous "Chicago Way" of doing politics had anything to do with how those phony numbers came to be. Today Crudele adds more - and it links back to Emanuel when he was a part of the Obama Administration.
Back in 2009 — right before the 2010 census of the nation was taken — there was an announcement that the Obama administration had decided that the Census Bureau would report to senior White House aides.
The rumor was that Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was in charge of the nationwide head count.
The chief of the Commerce Department usually oversees the Census, which determines how many congressional representatives and how much money each state gets for the next decade. But the Obama administration had decided — the story went — that Emanuel was a better guy for the job.
And, Crudele says -
The supervisor who was fingered by [whistle blower] Buckmon did admit that he told other survey takers to hand in half-filled-out interviews. And the White House always has pretty good influence at the Census Bureau, even if it didn’t get its wish for Emanuel.
Maybe it’s just my deeply ingrained distrust of authority — especially when it resides in Washington — or my hope that a good story will last, but I’m betting 60/40 that the White House had grand plans for Census. And some of those may have been carried out.
