Surprise!

Philip R. Klein writes of the 2010 Census in this posting on the SET Political Review:

The Southeast Texas Political Review has learned that initial censes [sic] figures show an almost 5% decrease in population in Jefferson County Texas. Meaning? That almost 12,000 people have left Jefferson County Texas in the past 10 years.

Readers may remember this from January 25, 2010:

This afternoon the Review was shown preliminary statistics that suggest that Jefferson County Texas could reach 25% of the total population in poverty. This includes men, women and children whose average income or family income lower that the poverty level.

As I pointed out at the time, the Census Bureau didn't mail the forms until March, so there could be no preliminary statistics in January. Likewise in this case, census workers will spend through July tracking down families that failed to respond by mail before any numbers are actually crunched.

As of last Thursday, the Census Bureau had only completed roughly 62 percent of the non-response interviews, so they're obviously not finished with data collection. Without a complete dataset, there are no "initial censes [sic] figures" from the Census Bureau, regardless of Klein's self-aggrandizing claims. Find more things the Southeast Texas Political Review has learned over the past three years here.

This will be further verified tomorrow when Robert Groves, Director of the U.S. Census Bureau, conducts a public briefing on progress in the 2010 Census. You can watch the actual session here after 11:00 AM Central.

According to the 2000 Census and the 2009 estimate, here's the real story:

• 2009: 243,237       
• 2000: 252,051   

You can draw your own conclusions, but the implication is obvious: Philip is manufacturing statistics again.  The rest of Klein's posting is more of his "same old think, over and over and over again." He does, however, offer some hope:

We can only be the town crier so long.

Either Klein is retiring soon, or he meant "town idiot."