Nonsense about Randomness

One of the useful things the federal government does for the economy is produce information as a public good. And the American Community Survey is chock full of information that's useful to researchers, companies, curious individuals, policymakers at different levels of government, etc. But House Republicans have decided that they want to kill it, and it seems clear that some of them have a passion for the cause that completely exceeds their understanding of the issue. Representative Daniel Webster, for example, is a sponsor of the anti-ACS survey in part because he thinks $70 per survey respondent is "not cost effective ... especially since in the end this is not a scientific survey. It’s a random survey." [Emphasis added.]