No disrespect to the federal government (except for the oil spill, the wars, Congress, etc.), but the folks who designed the American Community Survey questionnaire must be flippin’ out of their minds.

The first thing it does is ask for your name and phone number, in case the feds want to call. Now that’s reassuring.

I’m sitting at the dining room table trying to race through it.

Didn’t want to fill it out in the first place.

My attitude isn’t good: this stuff is not the federal government’s business.

What is my race? How many bedrooms in my house? When did I buy my house? What was my gas bill last month? What was my electric bill last month?

Let’s stop and think about that for a moment. What was my utility bill? Can’t remember, exactly. How much of that was gas? How much was electricity? We Energies doesn’t bill exactly by the month. I could look all this stuff up, but naaah. Just ballpark it.

What good is knowing what a single month’s gas bill was? What about the other 11 months?

What is my house worth? What are my property taxes? How much is my mortgage? How much are my monthly mortgage payments? How much did I pay for water and sewer over the last year?

Wow — do they really expect me to remember what my last four water bills were? And why do I need a year’s worth of water charges, but only a month’s worth of utility bills?

The census people presumably expect Milwaukee respondents to go back through a year’s worth of bills and take out all the other charges the city now dumps on them. That ain’t going to happen in my house. Move on.

Am I deaf? Am I blind? Do I speak a foreign language? How many times have I been married? Do I have trouble dressing or bathing? Who do I work for? At what street address? How much did I make in wages last year? How much did I make in dividends and interest?

Intrusive questions. Don’t really know the answers to some and, given my druthers, wouldn’t answer anyway. The  coercion behind the US government mandating my cooperation really is irritating.

My own questions and answers: Do I feel very invested in this? No. Do I just want to get it done and over with? Yup. Are my replies accurate? Well….yes, if I knew the answers off the top of my head. The rest are just guesstimates that I figure are at least as accurate as the early government estimates of the rate of leakage from the gulf oil catastrophe.

Do I think I’m fairly typical of the innocent folks mandated to fill out this stupid form? Yes.

Should federal officials base any sort of policy on the results of a too-complex survey filled out by resentful people who do not know all of the answers?

No. But they will.