Stand up and be counted - maybe

Census forms arrived in our mailboxes on Monday, and the controversy arrived as scheduled on Tuesday.

Residents of Greenfield, a local suburb, are up in arms that their census forms arrived - but used "Milwaukee" as the city on the address rather than "Greenfield". My own form is likewise addressed to a resident in Milwaukee, even though I'm firmly in West Allis.

The official response from the Census Bureau is a whopping, "eh - don't worry about it". They claim the city designation is for the convenience of the post office, and the real driver used for tabulating location is the (undecipherable) bar code on the census form itself. How...convenient.

It may well be that the information on the bar code is correct. It's likely that Milwaukee functions as the main distribution site for the suburbs in the area (some of my mail has been addressed as "Milwaukee" for years); the city is used to sort for delivery to the distribution center, where the zip + 4 is used to further sort. Still, it's a bit disconcerting.

They can't get my address right - and these are the people who want to control my health care?