Congress must take serious look at Census — before it’s too late

It seems as though everyone is investigating the Census Bureau — except the one congressional committee that has jurisdiction over it.

And the lack of investigative enthusiasm at the House Oversight Committee, under new Chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), flared into a squabble between two ambitious politicians over the weekend.

Readers already know I’ve been conducting my own lengthy probe of Census. I’ve found that extremely important economic data have been compromised and that nobody seems to know how Census is spending its $3 billion-plus annual budget.

My probe led to an investigation of Census by the Commerce Department’s inspector general, Todd Zinser, who recently was forced out of that job. It also led to a half-hearted probe by the Oversight Committee in 2014, when it was run by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.).

Issa’s committee complained that its investigation of Census had been “obstructed” by the Commerce Department, which has authority over Census. Nobody looked into the alleged obstruction or who might have ordered it.

As half-assed as Issa’s investigation might have been, he at least put more into it than the lazy Chaffetz did. And Issa isn’t afraid to say so.

“Jason’s [Chaffetz] a good man, an honorable man, but he got his job by going to [John] Boehner and saying he would shut down that rancor that was going on … he would go along, get along — and he has done that,” said Issa during an appearance Friday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

The California lawmaker had more harsh words for his rival. “There hasn’t been a single committee report or staff report published since [Chaffetz’s] been chairman,” he added, claws clearly out and in attack mode.

The House investigation into Census has clearly been hampered by Boehner’s and Chaffetz’s pacifism. There’s still a lot that needs to be looked into, including about 120 computers that went missing at the Philadelphia Census office two months before the last presidential election.

Where are the computers? And were they used to change economic data so that the employment situation looked better than it really was — and then purposely discarded?

Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), the weepy-eyed lawmaker, is looking to leave the House and his position as Speaker. Few want his job, but Chaffetz and Issa are two who appear interested.

I don’t give a bucket of spittle who becomes Speaker. What I do care about is this: Someone at Oversight or at a second House precinct needs to continue to look into Census quality control before the Federal Reserve and others continue to use faulty economic data — data provided by Census — in their policy-making.

The Post, one of the country’s best bargains, costs “just a buck.” So I figure my column is worth about 2 cents of that buck.

So, was my Oct. 1 column worth 2 cents to you? That’s the one in which I wrote quite confidently that the next day’s employment report would be weak and that disappointing job growth would stymie a rate hike.

Everyone else thought the job growth would be strong enough to permit the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates in the near future. And that way of thinking was causing stock prices to decline.

The Fed’s help in creating a bubble is the only reason that stock prices have been climbing for the past half-decade. Once the Fed starts putting rates back to normal, investors will move into fixed rate-securities and the stock bubble will burst.

When, as I predicted, the Labor Department announced the bad employment news on Oct. 2, the stock market — after a momentary decline — started rising. And it climbed for seven straight trading sessions.

The Dow Jones industrial average was up more than 800 points before pulling back during the past two sessions. That was nearly a 5 percent increase during the winning streak.

Now, before you start thinking that I’m optimistic about the stock market like those clowns on TV — who, incidentally, were wrong about the jobs report — let me add this: Wall Street is in a bubble because of government intervention. Bubbles don’t last, and there will be a lot of very angry people when this one pops.

That, anyway, is my 2 cents’ worth for today.

So, there aren’t going to be nudes in Playboy magazine anymore.

I guess we’ll soon find out who gets the magazine for the articles — besides me, that is. Good luck with that, Mr. Hefner. (I said, GOOD LUCK WITH THAT!)

Playboy founder Hugh Hefner is 89 years old, and I figure his hearing is a little off — as is his judgment about whether men still want to see nicely photographed naked women.

Corporate profits are coming in above expectations but mainly because companies lowered the bar.

According to Thomson Reuters, 26 of the 500 companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index have reported — and 73 percent of the profits are above what was expected by Wall Street.

Normally only 63 percent beat estimates.

But before you decide that this is good news, consider that profits are expected to be down (yes, down) 4.8 percent when all the numbers are in.

And remember, keep an eye on corporate tax rates. As I reported in a couple of columns two months ago, companies play with taxes in order to get profits up.

Earnings at Johnson & Johnson, for one, were respectable in the third quarter because the company paid taxes at a lower rate.