Word: usefully
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...China Books vary greatly in quality, but even the best leave me cold due to their bird's-eye view of the P.R.C. Adopting an Olympian perspective, their authors tend to use broad strokes to portray things that actually require a fine-grained touch. For example, most treat China's population as an undifferentiated mass, or one that can be bisected along just one axis: be it the 90% Han and 10% non-Han ethnic divide, the clear ideological fault line between loyalists and dissidents, and so on. And they often buy into the cozy but distorting official myth...
...were sometimes absurdly specific: in 1850, data collectors were instructed to "ascertain if there be any person in the family deaf, dumb, idiotic, blind, insane, or pauper." The 1870 Census distinguished between farmers and "farm laborers" and between housekeepers and those just "keeping house." (Enumerators were also instructed to "use the word huckster in all cases where it applies.") Until the Civil War, surveys differentiated free people from slaves, who had historically counted as three-fifths of a person...
Despite the evolution of data gathering, miscounts have occurred, particularly among the urban poor. Democrats tend to say sampling--the extrapolation of data from smaller groups--is more accurate, but Republicans, suspicious of overcounting in left-leaning areas, argue that the Constitution's use of the word actual mandates a nose count. Getting it right is important: in addition to its role in doling out congressional seats, the Census influences the allocation of more than $400 billion in federal funds that affect the lives of some 300 million Americans. How many, exactly? It'll tell us that...
...conceal details of the controversial $182 billion bailout of troubled insurance giant AIG, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner--head of the New York Fed when the e-mails were sent--was called to testify Jan. 27 on Capitol Hill, along with his Treasury predecessor Henry Paulson. At issue: the use of taxpayer money to cover AIG's debts to Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and other Wall Street firms. Both men defended the "backdoor bailout" and denied any involvement in the alleged attempt to hide the details of payments...
...case sparked a clash of worldviews. "The right of citizens to inquire, to hear, to speak and to use information to reach consensus is a precondition to enlightened self-government and a necessary means to protect it," wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy for the majority. A law declaring who can say what about elected officials, and how and when, did not pass muster. On the other side, Justice John Paul Stevens' 90-page dissent spoke admiringly of McCain-Feingold and shuddered to imagine the influence that big corporations and Big Labor might exercise over politics in the absence of such efforts...