Counting

First, they send millions of letters saying that they are going to send a letter. Then the Census form comes. The first instruction is to count all people, including babies... then you are supposed to count all the homeless people who stay in your house April 1. After counting all the people, including babies and homeless, you can successfully answer Question 1. Question 2 asks whether, in addition to all the people and babies and homeless, and after "counting all people, including babies, who live and sleep here most of the time", were any other people that were left out. The options include "babies" and "people staying here temporarily" (homeless?). Could this be any dopier?

Besides being designed for morons by morons, the main point of the questions seems to be about categorizing people by race. - clearly not what the census is supposed to accomplish.

And we are told that the government will spend $1 billion plus following up with people who don't respond or have difficulty answering the questions.

The Census question line informs you that there are reasons for asking all these questions about race. Two of the reasons are to assist in drawing up congressional districts (according to race? that can't be right) and in distributing government programs (according to race? that can't be right)

What is going on here?