You may have wondered from time to time at the antics of Congress. Surely they cannot be as stupid as you think they are?
Well, there's some objective evidence that Congress has dropped a full grade in its language usage. Currently, their speeches as taken from the Congressional Record and analyzed using the Fleisch-Kinmcaid method indicate that they sound like someone with a tenth grade achievement level -- a decline of a full year since the 1990's. It is not known if this change is due to newer members being less verbasl, or Congress simply getting stupider or more lazy with time.
And you wonder why the galleries in the Capitol are not SRO? Apparently, this decline is bipartisan -- the slightly higher language use levels by Democrats over Republicans are not statistically significant. Someone got the best Congress money could buy. But not me.
Well, there's some objective evidence that Congress has dropped a full grade in its language usage. Currently, their speeches as taken from the Congressional Record and analyzed using the Fleisch-Kinmcaid method indicate that they sound like someone with a tenth grade achievement level -- a decline of a full year since the 1990's. It is not known if this change is due to newer members being less verbasl, or Congress simply getting stupider or more lazy with time.
And you wonder why the galleries in the Capitol are not SRO? Apparently, this decline is bipartisan -- the slightly higher language use levels by Democrats over Republicans are not statistically significant. Someone got the best Congress money could buy. But not me.
That sort of explains things -- they ARE stupider!
ReplyDelete'Congress Is Getting Dumber'
ReplyDeleteI didn't think that was possible.
And getting stupider.
ReplyDeleteI've been saying this for a long time, but nobody listened to me. I guess I should have used a spiffy graph.
ReplyDeleteBasically, Congress is speaking on the floor using less complex sentence structure. This may be in part due to the desire for sound bites to make the news, rather than to persuade other members of Congress. I remember watching C-Span seeing a member of Congress addressing a largely absent Congress.
ReplyDelete