The 9% Congress

The 9% Congress


Don’t you just love percentages? Sometimes I view percentages like Will Rogers viewed statistics, you know, “There are lies, damn lies, and statistics (percentages)” and just like statistics, percentages are about as subjective as you can get when defining Human endeavors. For example, how many times have we all scoured over our favorite baseball player’s batting percentages only to speculate with cynical wisdom, about the chances of our employment survival with a 323 average of performance success? And how about the chances of rain percentages that the weather guessers are always laying on us? I mean, is it really possible to get wetter if you are caught in a 90% chance of rain rather than a 30% chance. I have a remarkable and very unscientific theory about things like this based upon a lifetime of observations while usually sipping away on an ice-cold brewski, and it goes like this. Compensation (money, etc.) is usually inversely proportional to the importance of the job or position. Just think about it. The President of the US of A makes considerable less money than a tobacco-chewing and mediocre big leaguer while a really important job, like garbage collector, barely makes enough jack to buy cigarettes while trying to support a family. I think we all can validate my theory many times over. In an odd sort of way, this brings me to a recent Rasmussen poll that confirms what most of us already knew and that is about 9% of Americans think the highly compensated members of the United States Congress are doing a good or excellent job. When I saw the percentages listed in this poll, I was immediately drawn to the 9 % number. What attracted my attention was not the confirmation of my own feelings that the number represents, but rather the glaring 9% number sitting there all by itself. Let me explain, or pontificate if you prefer. The Pew research center reports that the American electorate has come to be divided along political party lines by the following percentages: 30% Democrat, 30% Republican and 30% Independent. Well I’m not a rocket scientist but I can calculate that 30 plus 30 plus 30 equals 90% of the electorate. So what happened to the remaining 10% of the American electorate that the poll failed to address? Well Rasmussen may not know who you are, but you 10% out there know who you are, and so do I. I have always been a little dismayed and a little envious of this 10% because they are the ones who never seem to go along with the rest of us because they don’t give a damn about what’s going on around them or what other people think about them for that matter. You know what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about the 10% who say out loud “I don’t want to work, just want to bang on the drum all day.” This of course brings us back to that glaring 9% number that is close enough to the 10% number to be “within the margin of error” so it occurred to me that the “don’t give a damn” 10% are the very same ones who think that the highly compensated members of Congress are doing a good or excellent job because they too (the highly compensated members of Congress) Don’t want to work, they just want to bang on the drum all day.