Last year there were 662 commendations issued by the General Assembly, meaning that 24% of all bills were commendations. This year, just 502 (or 15%) of bills were commendations. That seems like good news, until one considers that this year’s session was substantially shorter than last year’s — 33% briefer by design, but, of course, last year’s session went into overtime. If we peg last year’s session at 60 days, and this year’s at 45, then we can see that the rate of commendations per day is a constant: 11.1.
Thus we have Virginia’s Law of Commendations: The number of commendations issued by a legislative body directly correlates to the length of its session, at the rate of 0.079/day/legislator.
And here I thought that 95% of all statistics are made up on the spot. Now I know that someone actually THINKS about them.
I don’t know which is more depressing.
I think you are within your rights to refer to it as ‘Waldo’s law.’ Or ‘Jaquith’s law,’ as you please.