A Quote by Emma Gonzalez
As constituents, we've become lazy in terms of what we want and how to get it. If we, as a constituency, don't like what Congress is doing, but 90 percent of incumbents get reelected every year, that's a problem.
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Congress is full of people who get reelected and reelected. How can you have urgency when there are all of those safe seats?
The reapportionment of 2002 designed congressional districts that favored incumbents of both parties, leaving virtually no room for challengers to be elected. Of 435 members of the House of Representatives, only four incumbents lost to nonincumbents of the other party. In all, 96 percent of incumbents were re-elected. (It was only 90 percent in 1992 and 1982 after the previous reapportionments.)
You have the same mandate whether it's a close result or - you're the President of the United States, you have to act like the President of the United States. You're the person in charge. You have to set the agenda. That's how you get yourself reelected by a much bigger number, if you want to get reelected. And that's the way you govern the country.
Eighty five percent of Americans, year in and year out, say they believe everyone should have universal coverage. The problem is everybody has a different idea of how to make it work. And unfortunately what you have is 85 percent of Americans are reasonably well-insured. And when you start thinking about how you're going to get the remaining 15 percent, everyone gets very nervous.
We can't have close to 90 percent of those prenatally diagnosed with an intellectual disability being aborted; 90 percent not going to school; more than 90 percent reporting discrimination in the healthcare system; and 90 percent unemployed, and tell ourselves that we're doing a good job. The obstacles to leading a full life for the vast majority of people with intellectual disabilities are far beyond what they should be, and far beyond what we should tolerate. So yeah, I want change.
I put a list together. It was like: Get health insurance, get a car, get a bigger apartment, travel more, get a record deal, get a publishing deal, sell 10,000 units, be a part of a No. 1 album, make a million dollars. I got to check off 90 percent of the stuff last year. I hit some serious landmarks in 2015.
I don't want to become this lazy person, a guy who thinks in terms of New Year's resolutions. I really do want to see a change in myself in certain ways, but I want to figure out exactly what they are and not have it be like a diet that I'm trying.
There's a reason why every successful person in Hollywood has like seven or eight projects up in the air at any point. It's like a 90 percent chance for each project that it'll never happen. Every project has about a 10 percent chance of getting made, unless you're like a Quentin Tarantino or somebody who just gets whatever they want to get done. But those are the rare cases.
The moot court process in our office when we get ready, we - everybody, including the SG, does two moot courts for each argument. And they are phenomenal, and they predict 90 percent of the questions that I get asked, at least 90 percent.
10 years ago [in 2006], nearly 90 percent of those albums sold enough in that year to reach Gold status. 10 years later, about 30 percent were eligible. With the new rules, we figure about 40 percent of the top 200 best-sellers for the year will be eligible. We were very cautious in our approach to changing how we calculate what is eligible because the integrity of the process is our foremost consideration. It's difficult to get certified sales awards, and it's a big deal and we didn't want there to be a huge change in how many would be eligible.
Florida is very difficult to have name ID... That's why statewide incumbents usually get reelected in Florida.
There's a reason that you hear something like 90 percent of our country wants universal background checks, but we can't get it passed legislatively. If we had a true representative democracy, 90 percent of our elected officials would want universal background checks.
Barack Obama did get a higher percentage of the vote than anybody has in this country in 20 years. I mean, it was a resounding victory. I mean, whether his core constituency was 20 percent or what, his electoral constituency, which is how we measure elections, was 53 percent, which was, you know, historically high, the highest of any Democrat, other than Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson.
Let me reminding you what Ted Cruz has told me I don't know how many times. The thing that shocked him more than anything his first few days in the Senate was how 90% of what senators do is get reelected. Ninety percent of their time is spent raising money, organizing fundraisers, dealing with the consultants and all who raise the money, planning the events. The other 10%'s being a senator. It shocked him. It was that blatant, that obvious.
It is difficult to get Latina and Asian women to speak out. We must make it clear it's not their problem, it's our problem. We need magazines like this one to keep talking about the issue. And know that we women in Congress are with you 100 percent.
Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, are motivated by all kinds of issues. They're sincerely interested in the economy, in terrorism, in social issues. But the one overriding thing they're interested in is getting reelected. And if they think that it's harder for them to get reelected by cooperating with each other, then they won't cooperate.
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