I talk to nurses and programmers, salespeople and firefighters - people who bust their tails every day. Not one of them - not one - stashes their money in the Cayman Islands to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.

Middle class America is acutely aware of how bad this economy is, and it is going to demand changes. I don't think politicians can afford to be complacent.

Personal responsibility matters. There are no excuses for those who spend money on things they cannot afford. But it's a whole lot harder to act responsibly when consumer credit contracts are designed to be incomprehensible, when prices are obscure and risks are hidden.

There are those who believe justice and dignity are reserved only for some people. Young men have died in police custody, and the growing heel of poverty has worn down harder on children of color...We must fight back.

You know, the old version was about balancing a checkbook. The new version is about the risks of debt, which is so much more widely available. So I think it's important that we design relevant financial literacy courses, and teach them starting early in grade school.

Right now, with millions of Americans still out of work, and struggling to recover from the worst economic downturn since the great depression, with 40 million Americans dealing with student loans, with millions of people working full-time at minimum wage and still living in poverty, with the big banks getting bigger and the workers getting poorer, and seniors struggling to make ends meet, Republicans in Washington have decided the most important thing for them to focus on is how to deny women access to birth control.

I want to be blunt: We should not be fighting about equal pay for equal work, and access to birth control, in 2012. These issues were resolved years ago - until the Republicans brought them back.