When you have no real power, go public - really public. The public is where the real power is.

What do the Republicans say? Donald Trump? They say they're just going to roll back the Dodd-Frank regulations. They want to undermine the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

My mother saved our home with a minimum wage job. But in the 1960s, a minimum wage job would support a family of three above the poverty line. Not today. Not even close. I understood right then that people can work hard, they can play by the rules, and they can still take a hard smack.

It takes money to run political campaigns. This is a cancer growing on the soul of our democracy.

The total amount of money that Wall Street handed out in bonuses last year was double the total income of ALL full-time minimum wage workers. That's obscene.

We're Americans. We celebrate success. We just don't want the game to be rigged.

The bankers might not have said it in so many words, but gradually their strategy emerged: Target families who were already in a little trouble, lend them more money, get them entangled in high fees and astronomical interest rates, and then block the doors to the bankruptcy exit if they really got in over their heads.