Automation and technology would be a great boon if it were creative, if there were more leisure, more opportunity to engage in raising a family, providing guidance to the young, all the stuff we say we need. America will work if we're all in it together. It'll work when there's a shared sense of destiny. It can be done!

The farmers markets were another step to giving people an opportunity to take more power over their own lives-and also to provide another outlet for organic produce. That is important because the production and distribution of food is increasingly being monopolized and controlled by large corporate structures, large financial structures.

We’re being ripped off and screwed by a bunch of liars, thieves, crooks, and criminals, and they’re not the folks below. Don’t look in the streets, look in the corporate suites.

Were I to stop oil production, we`d have to import it from Iraq and from Caracas, Venezuela or from North Dakota where the environmental standards are much lower, on trains that have already proven themselves unsafe, or by more ships that are causing significant pollution in the world. It`s just really dumb.

Taking significant amounts of carbon out of our economy without harming its vibrancy is exactly the sort of challenge at which California excels.

Pension reform can be hard to talk about. In the long run, reform now means fewer demands for layoffs and less draconian measures in the future. It's in the best interest of all Californians to fix this system now.

I question whether we can afford to teach mother macramé when Johnny still can't read.