The politics of fear has brought us everything we are afraid of, including the endless wars, the collapsing economy - all the rest.

I came from a very comfortable, middle-class family living in Highland Park, Illinois.Really growing up in a Jewish community with a fabulous public school.

Just in the course of an hour, people didn't need to be persuaded. They just needed to hear, oh my god, there is another plan here which is about the public interest.

We have a First Amendment for good reasons. We need a free press because without an educated electorate we cannot have a functioning democracy.

I have had a long tug-of-war going on with the FDA, in particular, and with other regulatory agencies, and it has nothing to do with vaccines.

In my view, this is not extremism on the left. This is what the American people support in poll after poll. Support the right to a job. Support living wages. Support real climate action. Support small community-based banks that make loans available to every day people and small businesses, not these too-big-to-fail banks that rip us off, that crash the economy at taxpayer expense. Support a public-option healthcare system, not Obamacare, which has been a boondoggle for insurance and pharmaceutical companies.

What happened in Cuba, just to cut to the chase, their death rate from diabetes went down 50%, their death rate from heart attacks and stroke went down approximately 30% and all-cause mortality went down 18% while they adhered to the system. Then they opened up their pipeline again from Venezuela, and their health improvements went away.