My struggles have been around protecting our air quality, protecting people from mercury in fish. I was very involved in the effort to get the FDA to recognize that mercury in fish is a real health issue and the FDA, you know, needed to be on that. But they were very tight with the fishing industry and did not want the public to be aware in the same way that they later didn't want the public to be aware of the problems with Vioxx, and they sat on the studies for many years and allowed 140,000 people to develop heart disease.

In an election like this one [in 2016], not only are voters dissatisfied, but where the foundations of our economy, our democracy, our ecosystem, and international war and peace are really crumbling and are really at grave risk for failing in many ways, we need desperately to have an honest public conversation about both the track record of where we've been, what are the critical problems we are facing and what it will take to solve them.

When Pearl Harbor was bombed, you know, there was a whole lot of buy-in to a national mobilization. And 25% of the economy was transformed in six months. And we're not calling for six months, we're saying 15 years. That's about what we've got. And probably all that we've got.

The Obama administration has embraced the policies of George W. Bush, and then gone much further. Wall Street bailouts went ballistic under Obama - $700 billion under Bush, but $4.5 trillion under Obama, plus another $16 trillion in zero-interest loans for Wall Street.

While the President [Barack Obama] did a good thing when he said he personally supported equal marriage, he then quickly backed away and said that he wasn't going to do anything about it - that it was a state matter, and that he wasn't going to interfere, as opposed to being than being a real advocate for equality across the board in marriage. He also, I think two weeks prior to that statement, refused to sign an executive order to establish equal rights in the workplace for the LGBT community.

I have the unique liberty as part of the Green Party that operates on the same terms. We have the ability to actually speak for everyday Americans. We are not controlled by major donors, by the influence of big banks, by fossil fuel giants, by war profiteers or insurance companies.

We spend $3 trillion a year [on healthcare] and we're only getting sicker.