Rhode Island works hard to reduce air pollution in our communities. We passed laws to prohibit cars and buses from idling their engines and to retrofit school buses with diesel pollution controls. But there is only so much a single state can do, particularly against out-of-state pollution.

Donald Trump disproved the notion that there is a direct dollar-for-dollar correlation between how much money you had in your traditional war chest and what your election outcome was going to be.

The Ryan budget gets rid of Medicare in 10 years and turns it into a voucher program.

I don't think you earn the right to a message until you've earned it by having a real fight, really being willing to stand up for what you believe in.

I, for one, despite being a pretty solid climate hawk, I am extremely sympathetic to West Virginia and its coal-country needs. I lived there for a year. I've seen it. And the same for Wyoming, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky. They all have parts of their state where that really matters. And I think that home-state constituency issue is a pretty constant one. And I think the problem of extreme lobbying by the corporate sector, which runs about $30-to-$1 compared to everybody else in the world, and the constituent aspect combines to give those industries a consistent advantage.

Once people know that you can spend the money and that you're willing to spend the money and that you're set up to spend the money in politics, then your threat to spend the money is as convincing as actually spending it.

When counting on learning from innovation, there are great successes but also failures. The Wright Brothers invented the aircraft and started an amazing process of innovation, where we now have planes that carry 500 passengers. Along the way there were some silly looking vehicles that crashed early on.