When you grow up a fatherless son, in many ways you have to raise yourself. No one tells you what looks good on you, how to carry yourself, or provides the approval. Without a father, you grow up never knowing what you didn't have. There is no intimate model of who you want to become, so it's as if you're always guessing.
Advances in automation, artificial intelligence and robotics, while increasing productivity, will also cause major upheavals to the workforce.
Since Day 1 of his candidacy, Donald Trump has divided our country and threatened our democracy, attacked the middle class and alienated our allies. Under his administration, real people are being hurt.
In Colorado, we passed universal background checks and magazine limits. We need to do that nationally, and we need to raise the purchase age, extend waiting periods for gun purchases, fund gun violence research, pass red flag laws, and more - no matter how hard the gun lobby tries to block it.
When I opened my first brew-pub, I did not include a checkbox on hiring applications that required applicants to disclose criminal convictions. And we were better for it.
If you don't trust the media, they are not going to trust you, and if they don't trust you, it's hard for the public to trust you.
Some day, someone will do something wrong and there will be a scandal to report in the paper. When that happens, we will address it honestly and openly and try to deal with it as quickly and as fairly as we can, and keep moving the city forward.
Many of the basic lessons of business, such as the critical value of customer service or measuring risk against reward when investing capital, have essential application in government, but not in a vacuum.
Oftentimes, when constituencies or sectors of opinion are distinct, when they are confronted with a situation where they're going to have to make a serious compromise, they react very negatively publicly, but they also recognize when they step back that this is right.
The vice president can play a real role in that, in helping solve some of the biggest problems in the country.
Democracy is based upon empathy and the recognition that some decisions are solely for the community's benefit without regard to one's own narrow self-interest.
Secure the border; have an ID system that works. Have a guest worker system. And then, finally, hold businesses accountable. Once you do that, most of the chambers of commerce and those who are clamoring around immigration will take a deep breath and relax.
As a businessman, I learned something that Donald Trump never figured out: It isn't about how many times you yell, 'You're fired,' but instead, how many times you say, 'You're hired.'
Last, in restaurants you spend a lot of time dealing with people who are very unhappy. Soup has been spilled on their laps, they've waited 10 minutes to get their check so they can leave, and you learn how to listen, I think, in a much more proactive way than government does.
In 1999, I found myself the unlikely leader of a community-based effort to protect what was arguably Colorado's most important brand, and one once thought to be untouchable: the 'Mile High' part of Denver's Mile High Stadium.
The Democratic Party is always going to be the party of civil rights and fairness - everybody gets an equal, fair shot at the American dream. And we're going to be the party that really fights to protect planet Earth - enjoy whatever time we're going to get!
Let's face it: the War on Drugs was a disaster. It may be well intentioned... but it sent millions of kids to prison, gave them felonies oftentimes when they had no violent crimes.
Slavery is the nagging, unrelenting shame of America that continues to deny the true promise of the country to too many its citizens. If we ever hope to change that, we must begin by owning our past and acknowledging the shame, the sin, the injustice, and the ongoing consequences of enslaving an entire race of people.
Colorado has always been a good place to find what you're made of.
I think we're in good shape, but the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina is in some small way mitigated by the fact that we now have more people talking about it, thinking about it and working on it, so that we will be more vigilant and ready.
