Who can sit back as our towns and cities are torn apart by violence and be content with the status quo?

Job creation is a choice. Investing in cleaner, greener technologies that allow us to strike a more sustainable balance with the other living systems of this earth - this, too, is a choice.

We are already witnessing a transformation in the U.S. economy to increased production of lower carbon energy through fuel switching to natural gas and expansion of wind, solar, geothermal, and other renewable non-carbon intensive energy sources.

Let's talk about policing and public safety. Let's debate what works and what does not. We must abandon practices that do not work, and do more of the things that actually do work to save lives.

Progress is a choice. Job creation is a choice. Whether we give our children a future of more or a future of less - this, too, is a choice.

We have now under President Obama's leadership had 29 months in a row of private sector job growth. That stretch of positive private sector job growth hasn't happened since 2005. We still have a long way to go, but we are moving in the right direction.

When you create an economy where you subsidize corporate profits through a welfare program and food stamps in order to keep wages low in some perverse pursuit of 'competiveness,' than you reap the fruits of the anger that you sow.

Facts are facts: No president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the Great Depression inherited a worse economy, bigger job losses or deeper problems from his predecessor. But President Obama is moving America forward, not back.

None of us wants to pay more at the pump.

Typically, I don't get to unwind after a day at work.

Leadership is about making the right decision and the best decision before, sometimes, it becomes entirely popular.

Justice must be done in investigating the tragic death of Mr. Freddie Gray. His family deserves our deepest sympathy and respect for their loss, and our admiration for their courage in calling us, as a city, to act as our better selves.

While different states and cities might look to different strategies for protecting public safety, we all can agree on this: we lose too many American lives to gun violence.

So, look, in order to move our country forward, we have to do the things our parents and grandparents did. They believed enough in our country to invest in our country, to create jobs, to make modern investments. And those are the things that we need to get back to with a balanced approach.

But we should not lose sight of how far we are coming and what a big hole we were left by George W. Bush.

We have not recovered all that we lost in the Bush recession. That's why we need to continue to move forward.

Romney economics would spell disaster for America's middle class. In this economy there are shipbuilders and ship wreckers.

In times of adversity - for the country we love - Maryland always chooses to move forward. Progress is a choice. Job creation is a choice. Whether we move forward or back: this too is a choice.

Together with President Obama, we are moving America forward, not back.

Our parents and grandparents understood this truth deeply. They believed - as we do - that to create jobs, a modern economy requires modern investments: educating, innovating and rebuilding for our children's future. Building an economy to last, from the middle class up, not from the billionaires down.

Our story, Maryland's story, is the story of better choices and better results.

Some people see Baltimore as a hopeless place. Some have even made a lot of money on it.

The Republican Party is doubling down on this trickle-down theory that says, 'Thou shalt concentrate wealth at the very top of our society. Thou shalt remove regulation from wherever you find it, even on Wall Street. And thou shalt keep wages low for American workers so that we can be more competitive.'

I think former President Clinton and even Newt Gingrich have said it was a mistake to repeal Glass Steagall.

Oh, you know what, it's an honor to be mentioned in the company of those that might lead our country forward after President Obama.

Doing difficult things like passing marriage equality, passing the Dream Act, doing common sense things that allow new American immigrants to fully participate, pay their taxes, play by the rules and take care of their families. That's the inclusive America that I believe all of us want to move to.

I was motivated to go into public life because of the great chasm that exists between justice and injustice in our country. Nowhere is that divide greater than in America's cities.

When the citizens of Baltimore banded together to repel the British during the War of 1812, three in five were immigrants, and one in five was black - some were free, some slaves.

The most fearless hearts, the audacious dreamers, have always maintained a sense of optimism that often flies in the face of the available evidence.

When I was in Grade 9, there was an election for high school president, and one of the candidates told us that if we elected him, he would abolish homework. He promised this to the entire student body from the stage in the school gymnasium.

Gilles Duceppe avoids making campaign promises altogether so he can emphasize that his Bloc Quebecois has only one objective: to prevent Harper from forming a majority government.

The presidency of the United States is not some crown to be passed between two families.

We haven't had an agenda for American cities probably since at least Jimmy Carter. We have left cities to fend for themselves.

Senator Mikulski has done an outstanding job representing Maryland in the U.S. Senate for nearly 30 years.

I did not dedicate my life to making Baltimore a safer and more just place because it was easy.

There are people in whole parts of our cities who are being totally left behind and disregarded. They are unheard. They are told they are unneeded by this economy. And that extreme poverty breeds conditions for extreme violence.

The way forward is always found through greater respect for the equal rights of all.

Back on September 11, terrorists attacked our metropolitan cores, two of America's great cities. They did that because they knew that was where they could do the most damage and weaken us the most.

If any mayor reduced school funding by 33 percent and called it the 'Strengthening Our Schools Initiative,' I think they'd be excoriated.

We have to wrap this imperative of addressing climate change in a prosperity framework, and secondly we have to do a much better job of putting forward an American jobs agenda that's a match for the climate challenge.

I believe that the best way to campaign is one-on-one with people.

You can't forge a new sort of consensus, you can't forge public opinion, by following public opinion.

Progressive leaders always try to take action on the forward edge of that movement, movement toward greater respect for the equal rights of all.

If there is a thread that unites all of our work, whether it's in Iowa or whether it's in Maryland or whether it's among our young men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan, I believe that it's the thread of human dignity.

I go to the gym pretty regularly.

All of us, wherever we happen to stand on the marriage equality issue, can agree that all our children deserve the opportunity to live in a loving, caring, committed, and stable home, protected equally under the law.

Progress is a choice.

Extreme poverty is extremely dangerous.

In 2013, Maryland had the second highest job creation rate of any state in the Mid Atlantic region - faster than both Pennsylvania and Virginia.

Putting aside competitive interests for a new kind of collaboration, Maryland pioneered a real-time encounter notification service to alert primary care doctors when their patients are hospitalized.