Businesses have come and gone at Homeboy Industries. We have had starts and stops, but anything worth doing is worth failing at. We started Homeboy Plumbing. That didn't go so well. Who knew? People didn't want gang members in their homes. I just didn't see that coming.

I know now that gang warfare is not the Middle East or Northern Ireland. There is violence in gang violence, but there is no conflict. It is not 'about something.' It is the language of the despondent and traumatized.

My job isn't to fix or rescue or to save. It's to accompany, see people, listen to them.

We are among the handful of countries that has difficulty distinguishing juveniles from adults where crime is concerned. We are convinced that if a child commits an adult crime, that kid is magically transformed into an adult. Consequently, we try juveniles as adults.

And I can tell you that history will back up what I'm about to say and that is that there is no government run by conservatives, Republicans, put whoever you want there, if you give government the opportunity to spend more money than it has, it will do it. It will do it every time.

We got two examples in recent history from this country. One in the '80s under President Reagan. One under President Clinton and the Democratic-controlled Congress in the '90s. We had nearly 5 percent growth rate in each of those decades. We can do it again for sure.

The Constitution gives the president the power to appoint, upon the advice and consent of a majority of the Senate, and it plainly does not give a minority of senators any right to interfere with that process.

The federal government has never created one job that is sustainable long term. It creates government project work but not creating real work where people are.