ELLEN BROWN - Green Party Candidate for Treasurer of California 2014

"From Austerity to Prosperity: Why I'm Running for California State Treasurer in 2014" by Ellen Brown

Governor Jerry Brown and his staff are exchanging high-fives over balancing California’s budget, but the people on whose backs it was balanced are not rejoicing. The state’s high-wire act has been called “the ultimate in austerity budgets.”

Welfare payments, health care for the poor, and benefits for the elderly and disabled have been slashed. State workers have been downsized. School districts in need of cash have been reduced to borrowing through “capital appreciation bonds” bearing 300% interest. In one notorious case, the Santa Ana school district actually borrowed at 1,000% interest. And the governor acknowledges that California still faces a “wall of debt” amounting to $28 billion. Some analysts put it much higher than that.

At the end of the 20th century, California was ranked the sixth largest economy in the world. By 2012, it had slipped to number twelve. It is coming back up, in part because European countries are falling further into recession; but California’s poverty rate remains the highest in the country. More than eight million Californians struggle to meet their daily needs, and one in four children lives in poverty. Income inequality is higher in the nation’s most populous state than in almost any other.

California cannot solve its budget problems by slashing services that have already been cut to the bone or raising sales taxes that hurt the poor far more than the rich. We are fighting over a pie that remains too small. The pie itself needs to be expanded – and it can be.

How? By reclaiming that portion that is now siphoned off in interest and bank fees.  When tallied up at every stage of production, interest has been calculated to claim one-third of everything we buy.

How can that money be recaptured?  By owning the bank.Peoples_Bank.jpg

The approach was pioneered in North Dakota, the only state to escape the 2008 banking crisis. North Dakota has the lowest unemployment rate in the country, the lowest foreclosure rate, the lowest default rate on credit card debt, and no state debt at all. It is also the only state to own its own bank.

In the fall of 2011, a bill for a feasibility study for a state-owned bank passed both houses of the California legislature. The Public Banking Institute, which I founded and chair, was instrumental in helping to get the bill as far as it got.  But it died when Jerry Brown vetoed it.  His rationale was that we already have a banking committee, and that the matter could be explored in-house. Needless to say, however, we have heard no more about it since.  

I am therefore running for California State Treasurer on a state bank platform, along with Laura Wells, who is running for Controller. We are throwing our bonnets in the ring for the opportunity to show the Governor or his successor that a state-owned bank can be our ticket to returning California to the abundance it once enjoyed.

I was a recipient of that abundance myself. I got my undergraduate degree at UC Berkeley in the 1960s, when tuition was free; and my law degree at UCLA Law School in the 1970s, when tuition was $700 a year.  Today it is $13,000 and $45,000 annually, respectively, for in-state students.  In the 1960s, the governor of California was Jerry Brown’s father Pat Brown, a New Deal visionary who believed that investment in education, infrastructure and local business was an investment in the future.  Our goal is to revive that optimistic vision in 2014.

We are running on the endorsement of the Green Party – along with Luis Rodriguez for governor and David Curtis for secretary of state – because Green Party candidates take no corporate money. Candidates who take corporate money – and that means nearly all conventional candidates – are beholden to large corporate interests and cannot properly represent the interests of the disenfranchised 99%.

The North Dakota Model: Banking that Supports Rather Than Exploits the Local Economy

California’s revenues are currently parked in those very largest of corporations, Wall Street banks. These out-of-state banks use our giant asset pool for their own speculative purposes, and the funds are at risk of confiscation in the event of a “bail-in.”

In North Dakota, by contrast, all of the state’s revenues are deposited by law in the state-owned Bank of North Dakota (BND). The BND is set up as a DBA of the state (“North Dakota doing business as the Bank of North Dakota”), which means all of the state’s capital is technically the bank’s capital. The bank uses its copious capital and deposit pool to generate credit for local purposes.

The BND is a major money-maker for the state, returning a sizable dividend annually to the treasury. Every year since the 2008 banking crisis, it has reported a return on investment of between 17 percent and 26 percent. The BND also provides what is essentially interest-free credit for state projects, since the state owns the bank and gets the interest back. The BND partners with local banks rather than competing with them, strengthening their capital and deposit bases and allowing them to keep loans on their books rather than having to sell them off to investors. This practice allowed North Dakota to avoid the subprime crisis that destroyed the housing market in other states.

Consider the awesome potential for California, with its massive capital and deposit bases. California has over $200 billion stashed in a variety of funds identified in its 2012 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR), including $58 billion managed by the Treasurer in a Pooled Money Investment Account currently earning a meager 0.264% annually. It also has over $400 billion in its pension funds (CalPERS and CalSTRS).

California’s population of 37 million is more than 50 times that of North Dakota. In 2010, the BND had about $4,500 in deposits and $4,200 in loans per capita.  Multiplying 37 million by $4,200, a State Bank of California could, in theory, generate $155.4 billion in credit for the state; and this credit would effectively be interest-free free, since the state would own the bank.

What could California do with $155 billion in interest-free credit? One possibility would be to refinance its ominous “wall of debt” at 0%. A debt that is interest-free can be rolled over indefinitely without cost to the taxpayers.

Another possibility would be to fund public projects interest-free. Eliminating interest has been shown to reduce the cost of public projects by 35% or more.

Take, for example, the San Francisco Bay Bridge earthquake retrofitting boondoggle, which was originally slated to cost about $6 billion. Interest and bank fees wound up adding another $6 billion to the overall cost to taxpayers. Funding through its own bank could have saved the state $6 billion or 50% on this project.

Then there is the state’s bullet train fiasco, which has been beset with delays, cost overruns, and funding issues. As with the Bay Bridge, costs are projected to double as a result of compounding interest on long-term bonds, imposing huge hidden costs on the next generation of taxpayers. By funding the bullet train through a state-owned bank, its costs, too, could be reduced by 50%.

Public banking models globally and historically are explored in my books The Web of Debt (first published in 2007) and The Public Bank Solution (published in 2013). I have also written over 200 articles on this and related subjects, which can be found on my blog at ellenbrown.com.  

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ABOUT ELLEN'S LATEST BOOK 'THE PUBLIC BANK SOLUTION'...

WHAT WALL STREET DOESN'T WANT YOU TO KNOW

Shock waves from one Wall Street scandal after another have completely disillusioned us with our banking system; yet we cannot do without banks. Nearly all money today is simply bank credit. Economies run on it, and it is created when banks make loans. The main flaw in the current model is that private profiteers have acquired control of the credit spigots. They can cut off the flow, direct it to their cronies, and manipulate it for personal gain at the expense of the producing economy. The benefits of bank credit can be maintained while eliminating these flaws, through a system of banks operated as public utilities, serving the public interest and returning their profits to the public. This book looks at the public bank alternative, and shows with examples from around the world and through history that it works admirably well, providing the key to sustained high performance for the economy and well-being for the people.

Ellen Brown is an attorney, president of the Public Banking Institute, and author of twelve books including the bestselling Web of Debt. In The Public Bank Solution, her latest book, she explores successful public banking models historically and globally. Her 200+ credit blog articles are at https://ellenbrown.com/ She is currently running for California State Treasurer on the Green Party ticket.  Ellen is also hosting a radio show with Walt McRee, “It’s Our Money,” on Progressive Radio Network at noon PST/3pm EST every second Wednesday.

BIO BELOW FROM: http://floridadetox.com/dr-sponaugle/

Dr. Rick Sponaugle - Founder and Medical Director of Florida Detox^® and Wellness Institute

Click here to view Dr. Sponaugle’s Curriculum Vitae.

Dr. Marvin “Rick” Sponaugle is Board Certified in two specialties, Addiction Medicine and Anesthesiology. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Addiction Medicine and a member of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine. Dr. Sponaugle is also a member of ACAM, the American College for the Advancement of Medicine.

Dr. Sponaugle is often invited to speak at physician meetings and national audiences on “Brain Chemistry and Addiction” and the topic of ”The Brain-Body Connection in Wellness.” Dr. Sponaugle was a guest speaker at the White House in 2008 where he met with Rubin Brasalis, Deputy Chief to President Bush. A list of Dr. Sponaugle’s past and upcoming speaking engagements can be located further down this page.

Dr. Sponaugle is the first addictionologist to correlate brain chemistry patterns with variations seen on SPECT Brain scans in addicted patients. He has matched these changes to specific drug craving patterns in his patients. This research has enabled Dr. Sponaugle’s patients to achieve much lower relapse rates because their drug and alcohol craving stops when their brain chemistry imbalance is corrected.

Dr. Sponaugle is also the first addictionologist to prove that imbalance of female hormones has causation in at least 60 percent of the addiction issues seen in middle age women. Dr. Sponaugle lectures on this phenomenon at national meetings and was a speaker on “Menopause Causing Alcoholism and Drug Addiction” at the annual AACC meeting [8,000 attendees] in Nashville, September 2011.

Dr. Sponaugle is the first doctor in America to determine a classic brain chemistry pattern caused by Black Mold Toxicity, the excessive accumulation of the Stachybotrus Trichothecene T2 toxin in the brain. Dr. Sponaugle’s research has clearly proven that changes in brain chemistry derived from hidden mold toxins causes craving for relaxing drugs and subsequently, alcoholism, Xanax addiction and Oxycontin addiction. Americans with HLA DRBQ genetics have difficulty removing these toxins from their brain and body.

Dr. Sponaugle’s clinical research has proven that there are hundreds of biochemical and medical disorders that commonly contribute to the drug and alcohol craving!! Yet, these treatable disorders are rarely diagnosed at America’s drug treatment centers. Since 1998, Dr. Sponaugle has attempted to change the paradigm of addiction treatment to a less judgmental, more scientific model – one that embraces the biochemical basis for addiction.

Dr. Sponaugle’s use of advanced brain science combined with integrative medicine principles for the healing of drug induced brain damage in thousands of patients has taught him how to more successfully treat multiple brain disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Autistic disorders, Multiple Sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease. Dr. Sponaugle is currently proving that these brain disorders can be more effectively treated with integrative medicine protocols than with pharmaceutical medications alone.

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: Dr. Sponaugle was born in Franklin, West Virginia. While majoring in chemistry at West Virginia University, Dr. Sponaugle was awarded the Alpha Epsilon Delta National Chemistry Honor Society, the Beta Theta Pi National Merit Scholarship and Who’s Who in American Colleges and Universities.

After graduating with the honor of PHI BETA KAPPA, Dr. Sponaugle accepted one of four scholarships given by the state of West Virginia to outstanding pre-med students for enrollment at the WVU School of Medicine. After receiving his MD degree at WVU, Dr. Sponaugle attended the University of Florida where he performed specialty training in anesthesiology, cardiac-intensive care medicine and pain management.

In 1985, Dr. Sponaugle began private practice in Tampa Bay. He has served as Chief of Anesthesiology for two Tampa Bay hospitals, Medical Director of three surgical centers and the Medical Director of  the Watermark Pain Treatment Center.

Dr. Sponaugle accepts referrals from doctors throughout North America including University Medical Centers and Dr. Phil. He has been featured on numerous national media including the Dr. Phil show, Ricki Lake show, CNN Anderson Cooper, FOX News, ABC News, CBS News and NBC News and PBS.

Tripp Lanier is host of The New Man Podcast, a professional men's coach, an entrepreneur and artist. As a host, he has interviewed such notable personalities as Ken Wilber, Marcus Buckingham, Bill Harris, Steve Pavlina, Shawn Phillips and Vernon Reid. The New Man Podcast reaches listeners around the world, and regularly finds its home in the Top Ten Self Help Podcasts on iTunes. Tripp was featured in EnlightenNext's issue dedicated to "Constructing the New Man." (EnlightenNext is previously known as What is Enlightenment Magazine)

As a men's coach and group facilitator, Tripp has coached men all over the world to connect with what really matters and navigate the challenging world of relationships. He has trained with and contributes to The Authentic Man Program in San Francisco and Boulder.

Tripp has extensive experience in the business world. He founded and owned Zero-One Digital Media, Inc., one of the first digital video production companies in the Southeast. For twelve years, Tripp created TV shows and ads for the likes of ESPN, Hitachi, Homes & Land Magazine, various ad agencies and scores of political campaigns.

Balancing out the business side are Tripp's artistic endeavors. Tripp has written, performed and produced over 5 CDs with his own rock groups, Hank Madison and Screaming Witness. He's also co-produced for artists like Stuart Davis and can be seen regularly humiliating himself on Stu's Sex God Rock n Roll TV Show on HDNet. Other contributions include working with Ken Wilber as Co-Director of Integral Institute's Art Center.

Tripp has had the privilege of studying with Ken Wilber, Jun Po Denis Kelly & The Hollow Bones Order of Rinzai Zen, Genpo Roshi and Big Mind, David Deida, Vipassana via S.N. Goenka, The Taoist Tai Chi Society and many other amazing people along the way.

Tripp is married and lives with his wife Alyson, daughter Be, a funny looking dog and a perpetually bitchy cat in Boulder, Colorado. He visits the island of Kauai as often as possible.

Bernardo Kastrup has a Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), in the Netherlands, one of the top European technology schools. He started his scientific career at the world-renowned European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), in Geneva, Switzerland. At CERN, he worked on the data acquisition system of the ATLAS detector, one of the main experiments of the new Large Hadron Collider (LHC) accelerator. After CERN, Bernardo moved to the Philips Research Laboratories, in the Netherlands, the place where the "Casimir Effect" of Quantum Field Theory was originally discovered. During his scientific career, Bernardo has authored many scientific papers and inventions. At Philips Research, he developed ground-breaking computing technology that would lead to his founding of Silicon Hive, a successful start-up company eventually sold to Intel Corporation. Since leaving the start-up scene, Bernardo has dedicated himself professionally to high-tech marketing and business development. He is currently Marketing Director at ASML, one of the worlds foremost high-tech companies.

In parallel to his professional activities, Bernardo has had a life-long scholarly interest in philosophy, particularly in the relationship between the nature of reality and our knowledge of it. This interest has led him to explore ancient worldviews and paradigms of thought, as well as the practical application of techniques for the subjective exploration of reality. For instance, he is a longtime meditator and student of related methods. His familiarity with science has allowed him to coherently hypothesize and articulate holistic worldviews in a language that appeals to the rational mind. He has published two philosophy books, Rationalist Spirituality and Dreamed up Reality, both with O-Books. A third book, Meaning in Absurdity, will be published by Iff Books in early 2011. Bernardo occasionally gives talks about his philosophical work, like his recent TEDx presentation of May 2011. Bernardo regularly travels the world for his work, which exposes him to many different cultures and worldviews. He has lived in four different countries across continents and currently resides in the Netherlands.

STEVE JONES had been co-chair of Scholars for 9/11 Truth up until December 5, 2006. Following a dispute with co-chair James Fetzer over the direction the organization was taking, Jones resigned his membership and joined Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice.

Steven E. Jones is a Professor of Physics at 30,000-student Brigham Young University in Provo , Utah. His Ph.D research was performed at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in California and his Ph.D is from Vanderbilit University.

During his 28-year career as a physicist, his research has centered on fusion and solar energy as well as archaeometry (the application of physics methods to archaeology). He has taught graduate-level archaeometry at BYU, and he says this work in particular prepared him for studies of evidences of possible foul-play at the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001.

Whitley Strieber is widely known for his bestselling account of his own close encounter, Communion: A True Story, and has produced a television special based on Confirmation for NBC.

He is also the author of the vampire novels The Hunger, The Last Vampire, and Lilith's Dream, and is the new host of his own radio program, Dreamland, founded by Art and Ramona Bell.

His website -- the world's most popular site featuring topics at the edge of science and culture.

For more on Whitely Strieber please visit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitley_Strieber

BIO BELOW FROM: http://projectearth.com/about/adam-trombly

Adam Trombly - Historical Bio of Project Earth & Adam Trombly 

Adam is an internationally acknowledged expert in the fields of Physics, Atmospheric Dynamics, Geophysics, Rotating and Resonating Electromagnetic Systems, and Environmental Global Modeling.

Taking the advice of his friend and mentor, R. Buckminster Fuller, Adam has maintained a "synergistic, global view" within a multi-disciplinary scientific background. From this perspective, Adam offers unique insights into the changes humankind has effected on our environment, and the adjustments our future requires of us now.

Adam Trombly, Director of Project Earth for the Institute for Advanced Studies at Aspen (now also in Maui, Hawaii) has at age fifty-five proven to be one of the most influential and unorthodox scientists of his generation. In 1980 Adam and colleague Joseph Kahn designed and applied for patents for the Closed Path Homopolar Generator, a potentially revolutionary design for super efficient generation of electrical power. In June of 1982, International Letters of Patent were published by the International Patent Cooperation Treaty Organization. (Patent Publication Number WO82/02126)

In 1983 Adam began to dedicate his efforts to Project Earth. The late R Buckminster Fuller is quoted as saying, "Project Earth is a human design experiment. It will be incumbent on human beings throughout the Earth to become a living network, to demonstrate the power of working synergistically with their environment to insure a future worth living in."

In 1984 Adam was awarded the RJ Reynolds III Endowment for his efforts with Project Earth. I spoke to the late Mr. Reynolds during a Tesla Society Conference in Colorado Springs in 1988. He said: "Many people approach me and ask me and my family to support their work. After I heard Adam speak at two separate International Conferences, I approached him! I had never done that before. Adam has never ceased to amaze me. When you know Adam, you begin to see both the present and the future through his eyes. When you see the world like he does then there is this urgency that takes a hold of you to do whatever you can to make a difference for the better. I could not be happier with his work. We all need to listen to this man."

As the eighties progressed, copies of the Closed Path Homopolar Generator Patent had circulated throughout the world. One scientist, Paramahamsa Tewari, who was then Head of Quality Control for the Tarapore Atomic Power Station in Trombay, India, received permission to carry out experiments with the design. In 1986, Tewari (with the blessing of the late Prime Minister Rajeev Gandhi) published results of experiments carried out with a crude facsimile of the machine described in the patent. In the American Industrial Journal, Magnets, Tewari wrote, 'The test results have shown an efficiency of the machine above 250%." It was the first time in human history that claims of greater than 100% output had been independently verified by a bona fide third party using the description of the art provided by a patent document.

This further propelled Adam and Project Earth into the international spotlight. I ran into Adam next at the largest New Energy Technology conference ever held (even up to this point) in Hanover, Germany in 1987. Paramahamsa Tewari had brought his rather crude facsimile of the Trombly/Kahn generator. The next day, Adam gave one of those lectures with an impact that never seems to leave you.

Adam continued his research into new energy technologies with colleague David Farnsworth. In June, 1989, in New York City, Trombly and Farnsworth physically demonstrated a small solid state electrical transformer that measurably showed an efficiency of 54:1. Adam then walked down the street to the United Nations to give an address. From the point of view of one who witnessed this event firsthand, I can't believe the entire world didn't change as a result. One of the reasons I asked Adam if I could write this piece is because it is now ten* years later and the American people, in particular, have still not gotten the message that there is an entirely new and benign option to the current death spiral of humanity. As the result of ignoring the opportunity that was presented on that day in 1989, the world still suffers under the tyranny of fossil fuels and a global power structure which seems bent on the eradication of all species.

Today Adam continues to pursue the work of Project Earth in spite of the fact that in his view the destabilization of Planet Earth has reached critical, even nearly irreversible proportions.

"At this point I am recommending that people pray like they never have before for Divine or at least Benign Intervention. It is unlikely that the boys in Washington and other world capitals are going to implement any world healing policies unless the populations of the world rise up and unequivocally demand change. We don't have much time." AT

For my part, I want to thank Adam for allowing me to make this little, historical sketch my small contribution to the work of Project Earth. There is so much more I could say but I hope this gives you a better idea of who this man called Adam Trombly is.