MARK KLEIN is the whistleblower who exposed AT&T’s participation in the National Security Agency’s illegal warrantless spying on millions of Americans.  Klein grew up in New York City and in 1962 entered Cornell University’s School of Engineering. As the 1960s exploded in social upheaval he was moved with his generation to investigate society and graduated in 1966 with a B.A. in history. Later he returned to technical school, obtaining certificates in electronics and computers which led to employment in computer manufacturing in the 1970s.  He was hired by AT&T in 1981 as a communications technician and worked for the company for over 22 years. In 2003, he discovered the illicit NSA installation in San Francisco and three years later brought it to public attention. He retired from AT&T in May 2004, and now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife.

ABOUT MARK KLEIN'S BOOK: Wiring Up The Big Brother Machine...And Fighting It

Whistleblower Mark Klein tells the story of the illegal government spying apparatus installed at an AT&T office by the National Security Agency, and his battle to bring it to light and protect Americans’ 4th Amendment rights. After the New York Times revealed in 2005 that the NSA was spying on Americans’ phone calls and e-mail without Constitutionally-required court warrants, the Bush administration openly defended this practice which also violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. All details of the highly secret program remained hidden from the public—until Klein came forward. A technician for over 22 years at telecom giant AT&T, Klein was working in the Internet room in San Francisco in 2003 and discovered the NSA was vacuuming everyone’s communications into a secret room, and he had the documents to prove it. He went to the media in 2006, and then became a witness in a lawsuit brought against the company by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

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.  

Please visit:
https://www.facebook.com/EllenBrownAuthor

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.

DR. HELEN CALDICOTT is the single most articulate and passionate advocate of citizen action to remedy the nuclear and environmental crises, Dr Helen Caldicott, has devoted the last forty two years to an international campaign to educate the public about the medical hazards of the nuclear age and the necessary changes in human behavior to stop environmental destruction.

Born in Melbourne, Australia in 1938, Dr Caldicott received her medical degree from the University of Adelaide Medical School in 1961. She founded the Cystic Fibrosis Clinic at the Adelaide Children’s Hospital in 1975 and subsequently was an instructor in pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and on the staff of the Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Boston, Mass., until 1980 when she resigned to work full time on the prevention of nuclear war.

In 1971, Dr Caldicott played a major role in Australia’s opposition to French atmospheric nuclear testing in the Pacific; in 1975 she worked with the Australian trade unions to educate their members about the medical dangers of the nuclear fuel cycle, with particular reference to uranium mining.  While living in the United States from 1977 to 1986, she played a major role in re-invigorating as President, Physicians for Social Responsibility, an organization of 23,000 doctors committed to educating their colleagues about the dangers of nuclear power, nuclear weapons and nuclear war. On trips abroad she helped start similar medical organizations in many other countries. The international umbrella group (International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War) won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985. She also founded the Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament (WAND) in the US in 1980.

Returning to Australia in 1987, Dr Caldicott ran for Federal Parliament as an independent. Defeating Charles Blunt, leader of the National Party, through preferential voting she ultimately lost the election by 600 votes out of 70,000 cast.

She moved back to the United States in 1995, where she lectured at the New School for Social Research on the Media, Global Politics and the Environment; hosted a weekly radio talk show on WBAI (Pacifica)in New York; and was  the Founding President of the STAR (Standing for Truth About Radiation) Foundation on Long Island.

Dr Caldicott has received many prizes and awards for her work, including the Lannan Foundation’s 2003 Prize for Cultural Freedom and twenty one  honorary doctoral degrees. She was personally nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Linus Pauling – himself a Nobel Laureate. The Smithsonian has named Dr Caldicott as one of the most influential women of the 20th Century. She has written for numerous publications and has authored seven books, Nuclear Madness (1978 and 1994 WW Norton), Missile Envy (1984 William Morrow, 1985 Bantam, 1986 Bantam) , If You Love This Planet: A Plan to Heal the Earth (1992, W.W. Norton);  A Desperate Passion: An Autobiography (1996, W.W. Norton; published as A Passionate Life in Australia by Random House);The New Nuclear Danger: George Bush’s Military Industrial Complex (2001, The New Press in the US, UK and UK; Scribe Publishing in Australia and New Zealand; Lemniscaat Publishers in The Netherlands; and Hugendubel Verlag in Germany); Nuclear Power is Not the Answer (2006, The New Press in the US, UK and UK; Melbourne University Press in Australia)  War In Heaven (The New Press 2007);  revised and updated If You Love This Planet (March 2009); and Loving This Planet (The New Press; 2013).

She also has been the subject of several films, including Eight Minutes to Midnight, nominated for an Academy Award in 1981, If You Love This Planet, which won the Academy Award for best documentary in 1982, and Helen’s War: Portrait of a Dissident, recipient of the Australian Film Institute Awards for Best Direction (Documentary) 2004, and the Sydney Film Festival Dendy Award for Best Documentary in 2004.

Dr Caldicott currently divides her time between Australia and the US where she lectures widely. In year 2001, she founded the US-based Nuclear Policy Research Institute (NPRI), which became  Beyond Nuclear. Currently, Dr Caldicott is President of The Helen Caldicott Foundation/NuclearFreePlanet.org, which  initiates symposiums and other educational projects  to inform the public and the media  of the dangers of nuclear power and weapons.

The mission of the Foundation is education to action, and the promotion of a nuclear-energy and weapons-free, renewable energy powered, world.  The Foundation’s  most recent symposium, co-sponsored by Physicians for Social Responsibility was held at the New York Academy of Medicine in March 2013, 2013.  It was entitled The Medical and Environmental Consequences of Fukushima helencaldicottfoundation.org

A book – Crisis Without E nd — emanating from the conference proceedings and edited by Dr. Caldicott will be published by The New Press in the Spring of 2014.

From 2010 to 2013  Dr Caldicott hosted a weekly radio show If You Love This Planet which aired on many community and other public radio stations internationally.  From 2007 to 2009 she was  also a member  of the International Scientific Advisory Board convened by  José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the then Prime Minister of Spain.

Lordiel host a regular radio show on blog talk radio, she is also a internationally known lecturer and author. She has recently completed three lectures in Canada: Quieting the Mind, Freeing the Mind Body & Soul, and Massaging the Mind Body & Soul. Lordiel has authored two books, Words For The Soul and A Chance To Be Better "Trust Your Journey" (audiobook).

The healings and blessings that flow through her are unpretentious, unrehearsed and straight from the heart, soul and Spirit. She can talk to your callers about helping each other ... and finding solutions to that which they seek!!! Programs that are for the people and by the people to share, teach and reach out to each other in living life. As in life, we are all in it together and if each of us just REACH out and TOUCH someone,we can and will make a difference!!! 

Some of her credentials are: Spiritual Artist, Certified Soul Healer,Life Coach, Certified Soul Communicator, Crystalline & Celestial Divine Healer, Registered Nurse, Ordained Minister, Shamballa Multi-Dimensional Healing Master, Certified Clinical & Medical Hypnotherapist, Lymphologist, Certified Access Conciosness, Reiki Master, Certified in Energy Balance, Certified Re-Connector,Clairvoyant, Medium, Clairaudient, Channel the Spirit Worlds and so much more.......