My first guest, Harvard-trained, Dr. Cynthia Thaik is a heart doctor that practices with her heart. She delivers security and peace of mind to her clients by orchestrating behavioral and mindset shifts to evoke lasting transformational changes in their health, well-being, vitality, energy, and creativity. She has helped thousands of people make changes to transform their lives through the ways they think, feel, and act. Intuitively, she has known that she would serve this calling since the age of five, after accompanying her physician mother to the medical clinic in their home country of Mayamar, formerly known as Burma. There, she witnessed the pure hands-on art of healing, free from the modern-day challenges of drugs, bureaucracy, and the threat of malpractice.

Dr. Cynthia began her professional training at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. From there, she completed her internal medicine and cardiology training at the Harvard’s training programs (Beth Israel, Massachusetts General, and Brigham & Women’s hospitals). She manages two successful cardiology clinics and is the founder of Revitalize-U, a wellness center focused on health, nutrition, weight loss, and detoxification. Beyond her academic and professional achievements, she is most proud of the praises that she receives from her patients: caring, compassionate, service oriented, and excellence are words used to describe her style of practice.’

Dr Cynthia believes the mind-body connection for health is best served through the practice of being centered and present in each moment. A practicing Buddhist, Dr. Cynthia is now on a mission to deliver that message about healing through her new book, Your Vibrant Heart: Restoring Health, Strength & Spirit from the Body’s Core.

Dr. Thaik has received numerous awards and honors including the Cardiovascular Research Award from the American College of Cardiology and the L.A. Business Journal “Women Making a Difference” nomination in 2005. :In addition to her book she has published several peer reviewed articles in professional journals and is involved in her professional organizations.

My second guest, Dr. Albert Mensah is an internationally recognized physician-specialist in metabolic treatment approaches for patients with developmental, learning/behavioral and mental health disorders.  Dr. Mensah is the president and co-founder of Mensah Medical, the world’s largest biomedical practice specializing in biochemical individuality and imbalances.  Mensah Medical’s non-drug, nutrient approach is targeted to correct biochemical imbalances associated with autism, anxiety, depression (including postpartum), behavioral and learning disorders, OCD, eating disorders, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s Disease.  Dr. Mensah regularly consults with physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and other health care professionals, and leads annual physician training with William J. Walsh, PhD, of the Walsh Research Institute in orthomolecular medicine in the U.S., Australia and Ireland.  Mensah Medical’s main clinic is located near Chicago and patients can be seen at their U.S. Outreach Clinics located in Scottsdale, AZ, Annapolis, MD, and near San Francisco and Los Angeles, CA. 

Michele Avanti has been teaching metaphysics since 1972. She is a metaphysical minister, an ISAR certified astrologer, an accredited Fixed Star Analyst, an EFT professional and an award-winning author. Michele mentors clients through individual consultations. 

Dolphin grew up in Vancouver BC.  For as long as he can remember he has been a passionate student of life and the human condition.  He loves the opportunity to share and grow with people through his work and brings a clarity, sensitivity and playfulness to it.  With over 15 years of experience coaching and facilitating workshops to tens of thousands, Dolphin is a beautiful combination of insight and action.   He is constantly inviting others to join him in a more authentic life; the one that we all are here to live.

“I do this work because of my strong belief and trust in each person’s ability to heal, grow and live a deeply satisfying life.  We cannot do it all, or fix everything.  We can, however, do the good that is there to be done in this moment.  In that, we can be the ripple that touches the entire surface of the earth “ ~ Dolphin Kasper

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. Steven Zarit has done considerable research as regards how the stress experienced by family caregivers can best be managed. His recent research focuses upon the benefits that caregivers derive when their elder attends a day care facility. This arrangement allows them a valuable respite from their caregiving efforts. His studies indicate that having this support even results in caregivers' level of stress hormones decreasing. 

Dr. Zarit developed the Zarit Burden interview that measures the extent to which caregiving might be placing a "burden" upon those who accept this "responsibility." It has been used extensively in both therapeutic and research settings. 

Hélène Cardona is a writer, actress and producer. She played Françoise ‘Fuffi’ in Lasse Hallström’s Chocolat and Candy in Lawrence Kasdan’s Mumford. Other roles include Law & Order, A Good Year, Enough, The Bold and the Beautiful, Pan Am, Chuck, Nikita, Stealing Roses, & more. Voice credits include X-Men Days of Future Past, Mad Max Fury Road, Muppets Most Wanted, The Blacklist, World War Z, Red 2, Happy Feet 2, The Muppets, Hereafter, Inception, Inglourious Basterds, The Interpreter, The Bourne Supremacy & many more. For Serendipity she co-wrote with director Peter Chelsom and composer Alan Silvestri the song Lucienne, which she also sang.

Hélène is a graduate of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and also trained with Ellen Burstyn and Sandra Seacat at the Actors’ Studio. She performed the lead in plays at The Actors’ Studio, The Players Club, The Naked Angels and UBU Theatre Rep. in New York.

She co-wrote the screenplay Primate with John FitzGerald, based on his novel. Her most recent book is Dreaming My Animal Selves.

She attended Hamilton College, where she also taught French and Spanish, and the Sorbonne, where she earned a Master’s in American Literature. She received fellowships from the Goethe Institut and the Universidad Internacional de Andalucía.

She’s fluent in French, Spanish, German, English, Italian and Greek, and has lived in Switzerland, England, France, Wales, Monaco, Germany, Spain, and the United States.

She can be currently seen in the documentary Femme: Women Healing the World, which she co-produced, with Maria Bello, Marianne Williamson and Sharon Stone.

Albert Einstein is most famous for proving the relationship between Time and Space, known as the Law of Relativity or E=MC². The power concealed within the core of that remarkable theory has been incorporated into a dynamic approach to living called the Personal Time-Map System now being introduced to the world at by Rev. Thabiti, the system’s inventor.

“Where” a given person is right now can be mapped out geographically, but “when” that person exists is a function of their Personal Time-Map. Personal Time-Mapping (PTM) does not predict which direction a person will choose, but it does reveal what will happen—or what someone might expect—as he or she moves through each new time period on that person’s Time-Map. The Time-Map shows an individual’s movement through time in the same way a map of a country would show that same individual’s movement through space.

Join us for a fascinating discussion on The Personal Time-Map System — An Holistic Approach to Helping Guide Life’s Decisions