This evening's music features blues guitarist, member of the Mississippi Sheiks and co-writer of "Sittin' On Top of the World, Walter Vinson.

Here are some stories from tonight's posting:

An excellent article by Ellen Brown, well worth reading in full:

How America Became an Oligarchy

The stages of the capture of democracy by big money are traced in a paper called “The Collapse of Democratic Nation States” by theologian and environmentalist Dr. John Cobb. Going back several centuries, he points to the rise of private banking, which usurped the power to create money from governments:

The influence of money was greatly enhanced by the emergence of private banking. The banks are able to create money and so to lend amounts far in excess of their actual wealth. This control of money-creation . . . has given banks overwhelming control over human affairs. In the United States, Wall Street makes most of the truly important decisions that are directly attributed to Washington.

Today the vast majority of the money supply in Western countries is created by private bankers. That tradition goes back to the 17th century, when the privately-owned Bank of England, the mother of all central banks, negotiated the right to print England’s money after Parliament stripped that power from the Crown. When King William needed money to fight a war, he had to borrow. The government as borrower then became servant of the lender. ...

The Populist movement of the 1890s represented the last serious challenge to the bankers’ monopoly over the right to create the nation’s money. According to monetary historian Murray Rothbard, politics after the turn of the century became a struggle between two competing banking giants, the Morgans and the Rockefellers. The parties sometimes changed hands, but the puppeteers pulling the strings were always one of these two big-money players.

In All the Presidents’ Bankers, Nomi Prins names six banking giants and associated banking families that have dominated politics for over a century. No popular third party candidates have a real chance of prevailing, because they have to compete with two entrenched parties funded by these massively powerful Wall Street banks.

How Big Money Is Buying Off Criticism of Big Money

Not long ago I was asked to speak to a religious congregation about widening inequality. Shortly before I began, the head of the congregation asked that I not advocate raising taxes on the wealthy.

He said he didn’t want to antagonize certain wealthy congregants on whose generosity the congregation depended.

I had a similar exchange last year with the president of a small college who had invited me to give a lecture that his board of trustees would be attending. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t criticize Wall Street,” he said, explaining that several of the trustees were investment bankers. ...

“There’s really no choice,” a university dean told me. “We’ve got to go where the money is.”

And more than at any time since the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century, the money is now in the pockets of big corporations and the super wealthy.

So the presidents of universities, congregations, and think tanks, other nonprofits are now kissing wealthy posteriors as never before.

But that money often comes with strings.

When Comcast, for example, finances a nonprofit like the International Center for Law and Economics, the Center supports Comcast’s proposed merger with Time Warner.

When the Charles Koch Foundation pledges $1.5 million to Florida State University’s economics department, it stipulates that a Koch-appointed advisory committee will select professors and undertake annual evaluations.

The Koch brothers now fund 350 programs at over 250 colleges and universities across America. You can bet that funding doesn’t underwrite research on inequality and environmental justice.

David Koch’s $23 million of donations to public television earned him positions on the boards of two prominent public-broadcasting stations. It also guaranteed that a documentary critical of the Kochs didn’t air. ...

Our democracy is directly threatened when the rich buy off politicians.

But no less dangerous is the quieter and more insidious buy-off of institutions democracy depends on to research, investigate, expose, and mobilize action against what is occurring.

Obama’s Fateful Indecision

The foreign policy quandary facing President Barack Obama is that America’s traditional allies in the Middle East – Israel and Saudi Arabia – along with Official Washington’s powerful neocons have effectively sided with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State out of a belief that Iran represents a greater threat to Israeli and Saudi interests.

But what that means for U.S. interests is potentially catastrophic. If the Islamic State continues its penetration toward Damascus in league with Al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front and topples the Syrian government, the resulting slaughter of Christians, Shiites and other religious minorities – as well as the risk of a major new terrorist base in the heart of the Middle East – could force the United States into a hopeless new war that could drain the U.S. Treasury and drive the nation into a chaotic and dangerous decline. ....

Increasingly, the choice facing Obama is whether to protect the old alliances with Israel and Saudi Arabia – and risk victories by Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State – or expand on the diplomatic opening from the framework agreement on Iran’s nuclear program to side with Shiite forces as the primary bulwark against Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. ...

The problem with Obama has been that – although he himself may be a “closet realist” willing to work with adversarial countries like Iran and Russia – he has not consistently challenged the neocons and their junior partners, the liberal interventionists. The liberals are particularly susceptible to propaganda campaigns involving non-governmental organizations that claim to promote “human rights” or “democracy” but have their salaries paid by the congressionally financed and neocon-run National Endowment for Democracy or by self-interested billionaires like financier George Soros. ...

Whether one likes it or not, the only real force that can stop an Al-Qaeda or Islamic State victory is the Syrian army and the Assad regime. But Obama chose to play the game of demanding that “Assad must go” – to appease the neocons and liberal interventionists – while recognizing that the notion of a “moderate” alternative was never realistic. ...

But Obama may be running out of time in his halfway strategy of half-heartedly addressing the real danger that lies ahead if the Islamic State and/or Al-Qaeda ride the support of Saudi Arabia and Israel to a victory in Syria or Iraq or Yemen.

Edward Snowden statue prompts cover-up at Brooklyn park

The New York parks department on Monday removed a large bust of Edward Snowden that was installed in a Brooklyn park, shortly after covering it up with a tarp and thwarting the artists’ stated intent “to highlight those who sacrifice their safety in the fight against modern-day tyrannies”.

The Snowden bust still stood at Fort Greene Park’s Prison Ship Martyrs monument, atop a single Doric column. But it was wrapped in a blue tarpaulin, as city workers debated what to do with it.

The monument stands to the memory of 11,000 prisoners who died in British captivity during the Revolutionary war.

The anonymous artists explained their tribute to the NSA whistleblower in a statement, writing: “It would be a dishonor to those memorialized here not to laud those who protect the ideals they fought for, as Edward Snowden has by bringing the NSA’s fourth amendment-violating surveillance programs to light. All too often, figures who strive to uphold those ideals have been cast as criminals rather than in bronze.” ...

The Brooklyn-based artists also wrote that they hoped passersby would “ponder the sacrifices made for their freedoms”.

“We hope this inspires them to reflect upon the responsibility we all bear to ensure our liberties exist long into the future,” they said.

Garcia-Emanuel Runoff in Chicago Divides Unions, Blacks and Latinos

Lose-Lose-Lose Proposition': Obama's Forest Service Endangers Colorado Woods With Coal Mine Loophole

"THIS is Obama's new climate initiative?" asks Earthjustice attorney. "Bulldozing Colorado roadless forest for 350 million tons of dirty coal."

Thousands of acres of publicly-owned, roadless Colorado forests face renewed threat on Monday after the U.S. Forest Service moved to reinstate a loophole that allows major coal companies to bulldoze over protected lands, paving the way for coal mine expansion and increased carbon emissions of the 'dirtiest' variety.

"The coal mine loophole is a lose-lose-lose proposition: it’s bad for wildlife, bad for hikers and hunters who enjoy Colorado’s wild forests, and it’s bad for our climate," said Ted Zukoski, an attorney with the group Earthjustice, which is among the local and national conservation groups sounding the alarm over the rule change.

Known as the North Fork Coal Mining Area exception of the Colorado Roadless Rule, the loophole was rejected last year by the U.S. District Court of Colorado, which ruled that the Forest Service's approval of Arch Coal's Environmental Impact Statement failed to consider the climate change impacts of expanding coal mining and burning. The court’s ruling left the door open for the Forest Service to revive the loophole if the agency undertook a new analysis. ...

"This plan shows the dangerous disconnect between Obama’s climate rhetoric and his plans to open more public land to the fossil fuel industry," said Taylor McKinnon of the Center for Biological Diversity. "This coal can’t be burned if we’re going to keep our planet livable. The president should withdraw this proposal now."

Also of interest and highly recommended:

Is Flawed Terrorism Research Driving Flawed Counterterrorism Policies?