The Digital Dispatch

From NOEBIE.net

Public Policy

Articles That Caught My Eye Today

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“DOWN OUTRIGHT MURDER”: A COMPLETE GUIDE TO THE SHOOTING OF MICHAEL BROWN BY DARREN WILSON | Ryan Devereaux, The Intercept

A State-by-State Look at TANF | The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities

A generation jeopardized by obsession with testing | Wendy Lecker, The Stamford Advocate

WALL STREET IS TAKING OVER AMERICA’S PENSION PLANS | Murtaza Hussain, The Intercept

The war on giving | Jessica Hansen-Weaver, Socialist Worker

How Police Use Military Tactics to Quash Dissent | Aaron Cantú, Alternet

Wal-Mart’s Bottomless Greed: Dodging Billions in Taxes, Scheming to Avoid Billions More | Steven Rosenfeld, Alyssa Figueroa, Alternet

The Corporate Court in Context

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Peter Montgomery from People for the American Way puts this week’s Supreme Court decisions in historical context.

Samuel Alito is the single most pro-corporate Justice on the most pro-business Court since the New Deal. Still, Alito’s one-two punch was another extraordinary milestone for the strategists who have been working for the past 40 years to put business firmly in the driver’s seat of American politics.

Many would suggest that the modern right-wing movement began with the failed presidential bid of Barry Goldwater. But there’s a strong case to be made that it begins in earnest with a 1971 memo by Lewis Powell, who argued that American businesses were losing public support and called for a massive, continuing campaign to wage war on leftist academics, progressive nonprofit groups, and politicians. The memo by Powell, who was later appointed to the Supreme Court via a nomination by Richard Nixon, inspired a few very wealthy men like Adolph Coors, John M. Olin, and Richard Mellon Scaife, who set about creating and funding a massive infrastructure of think tanks, endowed academic chairs, law schools and right-wing legal groups, including the Federalist Society, which has nurtured Alito’s career.

Read the full article: Samuel Alito: A Movement Man Makes Good on Right-Wing Investments | Peter Montgomery.

The Real Face of Welfare

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Just ran across this on the Book of Faces and had to share.

Breaking Brown notes that “blacks comprise 22 percent of the poor, but blacks only take in 14 percent of government benefits. Conversely, whites make up 42 percent of the poor, but take in a disproportionate 69 percent of government benefits.”

Read more: This One Fact About Welfare Makes White People Look Lazy | breakingbrown.com.

Lies My Postmaster General Told Me

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The Postal Service has been reporting revenue increases for five straight quarters. So why is Postmaster General Donahoe minimizing that winning streak? Over the last few years, faced with falling revenue, postal management has closed post offices, slashed rural office hours, sold historic buildings, cut jobs, and consolidated processing plants. It continues to seek closings and service cuts, such as eliminating Saturday delivery; but some of these moves have been delayed or curtailed by pushback from the public, from employees, and from legislators.

Read More: Why is the Postmaster General Understating Postal Revenue Gains? | Talking Union.

New Study: Charter Schools Hurt Poor Kids

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Adopting a “school reform” agenda that encourages privatization actually makes the problems worse, according to a new study.

“In pushing these efforts, politicians, rightwing think tanks, chambers of commerce, and, most of all, the American Legislative Exchange Council are actually creating the very problem of failure in the school system they claim their privatization plans will help address.”

Read about it: Scathing Report Finds School Privatization Hurts Poor Kids – In These Times.

Understanding Education “Reform”

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Deborah Meier writes at Talking Union about the greed behind the “new reform” movement in Education.

“Having failed time after time with vouchers—direct public funding of private schools, the new reformers saw a way around it. Their instincts also suggested that history favors reforms that make repeal difficult, almost impossible. So the motto is: move fast and thoroughly.”

Read the full article: Follow the money to understand education reform | Talking Union.