Michigan State University is the faculty, staff, and students, not “Communications and Brand Strategy,” teams of overpaid lawyers, and “University Advancement,” whatever that is. The purpose of these groups is to support the work of the faculty and students, not to make decisions that direct the mission of the institution. A university is an academic institution, not a corporation. The […]

In his groundbreaking novel Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace (R.I.P.) extrapolated the concept of naming stadiums and arenas after their corporate sponsors to the annual calendar. He called “Subsidized Time“: In the book’s future, advertising’s relentless search for new markets has led to a world where, by O.N.A.N. dictate, years are referred to by the name of their corporate sponsor. […]

It doesn’t take much digging to understand why top officials at Michigan State University seem to be so willfully ignorant of the sexual violence being perpetrated against its students. All you have to do is look at the rhetoric coming from its Board of Trustees and a major donor. Joel Ferguson, the Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees made […]

The media needs to focus on the bonuses the radical robber barons are giving their workforce — the Republican Party A new report from Americans for Tax Fairness finds that it turns out a tax cut that gives 83 percent of its total benefits to the richest 1 percent with three-quarters of its individual tax cuts going to those earning […]

What else do you think #ReleasetheMemo is about? The New York Times scoop that Donald Trump ordered special counsel Robert Mueller fired in June of last year is interesting for obvious reasons. It was confirmed by contemporaneous reporting and suggests that Trump was told by the White House counsel that firing Mueller would at least be seen as another attempt […]

Over the past week, 159 women gave victim impact statements during the sentencing hearing of the notorious serial rapist, Larry Nassar. The 159 women represent just those who volunteered to come forward. Given this, it’s not hard to fathom that Nassar sexually assaulted over 200 women over the past twenty years. He did this when most of them were young […]

The fetish for covering Trump backers fails to treat them like adults “The Wall is the Wall, it has never changed or evolved from the first day I conceived of it,” the loser of the 2016 popular vote tweeted last week, before rejecting at least two bipartisan agreements to keep the government open. Both reportedly included some funding for the […]

Last year in a rare exhibition of bipartisanship, the Michigan state senate voted unanimously and the House voted 89-11 to pass a new rule involving the taxation of a purchased vehicle when someone trades in another vehicle in the transaction. Under a 2013 law, buyers initially could exempt the value of the trade-in vehicle up to $2,000 from the sales […]

The Trump Tax scam is likely to result in a fair number of us seeing a tiny bit more money in our paychecks starting next month. It is, of course, a scam. You shouldn’t get used to the extra funds because some time in the next 8-10 years, they’ll go away. The extra money that the über wealthy are going […]

There’s no question that Donald Trump is working around the clock when he’s not golfing at one of his many golf clubs using millions of our tax dollars to dismantle our country’s democracy, our institutions, and the laws and policies we have in place to protect ALL Americans, not just those at the top of the economic food chain. On […]

The following essay is by Michael Andrade, a friend who sent it to my wife as a Facebook message. It was powerful enough that she read it to me and I thought it was a perfect piece to run today on Martin Luther King Day, particularly as we approach the one year anniversary of Donald Trump taking office as the […]