Episode 235: A Winkling In The Making

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Our homes are the greatest asset most Americans have. This should therefore scare the living shit out of us: right now more renting a place to live than getting a chance to own at all. What can be done? On to Episode 235: A Winkling In The Making.

In this episode, I read from: a Vice article about the proposed legislation that would separate large funds from their rental housing; from Chuck Collins' book, The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions; and from a DailyKos article about actual left-leaning Democratic politicians bitching about the senior leadership in their party with a serious hard-on for preventing, well, left leaning policy, lest they piss off their wealthy donors. Ah, neoliberalism! What can't you fuck up?

I play: Pat Boone, covering Led Zepellin's most famous song, "The Stairway to Heaven". (Seriously, that Boone guy gets all kinds of shit because he dared to cover famous black artists, but no one mentions that Pat will cover absolutely anyone. He is an equal opportunity copy-cat. A copy-Pat, if you will.) KMFDM backed Henry Giroux in the opening, and I let the Vince Guiraldi Trio play us out with "Skating".

Episode 234: Enshittification

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There's a new word out there, doing its part to describe an old type of theft. Rentiers are once again attempting to rake in money, today using technology to make that job easier. I describe this word and some of the acts associated with it in this Episode 234: Enshittification.

In this episode, I read from: correspondence between myself and my podcast host helpers; and from two bloggy articles (the first also re-published by Wired) by Cory Doctorow. Listen also to Cory's extended three-part interview conducted by "BeeGee" Brooke Gladstone.

I played Clark Gable's huckster character from the 1947 movie The Hucksters in the intro, backed by KMFDM. Julie & Rolf & The Campfire Gang sing us out.