http://generalpurposepodcast.blogspot.com en-us Sound recording licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike United States 3.0 License (see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/) A series of conversations with Grace Potts Paul R. Potts Grace and Paul in the Potts House home studio Grace and Paul in the Potts House home studio Paul R. Potts paul@thepottshouse.org yes Paul R. Potts Third-party Candidates; end of life; food stamps as corporate welfare; the Southern Strategy; Big Bird; the mainstreaming of Mormonism; destroying black families. Part one: It's true, Paul raps; man-cave studio upgrades; Bloodthirsty Vegetarians; the 2012 presidential election; Jill Stein; Joe Shriner; playing electoral Stratego; the lesser of two weevils; life under Romney; Obamacare; the terrors of for-profit health care; death panels, triage, and end-of-life care. Break 1: Paul plays the guitar part for Jonathan Coulton's song "I Crush Everything." Part two: end-of-life decision making, continued; they will abuse your corpse for money; the single-preyer system; food stamps as corporate giveaway; seeds for victory; food deserts; the poor as bogeyman; the southern strategy; you have to pay your darkies now; using race to manipulate politics; the house nigger can't get uppity; Obama's debate performance; disqualified for black rage; fried chicken in Camp Delta; Clinton, the first black president; my parents were married at one time; gratitude; everything sucks; Grace makes jokes. Break 2: Paul plays the guitar part for Jonathan Coulton's song "Nemeses." Part three: PBS as a conservative community value; Sesame Street as radical culture; Elmo in loco parentis; Ren and Stimpy is not for your four-year-old; if you have ads, then you have to please your advertisers; giving your kids up to the Red Chinese; Big Bird's drumsticks pack a lot of meat; sorry kids, your parents should have made more money; when the Mormon church became mainstream; Christians get a say in what makes a Christian; Mitt Romney is proud of his faith; the creeds; I am not a nuclear physicist, despite my degree in English; baptizing our dead slaves; Rosa sat so Martin could walk so Obama could run; never forgetting and never remembering; desegregation and fixing racism; separate but equal at least means equal; the Maafa; dismembering families for fun and profit; there will be a test; bye! http://thepottshouse.org/pottscasts/gapp/Conversation%20%231_%20October%206,%202012.mp3 Tue, 16 Oct 2012 01:00:00 -0500 1:57:36 Paul R. Potts Entitlement programs as corporate giveaways; why income-based stimulus can't lift people out of poverty; growing small business; immigration; Strong Towns. Our 11th wedding anniversary; remembering wombat Chelsea Clinton; the damp gets into our old bones; the joys of fireplaces; food stamps as corporate giveaway, revisited; entitlement programs as wealth transfers to corporations, not to people; everyone has skin in the game; you can't tax that dollar again; Fort Knox; money is loaned into existence; money as life-blood; stagnant pools of money; the Founders on aristocracy; these aren't the job creators you're looking for; stimulus-funded construction projects; Solyndra; the jobs bill; why stimulus can't get people out of poverty; what an asset stimulus might look like; adding one employee to a thousand businesses, as opposed to a thousand employees to one business; diversifying and specializing; apprenticeships and internships; skills that pay; NAFTA as the root of our immigration problem; exporting poverty and wealth transfer; invisible workers; what you have that Australia doesn't already have; you can't eat the asset; Strong Towns book giveaway (send us your mailing address for a free copy). http://thepottshouse.org/pottscasts/gapp/Conversation%20%232_%20October%2020,%202012.mp3 Sun, 21 Oct 2012 14:15:00 -0400 1:40:10 Paul R. Potts The Michigan ballot; a walk on a fall day; land tax as mechanism for urban improvement; racist language in politics. The Michigan ballot; optical scan ballots; third parties; partisan and non-partisan races; the proposals; the Michigan emergency manager law; the tragedy of Benton Harbor; how proposals are worded in confusing ways; the constitutional amendment to allow collective bargaining; how the emergency manager law started out as a Democratic law; the new renewable energy amendment proposal; proposals written as amendments; it works in Iowa; collective bargaining for home-care workers; SEIU and the back-story; a proposal to place limits on taxes; legislators voting themselves raises; the weirdly specific bridge-to-Canada proposal; doing the regular state business by constitutional amendment as symptom of a broken political process; millages; segue into our outdoor walk; the state of our garden; land taxes as a mechanism for reversing urban decline; voter suppression; shucking and jiving; racist language; home-schooling; education; being an auto-didact; eulogy for Wendell Taylor Sr.; returning from the recording of our walk; racist political language redux; our endless toxic election season; phony centrism; conspiracy theories and the search for truth about the Benghazi attack; the theory that we were arming the Syrian resistance; Romney would do the same thing but louder and whiter; the cowardly left; both sides aren't psychotic, but both sides are delusional hypocrites; calling Obama a "house nigger"; a whole rich stew of meaning; Uncle Tom's White House; JFK got uppity; the man of the house; poking the hornet's nest; holding your President to his promises. http://thepottshouse.org/pottscasts/gapp/Conversation%20%233_%20October%2029,%202012.mp3 Mon, 29 Oct 2012 23:10:00 -0400 1:53:23 Paul R. Potts Should we boycott (or support) local businesses who advertise their political and cultural opinions? Living with people is uncomfortable. New headphones; the Birch Run outlet mall and its surreal land use; lost in darkened parking lots the size of football fields; there's a point to this story somewhere; The Death of King Arthur, the Immortal Legend by Sir Thomas Malory and Peter Ackroyd; the cost of an outlet mall; Land of the Lost: sophisticated science fiction for the most discerning children in pajamas; post-nasal drip and the virtues of bourbon for sinus infections; toilet paper by the 48-pack; this conversation is really boring; our great local music store; our real topic for today -- whether to support or boycott local businesses because or despite the fact that they express their political and cultural opinions; pastries and purple flags; Robomney in effigy; rainbow stickers; abortion arguments; the Borders boycott; taking things personally; the Corporate Malfeasance chant; walking the picket line; I can't have that sign in my window; expressing who you really are; Paul can't stay focused for some reason (could it be the BOURBON, by chance?); boycotting chain stores in general; the Ace Hardware and IGA model; Chik-fil-a revisited; let's fire some peasants; nothing actually changed on election day; fire the guy driving the Volvo; the fiscal cliff; raising taxes; the election aftermath; winding down; eat the hell out of those pastries; living with people is uncomfortable; celebratory drone strikes; watching the election results in the company of our fellow citizens; the local drinking establishments; Mr. Rove demands a recount; what we expected; voter suppression; examining the results; gerrymandering; mild relief; underwhelming schadenfreude; a white-hot ball of rage. Closing song: Leaving Ann Arbor by Paul R. Potts (warning: NSFW language). http://thepottshouse.org/pottscasts/gapp/Conversation%20%234_%20November%2010,%202012.mp3 Sat, 10 Nov 2012 23:00:00 -0400 1:42:08 Paul R. Potts A Song of Ice and Fire; taxes and the middle class; the assault on labor unions in Michigan. We're back; A Storm of Swords (the TV show, season one); getting bogged down in book three of A Song of Ice and Fire; it's not going anywhere: Daenarys Targaryen may never actually conquer Westeros; Paul continues to beat the subject to its death in a positively Martinesque fashion; the Anti-Choice Hate Fest concept; my 2K: the effect of tax increases on the middle class; taxes as broken windows; your money must be destroyed; hoarded money and the failure to invest; waiting for a fire sale on assets and labor; oh yes, it can indeed all get worse; partisan numbskulls and personal attacks; straw-man arguments about taking all the billionaires' money; marginal tax rates and our total tax burden; this isn't the crisis you're looking for; actual solutions to fund our priorities; progressive responses to recession and depression as a series of compromises and capitulations; estates and dynasties; the majority is not conservative; watching Republican heads explode; a brief, shining Tea Party moment; finding common ground; widening the range of rational discourse; getting our talking points on; epistemic closure, ritual purification, and MSDNC (lean corporate!); the conservative circular firing squad; the Republican assault on unions in Michigan; punishing workers who work for their equitable share; "right to work" and freedom of association; union "thugs" and "goons"; there wasn't even a mosh pit; the Brooks Brothers riot and paid operatives; cutting off our noses to spite our faces; "make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible"; owning your job; employees as slaves; 70,000 rolls of toilet paper; Macs to be made in the United States; getting back to the future of manufacturing; the brave new world of low wages; old Bob Dole is sad; Rick Santorum's new gig; Boehner's purge; the creme de la creme DeMint; Stephen Colbert is ready; Mitch McConnell filibusters himself; the 300th drone strike in Pakistan; it got better. http://thepottshouse.org/pottscasts/gapp/Conversation%20%235_%20December%206,%202012.mp3 Fri, 07 Dec 2012 23:30:00 -0400 2:16:37 Paul R. Potts A trip to Lansing to say goodbye to Paul's job. Sixty-nine in two miles; the job of no job; wage slavery; the whip in the overseer's hand; not having a job is a full-time job; the family's calorie burn rate; positive feedback; health care crises; the surgeon that ran from his patient; our tall dwarf, revisited; thirteen years ago; Eastern Accents; three pork buns and two cups of ginger tea; a clean, well-lighted place; on our way home. http://thepottshouse.org/pottscasts/gapp/Conversation%20%236_%20March%2015,%202013.mp3 Fri, 22 Mar 2013 14:00:00 -0400 1:25:04 Paul R. Potts A walking conversation on a spring day about how modern conservatism is really just mean-spirited liberalism. Mr. Talky-talk; the eggs are piling up; at least the kids don't have lead poisoning, ha ha ha sob; WIC food; health coverage; 3 inches of rain; conservatives as mean-spirited liberals; Grace talks about the conservative and liberal traditions; freedom and responsibility; you don't actually want a conservative amount of sex or a liberal amount of arsenic; what a truly liberal food safety net would actually look like; neoliberalism; packaged and processed food; quantity over quality; the opposite of elitism; insistence on quality as a fundamentally conservative value; a clean diet for the rich and processed starches for the poor; CSAs; cow's milk; breastfeeding; there is no low-fat goat's milk to be found in Saginaw county; it's not about calories; eating whole foods; juices; the WIC rationale; what a truly conservative food safety net would actually look like; someone stole our rocks and our trash can; the modern year-round CSA; driving a market; the WIC training class at Wal-Mart; Grace's homework assignment; learning the basics; I'm not ungrateful; life skills; nobody should be grateful for toxic garbage; giving your first fruits; what we're really grateful for; it's not a gift; our social investments and what we get back from them; investing in skills; getting our teenager launched; education in Belgium; dignity written on our butts; investing in people; Barack Obama has a student loan to offer Paul. http://thepottshouse.org/pottscasts/gapp/Conversation%20%237_%20April%2016,%202013.mp3 Tue, 16 Apr 2013 18:00:00 -0500 1:25:58