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I’m Still A-Mergin’ Even More

Oh I marched to the battle of the Enron trench
In a scam that was bound to end all scams
Energy stocks were flying, who knew that we were lyin
But I’m still mergin even more

I foreclosed my share of houses in a thousand different towns
Maybe the house where you were born
The American dream is ending
Thanks to predatory lending
No I ain’t a virgin anymore

It’s always the rich to teach us how to fail
Always the poor to learn
Now look at all we’ve won
With deregulation
Tell me was it worth your house

Oh I marched through downturns of every stripe
At the end of every roaring boom
There were Panics and Depressions
And 21 recessions
Yes I was binge and purgin all along

For I ponzied up my default swaps till no one knew
What the hell they were selling on spec
Though it wasn’t strictly legal
At least we lost Glass-Steagall
Yes we were surgin through the store

It’s always the rich to hold onto the bonds
Always the poor in the stocks
Now look at all we’ve won
With deregulation
Tell me was it worth your job

And I marched in the battle of Seattle too
Though not in the streets with you
I was globalizing profit
You were yelling hey come off it
And now I’m splurgin’ even more

Now AIG and B of A are billions in the hole
City Group screams at Manhattan’s shore
Call it pyramids or teasin
I admit I am the reason
That they’re enlargin’ even more
And you’ve got no margin anymore
But I’m still chargin’ plenty more

Poor Penny Pritzker

If you want to evaluate the new Secretary of Con-us, consult with the workers at her Hyatt Hotels, or the schools she ran into the ground, or the folks she foreclosed on, or…

Poor Penny Pritzker is not so swank
She only owns one superior bank
She’s only got 1.5 billion thank you very much

Once she built a hotel, made it run
And a bank so sub-prime
Once she ran the schools and now they’re gone
Penny, can you spare a dime?

But Mr. President,
she’s an above average Cabinet resident
Off-shore trust in the Bahamas
Heir to Hyatt Hotels
High regard for housekeepers
Same as schools and neighborhoods
If the workers want a wage, she subcontracts out
Just like Hell-Mart

In Penny’s reign the banker shaves another customer

We see homeowners sitting waiting for a trim

Then the Pritzger people rush on in

Putting kids in pain…
Very strange

Subprime Penny, well what’s that worth?
Secretary of Commerce, what on earth?
Of qualified secretaries there seems to be a dearth
So a bank ruinator gets a cabinet berth

(Pennies from Heaven)
Folks in chains for bankers’ gains
Penny’s slum heaven

St. Peter said I’m deporting you Penny from heaven

She found her fortune foreclosin’ all over town

For sure that’s our economy upside down

I’d trade her for a package of corporate tax enforcement improvements
If you want the things you love, you must have labor movements
But what you hear’s not thunder, it’s simply plunder you see
There’ll be pennies left over of our economy

Say don’t you remember she cost the Feds
Half a billion that time
Based upon her record running a bank
Penny will take our last dime

I Won’t Bloody Buy It

We boycott all the unjust companies we can find, but why do we occasionally balk?

When I was with Gandhi I didn’t buy British goods
Nor during our own revolution wouldn’t wanta support those hoods
Boycotted buses in Montgomery
For freedom I would walk or even hitch
And when they made sexist t-shirts
I boycotted Abercrappie and Bitch
Nestles replacing breast milk,
mothers being bilked
Our health being pushed aside
They fill us up with pesticide
And GE is so into nukes, I ask you
When they contaminate you
Do you think boycotting is for kooks?
But yet you say it’s no crime
You’re not joinin’ in this time
I tell you

Chorus:
It’s the same as serving Gallo wine
It’s the same as playing Sun City,
Cross the apartheid line
Like buying Exxon after Valdez
Or BP after the Deep Horizon – please!
Chilean grapes under Pinochet
Monsanto, Agent Orange – nyet
It would turn me Tourette – Tourette!
So…I won’t bloody buy it
So why even try it?
I’m not for it, I won’t ignore it
You shouldn’t sell it
And I won’t buy it
Even if it’s half price, no dice
It’s too bloody bloody, and it’s not nice

And that’s why I don’t buy Ahava
Because in Palestine they kill the dream
OK I don’t buy beauty cream especially
if it’s Ahava, don’t you see
Because it comes from the Dead Sea, made in an illegal colony
I’ve also cut way back on buying bulldozers from Caterpillar yeah
Due to their demolitions, that’s how their dozers are applied
And also when I buy hummus
I make sure I’m not funding apartheid
Supporting colonizing felons
If it is that’s why I’m yellin’
As I child I ate no grapes
From social conscience there is no escape
So I decline to buy the fruit of the vine
From stores that ignore Immokalee
It’s the least that I can do, can’t you see
But yet you say it’s no crime
You’re not joinin’ in this time
I tell ya
Chorus

No of course I’d never boycott Hindus or Jews
But justice I always choose
I boycott states that seize another’s land
Till there’s nothing left to lose
Especially if the farm workers ask me to
I can do without whatever’s dripping blood – wouldn’t you?
Small suffering, won’t you join me in sitting on our bucks, this situation sucks
But we’ve got one shot, so why not boycott

And while we’re at it won’t you sign my petition, send off a letter, make a call
Show up in a downpour, or at the Corporate hall, sit at the factory gate
Otherwise –
Chorus

Look around, take stock of yourself
And take that chazerei off your shelf!

Ghostwriters of the Law

Who writes our laws? ALEC does. American Legislative Exchange Council. AKA the 1%. Surprise!

The American Legislative Exchange Council
Is so creative when they’re through our towns’ll be
Shells of their former selves
It’ll be as if old Santa had downsized all his elves
How so you say?
Listen, I pray thee
To a sad and sorry tale
Prepare to shed tears in a vale

Just who are these smart operators, you ask
Well, I read the whole internet so I’m up to the task
On the board there are just three cokes
The drink people quit, leaving the brother Koch blokes

Telecoms, big banks, and really big insurance
Assuring the ongoing corporate crime endurance
If you’re mom and pop well you just don’t rate
At the intersection of business and state

They’ve got a lot of energy, they’ve got Texaco
Chevron, Enron, Exxon, also Amoco

Yippie-eye-ay
Yippie-eye-aw
Ghostwriters of the law

It’s a corporate bill mill, they like to meet
Behind closed doors at a swank retreat
The NRA wrote stand your ground
More and more black youth are not around
Privatizing schools and prisons and social security
Selling of the wealth to the wealthy
Lease it back to the public, that ain’t healthy
For me, or you, but

Smart ALEC knows the score,
Smart ALEC knows what for
Gives all the money so it’s hard to trace
Finds its way to a friendly face
That’s more like arsenic than old lace
Before you know it they’ve taken their place
In the white house, state house, every other great house
They change the rules, play us for fools
And legislators are their tools

Yippie-eye-ay
Yippie-eye-aw
Ghostwriters of the law

They don’t even try to influence legislation
They promote love between government and corporation
They’re rarely seen in the lobby
But writing laws is their favorite hobby

They help thwart corporate taxes by hiding their wealth
And if we even try to expose how they destroy our health
They would love to silence us or even arrest us
Nearly as much as they love asbestos

Smart-ALEC knows what to do
To keep me and you in deep doo-doo
Writes legislation to ruin the nation
And lower the station of the 99 percent
Straighten your seat backs for our final descent

Yippie-eye-ay
Yippie-eye-aw
Ghostwriters of the law

They throw a smokescreen round those who try to sting them
For defending Big Tobacco, they love the plant kingdom
And besides the evil weed these guys are deeply pharmaceutical
With the Glaxo gang lawmakers are downright cahootical

Yippie-eye-ay
Yippie-eye-aw
Ghostwriters of the law

Alberta Tarbillies

(Keystone XL pipeline).

(tune: Beverly Hillbillies)
Come listen to a story ‘bout Alberta Tar Sands
In a western province of wheat-growin’ lands
Tycoons found a complement for their blue blood
Down in the ground was some tar sand crud
Spoken:
Oil, that is, dirty oil, Pollution tea, toxic sludge…
water waste…tailing ponds…
I never swim in ammonia….if it’s mixed with cyanide….
 
Well the first thing you know TransCanada was there        
Corporation said better move the tar but where?
Turns out Texas is the place where they refine
So they fueled up their tools and built a pipeline
Spoken:
Oil spillin’, river ruinin’, petroleum dependin’
Climate killin’…acidic….corrosive…volatile…unstable…
like its builders….fossil fools.
 
They say if you build it, it will spill
You can tweak but it’ll leak and wildlife it’ll kill
Runs through an aquifer we can’t live without
Will the planet survive oil industry clout?
Spoken:
Let’s hear it for long-term strategies for energy sanity!
Now let’s hear it for short-term profits!
How a-bout that destruction of indigenous lands?
Puttin’ that much sulfur and acid in a pipe – what they been smoking?!

(Slower rhythm:)
Is it time to say good-bye to atmosphere and earth?
We would like to thank you folks fer shoutin’ what it’s worth
You’re all invited back again to this locality
To share a heapin helpin of your solidarity
Spoken:
Earth-savin’, that is. Set a spell. Civil disobedience.
Y’all save the planet, y’hear?

So I’m offering this warm refrain
The mercury’s at 92
Foggy Scotland’s shores are now hot as Bahrain
Scary business melting me and you

What the Frack?!

The good people of the petroleum industry have decided to treat the earth like the government treats the elderly and the sick: expendable.

Chorus:
What the frack are they thinking
What the frack have they been drinking
Our water quality sinking
What the frackety frack!?
I don’t need their gasssss
They can kiss my

They want to shoot us up with chemicals
I don’t mean to be polemical
But shooting chemicals into rocks
Is that really thinking outside the box?
I know an easier way to get gas
Eat beans and kiss my asterisk

Footnote one:
It would be more fun
To get your power from the sun, son
And we really have sinned by ignoring the wind
And the waves

And they’re frackin’ in Texas
To get some of that frackin’ oil
They’re determined to hex us
It’s enough to bring your blood to a boil
What the frack, we gotta foil
This frackin freak show
Cut the power to the fossil fuel clique ya know

Cho:
What the frack are they thinking
What the frack have they been drinking
Our water quality sinking
What the frackety frack!?
I don’t need their gasssss
They can kiss my

Farmers forced to fracking
Aced out by agribiz
When you’ve lost your job, you gotta get by
Offered cash to trash your land and water
What are you gonna try

Six figures, that’s good roustabout pay
How could they harbor any doubt you say
But the job will last six months or less
Then you’re back where you started, but you’re under duress
They leave you in the lurch
So when you go to church
Speak up, speak out, don’t let ‘em run you out
Poor people always been expendable
When the water’s poison it’s not mendable

Cho:
What the frack are they thinking
What the frack have they been drinking
Our water quality sinking
What the frackety frack!?
I don’t need their gasssss
They can kiss my…

Footnote two: Natural gas is mainly methane
Don’t sound so friendly, more like arsenic than champagne
Your water will be so bad, polluted, sorry and sad
Your tapwater catches fire? It’s a new stove, you should be glad

We need energy independence
From Exxon, Chevron & Shell,
They need to move their offices
On down to the county jail
We’ve got shale shock,
It’s a bridge fuel……to nowhere

Cho:
What the frack are they thinking
What the frack have they been drinking
Our water quality sinking
What the frackety frack!?
I don’t need their gasssss
They can kiss my…

We Are the Ones

A look and listen at some of the grassroots social justice organizations abroad in the land. From the album “Food, Clothing, & Glaciers”

When in the course of social collapse
It becomes necessary to change society, perhaps
Jobless and homeless, can’t get ho health are, life isn’t fair
Who do we know, to help us go, help us sew
Seeds of somethin’ better, cast aside fetters
Well I met her, she sent a letter:

We’re the welfare mothers from New York City
We fight for rights don’t need your pity
But where are the people to join in our fight
To make it right, could they be hiding in plain sight
Well we are the ones, yes we are the ones

Farm Labor Organizing committee Flocs to the rescue
takes on the soup and pickle people
demanding respect for the pickle pickers, don’t you know,
fair wages and treatment for the sis and bro
Grassroots global justice, Alianza Popular
wants a new system
What Dreamers! – Wait, that’s how we make change,
For a minute I forgot
Power for working people and those who have not

Indigenous Environmental Network
Somehow got this funny idea
people are in some way part of some environment round here
Third world majority says we not only have the right to know
We have the responsibility to BE the media, step it up and go
Don’t you think youth of color queers and other marginalized multitudes
could do a better job of telling us what’s goin down
Than those gringos up at NPR with their chatty Kathy attitudes
(you heard me – I said – You can say that)

And when the CEO said you just gotta trust us
Got a big laugh from Jobs with Justice
We bailed out the rich, they got the bonus itch
Did you see what I saw, I had drop jaw
We want our dignity back, not mention homes and jobs
They say the wheels of society are coming off,
Train wreck is straight ahead
But some of us have been there all along
Somebody somewhere doin something wrong
Undernourished children in a overnourished society
When we allow poverty to continue that’s an impropriety
Who cares about health care, we care,
Who cares about immigrants, we all share
If money can move globally
so can people who have to have it to live nobly

Michigan welfare rights organization
fight against privatization for affordable water rates,
Like they did in Bolivia and by the way they won
If Bolivia can do it, Michigan can
Padres Unidos defending Denver Latinos from education asesinos
Without the Freedom to Learn Project
You got no freedom to earn prospect
We want no schoolhouse to jailhouse track
We want our dignity back

Women in Transition out in Louisville Kentucky
Do you think you get what you need by hopin, maybe little dopin C
No, you band together, stand together, don’t wait for their approval
Get up stand up against unjust child removal
Poor people’s economic human rights campaign says
we all have the right to do more than complain
about health care, housing, education, and a living wage
It’s the new black, it’s all the rage
Supports the victims of Nafta and welfare reform
Which taken together were a perfect storm

We been downsized and cast-aside
But we will not be sat astride
We need power which we can only get
From the strength and perseverance of our 93 member organizations
I’ll mention a few, most I can’t remember cause I ain’t no cyborg
you can look it up at economichumanrights.org/members
There you find among others these sisters and brothers
Alexandria United Taxi-drivers, and the Hip-Hop Congress,
Sisters Together Ending Poverty STEP
Southsiders Together Organizing for Power STOP
Toledo Foreclosure Defense League TFDL?
Direct Action Welfare Group – DAWG!
And don’t forget the Mormons
For Equality and Social Justice
All right!
INCITE! radical feminists of color workin to end violence – against women –
and communities of color through direct action, and grassroots organizing. I’m gonna go out on a limb and link ‘em
with the Indigenous Women’s Network with their Youth Cultural Arts
Program and Sustainable Communities
We are the ones…

Songs from the CD “Food, Clothing, & Glaciers”:

Ballad of BP and the Massey Massacre

Chorus:
I won’t be making the trip
To visit Don Blankenship
In his prison cell
And I don’t wish him well
Won’t visit Tony Hayward
He’s way to wayward
Though seeing him in jail
Is my holy grail

No it isn’t fine to operate a mine
When coal is the cancer of the earth
But to sacrifice 29
To increase your bottom line
Brother you’re asking for it
Into the patrol car, officer, floor it!
Chorus

And the only proper plea
For drilling in the sea
With no referee
Is insanity
But on second thought I guess
We really ought to press
Charges including reckless endangerment,
In the presence of clear and present danger
He went straight to
manslaughter, sea slaughter, shore slaughter
Killing of land and air and water, so…
Chorus