Corpulent America - I In 1960, U.S. corporations Made 24 percent of tax donations. With offshore havens skilled to circumvent, Today they give a paltry 8 percent While at four hundred times the average wage, Portraying the unfairness of our age, The chief executive furthers his gains Building his fortunes upon other's pains, While whistleblowers, soothsayers and prophets Are sacrificed to greed and easy profits And agencies that might uncover fraud Are underfunded, hampered and declawed. The Founding Fathers, seeing these corporate knaves, Would cry for vengeance, turning in their graves, While Adam Smith, whose principles are cited, Is slandered and his 'Wealth of Nations' slighted. See how our Congress is put up for sale And Virtue stoops when Avarice assail. The valiant few are hard-pressed to prevail And lily-livered sycophants turn tail. Connect the links of lawyers, politicians, Foreign dictators, judges and commissions, Of regulators bought by businessmen To overthrow the average citizen, Of lobbyists disguised as charity Or wearing masks of Issue Advocacy, Wolves in sheeps' clothing, and the wicked preacher, The whitewashed tomb, devout only in feature. The IMF, the WTO, The World Bank, each has dealt a bitter blow In service to the U.S. corporate beast That glutton-like on foreign assets feasts. As corporations typically do good Only when courts enforce a law they should, Suits to the suits! but vainly they unfold When judges' rulings can be bought and sold. In contrast to the simple-minded creed, We learn that crime pays handsomely indeed From the example of the Texan heir Whose self-delusion breeds se laisser plaire. With toxins spewed by denizens of oil, Our lands to desecrate, our lungs to spoil, See how Bush favors fawning friends, indebts Our future, our environment besets. On ignorance his reelection rests Lest an informed electorate protests How public funds and power turn private gain And looks instead to noble John McCain. July 2002