THE CONVERSATION WE NEED TO BE HAVING
(in our own heads for starters)
Who Made Who
It’s never gonna come up in any cell phone
conversation
Or anywhere, out loud, across the nation
You’re never gonna admit it
Guys, ego to ego in the corner sports bar
Ladies, gossip to gossip in the hair salon
But deep inside
In your heart of hearts
In your nighttime thoughts
In your time on the can
On the street waiting for the man
America, you know it’s true
You think about how Bill Gates is better than
you
And not just Bill and that Microsoft crew
There’s also BET’s Robert Johnson
That Chicano dude who bought the Angels
Warren Buffett
George Soros
Oprah, Jay Z, Russell Simmons too
Anyone who’s light years above just making
do
Limousines passing in the night
They must have done something right
And you must have done something wrong
To keep sinking out of sight
Like the song says:“I don’t put down the man who’s got a better
hand
‘Cause I know I’m doing the best I can”
But those people on the cover of Business
Week
Are doing better than best
Is it really ‘cause they’re innovators or
because they never rest?
Their golden road was paved way before they
were born
Free labor from the slaves
Free land from the Indians
You could be as dumb as Dubya and build an
empire from that
Mexico and Hawaii
Stolen
Investments worldwide
Golden
You could be as dumb as Dubya and build an
empire from that
Bill Gates and all the billionaire boys and girls
didn’t start at the bottom and pull themselves up
They started at the top of a bloody ladder
The most they did was add a rung or two
And if that ladder gets shaky and they fall?
Congress says “Don’t worry, we’ll bail you out; you know how we do”
Seven hundred billion, and that’s just the
beginning
The top of the first inning
The corporate types are rewarded when they
fail
You get no health care, no job, and time in jail
Seven hundred billion wasn’t the first chapter
in the bailout book
Through boom and bust
With high tech industries and those covered
with rust
We’ve paved the corporate highway with
bonds, tax breaks, free land
In fact, we’ve given them anything they
demand
They make the dollars
But that really makes no sense
Since we paid for it all
Shouldn’t we own it?
We receive no crop although we’ve sown it
Instead
We’re dying at the gates of paradise
Just barely living in a country with more than
enough for all
A country where professional eating is a sport
And fourteen million children go hungry every
day
Can’t we take these funky economic relations
and twist ‘em
Get a new system
Where we can live our days
Instead of just counting our years
It’s time for you to step up and be the repo
man
To do that you need a repo plan
But you’ll never get that as long as….
Deep inside
In your heart of hearts
In your nighttime thoughts
In your time on the can
On the street waiting for the man
You turn history inside out, take the false and
make it true
And think that Bill Gates and Oprah are
somehow better than you
Lee Ballinger / January 2009
