Friday, August 6, 2010

Our Doomed Corpro-Conservative Way Forward


Do not design new products or organize production, just send the half-baked specs overseas
Let laid off workers patiently await the good jobs you said their layoffs would help create
Walk away from your pension and benefit obligations to go build plants in southern china
Employ uprooted peasants for a dollar a day and trumpet this as the great New World Order

Give up the croplands to the stewardship of subsidized corporate conglomerates
Keep them working 14 hours a day to send a little money back to starving families
Close up those new Mexican maquiladoras because their wages are getting just too high
Call poverty the price of inexorable progress and preach solemnly of Personal Responsibility

Import autos and oil while clumsily trying to export an inequality-based evangelical democracy
Keep chanting the tired fairytale about free trade creating a better world for us all
Have neither business nor government pensions and no savings or jobs for those laid-off at 50
Ignore the collapsing house of credit cards that will eventually leave 99% in equal poverty

Trumpet our vaporous financial genius, infantile marketing wizardry and overpriced sales expertise
Invest’ trillions in deficits on defense against the phantasmal enemies who surround us
Profit on higher education by ensuring that it only comes with a heavy burden of debt
Send them back scrap metal and used paper in exchange for plasma TVs and game consoles

Place your implanted consumerist needs above the once-good earth that sustains them all
Pretend foreigners will rely on our overspending to sustain their loaning us even more, forever
Marvel at our consumer’s ingenuity in behaving as if their negative savings rates are sustaiable
Call for less government interference while lobbying for tax breaks, subsidies and tariffs

Pretend that multi-million dollar bonuses for cynical bankers and brokers are just and well-deserved
Dispose of workers at 50 but let them try to live til 80 without work, savings or healthcare
Give the Asian billions a little taste of the good life just as the natural resources run out
For god’s sake have them keep their children away from the poisoned rivers and acid lakes

Recite a scripted homily that decent health care is simply another profit-driven industry
Sneeringly, get governments out of the ‘business’ of species and habitat preservation
Pour billions into violently securing oil supplies and next to nothing on its replacement
Clone vast and toxic exurbs with economies based solely upon shopping and services

Cleverly design products which break just as their replacements are coming to market
Headquarter in Bermuda, produce in China, support in India but advertise as All-American
Create ads with soft music, omissions and misrepresentations spoken in soothing tones
Convince them that simply rewarding your blind greed will surely lead us all to a better tomorrow

Contract food ingredients from the lowest overseas bidder with no on-site oversight or inspections
Polish a reputation for iron control but, at your trial, claim you never knew of any crimes
Act eager to clear your name but let your greasy, expensive lawyer do all the talking
Scurry from the spotlight behind toadying spokesmen you deliberately keep in ignorance

Cynically foster a bitter political stalemate that lets your criminal neglect continue to run its course
Then duck into waiting limos without a comment, O ye brave knights of unbridled capitalism

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