No Corporations in Heaven
Heaven once had corporations, Once upon a time.
But the courts, the schools, the golden rule All got left behind.
Our food and water, and the government Just went all to hell.
But things are better now, We learned the lesson well:
No corporations in heaven, No one on your nerves.
No one to upset your boat, Or get your goat, Or take your vote.
And the banks are friendly, They don’t want your home;
They’re not too big to fail, No need to bail, It’s no fairy tale.
No, it’s just heaven, People standing proud.
And corporations, Are not allowed.
You don’t get rich by stealing, Nothing here to hide.
We’ve got transparency, Integrity, Far and wide.
Police don’t hurt you, They are all your friends.
Protect you from all harm, Arm in arm, Works like a charm.
‘Cause it’s just heaven , you can take it slow.
If you don’t like it, You are free to go.
Got a Constitution, Treat us all the same.
They’ve got a bill of rights, That’s water-tight, In black and white.
Politicians honest, And Judges, they all work
To protect the common good, The neighborhood, It’s understood
That this is heaven, People standing proud,
And corporations, Are not allowed.
We don’t have an army now, And look at what we save.
In place of poverty, Now you see Prosperity.
Forget about the stocks and bonds, The whole portfolio
In heaven, don’t you know It’s got to go.
Cause this is heaven , we all take it slow.
If you don’t like it, You are free to go.
Yeah, this is heaven, People standing proud
And corporations, Are not allowed
Words & Music ©Doug Hendren 2014
What’s it about? More than any previous moment in history, we possess the power to promote justice and end poverty and hunger in our nation and throughout the world. Why, then, are we going the other way at top speed? The United States now has the most lopsided wealth and the worst income inequality in the developed world. We devote a huge sector of our productive economy to the manufacture and sale of weapons of war, at the expense of basic education, shelter and food security here at home. Although most Americans favor gun control, we haven’t a prayer of getting it through Congress. While tens of millions of Americans have awakened to the public health hazards of genetically engineered foods and the pesticides used to grow them, giant agribusiness companies like Monsanto easily deceive the public, obstruct scientifically sound policy and exert influence directly in the Supreme Court and the FDA. Oil pipelines and fracking companies threaten the purity of our drinking water. A rogue banking industry can rob tens of millions of Americans of their homes, and not one senior banker goes to jail. And bigger than all of these, the US Congress leads the world in climate denial and in obstructing a global response to climate change. The common denominator to all of these problems is, of course, the economic elite, “the 1%”, operating primarily through corporate interests concentrated on Wall Street. Corporate and banking industries and their armies of lobbyists have acquired decisive control over our political process. Acting through organizations like ALEC, corporations actually write their own laws for “our” lawmakers to pass. Fossil fuel companies are able to control global climate negotiations, when they shouldn’t even be at the table. A Princeton University study recently determined that the United States should no longer be called a democracy. It has not always been so. The 18-century American colonists feared the English corporation more than King George’s army, and early US law placed very strict sanctions on any corporations failing to act in the public interest. The formula is simple: Corporate interests capture the government, using their great wealth to pass laws allowing even further concentration of wealth, while saddling the public with all the liabilities. Over time, jobs and manufacturing are shipped away to wherever they can be done most cheaply, allowing poverty to grow at home. As more and more Americans become more desperate and insecure, the police must now begin to see the American people as the “enemy”, as insurgents, rather than the people they are sworn to protect. The American military, and an increasingly brutal and militarized domestic police force, gradually come to protect the interests of the economic elite more than those of the American people. Frustrated American citizens who respond to these dangers with political activism are profiled as “terrorists” for engaging in the great American tradition of civil disobedience. The modern corporation is central to all these developments. We need to put corporate America back in its place if we expect to reclaim our future and our democratic rule at home. If not now, when? There’s no room for corporations in anybody’s heaven! RECOMMENDED: Inside Job. The fast-paced 2010 documentary film about the people and banks behind the 2008 global financial collapse. This is more than entertainment: The director, Charles Ferguson, holds a PhD in political science from MIT. Predator Nation: Corporate criminals, political corruption and the hijacking of America. Charles Ferguson 2012 The Public Bank Solution, Ellen Brown 2013. How the banking industry gained such a dangerous degree of power over our lives, and how we can reorient banking to serve us all.
