A Limerick for Eric Holder

by Citizen Mofo

Attorney General Eric Holder (in Congressional testimony March 6, 2013): I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if we do prosecute — if we do bring a criminal charge — it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy.

Our AG says banks are unprosecutable.

The impact might be international.

There’s just one tiny flaw

In his view of the law:

It’s completely unconstitutional.

A Rhyming History of the Banksters

by Citizen Mofo

We don’t deserve a banking system run by crooks.

Yet that’s just what we’ve got, the way it looks.

They lie, they steal, they double deal, they cook the books,

They claim they’re doing the “work of God”

And Congress is duly shocked and awed.

But I’d say that’s rather odd unless God’s so flawed he favors fraud.

When Congress killed Glass-Steagall was the day

That banks began to see that crime could pay

With no more regulations on predation in their way.

Work hard, play by the rules? “No deal,”

The bankers said. “We’d rather cheat and steal,

And now we’re free, as we should be, to do just as we feel.”

For the government’s been captured, and “We

The People” no longer means you, or you, or me.

It’s “by the bankers, for the bankers” by government decree.

Too big to fail, the bankers act with impunity.

Too big to jail, the banks’ crimes have immunity.

And government, conveniently lenient, provides the opportunity.

Not only did the government defraud

Its citizens to serve its greedy god

It did a quid pro quo on the status quo with the low blow of Frank/Dodd.

Congress was captured being lobby money whores,

The executive branch was captured by revolving doors,

And the SEC and Treasury are full co-conspirators.

We see no diff if the administration

Is Democratic or Republican.

The Bush guys lied; so Obama’s decided that was the way to win.

Paulson was a master of the bait and switch.

Geithner was the bankers’ little bitch.

Both took an oath but nonetheless got filthy freakin’ rich.

So sit down, shut up, it’s my turn to speak.

You may think that you are strong and we are weak.

But right makes might, we’re ready to fight, and it’s justice that we seek.

“Too big to jail” – just another self-serving lie.

Jail the CEO, they’ll just hire another guy.

Put AIG in the penitentiary and no one’s gonna cry.

It’s time to cut the criminal cancer out –

The banks and bankers who brought this mess about

And their admirers and conspirers whom they couldn’t have done without –

Time to cut them out so the system can start to heal;

To put them away for life with no appeal;

To weed out the pigs and break up the bigs that caused this whole ordeal.

We must now re-learn the rule of law.

For if democracy has a fatal flaw

It’s the scale of disaster when the government’s master is Bank of America.

An Elegy for Barack Obama’s Conscience

by Citizen Mofo

Barack Obama was once the lone sane Senator
Who showed discernment and a conscience
By speaking out against that damn dumb war
With simple, forceful eloquence.

And so we made him President.
But his actions since give cause to wonder
Where has that conscience gone, and that discernment?
It’s not that, like Bush, he’s made one blunder

After another out of sheer vacuity.
The things he’s done he’s done with care,
Prepared with intellectual acuity.
It’s just that there’s no more conscience there.

I refer in particular to the drone attacks –
Pure murder, immoral and illegal –
And no lying lawyers can change those facts.
Now, when did we grant the regal

Authority to kill citizens at will
To our President? To kill kids and to kill moms?
He may as well be chalking up each kill
On the White House walls beside Osama’s and Sadam’s.

Gameboy war, this high-tech barbarity
Makes killing pixel people easy, without feeling.
They claim collateral damage is a rarity
But what’s the truth with which we should be dealing?

Let’s check the tally: Four U.S. citizens
Have been murdered by drone to date.
Hundreds of women, nearly two hundred children,
All murdered to fan the flames of hate

And create new jihadists far far faster
Than we could ever hunt them down.
Mr. President, O murder-dealing master,
I wish your conscience were still around.

Unlike Lincoln, who grew in humanity
Through four bloody years of civil war;
Or FDR, who rolled with firm urbanity
Through the Depression and the Nazis and through the door

To greatness – Obama, on the other hand,
Is regressing and shrinking, further and further,
From the Senator who was once the lone sane man
With a conscience. Now he’s steeped in the blood of murder.

An Ode of Respect for Edward Snowden

by Citizen Mofo

While the crime lords of banking are still roaming free,
While war profiteers serially defraud the DOD,
Costing us trillions, the Feds instead of stopping their spree
Choose to turn the full force of the U.S. legal artillery

On Edward Snowden, whose crime was to show
His fellow citizens what we have a right to know
About government’s secret surveillance. And so
As far as I’m concerned, this man’s an American hero.

Think about it: Let your mind ride back in time
To 1776, where Jefferson’s crime
With the Declaration of Independence was the same:
Exposing government abuse. And from that sublime

Crime America was born in spirit and enshrined
As “We the People” in the Constitution and the national mind.
Now fast forward to today and that spirit has declined
To the point where the Feds see their power as unconfined.

Unlike the banksters with their trillions in illicit gains,
Edward Snowden gets nothing for his pains.
He risked his freedom and his life. So what remains?
A hero’s heart, and a patriot’s courage running in his veins.