'Spesh'ly for Koch Industries and their ilk. To ape Eben Brooks, I apologize to W.S. Gilbert. But not very much. (All the same, I live in hope that he'd at least appreciate the oh-so-very-sincere sentiment behind the satire.)
I am the very model of a modern multi-national
With business rationale which, frankly, borders on irrational.
When payroll I can't evicerate thru' outsourcing overseas
Stateside wages I'll deflate by lobbying for H1-Bs.
Likewise, my tax-burden I have arranged to shift off-shore
While blaming public debt on both the unions and the poor,
Deploring unwashed masses who won't get off their duffs,
To summon enough gumption to work two jobs to afford my stuff.
I far prefer an ad-blitz to cultivating word-of-mouth
And racing to the bottom with my moral compass pointed south,
But still in matters mercantile, fiscal and fi-nan-ci-al
I am the very model of a modern multinational!
Public oversight I'll block with Apocalypic admonition
(Unless it's regulation I'm assured will quash my competition).
Florid "Letters to the Editor" I can sock-puppet by the ream,
Wealth redistributing I abhor--unless, of course, it flows upstream.
Failing that, I'll bankroll election of compliant politicians--
Whose procedural chicanery will subvert opposition--
While carpet-bombing airwaves with part-truths and full-on lies
'Til absorbed are all the social costs--and the profits privatized.
My satraps gamely game my books as Dukes of robber-barons,
Their bonus earning on the backs of cube-serfs in faux-Aerons.
But still in matters mercantile, fiscal and fi-nan-ci-al
I am the very model of a modern multinational!
When I admit that fleas are caught from dogs I lie down with,
And stop mistaking Ms. Ayn Rand for Jesus Christ or Adam Smith,
When I stop paying CEOs the GDPs of nation-states
And renounce correlations of my tax cuts to employment rates,
When I stop acting though this planet's mine to plunder,
And attonement make for each dollar-goggled blunder--
In short, when my trickle-down is not only warm and yellow,
You'll say this global capitalist's a sugar-daddy fellow.
'Til then I'll live the fiction that is corp'rate personhood
My private interest rephrasing in cant terms of Public Good.
But still in matters mercantile, fiscal and fi-nan-ci-al
I am the very model of a modern multinational!
