Corporations seek pockets of povertylike pit vipers lock on to heat,taking advantage of cheap, docile laborand creating corporate fiefs

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REVELATIONS

Corporations seek pockets of poverty
like pit vipers lock on to heat,
taking advantage of cheap, docile labor
and creating corporate fiefs.

The poor get used as chum
in the roiling economic waters
to attract the sharks of profit
that circle the bottom line's coffers.

Corporations promise job creation
then run small business out of town
along with those original jobs, so,
in fact, the number of jobs goes down.

They also extort tax abatement
to get them to relocate at all.
What this does to property tax - and schools -
SHOULD be against the law.

This economic piracy is aided and abetted
by each Congress and administration
bought through the use of lobbyists
by those bent on total deregulation

so CORPSE can devour each other,
bloating into huge conglomerations,
Frankenstein-like profiteers
that feed off the poor of all nations.

The profits these CORPSE should pay tax on
they traitorously stash in sham offices offshore.
These and the tax breaks they get for outsourcing
strangle federal programs we need here at home.

Our federal budget supports corporate welfare
and the military-industrial complex's war.
Less and less tax-collected funds are available
for the social programs we need more and more.

Corporations continue to feed on
the minimum wage and labor unions.
The administration excuses them
from cleaning up their own pollution

which creates diseases so costly
only the most callous couldn't see why
that without any health insurance
all the poor can afford is to die.

It's hard to pay for heating oil
to survive the winter's cold
or gas enough to get to work
if you're someone who's still got a job.

What happened to the Progressive Income Tax
and funds for our children's education?
Where's the money for Headstart and childcare
and support for public transportation?

What are they doing to Social Security?
Didn't we used to have a right to privacy?
Is there still public housing? A G.I. Bill?
Has "the general welfare" become history?

Public airwaves were auctioned to CORPSE
and all at bargain basement prices,
so their media deem poverty a non-issue,
leaving the poor to their own devices.

Day by day the Social Safety Net
is rapidly disappearing
as CORPSE are granted more human rights,
making humans an endangered species.

An increasingly impossible American Dream
rubs the face of the poor in this fraud.
And the poor are increasingly aware
their situation's not an act of God

nor the invisible hand of the market
but, in fact, a conscious decision
made each and every day
by their erstwhile fellow Americans.

And this strategy isn't hidden, it's open
and agressive with a minimum of cover,
and, as outsourcing accelerates,
works its way up the economic ladder.

Elected representatives just wring their hands
and cry crocodile tears in mock sorrow,
then vote to grant CORPSE more rights.
The poor du jour could be you tomorrow.

And as CORPSE and their minions conspire
to get more rich by creating more poor
where there once was a War on Poverty
there is now a War on the Poor.

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, will make violent revolution inevitable." - John Fitzgerald Kennedy

- Vi Ransel

Authors Bio:
Vi's works appear widely both in print and online. She conducts Poetry Workshops and gives readings in Central New York. Her latest chapbook is "Sine Qua Non Antiques (an Arcanum of History, Geography and Treachery).