Excepting Corporate Welfare, Of Course

Remembering Alice's Restaurant and the simple days!
by Charlie Leck

You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant,
Exceptin' Alice of course!

Do any of you, my older friends and readers, remember Arlo Guthrie singin' this wonderful song – that was more like an entire album – going on for over twenty minutes about Alice and her husband, Ray, and the faithful dog, Fasha, and their Thanksgiving Day from hell together? Oh my, in the sixties it was my favorite song! I listened to that song hundreds of times and laughed so deep down inside myself each time I did.

Now, just why did I think of that song this morning when I read a NY Time editorial about corporate compensation. I thought of Arlo Guthrie singin' his charmin' song about Alice and her restaurant. Here's all these big-wig business types shoutin' about welfare and money handouts to the poor and how wrong it is that these folks ain't pickin' themselves up by their boot straps (whatever the hell that it is) and goin' out solvin' their problems by their own self, anyhow.

"But that's not how it works. The ongoing bailout of the financial system by the Federal Reserve underscores the extent to which financial barons socialize the costs of private bets gone bad. Not a week goes by that the Fed doesn't inaugurate a new way to provide liquidity — meaning money — to the financial system. Bear Stearns isn't enormous. It doesn't take deposits from the public. Yet the Fed believed that letting it implode could unleash a domino effect among other banks, and the Fed provided a $30 billion guarantee for JPMorgan to snap it up.

"Compared to the cold shoulder given to struggling homeowners, the cash and attention lavished by the government on the nation's financial titans provides telling insight into the priorities of the Bush administration. It's not simply a matter of fairness, though. The Fed is probably right to be doing all it can think of to avoid worse damage than the economy is already suffering. But if the objective is to encourage prudent banking and keep Wall Street's wizards from periodically driving financial markets over the cliff, it is imperative to devise a remuneration system for bankers that puts more of their skin in the game."

Now here's Arlo, comin' round again and screechin' his heart out as he gets to the refrain…

You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant,
Exceptin' Alice of course!

Mr. Cayne even got Alice. He's the big dude at Bear Stears. His bank collapsed right under him, you know; yet, between 2004 and 2006, he was paid over $40 million cash money. Now he's gonna reeeetire just down the road from Alice's Restaurant and live up there high on the hog.

I saw this'un nice little lady on the TV th'other day. She wassa 'bout to lose her entire house 'cause she was in those arrears to the tune of 'bout 2,000 bucks on her mortgage. That company had talked her right into improvin' her house with what they were callin' Equity Loans. My, oh my, how easy they made it sound. So she jest went 'bout fixin' up her kitchen and her bathroom and put on a nice porch and fixed the patio up real nice. Everything was so purdy! She was'a ridin' real high 'til somethin' went badly for her. Payment went up a tad and there was no room in her countin' for that.

There was no big government t'hep 'er out. She was what they call down around Alice's Restaurant, "shit outta luck!" Those fellers were gonna take her house, 'cause, of course, she signed that paper sayin' they could if'n she didn't pay that Equity Stuff back. They told her that her Equity had done disappeared. Vanished! And now her house was worth less'n what she done owed on it. Yep, she was SOL.

It's a real funny, goofy world when we can stick it to a nice lady like that. Yet, that fancy dude, that wrecked that bank, will walk away with enough to buy hundreds a'houses like that nice lady's house.

They's all against welfare, them corporate dudes; exceptin', of course, corporate welfare that bales 'em out when they stink up the place

The NY Times feller puts it real nice in them fancy words:

"But until bankers face a real risk of losing their shirts, they will continue blithely ratcheting up the risks to collect the reward while letting the rest of us carry the bag when their punts go bad."

END

For you young'uns, here's an explanation of Alice's Restaurant.

This was a war protest song that we either sang, or listened to on loud speakers, when we took to the streets to protest the injustice of the Vietnam War. This particular, long, delightful verse will explain it all and represents the general humor of the entire piece.

And friends, somewhere in Washington enshrined in some little folder, is a study in black and white of my fingerprints. And the only reason I'm singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a similar situation, or you may be in a similar situation, and if you're in a situation like that there's only one thing you can do and that's walk into the shrink wherever you are , just walk in say "Shrink, You can get anything you want, at Alice's restaurant.". And walk out. You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and
they won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. And friends, they may thinks it's a movement. And that's what it is , the Alice's Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement, and all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it comes around on the guitar.

With feeling. So we'll wait for it to come around on the guitar, here and sing it when it does. Here it comes.

You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant,
Exceptin' Alice, of course!

They were glorious days. Recruiters were aghast. Federal agents thought we were crazy! We marched on and on and kept tellin' to make love instead of war – with feeling!

When we got tired of singin' about Alice, we'd move on to Give Peace a Chance!