Hi Arlo,

I am wondering if you would give me permission to use the tune and chord progression from Alice's Restaurant for my own rewrite of the song? It is a rewrite based on my experience in Vermont, when I was working to get the state to create a public bank. The mayor of the city where I worked was a lobbyist for Bank of America and Wells Fargo, and he worked behind the scenes to get me fired from my job. The Vermont Supreme Court just ruled in my favor last week.

You can read more about my story here:

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2 ... pitol-city

Here are the words that I have written for the song:

Gwendolyn's Kangaroo Court

This song is called Gwendolyn's Kangaroo Court, and it's about Gwendolyn, and the Kangaroo Court, but Kangaroo is not the name of the Court, that's just the name of the song. It goes like this:

You can't get anything like torts
At Montpelier's Kangaroo Court
The long road to justice is short
At Montpelier's Kangaroo Court
Walk right in, it's at City Hall
Just down the hill from the Berlin Mall
You can't get anything like torts
At Montpelier's Kangaroo Court.

Now it all started two Thanksgivings ago,
Two years ago on Thanksgiving, when Gwendolyn
Was called to a legal proceeding in Vermont. It was in Montpelier, the state capital,
You know, but the Kangaroo Court wasn't in the Capitol itself,
It was at the City Hall, a tall yellow brick building on Main Street.

Being at City Hall like that, they decided they didn't have to pay attention to
the normal rules of procedure, things like cross-examination of witnesses
and inadmissable hearsay. So when Gwendolyn's hearing came up, because she had been fired from her job at the city, the city completely ignored jurisprudence and due process,
Which is why this song is called Kangaroo Court.

But before I tell you about all that, I need to tell you about public banking. Gwendolyn was fired in large part because of a mayor who worked as a lobbyist for the biggest banks, and so I need to explain the strange economic religion we call banking. We call it a religion because it uses faith in mythical deposits to manipulate poor people to give their hard-earned money to the rich.

Down in New York City, at the southern tip of Manhattan island, there's a short road called Wall Street. It probably got it's name from the monumental marble 24 Karat gold plated buildings the banks built there a century ago when they first established the privatized central banking system known as the Federal Reserve.

The monumental part turned out to be for things like unchecked greed and avarice, with scarce concern for the ramifications of their risky ventures and pyramid schemes on the rest of us.

These fat cat Wall Street bankers were making a lot of money off the good people of Vermont, as their tax dollars were deposited in their private banks to the tune of over $350 million a day. That's $350 million a day that Vermont deposited in Wall Street banks, the kind that are too big to fail, you know. And too big to jail.

The bankers were taking that tax money and investing it in things like the Keystone XL Pipeline and fossil fuels and derivatives and interest rate swaps, while businesses and students and homeowners in Vermont were trying to make ends meet with all the debt they had to shoulder, working at wages barely above the minimum set by law.

Banks don't really keep your money, you know, they just pretend to do that. Because in order to pay you interest on your deposits, and the bankers salaries, and for their monumental marble 24 Karat gold plated buildings, they need to loan that money out. They loan it out to people and businesses and governments for all kind of things, and so the money doesn't really stay there, it moves on to other places almost as soon as you give it to them.

And when that money moves on, when it moves to another bank, complete with its own monumental marble 24 Karat gold plated building, then when it gets put in the new bank it's not a loan anymore, but it's a deposit, and so that borrowed money gets loaned out again. Now in the first bank, you have to remember, that money is still on the books as a deposit.

And when the new money moves on, when it moves to another bank, complete with its own monumental marble 24 Karat gold plated building, then when it gets put in the new bank, it's not a loan anymore, but it's a deposit, and so that borrowed money gets loaned out again. Now in the first bank and in the second bank, you have to remember, that money is all still on the books as a deposit.

And if you sing this verse a few more times, you'll start to understand the magic of our fractional reserve system, with banks that make new money by giving it to other banks, who then make new money again, all loaned out to gullible but good people who borrow money to buy cars and borrow money to buy houses, and borrow money for their businesses.

All that money chasing interest, giving birth to more money chasing interest, and then creating even more money chasing interest, means before long, interest is a hidden tax in the cost of everything we own. Only instead of a tax that goes to the government to build bridges and roads, schools and hospitals, universities and water treatment plants, this tax goes to the banks and the people who own the banks, and makes them richer and richer and the rest of us poorer and poorer,

The interest grows and grows, and on the other side of the ledger the debt grows and grows, and if you got that debt on account of the fact that you wanted to go to college, you can't even declare bankruptcy and get out of the debt. Even if you graduate and can't find a job because there are no new jobs being created with all that money, interest, and debt; it's all just numbers and lights on computer screens, not real things for real people.

Public banks are a better idea, because the interest on the public money - - our tax dollars, goes back to the public instead. And Gwendolyn, remember Gwendolyn, this is a song about Gwendolyn, was traveling all over the State of Vermont talking about it. She did this on weekends and during vacations, because her day job was as the Planning and Community Development Director for the City of Montpelier. Working as a public official like that she could see clearly the need to find a new way to pay for the things governments are supposed to do like build roads, bridges, power plants, schools, hospitals, universities and water treatment plants. There is never enough money for all the things people need, in part because it all comes into existence as debt.

But little did Gwendolyn know, little did she know that the newly elected mayor of Montpelier was a lobbyist for the biggest banks. These banks were so big, they were so big that they couldn't even fit in the State of Vermont, so they had to hire the mayor as their lobbyist. Too big to fail banks, banks that were leveraged thousands to one, who all helped invent the creative state of accounting that allows one single dollar to be in seventy-five places at once. Bank of America, Wells Fargo, TD Banknorth, these banks were the mayor's clients.

The biggest banks don't like public banker ideas. They spend lots of money to defeat legislation, any law that would challenge their Monopoly money, with its built in interest and invisible tax. So Gwendolyn found herself in their crosshairs, with a banker owned mayor gunning for her head. She was fired from her job at the city, with fabricated accusations and slanderous talk.

To defend herself, she compiled all the proof that the city was lying about her - 875 emails, 200 memos, 15 reports, 4 phone call transcripts, 3 letters and 2 cards... She showed it to anyone who asked. All carefully organized in electronic format with hot links and detailed cross-referenced tables with dates, contacts, and comments and character sketches of the people involved.

Then she got the rules of the hearing from the city, where somehow normal jurisprudence didn't apply. Hearsay was allowed as evidence, she wasn't allowed to cross-examine anyone, and her witness list was thrown out, the majority of them were't allowed to speak. The public hearing the law required for zoning administrators was ignored, and the hearing officer, yes the hearing officer... This would be the person who listens to all the evidence and makes a decision, the hearing officer was the assistant to the manager who fired her.

Gwen took one look at the 875 emails, the 200 memos, 15 reports, 4 phone call transcripts, 3 letters and two cards all carefully organized in electronic format with hot links and detailed cross-referenced tables with dates, contacts, and comments, and character sketches of the people involved. Then she looked at the rules of the hearing, and she looked back at the 875 emails, 200 memos, 15 reports, 4 phone call transcripts, 3 letters, and 2 cards, and she began to cry.

She had started to realize that this was going to be a typical case of American Kangaroo Court justice, and all the 875 emails, 200 memos, 15 reports, 4 phone call transcripts, 3 letters, and two cards were not going to do her one bit of good. Due process and her civil rights all were thrown out the window, and she was taken back to the days before the Magna Carta 800 years ago.

Gwendolyn knew there was only one thing to do, and if you're in a similar situation, her solution might help you out, too. She knew when the day of the hearing came, all she needed to do was to walk in, sit down, and sing a bar of this song.

You can't get anything like torts at Montpelier's Kangaroo Court.

Then stand up, turn around, and walk out.

And can you imagine what would happen if two people, I'm saying two people, walked in, sat down, sang a bar of this song and walked out? They would think they were socialists and they'd have them arrested. And if three people, I mean what would happen if three people walked in, sat down, sang a bar of this song and walked out?

They would think it was a movement, and it is - Gwendolyn's New Economy Democratic Dollars movement. So wherever you are, if you have a bank or a unfair court proceeding going on, you can walk in, sit down, since a few bars of this song and walk out again.

You can't get anything like torts at Montpelier's Kangaroo Court.
The long road to justice is short at Montpelier's Kangaroo Court.
Walk right in, it's at City Hall
Just down the hill from the Berlin Mall
You can't get anything like torts at Montpelier's Kangaroo Court.

My husband and I have a small singing group we call the New Economistas, and we hope to have a CD of all our songs done for New Economy Week this year in October. I've also been asked to sing it for a meeting of an international group I belong to that meets in Hungary every year this August.

I think the rewrite captures the spirit of the original song, and I'm of course happy to mention you and the original song as the inspiration for it. Since I have lost my job, I don't have any money to pay, though, and I doubt very much that any money beyond what is needed to cover the costs of production will be made on our little CD.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you will let me know how I might get permission to use it.

Thanks,
Gwendolyn Hallsmith
Gwenhs@gmail.com
802-793-1293
40 Garden Way
Cabot, VT 05647

Great job there. Hope he gets to see it.

Sent from my LGL34C using Tapatalk

Thanks! Do you have any ideas how I would contact him besides this forum? It's not easy to find. Cheers, Gwen

You might try here through his "manager" (one of his daughters, I believe):

http://www.risingsonrecords.com/

The kangaroo is innocent !!

so is the (o)'possum!!

While I applaud your hard work I don't necessarily agree with it .Good Luck in the future .

i really don't think i know enough to comment on the the song's commentary. just wanted to point out though that my comment was a playful remark only. bouncing off what i saw as a playful remark from davex7 (i could be wrong but that is just the way i saw it) like, a "kangaroo court" is not meant to be taken as flattery and this person (davex7) perhaps standing up for the kangaroos (in a playful way), like saying, "what did they ever do?" i mean, i know they can kick and stretch and kick, but you know what i mean, and i thought of how i will stand up for 'possums and they are both marsupials, so anyhow. just take my comment as a playful aside and carry on