Follow The Money

There’s trouble, you can’t deny.                           GCG        CAPO 3
Times are tougher, you don’t know why.           Em C G
Wrecking ball on the White House lawn,           D
Everybody’s overdrawn.                                         C  D
No time to be asleep.                                              G CG
You can hear the mothers weep.                          Em  CG
They’re marching through our cities,                  D
And lying through their teeth, singing:              C  D

“Blame the people from out of town,                    C
Blame the people whose skin is brown.               G  C
Blame the communists.”  That’s old school.       Em  D
I say: Follow the money. It’s the Golden Rule.   Em C  D  G C G

I see billionaires living large,                                  G CG
And you’re asking who’s in charge.                       Em  C G
You can watch ’em buy elections while they’re   D
Planning trips to Mars.                                            C D
They’ve got judges in their pocket,                        G  CG
Algorithms on their mind.                                      Em  C G
They can disappear their taxes.                             D
No rich man left behind, singing:                         C D

“Blame the people from out of town,                    C
Blame the people whose skin is brown.                G  C
Blame the communists.”  That’s old school.        Em  D
I say:  Follow the money. It’s the Golden Rule.   Em C  D    G  CG

No one likes an angry mob, but                            B7
You just can’t make it with a full-time job.         Em  C
Nothing left for doctor bills, after                         G  D
Lobbyists and political shills.                                C   D      

Can’t compete with all that cash.                         G  CG
Food and families finish last.                               Em C G
It ain’t really Black or White.                                D
It ain’t really  Left or Right                                    C  D

It ain’t people from out of town,                           C
It ain’t people whose skin is brown.                     G  C
It ain’t communists, you’re no fool.                     Em  D
I say follow the money. It’s the Golden Rule      Em C  D
Follow the money. It’s the Golden Rule               Em C  D
Follow the money. It’s the Golden Rule             Em C  D  G –CG 

©Doug Hendren 2026

What’s it about? After decades of widely shared prosperity following WWII, wealth and income disparity in the US have again crept up since the 1980s, now approaching the extremes of the “gilded age.“

Thanks in large part to the infamous Supreme Court “Citizens United” decision (2010), the floodgates have been opened, allowing unlimited political campaign spending by wealthy interests to control US elections. Citizens United was popularly summarized as “Corporations are People,” and “Money is Speech.”  Since 2010, spending on US elections has gone up by a factor of ten. Any remaining limits were further eroded by the June 2026 decision dismantling the Federal Election Campaign Act.

The result? We have veered from representative democracy into plutocracy. Billionaires among us can now influence the Supreme Court as well as the executive and legislative branches of US government. They can now pursue legislation they want without public support.

For example, Elon Musk supported Donald Trump’s presidential campaign to the tune of $288 million, He was rewarded in numerous ways, including gaining control over the destructive and corrupt DOGE program.  Musk was able to weaken or dismantle federal agencies, including those investigating or regulating his private companies. Musk claimed he was rooting out fraud and waste, and DOGE would cut government expenses by one to two trillion dollars. But it failed to deliver. In hindsight, it has sacrificed expertise throughout the federal government, resulted loss of public respect and trust, and (as of July 2026) has resulted in an estimated 700,000 deaths, mostly children.

The signature legislation of the second Trump administration has been the “One big beautiful bill act” (OBBBA), which gives generous benefits to the very wealthy, while taking food from hungry children, and healthcare from tens of millions of working Americans. According to an ITEP analysis, the richest 1% of Americans will see net tax cuts of $117 billion in 2026, while over $1 trillion will be cut from healthcare for lower income Americans. $187 billion has also been cut from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and over 4 million needy Americans have lost food assistance altogether.

The specter of millions of working Americans going without food or health care, while the billionaire class gets richer by the day, is a bleak indictment of present-day America. The world’s richest men taking food from hungry children is not a something most Americans support.

People know something is wrong, something is “rigged” in American life. But these problems are not caused by immigrants, nor by socialists or communists, as voices in the GOP are chanting once again. This is just fear-mongering to distract us from real issues of illegal war, economic unfairness, and, of course, the Epstein files.

In summary, we now have a billionaire class fully capable of influencing the Supreme Court and controlling elections and legislation to further enrich themselves. In a nutshell, the billionaires are treading on us all.  Follow the money.

Against oligarchy, part I: Progressive taxation Paul Krugman

Tax the rich and save the world Robert Reich

Billionaires have been sucking the rest of us dry since 1989.

The richest 0.001% now own three times more wealth than the poorest half of humanity combined.