Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) is well-known for his unconventional approach to politics but this may yet top the charts. The Boulder congressman turned political poet penned two verses to elegize his first legislative session and hope for immigration reform.
Not to be outdone by prolific songwriter Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, Polis’ iambic talents have also proven to be lucrative.
His family fortune was earned, in part, from the sale of Blue Mountain.com, an early online greeting card company that was sold to Excite@Home for $780 million in 1999 at the height of the dot-com bubble.
No word yet on which Rocky Mountain lawmaker will up the ante with an interpretive dance of a defense appropriations bill.
2009
2009 come and gone
May 2010 be more ripe for song.
A difficult year for our nation and world
Around us recession, war, strife, all swirled
People jobless
Their families without bread
Looked to our congress
To make them well fed
We passed several bills
“Drink from the public swill”
to AIG, autos, and clunker-owners we said,
And the result, of course: to a higher deficit it led
The mountains of Afghanistan we occupy still
Our troop levels there continue to build
I listened to generals, to scholars to spooks,
Yet Al Queda isn’t there,
In Pakistan and Yemen we should look
So too we occupy old Babylon
With a promise we must honor to soon be gone
While in Washington the Pachyderms and asses did battle
Fighting and bickering and sounding like rattlers
Hissing and striking, hemming and hawing,
Displaying plumage and pomp
Never listening always talking
But despite us the engine of America is strong
The free market’s cycles are not decades long
There is a natural rhythm to things
Of seasons Fall, Winter, Summer and Spring
Of what futures markets bring
Of Dows, Russells, Standards and Poors
Of bears and of bulls, of declines and of soars
Of jobs and good wages to support honest folk
Of people borrowing and then struggling to throw off debt’s yoke
Some cry “depression”!
Others “mild recession”!
Still the country presses on
awaiting the bright new dawn
As for my prescription,
Hardly worth an inscription
The doctors say it best
” Do no harm,”
And a night’s good rest.
