Module 17: Series Song, "ONE SIGNATURE”
SERIES SONG — MODULE 17: “ONE SIGNATURE” Persona: IRONWOOD (Dark Country / Outlaw Americana)
LYRICS
In twenty twenty-one On a Tuesday in Chicago A man named Barre Seid Signed his company over to a trust
The transfer was worth One point six billion dollars He paid no capital gains The trust was newly formed
The trustee was a man named Leo
There was no public vote There could not have been The donation Did not require one
The trust was a cee four Social welfare on the form The donor list was sealed The Schedule B was redacted Section sixty-one twelve Of the Internal Revenue Code Lets a man donate his company Without paying what he’d have owed
ProPublica found it Fourteen months later The world learned about it On a Wednesday in August
One donation One trust One trustee One page
One signature On one piece of paper Sixteen hundred million put away Nobody voted Nobody knew And now you do
One signature And now you do
Two hundred sixteen point eight million Went out in the year One hundred fifty-three through Schwab Charitable The DAF takes the layer Fifty-five point five direct to Concord Judicial Crisis Network by another name Seven point six to the Knights of Columbus And the cascade goes on the same
The Schwab moved on One forty-one point five Landed at the Eighty-Five Fund That’s where the cascade ends and the program runs
Three hops down The original dollar Three layers between the donor And the ad on the senate floor
One donation One trust One trustee One page
One signature On one piece of paper Sixteen hundred million put away Nobody voted Nobody knew And now you do
The shape is the rules
The rules are the shape
Played correctly under current law At scale On either side The donor arrives at exactly this architecture
Mr Seid showed up With his lawyers and accountants And a trustee who understood the architecture And he executed The largest single transaction of its kind In American history
The architecture rewarded the man who showed up
It rewards anyone who shows up
So she opens ProPublica On her phone at the kitchen table She types Marble Freedom Trust And the filing returns She finds Schedule eye She picks the top recipient She clicks through to the intermediate She walks the next hop
She counts the layers She writes the trace She does not name the donor on her own feed She does not publish the cascade She runs the trace And the trace becomes the literacy And the literacy is the citizen The architecture cannot route around
One signature On one piece of paper Sixteen hundred million put away Nobody voted Nobody knew And now you do
One signature And now you do
There were forty seven other donations Of similar scale Documented across the political spectrum In the same five-year window
The architecture did not invent itself
The architecture is the rules
And the rules are the architecture
The trace is the participation The rules permit