Jimmy Buffet and the Coral Reefers wrote a song called “Pirate Looks at Forty” where one of the lines was; “Yes, I am a pirate, two hundred years too late. The canons don’t thunder, there’s nothing to plunder, I’m an over forty victim of fate. Arriving too late. Rivin too late.”

Well Jim, you were wrong. There’s plenty to plunder. You’re just in the wrong profession. The canons do thunder and there’s plenty to plunder. All you ever had to do was to become a politician instead of just a wonderful singer and poet.

Politicians can plunder all the loot they want. And they don’t have to bury it in the sand on some remote island so others can’t find it. They can be right out in the open about it. Throw it right in their victim’s faces. They’re above the law because they’re the lawmakers. Flaunt it.

Today’s pirates can even punish other buc(k)aneers that try to grab some of the booty before the politicians can get their hands on it. Make a few of them walk the plank. And they’ll even make a big show of it so the cheering and crying crowd will feel justice is being done.

And canons? Gadzooks Jimmy, we’ve gone way beyond those black powder behemoths that recoiled on our own crew. We’re in the age of “hi-tech” now.

Today, we don’t even have to look our victims in the eye. Today, we can wipe out millions of people from a distance and without even getting our hands dirty. We’ve even got stuff that will kill all animal and plant life for miles around and still leave the booty intact.

Our only problem is going in afterwards to get things like the black gold. We bring plenty of people out of the lower decks and bilges to do this dirty work. We tell them that they’re “being all they can be” or that they can become “an army of one” and let them shoot, torture, rape and pillage people hanging around our new properties. Foolish people that think it's their land and they can live there.

But then some of our own “volunteers” get killed or injured, often shot by women and children masquerading as innocent civilians. Maybe you’ve got some ideas on how we can solve this latter problem. It’s causing some minimal discomfort and discontent down below.

Mother Ocean and navigation have been, except for hurricanes, under our control for some time now Jimmy. We’ve got satellites; computers, Global Positioning Systems (GPS), and we don’t have to depend on sun or star shots with sextants while bouncing up and down and heeling over on waves while trying to determine how far we are above the surface. These old devices are now for sale cheap in antique shops. Nor do we need those old fashioned charts explorers drew. Today, it’s no more complicated than driving a car and the users don’t have to understand anything about the theories, technology, or the principles involved.

Set up properly and tied in with radar, steering, depth sounders, the GPS, and diesel bow and side thrusters, our ships have autopilots that will do everything but throw out the fenders and docklines. And we can guide long range missiles directly to their target in the same way. There’s hardly a need for human involvement except for picking the target and picking up the booty.

On top of that, we’ve got nano-tech that’s developing devices the human eye can’t even see. Some are small computer chips and tracking devices that can be inserted under the skin. We’re even working on others that are so small they can be ingested, put in your bloodstream, or planted behind your eyeballs so we can see and record everything you’re doing besides telling us where you are. Someday we may even be able to tell what you’re thinking. If we could only transfer the feelings from your pleasure centers or erogenous zones … hmmm.

The thing that pleases us most, our crown jewel, is the success we’ve had with trust funds. By simply using the idea of trust with their retirement payments for example, we’ve been able to bilk trillions from American workers and taxpayers. And guess what, we’ve even got it fixed so the same suckers will pay us back again plus interest that didn’t cost us a damn thing. Isn’t that a slick kick shtick? We’ve got them coming and going.

So much for one and two.

Now, here’s where we could really use your talents Jimmy. You could help our people develop the lyrics of the New World Odor. Billy Krystal can fill you in so you’ll hit the ground running. Some Americans still don’t believe that their whole world lays waiting behind door number three.