Corporation Day
Two years ago, I posted a piece on Labor Day. The name of this blog is Turning Points and it is indeed a record of my ongoing journey from innocence to informed opposition. As this country increasingly lurches to the right, I march ever further to the left. I’m posting this little gem, by Larry Beinhart, which I found on the website, Buzzflash. Even though it is written in a sarcastic tone, it surely does reflect the reality in this country. Labor unions? We don’t need no stinkin’ labor unions! Give me liberty or give me death! Send all those commie pinkos and socialists, like the protesters against the Tar Sands project, to jail.
Corporation Day
It’s time to end this silly farce of Labor Day.
No one celebrates labor.
I mean no one. A few months back I suggested to Arianna Huffington that Huffington Post have a Labor section. They have business – as do all major publications – style, black, latino, green, religion, good news, travel, weird news, comedy, celebrity, parents – but not labor. They have recipes, home, do it yourself, body, spirit, and mind, they have tech, engadget, techcrunch, joystiq, and an apple blog – but not labor. They have New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Denver – but not labor.
Let’s give the day to the people we actually admire, look up to, and support. We could have a Broker and Bankers Day, Hedge Fund Day, Big Banks Day, Billionaires Day, Multinationals Day.
The best replacement would be Corporation Day.
We need to celebrate corporations because we love and admire them so very much. We feel beholden to them for giving us ‘jobs’ and gadgets and stuff.
Plus they need a special day, like Martin Luther King Day, to celebrate their admission to full personhood after hundreds of years of not being persons, being just, well, corporations.
The amazing, and wonderful, thing is that they have already become not just our equals, but our superiors in every way.
First off, they are immortal, which is always an advantage.
As noted, at last they have all the rights of people. They have achieved that status without our human limitations or our social and legal liabilities. They have no sentimental attachments to human values. They need not care for family, relatives, friends, or neighbors. No obligation is so important that if it’s to their financial advantage they won’t seek to get out of it.
Their sole goal is to make money, at any cost to others, and they need not apologize for that.
They cannot go to prison for their crimes. They can kill, rob, steal, chisel, cheat, defraud, poison, pollute, wreck, and ruin. But they cannot be contained, even for that most valid of reasons for imprisoning people – to stop them from doing it again.
Corporate commercial interests have more status in our courts than human interests.
A human falsely imprisoned and tortured in the name of national security can’t sue because the suit might expose government secrets. But a private airline that flew such people to secret prisons and to countries where they would be tortured can expose the entire operation in court in a lawsuit over getting paid.
A high school student has no right to make jokes – like holding up a sign ‘Bong Hits for Jesus’ – but corporations have a right to spend unlimited money on political campaigns.
The results of political campaigns are largely determined by how much money is spent. That makes corporations into super-voters. The more money they have, the more super they are.
When it comes time to pass legislation a normal person can’t tell their congress person how to write the bill. They can’t get anywhere near their senator (try it sometime if you doubt me). But corporations hire lobbyists to write the bills for congress and the senate and guide them on how to vote yes for their bills and then give them the sound bites to explain to us why they were good bills.
Let’s get real, folks. We hate and despise regular working people, they’re not rich!
Let’s have a day for the übermenchen we truly love and adore, Corporation Day!
One of the best things I’ve read in a while.
Oh that was so good.