Friday, January 22, 2010

If corporations are people, they should be subject to arrest

Since watching the documentary The Corporation, I've been aware of the psuedo-personhood corporations enjoy. It's sick. It doesn't make sense, although it does help bring into focus the feeling so many people have of being raped by a corporation. Now, the U.S. Supreme Court has all but drawn a mustachio and eyebrows on corporate personhood, wound its wristwatch and given it car fare. It's now no-shit personhood.

I don't see this as a bad thing, so long as we follow through entirely with this humanification of entities.

For instance, the term "lay-offs" should be eradicated. From now on, when corporations fire huge numbers of its workforce, we should term this an "abortion" -- a "late term aborition" if any of the employees have worked there longer than 7 months. Because that's what it is. And I think it would be worth some entertainment points to get the Right to Life crowd mixed up in this mess. I want to see headlines like, "General Electric trimmed its workforce by 9,000 people this week bringing the number of corporate abortions up to 300,000 for the month."

Let the Right to Lifers go after those abortionists.

Maybe now that they're designated "people," corporations might finally get around to paying their gawddamned income taxes.

Better yet, in the same way human beings can be involuntarily committed to mental institutions with two or three signatures of our nears and dears, I'd like to see corporations subject to this treatment, as well. After all, one of the startling facts to come out of the documentary The Corporation is that when a typical corporation's character traits were tallied and tabulated, it fit the profile of a dangerous psychopath/sociopath. As any other person who is a danger to themselves or to someone else can be taken off the street against their will to undergo psychological evaluation, I believe that Halliburton and AIG and Xe Services (formerly known as Blackwater -- Eric Prince, you vampire, you're not fooling anyone with that name change), among many, many others to be chased down by men carrying butterfly nets, taken away (for their protection and ours) and made sane.

If corporations are people, then they can be arrested. I want to see AIG, Bank of America, Bear Stearns and Newscorp arrested on charges of widespread fraud, and every other manner of criminality in which they've engaged which has been aired in the media like a bedridden, shut-in's underwear.

If corporations are people, then mergers are marriages. Two companies whose leaders are the same sex should no longer be able to merge because gay marriage is not legal. I think California's Proposition 8 should be enacted retroactively against all corporations whose CEO's are the same gender.

I mean, all men were created equal says in the United States Declaration of Independence (and we all know the mention of men there means all people). So, if corporations are people, I think they should be treated like people. OK, let them buy unlimited political ads, but also make them serve jury duty. As people walking their dogs must pick up the dog's shit on the spot, so too should corporations be immediately on top of the messes they make. They should be cleaning up after themselves daily. Hourly.

If corporations are people, they should be required to have passports, Social Security numbers and health insurance. But first, let's mobilize the psychiatrists and psych wards. Let's get an army of Justices of the Peace and signatories declaring that corporations are a danger to themselves and to others. Let the evaluations of these peoples' sanity begin.

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