Words Will Never

As corporations evolve into humanoids – CorPersons – we must give these new friends and fellow earthlings equality.  For if we do not we will surely lose our own humanity.

Though it’s a legal fiction, in multiple ways, that U.S. corporations are people, I assure you this injustice can be remedied.

It should matter not in our treatment of CorPersons that there was never any court ruling or legislation bestowing upon corporations personhood.  See: Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. 

So what, if a wayward remark in a headnote to a court case was seized by corporate interests to transform a myth into a “legal fact,” an “entity” into a living, breathing, conscious being, alive with feelings and vitality?  We must all rejoice at the birth of our illusory child.

On Thursday, January 21, 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court slapped the CorPerson on its fat butt, cut the umbilical cord and, the heir to a zillion-zillon dollar fortune, wailed with joy!  

So, I say, let’s keep going!  Howdy and welcome to the human world CorPersons!  God bless the child that’s got not only its own but everybody else’s.

In the spirit of taking things way too far, I suggest the following human attributes be bestowed upon the new humanoid immediately:

The Right to Pay Human Taxes:  Forget two tax rates.  With equality for CorPersons we only need one.  If people can’t take the deduction, neither can a CorPerson.  Cars, planes, meals, travel, supplies, equipment, raw materials, all taxable!  Depreciation deduction?  A thing of the past.  You’re human now ya’ big goofy conglomerate you!

Used with permission of the artist: M. Wuerker 

Election Laws:  CorPersons must obey all human person election laws, including individual campaign contribution limits.  No, sorry, real humans can’t afford TV ads so, it’s only fair you can’t do those.  It would be way over the limit.  But, here’s the good part:  CorPersons will be able to run for public office.  President Exxon/Mobil has a nice ring to it.

The Right to be Imprisoned:  Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.  If humans get time for the crime, so do CorPersons.  Stealing, cheating, perjury, fraud all crimes subject to jail terms.  While CorPersons are virtually incarcerated, all outside corporation activities desist.

Jury Duty:  CorPersons will have the honor, and the obligation, as citizens to serve as jurors – we can issue each CorPerson a driver’s license so they get called.  They need only send one human person, but the rest of the corporation may not continue operations while their representative is at the court house.  During breaks, the people who comprise the corporation can grab a bite to eat, read, have a smoke or walk around the block.  But, just like human jurors, they won’t be able to get anything important, like work or making a living, done.

The Draft:  If a military draft is instituted CorPersons over 18 years of age will be eligible.  Like their human counter parts, they will be put to work as the military commands.  Oil companies will become information technology providers.  Aircraft manufactures will be in scripted into the infantry, etcetera.  Manufacturing firms will…. Well, let’s just hope the war isn’t against China.

Bankruptcy:  Yes.  Underwater?  Behind on your payments to creditors?  Profitability in the dumper?  Can’t make the payroll?  We have courts where these matters are settled for human people and why not for CorPersons, even TBTF BankoCorPersons, as well?  Human people at the top of the CorPerson will need to act like other human people in business.  When times are bad, when things go wrong, human people at the top of the CorPerson get paid last or not at all!

The Right to Vote:  Each CorPerson should have suffrage and be allowed one vote in Federal, State, County and local jurisdictions wherein they were inCorPersonhooded upon the reaching voting age.  This will also get them called for jury duty.

And, finally…

The Right to Die:  As there is no physiological means of CorPerson death, every day all U.S. CorPersons will be subjected to the human equivalent of the grim reaper, an actuarial lottery to see if they are dead or alive.  Aggregate CorPerson life spans will not exceed human averages.  When their number’s up, their number is up, all operations must cease immediately.  Competitors, please feel free to dance on the coffin of a departed foe, but keep in mind, just like humans, your time will come too, and you never know when.

Can you think of more human attributions, the slings and arrows of being flesh and blood that CorPersons should endure?  Please, chime in!

If corporations are people, apply election campaign contribution limits…

Yes, this is too simple for the establishment to grasp, but I’ll put it out there anyway.

If corporations are people then they should be subject to the same election campaign contribution limits that human people citizens are subject to.

Here they are:

The following limits apply to contributions from individuals to candidates for all Federal offices.

•$2,400 per Election to a Federal candidate -- Each primary, runoff, and general election counts as a separate election.

•$30,400 per calendar year to a national party committee -- applies separately to a party's national committee, and House and Senate campaign committee.

•$10,000 per calendar year to state, district & local party committees

•$5,000 per calendar year to state, district & local party committee

Aggregate Total -- $115,500 per two-year election cycle as follows:

•$45,600 per two-year cycle to candidates

•$69,000 per two-year cycle to all national party committees and PACs

States should just apply the Federal limits.

Now, the first thing the complex, convoluted establishment system we now have will say is:  that this argument may not be considered because I ended the single sentence second paragraph with a preposition. 

Next, they will argue that corporations don’t get to vote so the limits should not apply.

And, finally, they will argue that buying media time, producing ads and otherwise flooding the communications channels is not a direct contribution to a candidate.

To all that I say: I’ll fix my grammar, give each corporation a single vote, and yes spending on media is a direct contribution to an election campaign.

Okay everyone, have at!  Tell me all the other reasons we can’t do this and I’ll respond with two words: Bull Crap!

We are now officially a Corporatocracy.  We better learn how to get our power back as people.  Start here: www.UseCashMovement.org

Dear Marco,

Happy 24^th Birthday.  I want you to know how proud I am of you!

You went to a good college.  You got a degree in Business and Finance.  The math and management skills you learned will always be useful one way or another.  I hope you will keep learning.  I hope you will apply what you learned to your benefit and the good of others.

You’re tall, handsome, fit, and you take good care of yourself.  Keep up the good work.

After college you worked with me at the restaurant.  I really appreciate that while you were in transition you helped me and your Uncle out.  I hope it was a good experience for you.  I watched as you learned to take pride in doing a job most would call menial.  I saw you struggle with what a difficult, complicated, skill-heavy job waiting on customers can be and you mastered it.

You learned how to deal with some difficult and demanding people, who had no right to treat you in a demeaning manner, but felt they did.  Most importantly, you managed to not take it personally and you kept your self-esteem.  Not an easy lesson to learn.  Bravo!

I bet you’re glad not to be waiting tables anymore!   I’m glad too, but don’t forget that all work has value.  Unfortunately, in America today, those who do some of the most trying and necessary work are not compensated justly.  Perhaps that is the lesson of these times.

Well, I really enjoyed working with you, my son.  And I’m happy you have moved on to a new, better opportunity.

Now, you’re working as civil servant and you’re a Teamster, fancy that.

Maybe this isn’t the perfect job for you.  I know it’s not anywhere near the salary you would like.  But, while you are at this job, building a career in these difficult economic times, I hope you will take continue to take pride in both your work and in being a Union Man.

Thinking of my son as a Union Man brings such a smile to my face, even if it’s a role you may someday retire. 

You know that I don’t believe labor unions are perfect, hell I don’t believe anything is perfect, but they are important.

Last night at dinner my ears perked-up when you told me that you were reading about the history of Teamsters.  There’s a colorful subject and an important one.  Labor unions began their current demise starting just prior to your birth.  It’s one of the reasons our country is not in the place it should be today. 

And yet, somehow, you can thank the labor union movement for the job you have today.  You, a college man with a degree in finance!  Isn’t life wonderful?

I remember talking on one of our many rides back and forth from my place in New Jersey to your home with you mom in New York.  I told you that capitalism was the best method yet invented to allocate resources to provide for everyone in society.  I also told you that democracy was the best system of government.  I still believe in both those ideas.

Unfortunately, what we have today is a hybrid call Corporatocracy.  Simply put, the wall between our economic system and our form of government has been lowered to the point where money and corporations now have control of our government, so we no longer have either democracy or free markets. 

Corporatocracy is its own animal.  Once in power this perversion cannot be defeated through democratic means as it has control of the very government.  It can only be eradicated by people willing to educate themselves as to what has oppressed them, make sacrifices, organize and take actions in the marketplace to regain their power as the ultimate arbiters of fairness and freedom.  Labor unions fought against oppressive fascism and kept it in check for many decades.

I’m proud you’re a Union Man, college boy.

Marco, I can’t tell you how to find happiness in your life despite the powerful forces that will always hold sway to a greater or lesser degree.

I’ll be pleased if you use me as a sounding board as important decisions come your way.  I’ll give advice if you ask for it, but I will not expect you to take it.  In fact, I would rather have you use your wonderful, kind mind to think through every challenge at each crossroads for yourself.

But, I do ask you to remember these axioms that are currently buried under a morass of moral decline grown from greed:

1)      All life affirming work has value, should be performed with pride, and deserves to be rewarded with compensation that provides for a decent living. 

2)      Democracy is the best system of governance, but your freedom and meaningful representation will be lost if you do not participate.

3)      Free market capitalism can work, but be aware that this is an unattainable ideal that needs governance.  Moneyed entities often pervert the market and, while masquerading as free markets participants, become criminal machinery that siphons a living wage from those who provide meaningful labors.

Why should you care?  What’s this got to do with your birthday? 

You were born of two families who were, and are, both business people and workers.  They both worked diligently to provide for their families and the people who worked for them.  As you have seen, there are forces at work today that threaten these same people. 

Don’t forget where you came from.  Whatever you do, do something you can be proud of, live a life that brings you sound sleep, have some fun, take care of those you love, and stay involved.  The world needs people like you, my son, especially now.  You are the right person and the right time.  You are the salt of the earth. 

On your birthday, give yourself a present.  Commit yourself to living a good life.

Love, Dad



Okay, let’s explain this to ourselves as if we’re five-year-olds. 

Churning money on Walls Street makes nothing of value. 

Printing money at the Fed feeds nobody. 

A corporate merger, in and of it self, is intrinsically worthless.

And, a bailout of a failed company or bank just punishes viable competitors.

Spin the money all you want, without the sweat of the worker or some other energy input it all grinds to a halt.

According to Paul Volcker, this is something Wall Street didn’t know.  Really?!? 

Mr. & Mrs. America, your money and jobs are going, going... gone.  So, what are you going to do now?  More importantly, what will your children do in General Electric’s Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow?

We need to force change.  Not slogan change, real change.  Read no further if you like the fairytale of the politicians making everything better.

First, please raise your hand if, by now, you don’t realize that collateralize debt swaps and obligations, and other “sophisticated” (Ha!) derivatives, are nothing more than subterfuges for the Biggest Con every perpetrated, a masterpiece that continues today unabated.

No hands?  Just you over there at Goldman Sachs?  We don’t need or want you. 

Second, digest this:  There is no free lunch in the absolute worlds of physics, economics and politics.  You get what you put in.  That’s right, there’s no such thing as a perpetual motion machine, a wind-up Obama that produces change without an ounce of fuel.

Is it the Internet’s virtual world that has somehow convinced us that words are enough to get us what we want?

Yes, it was easy to be seduced by election narrative of the new transformative leader.  But, now is the time to grow up, dear parents. 

Bitching and moaning on websites – this piece included – is nothing compared to forces so powerful they can put the fix in for their con with nearly agency in Washington, DC.

 Do we still think we’re going to get fair healthcare reform by calling our congress people?  A few hands?  You over there, still wearing the Yes We Can t-shirt, you’re not excused.  Listen up.

You want change?  Okay, sign petitions, write the letters, make the phone calls, send the emails, bitch and moan online, but don’t expect any of that to work unless…

You’re also willing to vote with your feet and deny our corrupted system of the money and, therefore, the power that enables our abuse.   

Here’s a swift, legal, crafty action you can take today, tomorrow and forever until we get change.

Deny Big Banking an important revenue stream by eschewing their, oh so easy and convenient, payment system of credit and debit cards.  Instead, opt for the more cumbersome payment method called Cash.

 If you haven’t heard about this yet you are forgiven.  It’s new and taking subversive market action is not yet in the lexicon of virtual world protests.  Visit: www.UseCashMovement.org to learn more.

 Short story, just by using more cash and less plastic, en masse, we can deny Big Banking & Finance billions of dollars a year.  And, if the movement gets big enough, it will send a message to all those who derive their funding and power on the backs of workers and citizens. 

By using more and more cash, we can send a clear and punitive message.  If the system refuses to administer justice, then we the people must.

If the system won’t punish Wall Street, the Federal Reserve and the now way, way too big to fail banks, it’s our job.

Yes, to do this we must suffer some small inconveniences.  If we’re not willing to be inconvenienced, we do not deserve meaningful change.

So, I challenge you to make this work.  Use more Cash starting now to punish Big Banking and Finance.  I also challenge the Huffington Post, Alternet, Truthdig, OpEd News, etcetera to get the word out. 

Get behind Use Cash as a first, significant action of innovative market based protest of the new century.  Please, come up with similar actions we can take against other corporate transgressors, like the healthcare insurance companies and the government that keeps sending our jobs overseas.

If we are not capable of this, we do not deserve change.  If we can not take direct actions like Use Cash, what will we tell our children?  That we did a lot of bitching and moaning online and it didn’t work? 

Advertising for banking, credit and debit card services: $7 billion a year.   

Computer systems to process plastic transactions:  $50 billion a year

814 lobbyists to get laws in your favor: $62.5 million in 2009

Having the government, taxpayers and customers under your thumb:  Priceless.

As a taxpayer you already pay for one currency system: Cash.  But the banks don’t make any money on cash transactions, so they’ve invented another system: Plastic.

Each has its advantages and disadvantages.  You could even say that comparing the two is apples and oranges.  But this isn’t about which currency system is best for what.

Big Banking has done nothing less than put the economy into near depression, take taxpayer money to the tune of $1 trillion dollars, curtail credit and lending, foreclose on homes, and up interest rates and fees.  Something must be done, but what?  What can we do to change the current stacked system?

I believe a simple, effective action against Big Banking is to Use Cash instead of plastic.

Use Cash is about getting some power back into the hands of people to toward ending the current unfair, usury and exploitive financial system.

It requires small, easy actions from large numbers of people willing to suffer a little inconvenience to send a message to Big Banking that enough is enough.

There are no pending plans in Washington to curb or cap usury interest rates, set limits on fees or penalties, stop home foreclosures or free up credit.  Neither is their much happening to get Big Banks and Big Finance to end the casinoland games that gave us the financial crisis. 

To get banking and monetary reform we first need to get the attention of the industry and the government.  Letters, petitions, phone calls or political action will not work against the power and money at the disposal of Big Banking. 

But there is one way to get the attention of any profit driven industry: deprive it of money.

Use Cash is an easy way to constrict an important flow of money to an industry that currently acts with impunity.  Unlike a boycott, you need not deprive yourself of any particular product or service, including using your plastic.  Just use cash more, credit and debit cards less.

This is how using cash will put a burning hurt on Big Banking.

When you use cash to buy something you automatically do the following: deprive Big Banking of 3.5 cents on every dollar spent, decrease the likelihood you will be paying interest on the amount of the purchase, and reduce your chances of incurring an overdraft, over limit or late payment fee, just to mention some of the ways Big Banking makes money on plastic transactions.

When merchants accept plastic for a transaction they pay an average 3.5 cents on every dollar.  They get their money later rather than sooner.  And somehow they have to pass along that cost to their customers, even those who paid cash, in their prices.

Plastic is a great convenience, but it does not come without a cost and ultimately the customer always pays that cost.

So, I’m asking both purchasers and merchants to participate. 

When you purchase something use cash with the comforting knowledge you just took a little money out of the pocket of an industry that is abusing you.

Picture this, you just bought you and your new best friend for life coffees at a chic little cafe downtown, price $10.  Pay cash – that’s at minimum 35 cents not going to Big Banking.  Multiply that by hundreds-of-thousands of people, each a couple of transactions a day, and keep growing the movement until Big Banking cries uncle.

If you’re a merchant, please rethink your current policy of charging all customers for the cost of plastic transactions.  Even the playing field by offering a 5% discount for cash transactions.  You’ll have your payment on the day of the purchase and, instead of sending that 3.5% commission to Big Banking, your cash customers will benefit.  I don’t know about you, but I like my customers a whole lot more than I like Big Banking right now.

Then, we all need to do one more thing to give the Banksters some sleepless nights.  Spread the word.  Go to www.UseCashMovement.org , download the free signs “Use Cash” and “5% Discount for Cash” tape them to your car windows and storefronts.

Go ahead.  It will feel good to take a little power and money away from Big Banking and eventually we’ll get a fairer financial system. 

Okay, one question:  If you’re not willing to do this, what are you willing to do get change before it’s too late?

1)  [Source: Brandweek, Nov. 16, 2009 http://www.brandweek.com/bw/content_display/news-and-features/direct/e3i8ccf864b12d44b62c9f134a54f95b745 ]

2)  [Source: Information Security magazine, January 15, 2009 http://searchfinancialsecurity.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid185_gci1345047,00.html ]

3)  [Source: Senate Office of Public Records, reported by OpenSecrets.org, downloaded October 26, 2009 http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/indus.php?lname=F&year=a ]