As a leader in the movement to protect the civil rights of corporations, Murray Hill Inc., the first corporation to run for Congress, regards the growing Occupy Wall Street movement with amused indifference. How quaint and quixotic these raggedy radicals are, with their sleeping bags, day-glo banners and consensus decision-making. They don't stand a chance against the unchecked power of we the corporations.
We often hear that we have "the best Congress money can buy" but sadly this ideal remains unrealized. That's why, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Citizens United case that corporations have the same rights as individuals (or, as we call them, "bodied humans") to participate in political campaigns, Murray Hill Inc. decided to take the logical next step.
For too long, corporations had to rely on campaign contributions, lobbying, influence peddling and secret deals to get their way in Congress -- and they stillcouldn't count on the politicians they financed to reliably vote their way.
Why not, we reasoned, eliminate the middle man and run for office ourselves? By removing the human interface from electoral democracy we can save money, increase efficiency and achieve more transparency in government. Our message promoting enlightened self-interest and corporate accounting has been warmly received by more than 225,000 viewers on YouTube and readers of news accounts like this front-page story in the Washington Post.
With a corporation, what you see is what you'll get. There is no ambiguity over how a corporate member of Congress will vote -- it will always be in support of its shareholders' interests. For example, a senator from Exxon will be a reliable vote for oil exploration, and a representative from R.J. Reynolds will have a predictable position on public health.
What's more, a fully-corporate Congress will have no need of lobbyists, political fundraisers, campaign consultants -- even political parties. All of the back-door shenanigans that make people so cynical about politics will be things of the past, as power is openly sold and accessed through the front door of the U.S. Capitol.
Indeed, it would be an easy fix for our nation's budget woes to offer naming rights to rickety old edifices like the Capitol building, the Library of Congress, the Lincoln Memorial and the White House. A trillion dollars here, a trillion dollars there -- sooner or later it adds up to real money!
Ronald Reagan had faith in the "magic of the marketplace" to solve society's ills, but the Occupy Wall Street crowd is acting like a bunch of Muggles.
It's unfortunate that the misfits and malcontents marching on Wall Street and other cities this week wail about the so-called liberties being threatened by capitalism, but fail to see what is in fact the great civil rights struggle of our time: the fight for the rights of corporate persons. There can be no place in modern America for such blatant anti-corporate bigotry.
As the leader in corporate democracy, Murray Hill Inc. exhorts our fellow multinationals and monopolies to stand tall and stay strong. We wrote in this space recently of our disappointment in self-hating corporations like Howard Schultz' Starbucks, who would rather boycott political contributions than continue to wield the unchecked power most Americans expect from their corporate overlords.
Noisy sideshows like Occupy Wall Street will come and go, but the hegemony and wealth of America's great corporations will always endure. The "99 percenters" don't understand that the way we've managed to win political clout and get people to vote against their own self-interest is by convincing voters that anyone can cross over to the golden land of the one-percent and become a millionaire themselves.
No doubt about it -- as that pin-striped mascot for a brethren corporate giant would say:
"Greed is Grrrrreat!"