Corporations Are People

Corporations Are People

I'm getting tired of hearing the old saw casting "corporations" as nothing more than engines of profit, separate entities apart from human intervention, ugly self-sufficient teflon monsters roaming the streets like coyotes in search of house pets in the dead of night.

It goes beyond any Supreme Court rulings -- personhood for tax status and some pull in the statehouse. No, as malignant as that might be, this next undocumented step, a growing attitude edging us into the abyss, conveys the impression that the corporation is, in and of itself, a living, breathing entity greater than you and me and the rest of humanity combined -- like those futurist computers in "The Terminator," only a hundred times worse. It's not official. But it is. You figure it out.

"But it's just business," is almost always the response when the subject of corporate responsibility arises. "Oh, it's just the market," they'll lie, a lie repeated ad infinitum by a throughly corrupted media, as in on the con as the conners themselves, when the market sours. "It's not our fault," they'll bleat when the corporation caves or bites too hard. "It can't be our fault. After all, corporations aren't people."

I beg to differ. Corporations are people, and not just for the election cycle, either. And how can I make this bold assertion? Well, lemme tell'ya --

There's something everyone seems to forget in the midst of all the cocktail party rationalizations about American Business, that one dazzlingly obvious fact we always seem to miss; that one dazzlingly obvious fact that we're being screwed over by a bunch of rich old scumbags God's probably still shaking his head about, wondering just how in the hell he could've created creatures quite so evil.

Let's look at some of the players:

First, we have the Koch brothers, puddles of human excrement somehow animated and turned loose on an unsuspecting public. Both rich as sin, their draconian business practices reveal a corporation (series of corporations actually) only too happy to encourage employees' immersion in some of most carcinogenic substances known to man, but also gifted with the temerity to lie about it straight-faced. These guys suck.

Number two is that sultan of salmonella, Iowa "Poultry King," Jack DeCoster. Even hardened third-worlders would blanch at DeCoster's production practices -- fetid pools of waste everywhere one looks, these pits of bacteria surrounded by bone-thin, doomed chickens and the all pervasive stink of an operation run for profit... and nothing but. Frankly, I'm surprised one doesn't sicken just looking at DeCoster's output -- eggs with a little surprise inside, oh, and don't forget the emergency room bill. Cluck, cluck, cluck...

Third is probably the most grotesque of the trio -- Massey Mining CEO Donald Massey. They don't make'em much worse than this insect. Parading around in American flag shirts when not ducking into trailers to avoid the press, this critter is most recently responsible for the death of 29 men in a cave-in at his coal operations in West Virginia, a cave-in that could have been easily prevented. Massey's response to this? While he didn't say it outright, you could read it on his fat, mustachioed mug -- "Tough." One candidate for the gallows comin' right up!

Yes, America, these are some of our industrial titans -- inscrutable bottom feeders eating their way up the ladder in the shadows, every one of them protected by paper shields and so-called "representatives" only too pleased to roll over like chastened puppies when push comes to shove.

Journalist Chris Hedges recently suggested the country has already undergone a coup by corporate and financial forces that entails starving the government, forcing wages down to something like ten cents on the dollar, and generally enslaving the population. And the aforementioned, among others, are already crying for more. Why? For profit, for control, for them.

It's the kitchen sink disposal theory: works great but you've got to have someone to turn it on. Corporations are no different. They don't just ignite when you dump the scraps down the hole. Nope, you need an operator, just as you need with most any machine, someone to turn it on and off.

Now, as much as they might instead resemble farm animals, the miscreants chronicled come complete with all the usual human accourtrements. They walk, they talk, they feel pain -- they're human, whether we like it or not.

And these guys ain't nothing.

Still, one is forced to ask, what is the relationship, exactly, between these two elements, man and machine, as it were? Who or what makes corporate decisions? Who or what benefits from corporate profits each year?

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