They're Shifty

Since the Supreme Court has certified corporations as shape-shifters it's only right that the other branches adjust their thinking. Keep up with the times. If a corporation can morph at will from business to person, person to business, that opens the gates. Maybe they're both at the same time. No matter. But, I mean, what the fuck ELSE are they?

The laws and regulations need to reflect this. They're uncertain entities, corporations. So we're talking probabilities. Quantum stuff. Very Heisenberg. Not the one that broke bad. You know what I mean. And you can't regulate 'em if you can't find 'em, pin 'em down. They're amorphous. And out of our purview as of now. We'll need special shit on the regulatory front. New tools for new times.

You say they're self-regulating? Invisible hand? Whose hand would that be? Some market thing? Wait a minute I think we've stumbled onto something here. They're going back, way back, to a state-of-nature. Pre-civilization. Dog eat dog. Winner take all.

They're de-criminalizing everything. For themselves. Not for us. We have to live by the rules. So invisible as in non-existent, on the hand. They just do what they want. Should have said so. This IS very Heisenberg. Not the uncertainty dude, the one that broke bad. This is the world of drug lords, their new corporate working environment.

See they're all potentially rogue entities, those corporations. Renegade states-within-states. Unregulated entities, possibly unregulatable, with a mandate to maximize the short term bottom line at the expense of everything else. Period. It's required. It's what corporations do.

Can't look out for the employees, the scum, or the national interests. They're bound not to if it conflicts with the profit (the holy grail, omega point, salvation, orgasm, best thing ever, etc). Some fool interferes? Waste his ass.

They're laws unto themselves. Neat model. You live by one set of rules. Everyone else, another. All to their advantage of course. That's fairness in their world. All the advantages of enfrachisement, citizenship, without the responsibilities.

So it's not about respecting or breaking laws per se. There aren't any laws. None that apply to them, outside their system. None that they're actually subject to in real-life circumstances. Just means and ends. They make it up on the fly, what's allowed, to suit their needs. Isn't that what you would do if you could? See, they are like people.

So corporations are corporations, and people, and what else? States, functionally. Beginning to sound like it since they enact their own laws, or at least aren't subject to ours.

This resonates with something in my past, deep in the drawers. Been packed away in the memory banks. Got it. Oh my god, they're gods! Three but one. Triune. States, corps, peeps, all at once.

All the power and no responsibility. Answerable only to themselves. Omnipotent. Or damn powerful at least. And omniscient, presumably. Give them the benefit. The Republicans do.

Man, you can rationalize anything from there. As with God, so with Corps. Tripartite but indivisible. Unlimited power but no responsibility. Transcendent when it comes to, let's say, taxes. Above those. Undignified for a deity. Immanent on profits. Be there for that.

Cool. And a little kinky, this way of operating. Like to buy a kit for that on eBay. You say you can buy them at Capitol Goods and Trading, Penn Ave, D.C.? Contact my Representative? Lobbyist? All it takes is a load of cash but the returns are good.

Look at Heisenberg. Had to eliminate a few dudes on the way up, invest a sum, but the returns are mind blowing. And the shape-shifting comes in super handy. You're way enfranchised, tons of leverage, but no fingerprints. Stealth technology.

And other goodies. Came with the warship. Used. Klingon. A little worse for the wear from that last encounter with a worm hole, but fully functional. Cloak. And dagger. Fucking photon torpedoes. Got to have it. Tough world.

So the regulators come after your corporate ass, you morph into a person. Or a divinity. Or just waste their asses if they won't leave you alone. Out-gun 'em on the money front. Waste their asses with cash. Cool. Lee Atwater style. You just make shit up.

No wonder the Republicans kowtow to corporations, what with the religious bent. And the good returns, too. They love that. At least the ones high enough up in the food chain. May have to send them all off to Betty Ford on this one. Sounds a little funky. And addicting. And all sub rosa it is, too, with the stealth.

Anyway we're told this all somehow works out in the best interests of everybody, little guys included. Magically. Mysteriously. How? Shut up. You don't ask. It's a mystery, dummy.

They mean well, we're constantly reassured. Corporate kumbaya. Picture it. All these corporations--just bent the knee--sitting around a camp fire singing in the drizzle. They only let Fox News cover this in their program SPIN CYCLE, with host Bill the Shill, so we'll have to take his word. He swears they're beneficent, magnanimous, all that's good and holy, the corporations.

Ahem, the people. Those people. Them there. With the halos. The auras. Sitting around the fire with the embers glowing. Throwing another log--wait, shit, that's not wood. Those are our jobs being reduced to ashes.

The creationist crowd, they eat it up. It's all an article of faith with them anyway. They have special insight into the laws of the universe. So they think. So they believe. God's laws, which trump the heathen crap enacted by congress, fucking apostates.

So they're patriots, the creationists, their contempt for constitutional mechanisms notwithstanding. And the birthers. Remember it doesn't have to make sense. Good sign if it doesn't. Means you're in the realm of paradox. With the deity. All must be bent to His will. He, mark you. None of that She shit. A white He. Don't need no science. No reason. They got God.

And clearly since corporations are peeps--their peeps, mind--they can go to heaven. Probably predestined. Forgive me if I sound skeptical. Sounds like a big power grab and a lot of flimsy double-talk. They want us to take it all on faith, though. That's their idea.

No need. We ran an experiment on this, on ourselves, starting in the 70's, with the tax cuts for the rich and corporate welfare. Same thing really, those two. And more so in the 80's, the glory years of SS/RT. Supply Side, Rising Tide. Tide rose. Way up there. Small boats nowhere to be seen. They floated out to sea. Over to China.

But the people on the big boats, the corporatists, they rescued those people, some of them anyway, off the little boats. Out of their goodness. Saved their asses. Some of them. Gave them jobs. Good jobs, as servants. They're philanthropists, the corporatists. Points of light.

Those grateful people, the rescuees, are toiling away contentedly, they say, in the engine rooms and galleys. You never see them. It's said they look like ghosts. The government rewarded the big boat people for their good deed doing, and general holiness, with (more) money. From taxes paid by those little boat people under-decks. Got to come from somewhere.

Apart from being sick isn't this unsustainable? Isn't this system eating itself alive? I tried to point this out but they couldn't hear me, on the big boats. Huge party. Gatsby-style. No question about the outcome here, folks. Since the 70's the rich have done incredibly well. Everyone else, not so much.

This is the real Ponzi. Our tax dollars. They line their pockets, the corporatists, any way they can and give back as little as possible short of causing suspicion. They invest nothing, issuing false reports via their think tanks, Fox News, whatever. Why squander money on infrastructure for ingrates, those "takers," when you can buy another house, a bigger yacht. All kinds of great shit can be had, where the money flows.

There's a whole heirarchy, in the Ponzi. Leaders, Shills, Suckers. Appears to be in the late stages. They want more, they need more, since it's all going up in smoke to maintain their lifestyle.

But there's progressively less left to siphon off as the suckers become increasingly impoverished. The economic base? The jobs? What do you think the little boats were. And they're more and more irritated about their lives, the working folk, all the time. Might insurrect or something. They work harder while losing ground. Ultimately, inevitably, the system starves, collapses, comes unraveled, and everybody suffers.

OOPS! ERROR! They'll blame government of course. These aren't competitive entities, the big boat crowd. They're the takers, not the makers, despite the propaganda. They don't produce anything or benefit anyone. Just suck up resources. It's extractive.

Look at Mitt. Extracting wealth, like mining. Finding value, leaving skeletons of once viable industries. They're like snowballs rolling downhill. Accumulating stuff, running on inertia, until they come to a rest. As they must, inevitably.

Sure, they leave an occasional business or industry standing. If it suits their purposes. But the welfare of anyone else, or the country as a whole, doesn't factor in. It's irrelevant. And they ARE building infrastructure. Lots of it. In China.

Now look at basketball. Isn't that where you see the purest competition anywhere? Real competition. And football. And the national pastime, dogfighting. Let's say baseball. Privilege don't mean shit. Privilege gives you white boy basketball, circa 1950's. Dribble, dribble, tea break, shoot. Shake hands, pat the back.

Look now. What was that, fucking missile? Some black guy putting it down. Two points? Should get more than that. Looked like he came out of the rafters. You think the white boys want that on Wall Street? No way. Dribble, dribble, tea break, money rolling in, bushels and bushels. Shake hands, head home. Greenwich, their ghetto.

Good gig. I worked for that money! And they did. Kind of. Woke up at the top of a hill after a nice ride on the lift, took two steps forward, wiped the sweat from the brow, then whee! Just avoid the black guys clawing up-slope, on the way down. Would you give this up without a fight?

Anyway they regulate hell out of basketball. Order the owners around all over the place. Screaming socialists. The worst team gets first pick in the next draft, and so on. Total commies, but it keeps the whole system from imploding. In fact everybody does better. I mean everybody. And it makes for amazing competition. Real competition. Level playing field. No free rides to the top.

Somebody contact the SS/RT crowd and the libertarians. It's what they said they wanted. Freedom, latitude, to sink or swim. Structure enables this, it seems. Rational structure. Regulation. The kind only good, strong government can provide. Great discovery. Should instill the regulatory fervor. They're sure to get on board, when we show them.

But no, not what they really want, it turns out. Fair play? Rules? Limitations? Strictures? Instant replays? Game films? Independent analysts? Can't buy the refs? On Wall Street? No fucking way.

You can't hide shit. Not fair! Not fair! We paid a lot for the stealth! And that Klingon warship. What was that strange sound? Republican brains grinding their gears. Prime the photon torpedoes! Fire at will! Nuke something, anything! What good is a Swiss bank account in such a world. Horror.

One morning before I abandoned NPR in defense of my sanity, there was a report about a bust in Brooklyn. Prostitution. Mostly financial guys buying the services. Ten thousand dollars a night. That was the going rate. There's some free enterprise for you. Entrepreneurship. On both ends, I guess.

Then another report. The average net worth of a black person in the land of the free. Less than ten thousand dollars, if I remember right.

And here you thought I was exaggerating. I do sometimes, for effect. You never noticed? Hard to exaggerate these days when it comes to income disparity. And wealth disparity. And every kind of disparity.

I should mention Heisenberg here and the frankencorps and tie it all together somehow, but I've got to go to work. In the galleys, the engine room, of our wonderful floating plantation, plutocrat's paradise, yacht, Rovian Reichstag thingy. The big boat of the Boehnerites, with every imaginable amenity. Golf course, tanning beds, beer flowing in fountains, you name it.

You'll have to do it for me. Tie it in. Be creative. But keep your head down. Helmet. Flak jacket. Maybe body armor. Impenetrable force field.

Remember, they have drones. And the photons. Someone drops a dime, you're toast. Run a missile up your ass. Cruz missile. Photon your ass. Might want to invest in an igloo of concrete and steel, or a bunker. Cloaking would be good.

Heisenberg and his type, they don't mess around. Beam me out of here, somebody.