Let’s Declare January 20th a National Holiday for Corporations

The Citizens United ruling in the Supreme Court on January 20^th, 2010, extended more rights of citizens to Corporations. Perhaps it is time we considered extending other rights of citizens to corporations, such as holidays - however, if we did that, we would also have to hold corporations to the same responsibilities as citizens and we would have to be able to send them to war, and imprison or  execute them for crimes.

January 20^th, 2012, is a day to be celebrated. It is, of course, the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, which extends more rights of citizenship to corporations. Since corporations  are, apparently, just like real people, I think it is time we started treating them more like real people. It is time corporations got a holiday, and January 20^th, a kind of Independence Day, when their rights were finally recognized, is the perfect day.

You might be wondering what a corporate holiday looks like. Well, you know how on a holiday for the rest of us, we don’t have to work, but we still get paid? Well, a corporate holiday works the other way around – we still work, but the corporations don’t have to pay us. Or, if we need them to pay us, we can just work at time and a half (obviously having to work 1 and a half times as long as normal for the same pay).

That just made me think of something else that corporations need – overtime pay. So, when we work more than eight hours (or however many it is in your jurisdiction), the corporation has to pay you extra, right? Well, is that fair to a corporation? After all, they are the same as you and me. When a corporation has been working for more than 8 hours in a day, everyone should have to start working at time and a half (again, 1.5 hours work = 1 hour pay) so it is fair to the corporation who has to put in such long hours.

It is time we started respecting corporations as equals, not as something less than ourselves. Just as we look back and are ashamed that in past generations women didn’t have the same rights as men, blacks didn’t have the same rights as whites, future generations are going to look back at us and be ashamed that we did not give corporations the same rights as other citizens sooner. Let us start with this one little thing, giving corporations their own holiday, then we can move on to more important issues like the right to vote, welfare and unemployment insurance.

Of course, if we wanted to extend these rights to corporations, we would also have to extend the responsibilities of citizens to corporations. We would have to be able to arrest corporations for their crimes (I think we’ll need some new prisons), send corporations off to war (rather than letting them profit from it), execute corporations in states with the death penalty (not that I agree with that, but they need to be treated like their peers), make them pay same tax rate that others pay (in other words, actually paying taxes).

What’s that? It isn’t actually physically possible to arrest a corporation, or to send it off to war or to put it in the electric chair? Oh, I guess that is because corporations aren’t people. Guess somebody better tell the US Supreme Court, because they seem to be under the wrong impression.

On January 20^th, demand that the US government admits that corporations are not, and never could be, entitled to the same rights as citizens. Demand the 28^th amendment.