Footnotes in American History – Corporations are Just Like You and Me, only with More Money

This continues our series of footnotes in American history, footnotes we imagine will appear one day in the future when the definitive history of our time is written. Based on this week’s opinion of the United States Supreme Court in the campaign finance case, this footnote will appear in the Oxford-Kindle History of America series.   The case turned out exactly as the cats and I predicted back in September, a 5-4 win for corporations.

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The Supreme Court, in 2010, announced its 5-4 decision in the case of Citizens United. The Court held, in that case, that corporations had exactly the same free speech rights as real people.

Because corporations, like regular people, had First Amendment rights to run for political office and become judges, corporations soon dispensed with the subterfuge of buying judges and politicians and began running for office themselves. That is what comes of anthropomorphizing corporations. Due to the trillions of dollars available to the largest corporations, real humans could not compete and corporations, exercising their god-given First Amendment rights, took over America’s entire government. By the end of the Obama Administration in 2016, hardly any real people were left in government and the presidential election that year pitted the Bank of America against Exxon-Mobil. The election was close and eventually came down to a few disputed votes in Florida. The Supreme Court was called upon to choose the new president. Here, from ancient archives, is a copy of the news story that ran in the New York Times ( a defunct “newspaper” corporation. Historians are unsure what  “newspapers” were, but they seem to have been “paper” based.)

The New President

Dateline  2010 – Washington D.C.

Supreme Court Chief Justice NBC announced the decision of the Supreme Court today in the contested presidential election between Bank of America and Exxon-Mobil. The Bank of America wins and will become the Nation’s 45th president. Speaking on behalf of the president-elect, Simon Toady – corporate spokesman for the Bank of America — said that the bank was delighted with the result and looked forward to four years of record-breaking profits. “Our shareholders are going to see their stocks go through the roof! And the bonuses!” he announced happily. Toady said the new president would immediately introduce legislation requiring all Americans to deposit all their money in the Bank of America. He also announced that all Americans would be required to carry credit cards issued by the Bank of America and that their credit card fees would be raised to pay for the inauguration.

Simon Legree, spokesman for Exxon-Mobil, said, “We congratulate the Bank of America on its win. But what goes around, comes around and corporations live forever. We’ll get our chance at the presidency and, when we do, look for the price of gasoline to go through the ceiling. We take care of our shareholders!”

The 2016 Loser

The Supreme Court’s decision relied heavily on its earlier case of Bush v. Gore, the first time in the Nation’s history that the Supreme Court elected a president. That case was decided in the olden times of 2000, before the Court realized that corporations had exactly the same First Amendment rights as regular persons, which meant that corporations could run for office and become judges. Chief Justice NBC wrote the Court’s opinion and was joined by Justices Microsoft, Verizon, Goldman-Sachs, Wal-Mart, Toyota, China First, and Scalia (the last remaining human on the Court). Justice AFL-CIO dissented but, as the majority opinion noted, “Nobody pays any attention to unions anymore.”

In a related matter, the Chief Justice announced that Justice AFL-CIO would shortly leave the Court. “We had a higher bid from Blue-Cross for that seat,” said the Chief Justice.

In other political news of the day, House speaker Nancy Pelosi announced her retirement. She will be replaced by JP Morgan Chase Corporation which announced that it would fiercely oppose the new president’s attempt to “steal all our deposits.” Political analysts doubted that the new Speaker’s efforts would amount to much since Bank of America’s stocks went up 500% on the announcement of the Supreme Court’s decision. Spokesman Toady said, “The stock market will decide what is best for America, not ordinary citizens or some backwater corporation like JP Morgan Chase.”

Analysts said the election results ensured that Americans would, once again, be deprived of health care reform.

Tags: 2016 election, 45th president, campaign finance, Citizens' United, corporations, corporations as persons, Supreme Court on campaign finance