Friday, April 10, 2009

Let's legitimize corruption!

What do villages, kingdoms and nation-states all have in common? Every political unit in history has been tied to a patch of land. Land was a people and their culture. It was wealth and home; a place a nation-state could call its own.

However, America has changed all that! Over the last thirty years something wonderful has happened! America has broken the shackles of geography. She is no longer a country, but is now a black thunderhead of capital scudding across the face of the earth, leaving poverty and want in its wake.

The net result of this transformation is that the rights that once accrued to people now accrue to the dollar. American is no longer a land of people, but a mass of free-floating dollars. This new liberation now means that the dollar now has a constitutional right to influence Congress. Some old-fashioned types insist on calling this corruption. But, it isn’t! It’s civic participation.

This civic participation would gain the legitimacy it deserves if Congress would only tear a page from the NASCAR game book. Let the members of Congress sport jumpsuits emblazoned with the corporate logos of their sponsors.

It’s a win-win plan. The corporate logos would get free airtime every time a congressman appeared on Meet the Press. Congressmen would love it because they could sell prime jumpsuit space to the highest bidder. And the lobbyists would love it because they could tell at a glance who their friends were.

Finally, the public could no longer complain about money being passed under the table because Congress would literally wear its corruption on its sleeve. After all, if they can name stadiums after corporations, why can't they do the same with congressmen?

--Belacqua Jones

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