Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Text of Annapolis Speech on Corporate Personhood

Text of Annapolis Speech on Corporate Personhood
presented by DH Eric Hensal on Monday, Feb. 22, 2010

My name is Eric Hensal, designated human, DH for the baseball minded, for Murray Hill Incorporated's 8th district congressional campaign. Duly authorized by shareholder resolution, I speak for the corporation, and, by proxy, all corporations in this new world of corporate civil rights.

With the supreme court's Citizens United decision, our corporation saw a new day. A day when we are not judged by having a body, but the by balance in our bank accounts. Just as our founding fathers meant for us.

Corporations are people too! This belief is our campaign's heart and soul, if corporations believed in such superstitions, that is. And this enlightened decision finally puts such superstitions to rest. This case is not about corporate first amendment rights—all nine justices agree we have them. No, the majority made a different, bold stroke. By equating money with speech, speech becomes a product. A toaster, if you will. Bodied people who speak are are simply product packaging.

The majority opinion casts aside the 18th century superstition that we are endowed by a creator with inalienable rights. There is now nothing special about bodied people, no difference between them, the corporate and toasters. This decision does not elevate corporations, but sets a lower and fair market value on bodied persons. The justices crafted an elegant, thoughtful decision which I am sure they all rightly see as their Brown versus Board of Education, and not the Dredd Scott as some alarmists claim. It is now time for a corporation to run for office as the person the court says we are.

Murray Hill Incorporated is moving into this new democracy market, positioning ourselves early as a leader in manufacturing consent. Our view is people get in the way of politics. There are over 500,000 bodied elected officials in the United States who daily complicate corporate life. With corporations now free to purchase as much speech as possible to influence every government level, unchecked officials will ask for ever-increasing contributions, auctioning votes to the highest bidder. Our business model will succeed because we will cut out these middlemen by running corporations directly for office, increasing profits for everyone. The Murray Hill way will provide government to corporations at the lowest wholesale price. And with corporate accounting, the books will always look good.

I am sure there those in the audience uncomfortable with this new day. We can only say, get used to it. Our entire political culture rests on a corporate worldview that will quash any effort to set back our civil rights. Campaign finance laws? Our supreme court majority is young and will keep knocking out statues like a day at the driving range. Constitutional amendments? The last one took 200 years to enact. Shareholder resolutions for political spending? That's done in five minutes. A real assault against us would be changes to corporate law to increase shareholder influence and promote union organizing. Actions like these would force today's confused politics into corporate governance and, perhaps, make the corporate as accountable as the bodied. Our research department, however, assures us that any bodied opposition will pursue predictable lines.

So, today, our campaign's primary marketing objective is for the bodied to embrace this new corporeal diversity. Murray Hill understands that corporations may live forever, but we need cubicles filled every day, cleaning crews at work every night and, for the time being, votes cast every election. Our goal is for the bodied to see that following corporate enlightened self-interest is the only way and that it will make the world a better place for us. Let me assure you that Murray Hill eventually cares for the bodied person.

After all, you are people too!

For more information on Murray Hill Incorporated's historic run for congress, visit

Website - Murrayhillincforcongress.com

Facebook – Murray Hill Inc for Congress

YouTube - www.youtube.com/murrayhillcongress

No comments:

Post a Comment