UP@NIGHT

International Pillow Fight Day

Well, now we have it.  As the ad below highlights, Romney thinks that corporations are people.   They are not.   They cannot vote.  They cannot serve in the military.  They cannot feel pain.  And they are treated quite differently in terms of taxes, etc., etc.

What Romney seems to want to suggest is that people make up and benefit from corporations.   And this is precisely the problem.  The biggest benefit from corporations, money, has become so concentrated in the hands of a few that it is harder and harder to see these legal fictions as responsible players.   And people are angry about this.

I believe that we need a collective venting of the anger.  I propose a pillow fight.  But given the vast disparities in power and wealth, I suggest that the sides be picked in the following fashion:  the pay of workers vs. the pay of CEO’s at the largest U.S. companies.  In 1980 one survey showed it was 42 to 1.   Another in 2010, 343 to 1 (based on the median U.S. worker pay).

So I say we match 100 CEO’s from the largest companies against 34,300 of their workers.  Each will be supplied with identical pillows.

Further, I request that the Colbert Super-PAC (Making a better Tomorrow, Tomorrow) fund the event.  We will need a rather large stadium.  (Colbert this is a challenge.  I hope you are man enough to respond.)

I had been planning to write a blog on the bogus ways that the notion of “impartiality” has been used in the hearings for Judge Sotomayor.  I still plan to, even though Colbert and his writers have hit one out of the park on the rather implausible notion of  “neutrality” that has been bandied about by Republican senators and pundits.

In times such as these, our times, when unregulated capitalism has once again proven that it can bring down the house, literally, it’s worth reminding ourselves about the voices that have spoken so eloquently in favor of selfishness over the years.  (Not Adam Smith, by the way; he thought that sympathy was a basic feature of human nature.)  Here is Colbert discussing one of the leading lights of selfishness, Ayn Rand.

The Word – Rand Illusion | March 11th | ColbertNation.com

On Capitalism Run Amok, readers might want to check out Sullivan’s site today, March 23rd, “Are The Jacobins At The Gates?” Let’s just say, a bit over the top, but worth a look.  (Btw, Sullivan thinks of himself as a conservative.)

P.S.  Interesting fact:  Stephen Colbert was a philosophy major at Hampden-Sydney College.  Training in philosophy has its uses.