I Want to be a Corporation

I'm fine with the current legal fiction that says corporations are persons. Hey, if Mickey Mouse and the Easter Bunny can be persons, why not IBM and Shell Oil?

All I ask is equal rights.

I mean, if corporations are persons, they sure live in a peculiar state of grace.

For instance, I read the other day of a company that was fined for failing to file a closure plan under Ontario's Mining Act. The firm's CEO was original charged too, but the charges were withdrawn. The corporation pleaded guilty and was fined a peanut amount.

I guess I'm supposed to believe that this legal phantom, this illusion, failed to type up the papers and deliver them on time to the appropriate government office. Really? I think I'll try that one with my next income tax submission. How would that work?

Well, it wouldn't. It only works for corporations. You see, these fanciful entities are regarded as special persons because they create jobs -- unlike the rest of us poor slob consumer persons. The fact that I keep my grocer afloat and finance his army of teenaged employees is, I suppose, just so much chopped liver.

Are we delusional? Consider the facts.

First, corporations don't pay taxes like the rest of us. There's this bizarre conceit that the corporation's owners -- its shareholders -- pay taxes on their dividends, so the "person" who produces the dividends should go tax free. Sweet! With that bit of sophistry, we justify cute little goodies -- tax holidays, tax credits, reduced tax rates and a myriad of subsidies -- for mining companies, cartoon-makers and other hobgoblins.

Then there's the self-serving concept that everything spent on the care and feeding of a corporation should be a tax-deductible business expense. Meanwhile, back here in the real world, anything I spend on the care and feeding of my living person is fully taxable, both at source and through "value added" sales taxes that ding me every time I spend one of my pre-shrunk post-tax dollars.

If that doesn't frost you, look at the twisted relationship between these corporate sweethearts and the world's real persons.

Like medieval barons, corporations are allowed to do pretty much as they wish with their serfs. I mean truly nasty things like evicting thousands of employees when it pleases them, or raiding retirement nesteggs when they need spare change for some corporate adventure. Shades of the Highland Clearances, eh?

I won't even get into the plethora of international treaties that allow corporate beings to go where they like, do as they please and ignore the laws of elected governments while they're screwing the citizens.

Folks, it just doesn't get any better.

Being a corporation gives you untrammelled freedom to treat real people like dirt, rob, cheat and steal, then walk away from the legal mess when your misdeeds catch up with you. Rules? Who cares? Debts? What are those? Criminal charges? Go stuff them.

It's a paradise on earth. And I want a piece of it.

As Marx might have said: Citizens of the world, incorporate! You have nothing to lose but your inferior status as real human beings.

It's Time to Move the U.N. to Toronto

The United Nations turns 60 this week with several nasty clouds hovering overhead. The most threatening may be the growing animosity of its host country and creator, the United States.

It's no secret that the forces now triumphant in the U.S. are ideologically and politically opposed to the U.N. They see the U.N. as ineffectual, corrupt and obstructionist. Some believe the U.N. undermines the very sovereignty of the American nation. While these forces have long existed, they have gained currency and power in recent years to the point where they now jeopardize the very existence of the international organization.

It's also no secret that the U.N. has few better friends in the world than Canada. Thanks in large part to the legacy of Lester Pearson, Canadians generally support and advance the work, philosophy and principles of the world body. We have done so since the beginning. We will continue to do so into the future.

Here then is a modest suggestion aimed at restoring and ensuring the vitality of the U.N. for the next 60 years.

The U.N.'s General Assembly should immediately consider fleeing the barren ground of New York, where it is beset by enemies on every side, and relocating to a place where it will be valued and loved. There is no better place on earth for this hopeful body than Canada. And there may be no better place in Canada than Toronto. Other Canadian cities will have their own good cases to put forward, but Toronto has assets that would make it a nuturing home for the United Nations.

Toronto is one of the most multi-cultural cities in the world. Over the years, it has learned to value and respect cultural diversity, and to hear the aspirations of other nations. It understands the psychological struggle against colonialism, and it is sensitive to the challenges of living in the shadows of more powerful neighbours. Above all, its institutions are outward-looking, internationalist and global-minded.

For all its warts -- and it does have them -- Toronto is polite, respectful and worldly. It is a safe city and an animated city, despite recent concerns over gang violence and senseless shootings. And although it sometimes jails people in dubious circumstances, it has the good grace to anguish about it. Eventually, it always finds its moral compass and does the right thing.

Most important for the future of the U.N., civil debate on serious issues is still encouraged in Toronto. Its news media and political commentators may be accused of dullness, but, apart from a few of the sporting fraternity, there are precious few of those screaming, ranting, knee-jerk bigots who clog the airwaves south of the border. And its political leaders generally don't make a vote-trolling meal out of trashing the citizens of other countries. (I know what you're going to say, but let's be honest here. Next to CNN, Fox, Pat Buchanan and Rush Limbaugh, Carolyn Parrish is a model of discretion.)

So there's my suggestion. The United Nations should celebrate its first 60 years by re-establishing itself in Toronto, a move that would help secure and strengthen its next 60 years. International co-operation would be reinvigorated, and the world's future would look much brighter than it does today.

Toronto's Garbage Nightmare

I see a public health nightmare for Toronto.

The capital of Ontario, Canada, has taken a turn down a path that I fear will lead to extinction. Toronto has decided, with much self-righteous huffing and puffing, that garbage is a moral issue. That's very progressive. It must make all Toronto's environmentalists feel very good about themselves. But it is wrong, dangerously wrong.

Truth is that garbage is not a moral issue. It is a public health issue. And it seems that societies that forget that truth tend to suffer plague and disease. They become ugly, inbred and nasty. Evenually, they perish.

Right now, Toronto is a wonderful city. Sure, it's less clean and safe than it was in its prime, but it's still a pleasant enough place to live and visit. It still has a lively downtown, attractive streets, a jiggy nightlife, pretty neighbourhoods, good restaurants and a few great theatres.

But it's no secret hereabouts that Toronto's leaders are obsessed with garbage. They don't have anywhere to put it, so they've been trucking it down the highway to a site in Michigan. The Americans aren't all happy with the arrangement. We had a few anxious moments last fall when presidential candidate John Kerry yakked about stopping the flow of Canadian garbage over the border but he lost, thank goodness. Now the city has won some sort of a certificate for the purity of its garbage, so the heat's off for the moment. But no one thinks the Michigan solution will last.

Oh, yeah, there was a glimmer of hope the other day when a poor rural township north of the city thought it could make some bucks off a landfill site. Hope was dashed when the local and professional environmentalists were able to intimidate the rural politicians out of their idea. No one can stand up to the naysayers of the environmental brigade.

So Toronto is toying with a plan to charge people money to dispose of their "surplus" garbage. Punishing them, in effect, for having more than two bags a week. What is essentially a political and economic challenge has been dolled up as a medieval morality play. Good people recycle and compost all their garbage. Bad people put out more than two bags of garbage every two weeks.

It's all so simple for these simple-minded folk, and it's all so sadly predictable.

The fundamental job of a city is to keep its streets and alleys clean and free of garbage. In the final analysis, there is nothing more important it can do. In fact, to fail at that task is to invite an apocalypse of vermin, typhoid, diphtheria, consumption and plague.

Toronto has lost its way in its obsession with garbage. It demands that its harried citizens spend hours sorting and processing their garbage. It witholds garbage collection (at some monetary saving to the city, I might add) to encourage offially sanctioned consumption, sorting and composting. It punishes poor souls who can't toe the garbage line. It has reached the abysmal point where it employs people to sort through trash bags so that it might identify, from discarded envelopes or bills, the miscreants who have failed to comply with the garbage rules.

Poor sad Toronto is already overrun with raccoons. God knows how many rats are pigging out on leaky backyard compost piles and illegal dumps in the alleys. And this is just the beginning.

Can there be anything but disaster ahead? I don't think so, but maybe I'm too pessimistic. Maybe it will all work out. Maybe Toronto will succeed in creating a new Ontario man and woman who eat their own garbage for breakfast. Maybe Toronto will have better luck than the Soviets. Wanna bet?

Pity the poor cows

I read a most disturbing article in The Scotsman the other day. Scotland has banned fox hunting, which is a good thing, right? Or so it seems. But the ban also resulted in unemployment for hundreds of foxhounds. When the ban came into effect, the dogs no longer had a useful purpose. No one wanted them. As a consequence of this act of kindness to foxes, more than 400 dogs have been put to death. And hundreds of horses are facing a similar fate.

Now I have the utmost respect for animal welfare and rights organizations like PETA and others who work tirelessly to better the lot of animals around the world. But I question their lack of foresight when they urge others to become vegans and stop wearing clothes made of leather, wool, silk and down. What do they think will happen to all those cows, pigs, chickens, geese and lambs who are now grazing peacefully in pastures and barnyards around the world?

Do they imagine we live in a world where farmers will continue to care for Bossie and Cluck when they can no longer sell the milk or the meat or the eggs? Are they dreaming? Or is this the reason there is a very big article on euthanasia on the PETA website?

Check it out for yourself. That cute little pig with the picket sign? What will happen to him when the world no longer eats bacon or pork chops? Figure it out.

Maybe that's their game. I hate to think it, but maybe they don't like animals at all. Unless someone can tell me PETA's plans for all the unemployed cows, pigs, sheep and chickens they want to create, I'm going to keep questioning their lack of concern for these poor creatures. And I'm going to keep eating beef and chicken and pork chops, and wearing my down parka in really cold weather. Because I like animals. I am grateful to them for the things they give me. And I want them to continue living their useful lives in peace and dignity until they turn up on my plate.

And that's my rant.