TheWorx

The Supreme Court recently struck down laws that prevented corporations from campaigning for political candidates. That the Supreme Court can view corporations as citizens speaks of the blinders that too often guide these nine people down a road to ill-conceived or misguided justice. It is almost as if they were saying, "We are tired of your First Amendment lawsuits. We are going to take free speech and wrap you up in it so tightly that it will suffocate you." Now that corporations have freedom of speech, what else can we bestow on them? Shall we give corporations the right to vote? Shall we banish them to a desert in Arizona when they are found guilty of a crime? If a corporation is an entity with unalienable rights, what about other entities? Do we welcome the Vatican and the rich Muslims into our political arena? I can see why the justices are confused for we bail out and subsidize the corporations like they were relatives. We baptize them into being and dissolve them at ...

In grammar school, I thought unions were great. They were great when the injustices committed against Joe Schmo were atrocious (child labor, pittance pay, toxic environment). Today, I believe that those with unions are parasites on the those without unions. Invariably, those with unions are at an advantage not enjoyed by the rest. They get better pay, job security, benefits, and perks. Not always, of course. The hotel industry has found ways to unionize with unions that are nothing more than fronts of respectability and responsibility--organizations that remind me of Popeye's chicken soup. For non-boomers, Popeye used to make soup by dipping a dead chicken once or twice in hot water and serving the water as chicken soup. So what are the rest of us to do? We can start by considering the possibility of a government option for unionizing. I know, public options can get blown up by the likes of an industry puppet like Joe Lieberman. But we've got Pelosi on our side. She may not be ...

In last year's New Jersey gubernatorial election, Chris Christie was worried that Daggett would spoil his chances of being elected by taking away Christie votes. In a political novel, I fantasized that a rich person like Corzine just might be able to "plant" someone like Daggett in order to do just that. But fantasy or not, Chris Christie had valid concerns and, in looking at the problem, I saw that it was a simple matter to eliminate this problem--you merely let the voters vote twice. If you let the voters vote for their top two candidates, no vote will go to waste. When all votes are tallied, If their first choice (let's say Daggett) falls into third place then, the voters who had a third place candidate as their second choice will have their "first choice" votes transferred to the top two candidates. He's an example. If I voted for Daggett and Christie, and all the first choices tally as Corzine, Christie, and Daggett in third place, my second choice ...