Happy Fourth of July! I can think of no better time than the 4th of July to celebrate The Declaration of Independence that makes our country so cool. It’s hard to imagine the courage it took for the fathers of our country to sign this document. Any one of them could have been hung for treason to the British Crown, King George III. Also known as, “The Mad King,” King George III was a lunatic. His tyrannical rule of the colonies was characterized by the American Revolutionaries as “taxation without representation”.  It was a form of imperialism where people were taxed to support a government that did nothing for them but repress what the colonists considered their natural, legal and inalienable rights as human beings.

The right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as stated in our Declaration of Independence has since been used as a blueprint by freedom loving people around the world and throughout history to cast off the shackles of government tyranny. A reading of the Declaration of Independence has been an essential element of America’s Birthday since it was first celebrated in 1777

However, since the United States Supreme Court decision that corporations are citizens, I think it may be way past time to amend and modernize the Declaration of Independence. It is time for all Americans to embrace the concept that corporations are just like us only, bigger. That does not mean corporations don’t have feelings too. For way too long corporations were denied the basic rights that were guaranteed to the rest of us consumers. While the Court decision goes a long way to redress this historic wrong, we could do more. So here goes, the Declaration of Indepundits.

When in the course of corporate events it becomes necessary for one company to dissolve the business relationship with another and assume among the powers of finance, the separate and equal station to which the Federal Trade Commission and The Stock Market entitle them, a decent respect to the profits of corporations requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to liquidate their domestic assets.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all corporations are created equal, that they are endowed by consumers with certain unalienable rights that among them are executive pay raises, freedom from anti-trust regulations and the pursuit of profit. That to pursue these profits, corporations are instituted among companies, deriving their just powers from the consent of the shareholders for the common good of us all. That whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of corporate profits, it is the Right of the Corporations to alter or purchase a new Government that should seem most likely to affect the safety and happiness of the corporations, their shareholders and consumers.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be purchased for light and transient causes. But when a long train of abuses to corporate profits lowers their stock price, it is their corporate duty to layoff such a government and purchase a new one, to provide new guards for their future corporate security.  

We, therefore, the Corporations of the United States of America, appealing to the Supreme Judge of World Trade for the rectitude of our profits, do, in the name of our shareholders have the full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, purchase elections and do all other things which the military/industrial complex does all of the time. With a firm reliance on government providence, we mutually pledge to each other our tax shelters, stock options and profits.