The Supreme Court has struck a mighty blow for corporate freedom. By courageously setting aside past legal precedents that have kept corporations (which after all are just folks like everyone else) from enjoying their full free speech rights, corporations can now express themselves the same way every other decent individual does — with huge infusions of money into the political system.

This is a very important decision that the Founding Fathers would doubtless have found..well, interesting. Yet it is only a first step in giving corporations the full enfranchisement to which they are certainly entitled. We thus need a strong follow through. I’m thinking a good first step here would be sponsorship rights for elections.

With local governments so hard pressed for cash these days, doesn’t it make common sense, and constitutional sense, according to our present supreme court, for corporations to sponsor local elections the way they now sponsor other competitions like sports events? I’m looking ahead to the next congressional race in my own very liberal Philadelphia congressional district which soon might be renamed the Tostito Lefty Bowl. Tawdry, you say? Inane? Unspeakably vulgar? Let traditionalists whine all they want. Free speech is free speech for those who might see an interest in spending it.

Which brings us to voting. Full enfranchisement for corporations clearly requires that corporations have the right to vote like they have the right to money-based free speech. The carping crowd may claim that this would be impractical because some corporations have thousands of employees. How, then, could they vote?

To me, such a question smacks of simple prejudice. We make special accommodations for the disabled. Why not special accommodation for our corporate fellow citizens just because they are little different, more collectively obese, as it were. Corporations should have the same voting rights as the lame, the halt and the blind. All we need do is expand the size of voting booths.

And now we come to the natural, and perhaps the inevitable end game when it comes to corporate enfranchisement rights, the game now so nobly advanced by our supreme court with its corporate free speech decision. I’m thinking office holding. And before some traditional-bound carper says this is going too far, I’ll point out there’s really no big change required here. The mayor of New York has the same name as a huge financial news corporation he founded. That’s the only precedent needed (not that precedent is all that important to our present supreme court, but still…)

I’m now looking forward to the day when Congresscorp Procter & Gamble and Senator Burger King can meet with President Apple to work out health care policy. Which when you get right down to it, isn’t any crazier than having such policy shaped by the likes of Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson.