Now that the House of Representatives has voted to gut the Geneva Conventions, suspend the right of Habeas Corpus and do away with the Sixth and Eighth Amendments, and the Senate appears well on its way to doing likewise, what will Congress take up next?
Well, my spies in the capitol tell me about the Property Rights and Compensation Freedom bill. It's proponents, mostly Republican, say it eliminates an injustice down to property rights in the middle of the nineteenth century and provides the poor with a forward looking twenty-first century solution to debt crisis that is actually in use in many nations today, such as parts of Sudan, India, Pakistan, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, some west African nations and even a staunch US ally like Saudi Arabia. The bills detracters call it the "Freedom from having to Compensate bill" and charge that it is an attempt to reintroduce slavery in the United States, a point the bill's proponents say is simply absurd.
Summary: the Property Rights and Compensation Freedom Act of 2006
- Any employer, to include corporations, has the right to own any of his employees.
- No employer shall be deprived of his property, including employees owned, without just compensation.
- Congress shall make no law depriving any person, real or artificial, of any employee owned by him without due process of law.
- The right of the owner of an employee to dispose of his property as he sees fit shall not be infringed.
- Any person, real or artificial, has the right to collect wages payed on the labor of any employee he owns and to compensate said employee as he sees fit.
Senate Debate on the Property Rights and Compensation Freedom Bill
from the Congressional Record
SEN. McCAIN: This sounds an awful lot like slavery. Unless somebody can convince me it isn't, I will have to oppose this legislation.
SEN. FRIST: Let me calm the fears of my good friend and colleague, the senior senator from the great state of Arizona. Do you think President Bush and Vice President Cheney would support anything as abomniable as slavery? Why of course they wouldn't. This administration would tolerate slavery any more than it would tolerate torture.
SEN. McCAIN: Well, as the majority leader knows, I've had my differences with the President and Vice President before, but I'm always happy to clear them up. So I'm open to being convinced. How is this not slavery?
SEN. FRIST: I understand the Senator's concerns. They echo those of many fine Americans, mostly liberal traitors and terrorist sympathizers. This is not slavery. Slavery is a racist institution that involved only the ownership of darkies. This bill makes no mention of the race of the kind of person who may become an owned employee. Anybody can be an owned employee.
SEN. ALLEN: That's right, anybody. Macacas, queers, even Jews like me.
SEN. INHOFE: Even a good, white Christian man with a family. He will have the freedom under this bill to sell himself into sla -- oops, pardon me -- to any employer willing to buy him or his family. It would be a good way for some people to get out of debt, since we made bankruptcy more restrictive last year.
SEN. McCAIN: Would that justify it?
SEN. INHOFE: The Bible justifies. It speaks of sla -- oops, pardon me -- the ownership of employees in Leviticus, Exodus, Deuteronomy and several passages in the New Testament that are the word of Our Lord Himself. So this legislation is about complying with the Word of the Lord. We can't go against that or we we be smitten with plagues like attacks by heathen Muslim terrorists and even homosexuals living among us and even getting married.
SEN. ALLEN: Not to mention macacas and Jews like me.
SEN. INHOFE: Well, the junior Senator from Virginia knows I have a problem with that. Leviticus says that only members of the heathen tribes around the Israelites were to be ensla -- I mean -- owned as servants, and that it was OK for an Israelite to sell his daughter to somebody, but not as a servant. But even the Lord must make compromises in Congress to get worthwhile, progressive legislation like this moving.
SEN. McCAIN: Well, I still don't know. Some people might still call this slavery.
SEN. FRIST: Well, then, to alleviate the fears of my good friend and colleague, the senior senator from Arizona, I will propose an amendment to this legislation. Will the clerk please read the amendment?
CLERK: The Secretary of Labor shall withhold funds for support of Occupational Safety and Health and federal support of workman's compensation to any state that does not enact into law legislation deeming the characterization of the ownership of employees by the word "slavery" as slander or libel.
SEN. FRIST: And thus, by an act of Congress, it isn't slavery; and no one can call it slavery without slandering the good employers and property owners of our great nation. I hope that calms the fears of my colleague.
SEN. McCAIN: Well, I still have problems with this; I don't know.
SEN. FRIST: Well the clerk please the second proposed amendment to the Property Rights and Compensation Freedom bill?
CLERK: The department of the Interior shall authorize one billion dollars to the upkeep of the Hoover Dam, the maintenance of the Grand Canyon and the preservation of wildlife in the Sonora Desert.
SEN. FRIST: Now, are the fears of the senior senator from the great state of Arizona alleviated?
SEN. McCAIN: I'm sold!
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