Corporations are people? Yes, Count the ways

Here's what I want readers to do. Put your hands together with fingers interlaced and pointing downwards next to your palms and bring the heels of the palms together.

Then stick your two index fingers and thumbs up until the next-to-last paragraph while I talk to you about corporations, Republican Mitt Romney and a widespread misconception.

It's that corporations are reptiles. Recently, when presidential candidate Romney was confronted by Democratic demonstrators, he said taxing corporations is taxing people, that corporations are people.

Though he happens to have made millions as a corporate whiz, many responded with derision, including a TV reporter who committed a gaffe by calling it a gaffe.

Please. Someone or something has to own those corporations, run them and work in them.

The only creatures we know of with enough brainpower are people, unless there is such a thing as corporate-caused Darwinian devolution, leaving these souls with rough, green skin, long tails, sharp teeth and barely more alertness than TV reporters.

I don't think so. I do think I can identify two sources of the confusion.

The bigger picture is that when corporations go broke and close down, lots of everyday Americans (aka, people) find themselves unemployed. Shareholders (aka, people) also lose.

When the firms do well in a nonscary economy, they will often expand and hire more workers (aka, people) while stock values go up, giving succor among others to retired baby boomers (aka, people) relying on invested savings.

People are absolutely affected by corporation taxes (including those known as consumers).

It's also the case that people continue to be full-fledged citizens in an association. Many corporations are small, nonprofit and sometimes organized as a means of people having their rightful say in public affairs.

Even people in corporations out to make a buck -- thank God for them -- are similarly entitled to free speech and other liberties sometimes undermined by judges and politicians.

Let's concede that some CEOs behave atrociously, while adding that you can also find villains among legislators, TV reporters, columnists -- you name it. I'll agree, too, that campaign donations can cause corrupt politicians to bow deeply.

But you really don't understand American politics if you don't get it that pleasing voters is a more significant determinant of action -- that the government delivers considerable pain to corporations and that the main reason for cronyism is intrusiveness.

Control too much as an institution vastly more powerful than all corporations put together, and those who are controlled try to influence you back.

Corporations are primarily friends, providing us with such desirables as food, clothing, shelter, the highest productivity of any nation in the world and wages (aka, money). Government coercively takes much of that money to spend wastefully.

Fiscal recklessness now has us in one of the most threatening predicaments of recent times.

Recall the childhood rhyme, saying, "Here's the church, here's the steeple," and then turn your hands upside down with the fingers sticking in the air and conclude, "open the doors and see all the people."