One of the perennial undercurrents in the nation's political campaigns is whether corporations should be left unfettered by government regulations.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney says that corporations are people, a concept defined in business law and reinforced by the U.S. Supreme Court when it ruled that corporations have the same right to political speech as individuals.
With nearly unlimited money and the organizational power to use it to accomplish their own purposes, major corporations are organizations formed to do business for the sole benefit of their chief executives, directors and stockholders.
BP's broken well that dumped oil into the Gulf of Mexico was hardly a high moment of corporate citizenship. BP simply threw money, manpower and media spin at the problem and then moved on.
Major corporations are masters of the universe, citizens of the world rather than of any country. Multi-nationals play countries off against each other, dropping parts of their operations wherever financial benefit derives. Ships headquartered in New York issue checks through Swiss banks to pay sailors from Greece sailing under the Panamanian flag.
Some of the debate in the upcoming election cycle will revolve around whether or not corporations should have all the rights and privileges democracy reserves for its human citizens. And so it should. Do corporations have greater wisdom than their human counterparts or just more power? Should corporations pay taxes in return for the profits they extract, or is profit their untouchable right?
In the end, voters will probably not agree on these issues. But we should be able to agree, no matter what Romney and the U.S. Supreme Court proclaim, that corporations are certainly not people.