Just now on the campaign trail, Mitt Romney bear hugged his beloved Citizens United decision by informing voters that "corporations are people, too!"
Here's the video, via TPM:
ROMNEY: Corporations are people, my friend. We could raise taxes and --[unintelligible crosstalk]
ROMNEY: Of course they are. Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people. So -- [audience laughter] where do you think it goes?
[shouts]
Whose pockets? Whose pockets? People's pockets.
Okay -- human beings, my friend.
Number one, so number one: you can raise taxes. That's not the approach that I would take.
Number two, you can make sure that the promises we make are promises that we can keep. And in my view, the areas that you have to consider are, for higher-income people ...
He so reminded me of Professor Harold Hill conning the town in The Music Man. I almost wanted to hear him say there was trouble in River City, my friends.
Snark aside, there is no stronger indictment of Romney than what he just said. Sure, he'll walk it back in the days to come, try to tell everyone he meant that corporations employ people who get paychecks and so they are people. But we all know that's not what he meant. Not at all.
After Romney's firm Bain Capital laid off thousands of employees to raise profit margins, he didn't care much about those people, but he definitely cared about a "person" in the form of Bain Capital. And then there's the matter of the dummy corporation created solely to donate $1 million to him before it was dissolved. That corporation was created solely for the purpose of laundering a huge campaign contribution with no accountability. It was a person under the definition provided by the Supreme Court, but certainly not "people."
No, Mitt Romney just told us all where he comes from, and it's not a place where people matter at all.
UPDATE: Here's more video from Romney's Iowa State Fair encounter. Gosh, people are angry. Can't imagine why.
