If corporations aren't people, then neither are governments

"Corporations are not people," Elizabeth Warren said last week. "People have hearts. They have kids. They get jobs. They get sick. They cry. They dance. They live, they love and they die." To liberals, corporations are greedy, heartless institutions.

But if corporations aren't people, neither are these four beloved liberal institutions that are arguably more greedy and heartless than corporations:

1. Governments. Federal, state, and local governments fuel their greed with countless taxes, fees, and penalties assaults on taxpayers — from fishing licenses to death taxes — and no one can ever accuse the IRS, the EPA, the TSA, or any other government agency of having a heart.
2. Unions. The Chicago Teachers Union is a timely case in point. Although the average teacher salary is $71,000 (well above the $47,714 average salary of the college-educated tax-paying Chicagoan), the union just rejected a $400 million package that included a 16% pay raise.That's greed.
3. Universities. The overall inflation rate since 1986 is 115.06%, yet college tuition increased 498.31% during the same period. Universities hold billions of dollars in endowments — University of Virginia topped the list in 2011 at $4.8 billion — while their students accumulate millions in student loan debt. That's heartless.
4. Public Schools. American public schools spend an average $91,700 per student between the ages of 6 and 15 (not all the way to 18), the second highest per pupil spending behind Switzerland among the world's industrialized nations. Yet public schools continue to demand more money each year from local governments (property taxes), state governments (income taxes), and federal governments (income taxes). At the same time, public schools lobby vigorously against allowing even a small portion of a child's tax-appropriated dollars to follow him or her to a charter school, a private school, or a parochial school of choice. All greed and no heart for the kids trapped in really bad public schools.

At least corporations seek to please their customers. These liberal darlings don't need to bother.