It is a common theme when conversing with Progressives: the ills of the world are the result of corporate greed made worse by corporate marriages to corrupt government.

And for the most part, they are right. In the recent Bush era, VP Cheney had intimate ties with government contractor Halliburton, but this was only one of many corporate-government marriages where back-scratching was the norm.

The Bush Administration was very closely tied to Wall Street and Big Oil high-rolling donors; those donors of which were also smart enough to see the winds of Hope and Change start blowing after the 2007 financial meltdown.

And its not that the army of lobbyists and corporate fat-cats had to do summersaults to change their spots when they decided to jump on the Obama train and ride into Washington in January of 2009-- they were already there.

Firmly in place were the fused relationships between GM execs, the AFL-CIO and the Obama cash-machine, such that Wall Street became the willing broker to the bilking of GM bondholders, as Goldman Sachs got commissions for helping Obama's GM-corp "show a profit" and organized labor sold shares created out of thin air for a windfall of millions. It was a win-win for everyone except the American people, who once again were sold into another level of financial slavery by the very people who promised to rein in corporate greed.

Time for an economic moral-clarity break: Corporations by themselves are not evil. Government by itself is not evil. Nor is Union labor. So then -- what's wrong?

The problem is that certain inalienable truths are no longer self-evident.

For a moment, let's redefine a corporation to be any group of people associated to attain a common goal. As such, let's think of the labor union as a corporation, the government (all levels, all branches) as a corporation, and all private businesses trying to produce a good or service with the objective of making a profit, as a corporation.

No matter their size or composition, each corporation seeks to fulfill the purpose for which it was created: government seeks to govern, private businesses seek to maximize their profits, labor unions seek to protect their base through the influence and power of their members. And they all don't like competition.

So the danger lies when the self-interest of the various corporations combine into a ruling-class, and that class manifests its power over those who are not incorporated.

Here is an example: Big Oil and left-wing environmentalists commonly work together to expand their power and self-interests. Big Oil contributes money to environmental advocacy groups to stop new drilling by competing firms, thus they retain a monopoly on their pricing, profits and political power. Environmental groups that "play ball" with the oil companies are the ones that have the funds to maintain a political and public pretense, thus removing their competition, that of other environmental groups seeking limited donation-dollars.

Do you see where this is going?

Now some would say that I am being cynical, but the fact is that every "corporation" seeks to achieve its own "monopoly" of power, money, profit or influence, no matter who they are.

It's just the laws of free-market economics as applied to a non-free, progressive world.