Big Bad Business

Polls show that most Americans feel Big Businesses are "too influential" over the government.
The idea of a psuedo-government-business is inherently scary. It brings to mind images like the smoke filled rooms of yesteryear, or the bleak image of 1984.
The real question is, who are these greedy bastards anyway? I personally fear only Cronkite but thats another story. The truth of the matter is that some of the most powerful businesses are the ones you wouldn't realize. For example, ConocoPhillips is the 5th largest corperation just under cheveron.Some would find this scary as if "unknown" means "Evil Secret Coporation". I view it as a business that hasn't tried to affect me already and it probably wont in the future. And guess who is number one on the list? did you guess Microsoft? WRONG its WalMart! In fact Walgreens is higher on the list than Microsoft, And so is Lowe's.
I think we say things alot without looking at the facts and are almost always wrong. Like when you ask a teen these days why they hate George Bush they will usually say it's because of the Iraq war, But they have no understanding of the reason the war is bad other than it wasn't Iraq that attacked us. But maybe worst of all are the morons who seem to think that every single muslim is responsible for 9/11. (thats crazier than the crazies who think it was an inside job). Sometimes I wish we were forced to find the facts before we speak. but then again, whats funny about that?

some graphs on our economy in general since you folks like pictures