Record corporate profits in 2011 indicate that it is high time our nation takes stock of what is really happening in our economy.  The recovery from our financial crisis of 2008 is still slowly progressing, while we see quoted nightly that Wall Street, Big Oil and the Financial sector have been reaping fantastic profits for the past few years. Evidently, capitalism is healthy once more, due to the $700 billion bailout known as TARP, socialist solution that served to prevent a financial collapse, according to top economists.  I ask you, why these very same banks and companies are sitting on obscene amounts of liquidity, and still paying very little in taxes?  President Barack Obama led the charge to save Detroit, and now in 2012, the auto industry and auto parts companies added more than 38,000 jobs last year.  Good news indeed, for all of the United States, but what about all the other corporations our tax dollars saved?  There are numerous disturbing reports of workers in all kinds of industry putting in long hours without overtime pay, giving up vacation time, accepting lower wages out of fear of being fired, fast creating a culture where the worker’s rights become less and less important.  The biggest pig at the TARP trough was undoubtedly the banking industry….We did bail these big banks out, right?  Have they returned the favor by hiring staff and providing easier access to loans?  Not at all.  In fact, it seems all Big Banking has done is to try to create even more fees to profit further from their existing customers, and hold tight to the very money that was supposed to go into loans to small businesses and housing to help revitalize the economy.  It is an amazingly weird fact, but, the American tax dollar has been subsidizing Big Oil for over a century!  Perhaps it is time they did America a solid, and gave us a fair price for gas at the pump.  Big Oil has received billions from our Treasury, it is the least they can do.  And have you wondered, where are the jobs in the new green technologies they keep promising our nation in the expensive oil, coal and natural gas industry commercials that run during our news broadcasts?  Our legislator’s message to these ungrateful money grubbers in light of how they have repaid our nation’s investment should be: Time to come across, Big Business.  Or see your cushy tax status become less attractive, indeed.