Update: could be useful on future posts.

Show me how those who are paying for most of our government services are “sucking the rest dry.” I want to see the math.

However, it is a great example of the Big Lie. Tell it often enough, long enough, and some people will believe it.

Print out that little chart at the bottom.

Now use a green highlighter to mark all the “subsidies” to businesses, farmers, whatever. Since there aren’t any boxes on this chart that small, I’ll throw you a freebie and you can pretend that “Other Government Programs” is entirely comprised of subsidies.

Then use a yellow one to mark out the “social services” and “real live people receiving benefits.”

Tack it to your refrigerator as a reminder. You’ll need to look at it now and then.

Every farmer, every corporation, every rancher, and pretty much everybody who looks at you funny is part of some right-wing organization.

A subsidy is tax money delivered to a company (or anyone else) that they did not have before. A real payment. It is not a subsidy to allow a company (or anyone else) to keep money they have earned.

Make sure you apply that division to your examples. There are fuzzy areas. For example, I would call allowing the use of public resources for far less money than the private sector would charge under normal conditions, to be a subsidy.

Note that it is not “sucking the life” from taxpayers to fail to sufficiently loot other taxpayers. If you want to give really taxpayers some relief, maybe we should do something about a government that has doubled in size since 1988.

And not to drive a point home with a sledgehammer (however often it becomes necessary), Exxon - a single oil company - is paying an amount in taxes equal to half what the entire lower 50 percent of this country pays. All by itself. If there is any “suckage” going on here, I really don’t think it’s in the direction you say it is.

At this moment, advanced recovery techniques and other technological jumps are the only thing keeping the damn lights on in this country (not all of us run on waterwheels). Domestic oil production has gone up 14 percent in the past few years. Imports have dropped from nearly two-thirds of our consumption to less than half. Despite the virulent hostility toward the industry of the current administration. Even now the Left is trying to figure out how to murder the burgeoning oil shale industry in its crib.

All of these are right-wing organizations sucking the life out of taxpayers while objecting to real live people receiving benefits.

So, yes. IT IS TOO HIGH FOR ME, and should be for you.