Dic (usages): public trough

1.

Should public trough feed political animals? (Times Higher Education, 2007) 

2.

( ... ) The postwar period illustrated that corporations had learned that they could use the shelter of the state to shore up their political legitimacy at the same time that they were "feeding at the public trough" (Chomsky, 120). So this period was characterized by simultaneous protectionism and interventionㅡmassive "defense" spending combined with state subsidy and/or tax relief to industries that were under threat. ( ... ) (Conspiracy theories..)

3.

( ... ) No, the feeders at the public trough aren’t unions, aren’t first responders, aren’t teachers, aren’t firefighters or police officers or soldiers.  The biggest, loudest, slurpingest feeders at the public trough are Republicans who decry small government while using every bit of government at their disposal to take over our sex lives and family planning, our ability to support all religions (or none at all), offer employers the opportunity to judge the merits of our contraception, give hospitals and pharmacists the same liberties with our health, reject the stimulus with one hand and grab as much of it as they can with the other – all in the name of “small government” and all while decrying the use of big government to provide enhanced opportunity for the disenfranchised. (Republicans: Feeding at the Public Trough, 2012)

4.

public trough: the trough that is filled up by worker in the private sector in order that workers in the public sector and councilors, ect[?eat], can feed off. This is a never emptying trough as almost like magic the public sector will keep it full by increasing taxes ect and penalising the private sector. (urban dic.)