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budgets & spending cuts too much government

Everybody Pays – Nobody Wants

Senator Rand Paul has just issued The Festivus Report 2025, in part a laundry list of absurd government spending at your expense and mine — to buy things that nobody wants but all of us American taxpayers must pay for.

Well, not nobody-nobody: The recipients of the largesse? They’re the exception; they want it. But these exceptions can’t justify expenditures wholly unrelated to the proper government function of protecting life and liberty from foreign and domestic threats.

“Congress keeps shoveling money toward pet projects and special interests while hardworking Americans pay the price through inflation and crushing interest rates — even after President Trump took action to end most foreign aid programs,” says Paul.

Examples:

  • $5 million for cocaine for dogs.
  • $3.3 million to Northwestern University to fund “safe space ambassadors” and combat “systemic racism.”
  • $7.5 billion for an EV charger network that built just 68 charging stations throughout the country.
  • $244,252 for a Pakistan cartoon series about fighting “climate change.”
  • $2.8 million “for aborted fetal tissue to be implanted in humanized mice.”
  • $2 million for “gender-​affirming care” and influence campaigns in Guatemala.
  • $200 billion to schools in pandemic-​relief money “wasted on things like rooms at Caesars Palace, renting out MLB stadiums, and ice cream trucks.”
  • $22.6 billon on “things like furniture, car repairs and home down payments, as well as welfare for illegal immigrants.”
  • $700,000 to fuel anti-​gas-​stove propaganda.

And so much more. Take it all back, Santa!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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meme Thought Today

Christmas 2025

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Common Sense video

A Truce

This commentary, Common Sense with Paul Jacob, usually deals with man’s inhumanity to man — man’s insanity to man, oftentimes. But on this Christmas Eve, let’s for just a moment focus squarely on some beautiful days of sanity and humanity that somewhat magically broke out of the ugliness of “total war” back eleven decades ago: World War I, “The Great War.”

Let’s remember the good times.

The Christmas Truce
History Channel
A Sign Of Friendship In The Midst Of War I
THE CHRISTMAS TRUCE 1914
The Great War
Christmas Truce of World War I 
Joyeux Noel /​ 2005 film (video, 13:35)

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. Merry Christmas!

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crime and punishment general freedom too much government

Impending Gifts

Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas, denizens of the Sort-​of-​Great State of New York!

It is certainly a time to be jolly. For some time now, Santa and his legislative elves have been striving to give you and yours an ever more overbearing medical regime. 

Take a gander at some of the goodies that have been proposed in the Empire State’s Legislative Workshop:

  • A416 would let governors or health officials detain persons “afflicted with a communicable disease” as long as a state of health emergency has been declared.
  • A279 would institute a statewide vaccine database. If you’re vaccinated, you’ll be in the database unless you make a point of requesting otherwise (who knows, maybe even then).
  • A8398 would eliminate many religious exemptions from compulsory vaccination and limit the ability of local governments and private organizations to issue medical exemptions.
  • A02240 would mandate flu vaccines for children in daycare.

Santa sure has been working overtime the last couple of years.

Will such bills, lapsed at the moment, soon see the light of day? Let’s hope! You people of the State of New York really need this kind of bounty. Especially if you’ve been suffering any delusions about the propriety of independent judgement and personal discretion in such matters.

Did I say Santa? Maybe I meant the Grinch. Or Krampus. The real Santa would be putting moving-​expense vouchers in everyone’s stockings to help them get the heck out of this beleaguered state.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Common Sense general freedom

Merry Christmas!

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general freedom

The Season of Not Demanding

Every day, in tandem with these columns, ThisIsCommonSense​.org provides a bit of history (“Today”) and a wise or significant saying (“Thought”). Christmas Eve’s Thought is worth thinking about again. 

“Liberty is the only thing you cannot have,” wrote William Allen White, “unless you are willing to give it to others.”

While one could argue that trust and love and a number of other important things also require reciprocity, it is true, and profoundly so, that liberty is reciprocal — or non-​existent: if you won’t let others be free, they won’t let you be free, either. 

Further, the responsibility that is freedom’s flip-​side is something we must do together. 

That is where the idea of shared burdens comes in. Freedom is not itself a non-​economic, or free good, in that those who won’t leave us free must be fought, sometimes with a lot of time and effort and resources. And even danger.

The key to not turning the burden of defending freedom into a form of oppression itself is to respect individual liberty in doing so — not turning our wants into commands.

This year, 2020, the challenge has been bigger than usual. Governments’ demands have been breathtakingly extensive: to not work, not trade, to not engage in business or worship or even going to the beach.

That burden has been so oppressive — and so much worse for some (small business folks and their employees, especially, and those with mental health issues) than others (like retirees, people in government, those working from home) — that surely it is too much to demand of others.

That’s something to consider in this “gift-​giving” season: Don’t play the spoiled child, with a gift-demanding attitude toward others.

Freedom is the gift we can all afford to exchange.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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