2022 is no exception. Since 1991, Congress has failed to pass its twelve appropriations bills. To avoid public failure, Congress takes the easy route. It bundles all spending into the proverbial secret Santa grab bag called an Omnibus appropriation. The corporatists and social advocates, like children opening presents, must wait to find out what they got until they can read the new law. The timing is usually the end of the year before Congress goes home for Christmas.

While Republicans claim they want to stop the next giveaway, they want their share of gifts even more. For this year’s share, several Republicans will likely help the Democrat business community keep their prize gifts, favorable tax treatment for research and development, and carried interest. The social activists want billions of dollars of higher childcare tax credits. The final deal is always more spending, never less.

Since the beginning of the republic, there has been a debate over the scope of Congress’s power to spend our money and then tax us to generate more money for Congress to spend. James Madison argued Congress could only spend on the items enumerated in the Constitution. Alexander Hamilton argued the Constitution’s Spending clause is independent of the enumerated powers, thus allowing Congress to tax and spend as it deems necessary. The only limitation – spending must be for the general welfare, and Congress is the only institution that determines the general welfare.

Continuing to debate the limits of Congressional spending is a waste of time. The Supreme Court has made it clear that Congress can spend on whatever it wants as long as it promotes the general welfare.

Such a broad interpretation of Congress’ ability to tax and spend has resulted in a massive expansion of government and a $31 plus a trillion national debt.  The growth of the national debt will likely force posterity into involuntary servitude to the federal government. Most troubling is that the general welfare has morphed from building canals, bridges, and highways to make the U.S. an economic superpower into trillions of dollars of gifts to special interests and friends. These gifts to private entities come in the form of grants, tax credits, low rates, loan forgiveness, and paycheck protection plans.

Listed below are a few of the thousands of congressional gifts to private parties.

Suspending  $20 billion of student loan payments for two years and now seeking $600 billion more in student loan forgiveness based on the Higher Education Relief Opportunities Act of 2003, an act that addresses national welfare emergencies.

$ 721 billion was given in grants to states as a bribe to manage federal programs enacted outside the constitutional authority of Congress to legislate.

Forgiving tens of billions of dollars of federal Paycheck Protection Program loans made to organizations controlled by the elite rich such as Paul Pelosi (husband of the Speaker of the House); Khloe Kardashian, Tom Brady and Reese Witherspoon, Forbes Media, Ruth Chris Steakhouse, The Washington Times, and more than a few members of Congress.

$16 billion was given in farm aid to offset losses suffered by farmers on tariffs imposed on products sold to China. The top 10% of farmers receive 70% of the subsidies. This top 10% includes insurance companies, multinational corporations, and corporate farms.

Flood insurance subsidies are given to insure high-end housing in flood-prone areas, i.e., beach front properties. This insurance program is potentially liable for $1.3 trillion in flood claims while only collecting $3.5 billion in annual premiums. The program already has $25 billion in losses taxpayers will have to pay.

The $330 billion prescription drug industry received $64 billion in federal research funding, along with  immunity for any harm their drugs may cause.

Most recently, through the falsely named “Inflation Reduction Act,” Congress authorized $370 in new tax credits for corporations and individuals if they acquire green energy products or build green energy facilities. These tax credits are in addition to federal regulations imposing energy efficiency requirements on at least sixty products and $577 billion in tax credits and grants for green energy projects since 2004. The tax credits are to boost corporate sales of electric vehicles, the installation of rooftop solar panels, the development of solar power systems, heat pumps, water heaters, space heating, electric stoves, circuit breaker boxes, additional home insulation, and exterior windows, to name a few beneficiaries.

A week before the passage of the IRA, Congress authorized $280 billion to incentivize the semiconductor industry to build plants in the U.S. and invest in new research. The $ 573 billion semiconductor industry is expected to grow to $1.4 trillion by 2029 due to high product demand.

With a $31 trillion-plus national debt, citizens need to appreciate that every taxpayer owes $247,882 as their portion of the debt.

Christmas gifts to children are rewarding when parents see happiness in their eyes. Unfortunately, as some of these children grow up, they still expect gifts from the real Santa Claus, the federal government. The federal government likes playing Santa but never considers the immutable fact that the only money the federal government has is what it takes from taxpayers. The federal Santa game is simple. The federal government sees the glimmer in the eyes of its friends when they find out about the billion-dollar gifts they received for doing nothing. This tradition is the true meaning of a Washington, DC Christmas.

The post Yes, Virginia, The Federal Government is the Real Santa Claus appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

-Frank Reynolds, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

(Disclaimer 1: I do not have children. After you read this, you will probably say, “Thank God.”)

When I was a child, my family took Christmas very seriously. Though we weren’t what you would call serious churchgoers, we went all out for Yuletide. Lights, decorations, a blinged out tree, and of course the whole Santa Claus thing. My father, to his credit, was an exceptionally good Santa. Though we often didn’t have a lot of money, Santa always managed to show up and do his thing.

I was the most fervent Santa believer of all the kids in our house. He generally brought me what I wanted, too, except for that one year I went overboard and requested my own personal flying reindeer (as noted in a prior piece.) That was a bridge too far even for Ol’ St. Nick.

But all good things must come to an end. Eventually, the truth must come out. When my folks finally told little Chris the truth about Santa, I of course did not react well. In fact, I bawled my adorable little eyes out.

My dad’s reaction? To grab a camera and take a picture of my caterwauling. Isn’t his trauma so cute?

Now that I am older, jaded, and thoroughly damaged, I look back on the whole Santa thing and think: what the fuck? 

If one views the Santa Claus mythos at face value, it’s batshit crazy.

He supposedly lives at the North Pole—where there is no actual land. Is he on a huge ass boat? Does he hole up in some sort of Bond villain-ish underwater lair? Did he build his evil empire on a sheet of (literal) thin ice?

He supervises a team of elves. How are they paid? What are the benefits? Are they unionized? Are the elves a minority group that is being exploited? Are they, in fact, slave labor? Does the Thirteenth Amendment apply to the North Pole?

Who has jurisdiction over the pole, anyway? Canada? Russia? Denmark (via Greenland?) Are NATO and NORAD aware of this possible national security threat lurking in the middle of the Arctic Ocean?

Santa tells young children to sit on his lap and tell him all of their most base, greedy, material desires, which he will grant them…in exchange for certain behaviors. Nothing creepy about that. Grooming much?

Is Santa, for lack of a better term, a pedo? Or at least pedo-adjacent? Did he take the ol’ sleigh down to Epstein Island for a little jailbait action? Check those flight logs. Does the North Pole bear more than a passing resemblance to Neverland Ranch? Is he a prime candidate for chemical castration? How did this creeper survive the “Me Too” purges? Concerned citizens want to know.

Santa also accepts fan letters in lieu of lap dances. Still weird, but at least more sanitary.

He enters millions (or billions) or homes in the middle of the night undetected. Nothing creepy about that either, right?

What sort of acid-inspired fever dream thought up flying reindeer in the first place?

He is omniscient, knowing whether every single one of the 2.2 billion children on the planet has been good or bad for the last year. Does he accomplish this by some sort of magic? Or, does he have a 24/7/365 surveillance system that would be the envy of the NSA and the CIA even in their wettest of dreams? What would Edward Snowden think about this gross violation of privacy rights?

He is also omnipresent, at least on Christmas Eve, visiting the households of those 2.2 billion children in under twenty-four hours.

So we have omniscience and omnipresence. The only ingredient missing here is omnipotence. If Santa can somehow pull that off, then He isn’t just some jolly old elf. Santa is God. That has some pretty serious theological implications. Santa can not only bring you presents if you’ve been good, he can send your eternal soul to Hell if you’ve been bad. (The sad thing is, if this was made into a new religion tomorrow, it wouldn’t even be the craziest one out there.)

Are Santa’s acts a violation of the Non Aggression Principle? Does he only come into homes when he’s been invited? What constitutes an invitation? Cookies and milk? Does he just telepathically know? Is a child’s invitation legal even if his/her parents object?

You know who else requires an invitation to enter your home? Vampires, that’s who. Nobody’s ever seen Santa Claus and Count Dracula in the same place at the same time, you know. The mind wanders…

Entering a home without permission is trespassing; entering that home not only without permission but when people are present is straight up home invasion. If you catch Santa poking around downstairs at midnight, you are legally allowed smoke him. That’s Castle Doctrine, Holmes. Double tap that corpulent bastard in America and no authority will prosecute you. (Except maybe renegade St. Louis prosecutor Kim Gardner, who will indict your grandma’s fruitcake if it is politically to the right of Che Guevara.)

Even if we accept that there are many problems with the Santa mythology: why did we create him in the first place?

Essentially, Santa exists as a form of behavior modification. Be good, you are rewarded. Be bad, and you will be punished.

But why outsource this? Why lie? If I had a child, I would want him or her to know that I was the one rewarding him or her for good. I would want the credit. Fobbing it off on a fictional third party just seems lazy and wrong.

The same goes for punishment. If Santa exists as the holiday carrot, then Krampus and Belsnickel act as the holiday stick. But the same thought applies: why outsource your punishments? I wouldn’t want my kids believing some mythical anti-Santa is going to smack them if they get out of line;  I would rather they know it’s me that would be beating that ass. And not Christmas Eve, either; your bundle of switches or lump of coal will be delivered tout de suite.

The fact that Santa, Krampus, and Belsnickel all have Germanic origins tell you all you need to know about German culture. It’s not enough to terrify Poland, France, or Europe in general; they must also terrorize their own children. No way these folks could start two world wars and kill millions, right?

(Disclaimer 2: I am largely of German descent, so I can say this shit.)

Lying to kids at a young age only to reveal your treachery later plants seeds of distrust that can lead them to later question all sorts of other things. It’s a slippery slope from Santa to the void.

If you don’t use Santa as a behavior modification tool, then he’s just a prank. A fun thing you do with kids, right? What’s the harm?

But what fun is it to punk a child? There’s not a lot of sport in it. Don’t pat yourself too hard on the back after you pull a fast one on a rug rat. Or take pictures of him crying after you reveal your long running elaborate ruse.

If I were fortunate enough to have children of my own to traumatize, I would choose to do it in different (yet probably no less Teutonic) ways. Regardless, I would certainly advise them to stay off the laps of strangers who promise them goodies in exchange for who knows what. Nothing good comes from that. That’s just common sense.

This is the conversation I would have with my imaginary child regarding Kris Kringle:

“Daddy, is Santa Claus real?”

“Life is meaningless. Nothing you do matters. You are just one individual among a species of primates with billions of relatives living on a tiny rock in the middle of nowhere.”

Just kidding. I would cover that later. But as to Father Christmas, I would actually respond:

“No, it’s total bullshit. But you’re real. I’m real. Our family is real. Beyond that, everything is negotiable. And oh by the way, there’s no such thing as ‘free’, and taxation is theft.”

In a more rational world, we’d march Santa Claus, Elf on the Shelf, Silver Spurs, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy up the stairs to the guillotine and let the blade sing.

The rapey old coot is dead; long live Mom and Dad.

The post Santa Claus: Who Needs Him? appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

Molly Prince on December 22, 2018

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) will continue its more than 60-year-old tradition of tracking Santa Claus as he leaves the North Pole to deliver presents across the world.

The twitter account for NORAD and the U.S. Northern Command announced Friday that Santa will be tracked on Christmas Eve regardless of whether or not a government shutdown has gone into effect.

WATCH:

“In the event of a government shutdown, NORAD will continue with its 63-year tradition of NORAD Tracks Santa on Dec. 24,” NORAD and USNORTHCOM said. “Military personnel who conduct NORAD Tracks Santa are supported by approximately 1,500 volunteers who make the program possible each and every year.”

Accordingly, Congress failed to pass a spending measure before government funding expired Friday at midnight, triggering a government shutdown.

The House passed a stopgap funding bill Thursday that included $5.7 billion for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. However, Senate Republicans were not able to get the necessary 60 votes needed to send the bill to the president’s desk. Prior to the vote, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer vowed that any legislation with additional funding for a border wall would be dead on arrival.

Regardless, NORAD is funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, which is not included in the stopgap funding bill and has already been funded for the 2019 calendar year, The Hill reported. President Donald Trump signed the Fiscal Year 2019 National Defense Authorization Act into law in 2018, which included a budget of $717 billion for the department.

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According to a report from the Associated Press (AP), Santa Claus, a city councilman for the North Pole, has been reinstated by Facebook (FB) after the social media site deactivated his account, pending the proof of his identity.

You heard that correctly: Santa Claus is a sitting councilman in the city of the North Pole (see proof here), Alaska, and Facebook actually shut his social media account down on Christmas day until he could prove his identity. Claus told the AP that he was never given a reason as to why the company blocked his access. His best guess was that the site did not believe that Santa Claus was his real name and that he coincidentally lived in the North Pole.

AP reports that FB apologized via email to Claus saying, “the account was removed in error and restored as soon as we were able to investigate.” They continued, “Our team processes millions of reports each week, and we sometimes get things wrong.”

In order to prove his identity to the social media site, Claus explained that he sent copies of his Alaska driver’s license and letter of appointment to the North Pole City Council. He also claimed to be the only person who resides in the North Pole who legally goes by the name.

“I just can’t believe somebody, particularly on Christmas, would take me to task,” Claus said to the AP.

Apparently, Claus uses his account, which boasts more than 300,000 likes, to share “nice quotes” and interact with people. Take a look at his page here.

It turns out that he also ran for President in 2012. Watch his announcement below.

The post Santa Claus Forced to Prove Identity to Use Facebook appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

By Amber Randall

A woman launched a campaign to make Christmas more diverse after deciding the holiday was “too white.”

Nadya Powell, an advertising consultant, started the project after she searched for images of Christmas activities while working on a school project with her daughter’s friend, reports The Guardian.

Powell and Sara, a friend of her daughter, only came across white families posing in Christmas activities, Powell said. There apparently weren’t any black families that accurately represented Sara, she said.

That realization started Powell’s campaign to make Christmas less white.

“She was not seeing anything that looked like her and I realized she never did. This beautiful little girl is growing up in a world where on a daily basis she doesn’t see people like her in any media, where a perfect Christmas is a white Christmas,” Powell declared.

Powell connected with a modeling agency, Looks Like Me, when launching her campaign against the whiteness of Christmas. The project will inundate social media platforms with pictures of ethnic families doing random Christmas activities. The photos will be accompanied by the hashtag #ChristmasSoWhite.

Various media and marketing groups like Google, MediaCom, Saatchi & Saatchi and Edelman have financed the project.

Other people are trying to make Christmas more diverse. The Mall of America recently featured its first black Santa. During a four-day period, Larry Jefferson, a black man, dressed up as Santa and took photos with children. (RELATED: America’s Biggest Mall Gets Its First Black Santa)

“It gives them something to identify with, but Santa is still just Santa,” Jefferson said. “Just Saturday, I was doing an event, and one child said, ‘Santa, you’re brown,’ and I said, ‘Yes, I am, but Santa comes in many different colors.’ He said, ‘Oh,’ so I gave him a candy cane, he ran off with other kids.”

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The heartbreaking story about Santa visiting a terminally ill boy in the final moments of his life may turn out to be fake news.

Since Sunday, the tender story of a Santa performer bringing a toy to a terminally ill boy followed by the boy dying in his arms has been shared and viewed countless times, and even covered by other news outlets.

The Knoxville News Sentinel, which first published Santa performer Eric Schmitt-Matzen’s story, posted an editorial note Wednesday saying that “the story does not meet the newspaper’s standards of verification” and that the publication is “no longer standing by the veracity” of the account.

The single source for the story, Schmitt-Matzen, says he was asked to visit a 5-year-old boy in the hospital and bring a gift. Schmitt-Matzen presented the gift and told the boy, who knew he was about to die, “you tell ’em you’re Santa’s Number One elf, and I know they’ll let you in.”

“I wrapped my arms around him. Before I could say anything, he died right there. I let him stay, just kept hugging and holding on to him,” Schmitt-Matzen said, moments later.

Schmitt-Matzen does about 80 gigs as Santa in private settings and malls during the Christmas season, but that’s about the only part of the story that can be verified.

The Knoxville News Sentinel says Schmitt-Katzen would not reveal the identity of the boy’s family, or the name of the nurses at the hospital. “In follow-up interviews, he has continued to hold this position and stand by his account,” the editor’s note says.

NBC interviewed Schmitt-Katzen, and he told the story in nearly the same way.

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The post Boy Dying In Santa’s Arms Might Be Fake News appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

A pastor went to a local Texas mall and told children that Santa Claus doesn’t exist, much to the anger of parents gathered there.

David Grisham Jr., an evangelical street preacher, posted a video over Facebook showing himself telling young children that Santa Claus isn’t real as they waited to take pictures with him, reports 11 Alive.

“We’re going to tell the children today, the truth — that there is no Santa Claus. Christmas is about Jesus Christ. Jesus died on the cross for our sins. And Jesus was born in a manager 2,016 years ago,” Grisham said before approaching the group of children.

WATCH: 

Grisham spouted harsh truths about Santa Claus, telling the parents to stop lying to their children about the real meaning of Christmas.

“Parents, y’all need to stop lying to your children and telling them that Santa Claus is real when, in fact, he’s not,” Grisham yelled.

Grisham also ordered the parents to stop telling stories about the North Pole and Santa’s elves.

“Don’t lie to children! There are no flying reindeer… there is no workshop at the North Pole. There is no elves making toys. You buy all the gifts and put them under the tree.” Grisham declared.

Parents quickly grew angry and confronted Grisham over telling their children that Santa isn’t real.

“I’ve got my kids over there and we don’t need you coming over here, blabbing whatever the hell you want,” one father said angrily.

This is not the first time Grisham has gone after Santa Claus. A 2010 video reveals him hosting a mock execution of a Santa Claus pinata.

“What you can’t see is that we shot Santa in the face,” Grisham told his viewers.

Grisham stands by his war on Santa Claus; telling kids that Santa Claus is real is tantamount to idolotry, he said.

“If Santa Claus was a cartoon caricature like Mickey Mouse and everybody knew that it was fake, and no one thought it was real, I’d be fine with it,” Grisham told The Washington Post. “But when you start telling kids that Santa Claus is real, it now becomes idolatry.

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