With only a few days left in 2021, we’re seeing all the best- and worst-of-the-year lists come out. Here’s one I’m especially interested in, and one that I’m sure was very difficult to decide in a year when Democrats held both the White House and Congress: Sen. Rand Paul’s annual “Festivus Report” listing the worst examples of wasteful, pointless government spending.

https://www.westernjournal.com/teaching-pigeons-gamble-torturing-ferrets-fattening-eels-worst-government-waste-2021/

This year’s list totals over $52 billion worth of your tax money wasted (or borrowed, thrown away and put on our grandkids’ credit cards.) Some of the individual items include:

* $250 million for “enhanced border security” in Middle East and North African nations while our own border was left wide open…

* $465,339 to Reed College in Oregon to teach pigeons how to use slot machines (as if Vegas doesn’t have enough pigeons in its casinos already)…

* A $337,500 FDA grant to a Canadian company called NovaEel “to fatten and raise juvenile eels to keep costs down for those wishing to eat the fish.” Because for so many Americans, eel is a daily staple. Or maybe it’s because NovaEel is trying to turn male eels into females by giving them estrogen, so they got on to the trans bandwagon...

* Various grants for such worthy endeavors as feeding kids junk food and telling people in Vietnam not to burn their trash...

* And of course, up to $4.29 billion in fraudulent or duplicate Small Business Administration loans during the pandemic, when the government was throwing money everywhere without much regard for where it landed.

Once the holidays are over, many of us will immediately have to start preparing for our 2021 income tax filings. As you’re sweating over all those forms, trying to justify every penny you earned or spent to the government, think about this story. And remember it the next time some politician says that one group or another isn’t paying their “fair share” of what it takes to run the government.

How about if I stop paying taxes, and you stop giving money to people to create transgender eels, and we call that fair and square?