Paris, Texas, is a good example of bad government.
Our local governmental units – like governments everywhere – spend tax money on “amenities” (to buy votes) and on a few insider programs for well-paying cronies. Spending on necessities, usually identified as an emergency, take years.
Promises are lost while plugging another hole in the Spending Dike.
It’s why Paris has infrastructure issues: Chunk-holes held together by narrow asphalt streets; intersections that don’t meet city ordinances; leaks of treated water; dangerous sidewalks; areas that flood; sewer plant problems; neighborhoods surrendered to bight, decay, and rot; redlining issues; ignoring those who actually need help; to name a few.
It’s not always Margaritas, Mai Tais, and Yahtzee. This, somehow, is shocking to local leaders, and those visitors coming to Paris for a good time or a fight.
Behind leadership’s Happy Talk, however, only a few of the kind hearts and happy souls among the citizenry are happy in their craniums – a result from years of settling for less.
History, of course, repeats itself: Over the past 25-30-years, the leadership hasn’t done much to actually improve all of Paris, but council after council have wasted millions of dollars in that time period not even trying.
Actually, Paris hasn’t made a community-wide development effort since the fire of 1916.
While ignoring development opportunities, insiders gobbled up large portions of the government grants and low-interest loans made available after the 1982 Paris tornado (that wiped out or extensively damaged more than 465 residences and left approximately 1,000 people homeless). It’s one of several reasons why Paris is a good example of a bad government.
Equally as bad (or worse), there is no equal economic opportunity in Paris. Since the mid-1980s, economic opportunity is only for selected segments of the community – the favorite few, plus corporate large box stores, fast-food franchises, and conglomerate-owned retail outlets.
We limit opportunity, in general, to those with money (or access to it).
You can only escape poverty by ownership of private property (assets). Yet, banks now only lend money on cash-flows or on big-ticket consumer items that can be bundled and sold to high volume commercial paper lenders. Under such policies, banks do not make loans for acquisition of income-producing assets (land, building, equipment, fixtures, inventory, etc).
This make assets worthless for financing new businesses openings, which was the original purpose of banks . . .
We penalize the poor in order to subsidize the wealthy (or the somewhat rich).
Consider that the city subsidize developers to build low-income properties, but not potential purchasers of it – Or those who will live in it and pay rent to the developer.
Good examples of bad government are easy to find:
Too many issues hide behind obscure and / or conflicted administrative policies that are only good for confusing most matters. As long as those who are not allowed in the power playpens can be convinced to provide the money for the decision-makers to buy their pies, life is good. At least, for the decision-makers.
Generally, we’re told everything but the facts. It’s why the decision-makers never run out of excuses for why they do what they do.
Generally, government thinks most of us (citizens) don’t know what’s good for us, but that it does.
No wonder so many citizens have lost faith in government, as well as what the national manipulators tell us about open borders, drugs, jobs, inflation, energy, climate, terrorist, crime, Covid19 variants, China, Iran, Hamas, and Tucker Carlson.
A conspiracy is a story of those who find a clear path of action that leads to their desired conclusions, which is denied to others. It is a closed game that is available to the select few; beyond the reach of most citizens.
Sadly, Paris is a good example of bad government.
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