Private-Public Partnerships

1930s – 1940s: The Seeds of Change

  • Great Depression: Economic hardships led to federal initiatives aimed at job creation and infrastructure development, laying groundwork for using public funds to stimulate private investment.
  • Federal Programs: Initiatives like the Works Progress Administration (WPA; a governmental entity) are given as examples of how government spending can support private businesses.

1950s – 1960s: Formalization

  • Urban Renewal Programs: Using returning servicemen from WWII, enacted in the late 1940s and 1950s, these programs allowed for the use of public funds to pay for clearing blighted areas, and facilitating private development.
  • Federal Housing Act (1961): Introduced funding for urban renewal, further excusing the using of public tax dollars for private investments.

1970s: Expansion into Economic Development

  • Economic Development Administration (EDA): Established in 1965, as democrat socialism really bloomed, it helped to fund local development efforts through public-private partnerships.
  • Tax Increment Financing (TIF): Gained traction in multiple states following the trend during the 1970s, allowing local governments to claim re-capture of public tax dollars from future increased tax revenues from new private development, a program with limited success and a large number of mixed reviews.
Legislative Changes in Texas and Beyond

1980s: Legislative Framework

  • Texas Economic Development Act (1981): Established a blueprint for local economic development programs, permitting cities to use public funds as incentives for private businesses.

1990s: Widespread Adoption

  • Enterprise Zone Programs: Formulated by the U. S. Department of Commerce, these initiatives were to encouraged investment in economically distressed areas by private firms through financial incentives funded by public tax dollars, including guarantees back by the taxpayers to banks that would make loans to local government-approved developers.

Overall, the movement towards using public tax money for private endeavors evolved over decades, influenced by claims of economic needs and the acceptance by voters of democratic socialism for the growth of federal programs sold as fostering growth and revitalization in communities.

So, the question becomes, “Have such programs, based on costs or money spent, been successful at reducing poverty or homelessness or rebuilding inner-city areas?”

And the answer, of course, is that, despite using trillions of dollars of public funds to support private ventures, these programs have failed with greater numbers of blighted intercity areas, more poverty, more homelessness, and an even greater cost in inflation.

Assessment of Effectiveness

Positive Outcomes for democratic socialism:

  1. Job Creation: Many programs report job creation as a direct outcome, which can have a ripple effect in reducing poverty levels. Supporters claim that increased employment opportunities lead to better living standards. Currently, government is the nation’s largest employer.
  2. Investment in Infrastructure: Public funding has led to some improved infrastructure in a few in-city areas, which is claimed to enhance the appeal for businesses and residents alike, and it certainly increases the value for the owners of the improved property.
  3. Revitalization of Blighted Areas: Some cities have seen physical improvements, including the renovation of housing and commercial spaces, but still have the same problems, plus a higher tax rate.

Mixed or Negative Outcomes

  1. Limited Impact on Poverty: Many studies indicate that while jobs may be created, they often do not pay enough to significantly lift individuals out of poverty. The quality of jobs created is crucial. And not all the jobs are filled with workers from the sponsoring community, and some are filled by local workers simply changing their old job for a new one.
  2. Displacement Risks: Gentrification sometimes does follow revitalization efforts; lower-income residents are displaced as property values rise, and it has seemingly increased homelessness in large cities.
  3. Inequitable Distribution of Benefits: Benefits flow more to the property developers and the businesses than to the communities intended to be uplifted, leaving original residents (those who have paid the taxes for years) with minimal gains.

Evidence and Studies

  • Reports from Research Institutions: Various studies on enterprise zones and similar programs show mixed results, often indicating that while jobs are created, the long-term impacts on poverty and homelessness are less clear; pointing to the trillions of dollars wasted on the War on Poverty..
  • National Studies: Research has found that economic development programs frequently succeed in attracting businesses, but offered incentives are only a consideration after market and location and do not significantly alleviate poverty or homelessness on their own.

Conclusion

While some public-private funding programs have produced some positive results in certain urban areas, their overall effectiveness in significantly reducing poverty and homelessness or rebuilding of communities is limited and context-specific. Sustainable change usually requires comprehensive approaches that integrate economic development with social services and community engagement.

There are growing concerns about public-private partnerships and the negative impacts of using public tax money to fund private endeavors that primarily benefit select individuals or businesses.

A key report by the Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce regarding Private-Public Partnerships make these main points:

Key Concerns:

Mis-allocation of Public Funds

  • Public resources are sometimes used to support private projects that do not provide widespread benefits, leading to questions about accountability and fairness.

Favoritism in Selection

  • The risk of favoritism occurs, where certain businesses or individuals receive preferential treatment over others, creating inequities in economic opportunities.

Limited Community Benefits

  • Many times, the promised benefits, such as job creation and economic growth, may not materialize for the broader community, exacerbating disparities.

Erosion of Trust

  • Such practices can erode public trust in governmental institutions, as citizens become disillusioned with how their tax dollars are used.

Call for Accountability

  • The Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce continuously emphasize the need for transparency and rigorous evaluation of the actual impacts of these partnerships to ensure that public funds are used effectively for community benefit.

For the complete analysis, you can visit this link to read more about these critical perspectives on public-private partnerships. If you need further insights or a discussion on these issues, the Paris Texas Chamber has other website postings on economics and government, as well as local politics.

return to The Paris Texas Chamber

 

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  City of Paris and it’s local partners

 Local Government 

 

 

The City of Paris needs a HomeOwners Association

IF Paris, which once was “The North Star of Texas” really wants – as it claims – to ‘clean up Paris’, it should form a Homeowners Association (HOA), which can take rule enforcement to the next level.

A HOA is needed, as the city will not enforce ordinances concerning litter, grass and weeds, boats and RVs, inoperable vehicles, fences, and yards full of unsightly (strange and ugly) junk. The mystery being that if the city will not enforce ordinances, why have them?

If we’re not using the ones we have, why not turn them over to a HOA for enforcement?

Uh … forget about the “strange and ugly” bit – otherwise, the population may be greatly reduced. And one or two of our Paris Chamber’s Directors would be among the first to be forced to vacate not just Paris, but the NE Texas vicinity.

So let that sleeping dog lie . . . But there should be ordinances enforced about bathing; at least, once a month.

Flowerbeds won’t regulate themselves, and we don’t want to get started on those trash cans left out overnight.

IF the city is going to do as it has promised over recent decades, it needs to start a HOA – one that can use military precision, when and if necessary. After these years of unenforced ordinances, Paris needs to aim for a disciplined, picture-perfect community.

Instead of giving taxpayer’s money away, the PEDC ought to fund the HOA effort.

By a big majority, this chamber’s directors voted to recommend asking that HOA employees don fatigues, a utility belt with handcuffs, a bug zapper, a firearm, a ballistic vest, breath mints, bean-o, and an approach to every violation with a “take no prisoners” attitude. (See below poster of enforcer-type and equipment.) To assure a resounding success, this is likely the only road over the next three years.

IF HomeOwners are trembling at just the thought, good – so be it.

In transparency, one of older Directors, voting against the HOA, said he, “can see a time that if I just forgot to mow for a couple of days, I’d be doing push-ups in my front yard, and I cannot do push-ups anymore.”

We assured him that while residents might scramble to comply, praying their grass grows no higher than the regulation three inches, they would be building new muscles saluting their new governmental unit.

Some folks are now saying that instead of having more government, they would rather do the cleanup work themselves.

They’ve paid taxes for 25 to 50-years or longer to allow city councils and management to litter it up.

You really have to appreciate the rate of return when investing in government.

This is, of course, a continuing development of a story that is a half-century in the making.

                                                    Return to the Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce 

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Incentivizing

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A Free Press

The only excuse for the existence of government is the defense of individual rights.

(And before the howls of government lapdogs begin, it is clear that the defense of such rights include protecting and defending individual rights against the cronies and criminals inside and outside our state and national borders.)

The only legal or justifiable reason for government, is the defense of individual rights.

 

The intent of any government should be to serve and protect individuals from those who would do harm to others. The only power that government has is that which it takes from or that is given to it by individuals. It can perform a fair job of protecting everyone, but it cannot guarantee happiness to any one, and should always be prohibited from promising happiness or a special anything to a favored few.

There is nothing that government can do for you that it does not take from you. So, eventually, if its power is unchecked, it will become your turn in the barrel.

When we surrender our rights to government we become a ward of the state. As such, we cheapen the human right to be identified as an individual.

As wards of the state, we become a group of victims needing the guidance of a tool we’ve invented – A construct, based on hopes, wishes, and yearnings, that somehow becomes our superior in intelligence and natural rights and does so with greater values and principles?

The very idea that this invented and constructed thing – a thing without intelligence or an empathy for emotional considerations or a moral standard for reasonable behavior – will voluntarily and freely act in in the best interest of mankind is an unbelievable argument, a stinking mess of illogic from sick minds.

Once given birth, government grows to benefit government. To achieve this end, it divides us into groups of victims which, it claims, must be protected from other groups (that it identifies as more privileged).  But . . .

. . . . privileged is created by special allowances in laws for special reasons to exclusively create advantages or questionable rights for a certain class of people, professions, corporations, etc., that are not allowed for the average individual – as shown in tax laws,  regulations, restrictions, and permissions.

Government over-rides (corrupts) individual rights by inventing “rights”, which it gives to private and public limited liability partnerships, trusts, foundations, corporations, monopolies, and conglomerates. And for “Public Service” in government. All such  entities are non-human; created by humans. They are without empathy or understanding, and unable to comprehend the hidden agenda of either good or evil in the intent of a law that allow them to exist – or of the eventual results.

Yet, in every right or special construct in the paper formation of some law or regulation that benefits a non-human entity, that is not the same as it is for an individual, there is always a way to fleece the individual.

Every government program has a way to fleece the public.

 

Today, under State Capitalism, the partnership between Big Business and Big Government, there is no accountability for, and no limiting of, government’s action.

We, as individuals, create the government we have . . . and we are responsibility for it.

It’s why we have a vote.

The very idea that there are limitations on the  federal government’s executive / administrative branch is all but heresy in today’s political and judicial environments. No limitations exist.

The Supreme Court, the judicial branch, has lost respect from years of ignoring and violating 
Constitutional limitations and the role of the states.  And non-principled rhetorical criticism 
by law firms and law school professors ignore centuries of established common law and limitation 
on government to skillfully argue for destructive decrees. Appointed Justices, more politician 
than supporters of Constitutional mandates and constructs, have supported, and are supporting 
democratic socialism.  And there are no limitations.

And no limitations exist on Congress, the legislative branch. None.

Our founders, who had first-hand experience and hard-earned knowledge knew, as did Ronald Reagan, that “government is not your friend.”

When created, government becomes an entity with a primary objective to survive – to grow, and it feeds on the lies that another project or program need a solution that only a “benevolent government” can provide.

Government creates more government.

Knowing the danger in the nature of all its existing forms, the founders limited the actions of their new government to improving “the general welfare.” The Constitution allows Congress to collect taxes to pay for the general welfare of the United States, but not for the people or the individual states.

As James Madison observed, If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their Own hands; they may apoint teachers in every state, county, and parish, and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision for the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress; for every object I have mentioned would admit of the application of money, and might be called, if Congress pleased, provisions for the general welfare.”

The Constitution never granted our government power to act in malevolent ways against the natural rights of the individual.

But today, however, government has obviously seized the raw power to do these things – and more – that Madison feared: Taking, annexing, the bounty from one segment of the population to give the illegal funds and / or benefits to another segment, and further dividing the nation by its hostile attitude to individual freedom.

This is plundering in its most basic form (to steal or remove something precious from something, in a way that does not consider moral laws or is more severe than it needs to be).

What is more dangerous, however, is that plundering had its beginning, and is continually permitted, by emotionally-disturbed or mentally-deranged Supreme Court Justices appointed to office by emotionally-disturbed, mentally-deranged, gutless members of the U. S. Senate, who have the power to advise and consent on any action by the executive branch.

When government declares that a particular segment or group of individuals need help, it is saying that the group or its members are either too emotionally, physically, or intellectually incompetent to act in their own interest, Through its copious flow of ‘crocodile tears’ government uses contradictory and often illegal arguments to sell an excuse that our “society” (or some group) is responsible for the circumstances that it has created. It sets groups against group to enhance a perception created by government that they are seen and treated as a subspecies of humanity, and can only survive through the benevolence of government.

Government uses the negative perception it creates to set groups against groups.

Congress has subverted the very foundations of the nature of limited government as established by nation’s founders, The consequences from its action deserves the condemnation of all Americans. Not to do so is to surrender our birthright.

Congress routinely delegates their powers to the executive and judicial branches, so we now live in a nation where literally everything involves a regulation of the federal government.

Never was such power conveyed to Congress as is now given to or assumed by them. On the contrary, it was always clearly that the old Congress was limited to the enumerated powers, and that was explained in general terms.

The founders realized that an all-powerful government – one without unchecked or limited power – is a refuge for scoundrels and plunders, who view the population as its resource and its servants. In creating a new nation, they tried to create a government with only one excuse: The defense of individual rights and the rights of the respective states (whose citizens were risking their own lives).

Government should never be the playground for plunders and crooks of every stripe.

Every action by government should be restricted to protecting every individual from enemies inside and outside our national borders. It should never interfere in our personal lives. Its sole job is to protect them –

There is no other legal or justifiable reason for government.

When the lovers of government and those in government claim that it is there to do what individuals cannot do, they lie. Its why those who know that government’s power must be limited are described as “deplorable” and “garbage” and “terrorists” by the supporters of government.

There is no word or phase too loathsome for the socialists and other totalitarian lovers of the world to use in the fight for conquest over individuality and / or control and management of resources. Truth is the enemy; facts cannot be considered.

There is nothing that government can do for you – or anyone – that it does not take from you.

We, as individuals, create the government we have . . . And deserve.

It is why we have a vote; to hold government accountable.

Every action by government should be restricted to protecting every individual from enemies inside and outside our national borders.

Government should never be the playground for plunders and crooks of every stripe.

But it is . . .

                                              return to     Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce

A reprint & Special Thanks to The Streetscene Newsletter

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