Category: Government and Free Choice

It’s your choice

Our government

Figures don’t lie …  so, according to our government, everything is just hunky-dory; the borders are safe, and there’s no inflation at all – it’s just that prices are rising, which show positive and great economic percentages in growth – and it has all the data to back up the claims. The fly in all this pile of government manure is that while figures don’t lie, liars can figure.

Insanity is believing that inflation is a good thing and that liars can’t figure…

It’s things like those that make people distrust government.

It seems that those employed in or working for more government, including in Paris, seem to believe in the stupidity of voters.

The City of Paris budget has increased over 7-percent during the last two fiscal years, and it has added two new assistant city managers to help give away cash (and other incentive tax dollars), while adding litter, letting the weeds grow, allowing telephone poles to injure and kill citizens, and watching too many neighborhoods continue to succumb to blight and decay . . .

The federal boys and girls report National Retail sales (NAICS 44-45) increased 3.1% from $5,402.3 billion in 2019 to $5,570.4 billion in 2020, according to estimates from the U. S. Census Bureau’s 2020 Annual Retail Trade Survey <https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/arts.html> (ARTS).

Electronic Shopping and Mail-Order Houses (NAICS 4541) <https://www.census.gov/naics/?input=4541&year=2012&details=454111>)// had $888.5 billion in sales in 2020, up 35.2% from 2019. This was the largest year-to-year increase of any industry in 2020.

Other highlights:
* Motor Vehicle and Parts Dealers’ (NAICS 441) <https://www.census.gov/naics/?input=441&year=2012&details=441>) sales decreased 2.4% from $1,237.7 billion in 2019 to  $1,208.3 billion in 2020.

* Grocery Store sales (NAICS 4451) <https://www.census.gov/naics/?input=4451&year=2012&details=4451>) increased 9.4% from $694.3 billion in 2019 to $759.7 billion in 2020.

* Gasoline Station (NAICS 447) <https://www.census.gov/naics/?input=447 &year=2012&details=447>) sales decreased sales decreased 16.6% from $513.5 billion in 2019 to $428.1 billion in 2020.

The Census Bureau has been conducting the ARTS since 1952. This survey included 16,500 employer businesses that sell directly to consumers classified in the retail trade sector in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. It does not include data for businesses in U. S. Territories. Firms without paid employees (non-employers) are included based on administrative data provided by other federal agencies and through “imputation.”

The data are published on a North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) <https://www.census.gov/naics/> basis. They are used to benchmark monthly retail sale and inventory estimates each spring used by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and other federal agencies to develop related products.

 

According to this data, national retail sales increased by 3.1%, grocery prices by 9.4%, and a decrease in auto sales (2.4%) and gas prices (16.6%).

While the report doesn’t touch it, isn’t it likely that inflation created most of the increases, not value. And consumers made market choices on just what they could afford, and that much of the online and catalog sales came from the politically-inspired Covid19 shutdown? 

As sayth the national Democrat Party and the RINO’s in it, “there is no inflation.” The Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce is just wondering, (a) what caused the prices to increase? And (b) how much neighborhood improvement could be accomplished annually by half of what the City of Paris is now paying its administrative staff? 

                                          return to the Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce

     Links:  

               Slidin’ up to it or slidin’ away from it . . .           

               The Community’s Condition

                                                                                                  

blackmail and bribery

Government habitually works on a basis of personal relationships and a system of reciprocal favors. Basically, blackmail and bribery support an orderly process, widely known “as a good thing” of compromises and consensus, “a reasonable agreement on which both sides can agree . . .” Then, they add exemptions.

Even city councils pass ordinances with no exemptions, then allow local governmental units to excel at the granting of exemptions.

Any policy, regulation or law riddled with exemptions is designed to be ignored or broken.

Its underlying purposes are (1) to reward friends or those who are in a position to do favors, and (b) to demonstrate their power to control and/or deny opportunities for those they see as incapable of doing them harm.

Exemptions are arranged in secret meetings with insiders; developers, industries and other large or inside endeavors. Each meeting is generally conducted in an alternation of blackmail and bribery. Taxpayers are stuck with the bill for each exchange . . .

Earlier this year, the Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce vented about how the weeds and wild grasses of 2021 and 2022 were still standing all over Paris, and the new crops of 2023 were doing well, despite ordinances that existed against such things, even how high they could grow . . .

We’re not happy to report that three years of crops are still standing in several places. Or, that as the crops were growing, our local city government grew an assistant city manager and a deputy city manager to help the city manager to grow more government at a compounded 3.5-percent annual clip; which in ten years adds an estimated 40-percent increase to the taxpayer’s cost for bad government.

Ask yourself: What did Paris need most, weeds cut or a larger city administration?

Now it is what it is, and excuses and misinformation and blaming “the other guy” doesn’t change the changeable process. But government, of all kinds, must have exemptions from its own rules, polices, and public utterances or the exchange of blackmail and bribery won’t work.

 

Government is fertilized by thinking that government is good.

Government claims its purpose is to make our lives better.

Government’s purpose is to grow.

Or there wouldn’t be exemptions.

The very last thing every government wants is a way for the ordinary citizens to improve their lives economically – Oh, right!

We do or once did have the Constitutional guarantee of equal economic opportunity; whereby, each of us had an opportunity to improve our lives economically. But as voters, we allowed those we elected to ignore the Constitution by telling us that only government can make our lives better.

Its the Big Lie.

So, Blackmail and bribery

The only way you can rise above poverty is by acquiring property (assets). But our national banking policy is “cash-flow loans only” – and has been since the early 1980s, when our government outlawed asset-based lending.

When the acquisition of private property (ownership of assets) is no longer available, you’re limited on how you can economically improve your life.

Crooks in big financial institutions and the national swamp, using lobbyists, paid for the exchange from a Private Enterprise System to State Capitalism, the partnership between Big Business and Big Government. One minor reason for outlawing asset-based lending was to provide a way to launder the $150-billion a day cash-flow of illegal drug money, which the government now uses as an excuse to keep tabs on individuals doing $600-and-up transactions in a bank. It also provides those in Nutland, D. C., who keep tabs of such things, a secret list of millions and millions of people, all categorized by income, location, and occupation.

We’ve allowed the con-artists, snake oil salesmen, magic bean promoters, shysters, liars and advocates of Big Government to remove equal economic opportunity from our Constitution, which also effectively removed equal treatment under the law.

Of course, that same bunch of no-goodniks removed many of the Constitution’s constructs and mandates, including the three independent branches of government; one-man, one vote: limiting central government power; each state a separate nation; borders must be protected; privacy in our homes and papers; crimes punished; etc.

They claim our Constitution (a system of lawful principles to live by), is just parchment; a piece of paper where words were written down as an experiment . . .

 

Today, self-responsibility and accountability are just words –

Like the Second Amendment, principles are basically gone: Today, IF you try to defend yourself against a gang of armed thugs, you are the domestic terrorist.

We’re told:

  • to close down businesses and to wear a mask
  • you, as a parent, have no right to determine how or what you want your children taught in school
  • “equal outcomes” are more important than Equal Justice
  • support of Constitutional constructs cannot be posted on social media
  • illegals are legal
  • you MUST choose movies, music, and books and your friends based on equity, inclusion, and diversity
  • be ‘nice’ to individuals you wouldn’t go with to a dogfight or allow in your home

As they campaign for more government, totalitarians are dividing the nation, as seen in a corrupt U. S. Department of Justice carrying out blackmail and bribery, while claiming additional exemptions from principles and values.

That we’re also told to allow, just as we’re being told a lot of other things that rate high in stupidity and falsehoods.

                                                                                        return to      Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce

 

              Affordable Housing                             and                               Fish or Cut Bait                                   or                                   The Community’s Condition

1. At its core, every government program sold as a public purpose has a way to fleece the public.

For this fiscal year, after 30-years of population loss, the City of Paris (Texas) hit taxpayers with a 3.5% tax increase, the highest allowed by law without a vote. This “small, measly increase” amounted to about a 7-million, 300,000 thousand dollar budget increase, which roughly averages another $700.37 owed by each of the occupied households inside the city limits just to pay for the increase.

Total Housing Units & Occupancy: 11,854 units, 88% Occupied: 10,432.

The increase was on top of rate increases on water and sewer bills, with a percentage of those fees swiped off and added to the annual general budget, which, if transparency was required, would likely put the increase over the 3.5-percent.


2. The promotion of government programs are far better than the products. Listen to government and everything sounds as good as burial insurance:

The most pernicious of all Big Myths is that the economy and society – at least, any economy that is productive, and any society that is good – are of the results of the state or sponsoring entity. But society is not a manufactured process, however, that can be controlled and managed. It is a living entity, comprised of sentient individuals each with his or her own mind and preferences and fears and hopes.

Stupid people actually believe that socialism is greater than the American Constitution’s construct of individual freedom with equal economic opportunity because it is based on ideas greater than their narrow view of what they see only as greed and self-interest.

But history teaches that it is the collective totalitarian control of society by a nation state that leads to the enslavement and human misery of its citizens.

 

3. Good government can only be achieved by its citizens.

Based on the Paris Chamber’s knowledge of economic incentive programs, gained through years of community and economic development work, we believe that every citizen should be held accountable for the actions of their government. Government is their responsibility.

It’s why we have a vote.

It is in the development and implementation of policies that encourage private business investments in local families and neighborhoods, which encourage business growth and keep the economic gates open to equal economic opportunity and innovation to reward all taxpayers, are how communities and, in turn, economies are likely to achieve success.

 

4. The Paris leadership should remember that community growth will come from Paris being a resource for its citizens.

Instead of contributing to or building a prosperous economy for all Paris families and promoting the creation of good jobs over the last 25-30 years, Paris has actually acted to lose population, deepened the expenses of small businesses, created income inequalities for working families, encouraged blight and decay in many neighborhoods, increased the tax burden on every citizen, and it has done so by meaning to do good.

This is not good government.

But whose fault is it?

 
5. It is the job of a responsible citizenry to remember – and demand – that the local leadership remember how government acts under the THE BIG MYTH, which is government viewing the citizen as
  • a) its servant: “do this, and don’t do that….”
  • b) its resource: “I need more money, its for a [my] common good.” And
  • c) “The conscious creation of everything good comes from my blessings and benevolences.”  
 
6. The Texas Legislature meets in a regular session for 140 days every odd numbered year when 181 elected officials delight in making private citizens into common criminals.

Over 8,100 bill were introduced in the 88th Legislative Session; surpassing the 87th Session, which totaled 6,919 bills. Creating laws that control our lives increase every session, creating citizens as criminals and the criminals as isn’t . . .   Soon, we’ll all be in government or criminals.

For the past 40-years, an average  of over 5,000 bills were introduced in each legislative session: You can find more information on the number of bills filed in recent sessions of the Texas Legislature here.

Now, we have over a year of listening to why they need more money and more laws, why the laws we have now need changing (’cause they got it wrong the first time),  and how all the rest of us are so desperately in need of their control because we don’t know – like they do – what’s good for us.

Then during the 89th Legislative Session, in 2025, they’ll listen to the ones who feel they still need more of our money or why we need controlling.

Can you imagine the national corruption in Nutland, D.C., with the 535 elected members of Congress hotly pursued by thousands of lobbyists waving million-dollar bribes to attain some goal outside the best interest of citizens?  If not, you’re probably one of the 83-million plus dead and alive voters who keep us in an outside normal.

 
 A (bonus) basic truth: The PARIS TEXAS CHAMBER brings clarity and transparency to the conversation.

Adding your email address to the Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce mailing list encourages good citizenship. It’s voluntary. It’s free. And you can unsubscribe at any time.

 

return to  Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce