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Paris, Texas is a city in decline, beset by problems of its own making. 

We know this factual statement will bring screams of resentment from those living in an alternative reality.

Unfortunately, we first made it back in October, 2011.  Wasted years. Wasted years . . .

We also recognize that the Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce engenders considerable resentment from some people, just by being.  They seem to blame us for most of the problems in Paris, if not all of them – as if our observations and what we do are the problem, rather than the decisions of those who are actually in charge of community and economic development.

We are strictly a voluntary organization and, as such, don’t even have a vote on local decisions.  But the resentment our work engenders is real.  We don’t really mind the criticism, and we basically ignore the invective that come from limited or unthinking minds.

We like the give-and-take of ideas, and don’t worry about “image”, as we’d rather be hated for what we are than loved for what we’re not…  (And, yes, we realize this allows those others to shape our image.) But we know who we are . . .

So please…  Understand we only state the facts as we find them; drawing conclusions, which we believe are objective, based on situations as they stand at the time. We never say that conditions can’t improve. Or that they won’t improve.

The truth is; we are optimistic. We believe Paris, generally, is heading in a wrong direction.  But we also believe that…sooner or later…if given data and information…the community will make the right choices that will put Paris back on sound footing. Sooner or later, the more intelligent members of the community will eventually tire of the recent history of incompetence, finger-pointing, happy talk, and wrong decisions and look at things as they are – and do what must be done.

Please pay careful attention to the data we cite. And please send us any corrections to the facts. As we have repeatedly stated, we will happily publish any correction that can be substantiated. But please don’t send us accusations about “misstatements” or against our character, threats, or baseless claims about our lack of concern. If we didn’t appreciate the possibilities of Paris, none of the incompetence and wrong decisions would bother us.

We know that what we do involves politically charged and emotional issues.

Our conclusions are not easy for some citizens to accept. The fact that Paris is in a decline, as the 2.8% population loss in the 2010 Census (and 1.77% in 2020) show, is a very painful story that some present day movers and shakers do not want to hear.  And refusing to face facts, they react negatively to us.

And their limited-thinking sycophants follow suit.

The Paris Chamber has never said that the local organizations do not have Paris’ best interest at heart. We believe they do. But we also believe, when it comes to community and economic development, they don’t know what to do and, therefore, do too many things wrongly.

For, as the facts show, Paris is in a decline, beset by problems of its own making.  The Paris Chamber of Commerce simply challenges folks to re-examine what Paris is doing, and what they believe Paris should be doing.

Sometimes, thinking is a painful process.

We speak out because we believe someone must. And we have pooled our resources to do it. We are independent.  We do not ask for, nor want, tax dollars.  We prefer to be free from the pressure of answering to someone else paying our bills.  We will keep our list of memberships and supporters private, as much as allowed by law:  Our members and supporters have the right to privacy, free from short-sighted invective and economic threats.   

We do what we do because our political leaders, our business leaders, and our cultural leaders have made a long series of catastrophic choices that, as examples, include:

 (1) From those whom we employ to manage our organizations to those we elect or appoint to manage the managers (and don’t);

(2) In dividing Paris – for whatever reason – into two separate parts;

(3) Failure to establish a community-wide, recognizable structure of authority and responsibility for all governmental units, and known accountability that can – and must – be applied to each unit;

(4) Playing favorites among local non-profit voluntary organizations and rewarding the favored quislings that toe-the-line with tax dollars;

(5) Failure to develop worthwhile, affordable community and economic development programs (which develop needed, worthwhile and affordable projects);

(6) Thinking we can buy a “plan, study, consultant” that will tell us how to solve the problems we created.

For decades, Paris papered over these problems with a number of industrial payrolls that covered the holes in the fabric of our community, which can no longer be hidden…

We’ve reached the point where we will have to fix what lies at the heart of Paris’ decline… or be satisfied with stagnation and a vastly lower community standard in the future.  And possibly, a continuing loss of population.

The decision to fix what is wrong is not ours to make.

As we enter 2012, that decision can only be made by the citizens of Paris. 

Wasted years, wasted years . . .

The Nation’s Largest Employer has over 22-Million employees –

Elected and appointed local, district, regional, state and national office-holders, can, IF all 22-million wish, express concepts and ideas and take actions that support and approve and help create laws on issues and things that they hate or love.

The following is the result of word games. For instance, civil servants are not the same as government employees, an example being that military employees are not considered as government employees, which distorts – (no, lies about) – federal employment.

(grey)  Local government employees
(yellow)  State government employees
(Blue)  Federal government employees
(The blip up in hiring at the Federal level every 10 years is for the United States census)

But do these officials have the right – moral or legal – to do or say things that do NOT reflect the same promises and commitments they expressed to the voters who elected them and pay for the positions they occupy?

IF they do or are doing so, shouldn’t voters be able to remove them from office? They lied to get the position they hold; thereby, violating their Oath of Office.

A baseline fact is that they were not employed to act as social directors, guiding the community citizens thru the throes of progressive socialism, which they see as progress thru the fog of an unique version of history or just an inability to see cause and effect.

Voters have allowed every level of government to create too many platforms to serve government’s cause . . . 

Today, according to the U. S. Department of Labor, manufacturing employment is down to about 16-million workers. This is a loss of over 2-million jobs in this category since 2000, while government jobs increased over 6-million in the same time period – making it the nation’s largest employer. 

But in addition to the city, state and national government employees there are millions of other elected and appointed office holders  Seldom ever considered, examples are such as those employed in special taxing districts (the Visitor’s group and the PEDC, Lamar County Water District, etc., and a multitude of other tax districts); plus, staffs of numerous government-funded research centers, foundations, think tanks, and various other organizations; plus millions of school and college administrators, teachers and instructors.

Its likely that most employees in the list do not view themselves as office holders but, basically (as with any government office or office holder), they occupy offices that work to inform, educate, direct, promote, publicize, and affect and / or effect public issues, events, and/or a public cause or purpose.

Examining recent decades of voting records, it seems most Paris and Lamar County citizens will vote for or appoint any idiot who claims to love America and wave the flag while promising a “free” government handout or to “make our children safe.” But the same voters will remove their hats (if wearing one) and place a hand over their heart when that flag comes by and, when the national anthem is sung, they’ll join in (at least, on the words they can remember).

Whether the voters are yellow-dog Democrats with standards that haven’t made the change to those of their new “woke” party or an old time Republican who still treasures his or her “I Like Ike” button, they’re not stupid. They just have a real low threshold for electing or appointing self-promoters who cannot or will not walk their talk.

Or, maybe, we only hear what we want to hear and read what we want to read and see what we want to see.

That, however, only proves that we’re semi-members of the human race, which also seems to be a worldwide tendency, except in those totalitarian countries where there is no choice on what to see or read or hear.

Neither Paris, nor Lamar County, is an enclave of socialist thought, regardless of certain characteristics we sometimes demonstrate or read in the paper.

That’s where the fun and the cussing starts. 

But there’s nothing funny about the growing socialist mess Paris and the nation are in––

 

                     return to  Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce

 

 

This is one of the Big Myths: That each of us be deeply and forever in debt to the state or the sponsoring organization carrying out the process. They dogmatically believe that each of us owes these secular creators everlasting thanks and offerings – and they scold everyone who refuses to accept such an open-ended claim.

Nearly all schemes for uplifting society fail because the originators make the error of thinking that society is a manufactured thing, which can be altered by changing the process of how things are done. Most people see social order, economic growth, education and prosperity as being unobtainable unless engineered into existence – usually, by the government or the organization sponsoring a scheme for progress. This is one of the Big Myths.

 These believers demand that each of us be deeply and forever in debt to the state or the sponsoring organization carrying out the process. They dogmatically believe that each of us owes these secular creators everlasting thanks and offerings – and they scold everyone who refuses to accept such an open-ended claim. 

This is the Big Myth: To complain about paying taxes – and, worse, to actively oppose or reject the manufactured process – is selfishly resisting to give what is owed by each of us puny beneficiaries for the state’s or secular creator’s beneficence, magnificence, and grace. 

Another Big Myth is that government carries out the will of the people as long as its top officials are chosen by majority rule. This niave faith in majoritarian democracy is a mistake because there is, in fact, no “will of the people.” 

If, as individuals, we each have a sentient mind with our own hopes, fears, dreams and preferences, how do we become “the people” – as politicians like to refer to us? 

“The people” is not a sentient creature with a mind and hopes, fears, dreams and preferences. Naturally, individuals can come together to make a group, but this does not transform the group of people into a giant individual equivalent to each of the flesh-and-blood men, women, and children who make up or comprise the group. It doesn’t mean that two or more individuals cannot agree upon an objective and goals to pursue together. 

For centuries, individuals have pooled their resources to create communities, build roads and highways, and organized ways to defend ourselves (or even to attack others). But all this is a form of democratic decision-making, a “best means” way for registering the preferences of each individual in a way that results in an acceptable collective decision. 

But this reality does not mean that the results of the democratic decision-making process reveal that “the people” have a will that is in any way similar to the will that is possessed and exercised by each individual. All that even the best collective decision-making process does is to discover a compromise outcome that is acceptable to each member of the group. 

Supposing that the results of majority rule express the will of this collective creature – creates the false and dangerous impression that if any individual objects to a majority-rule outcome, this individual is attempting to elevate his paltry self over a will not only as real as his own but also greater because it is that of many individuals. But, again, “the People” is not a being with a mind or a will. It follows that no method of collective decision-making, not even the most ideal form of democracy, reveals the People’s will.

That which is unreal cannot be revealed. 

And the most pernicious of all Big Myths is that the economy and society – or, at least, any economy that is productive, and any society that is good – are the conscious creation of the state or the collective control that leads to enslavement and human misery. 

Society is not a manufactured process 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. And for too long, the reality is that Paris has treated citizens as its resource.

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

                   return to Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce