NEW OR RECENT POST

For over three years, The Paris News (and it’s parent company) repeatedly asked subscribers to urge their elected U. S. officials to vote “yes” to subsidize newspapers.

You’ve read that correctly.

Two (2) bills that later died in Congress called for government funding of newspapers:  The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, was buried in the 2,135-page tax-and-spending bill (in Section 138516).  It gave a refundable tax credit based on a newspaper’s total wages; thereby, subsidizing the ownership’s profit.

The credit could have been used for tax reduction of $25,000 for up to 1,500 employees the first year; decreasing to $15,000 per employee after the first year. All in all, allowing $1.67 billion in tax credit over ten years.

The Paris News claimed it would help small local newspapers survive.

Gannett, one of the nation’s largest newspaper chains (employing over 4,000 journalists at USA Today, and such local papers as The Arizona Republic and Detroit Free Press), would gain as much as $127.5 million over five years, called the effort “a good shot in the arm.”

The chain never specified how the money would be used, but it’s very likely that this “small” newspaper would find a way, as would other major news outlets.

In 2016, Forbes Magazine reported that 15 Billionaires owned most of the nation’s news media companies.

When a leftist haven, such as Harvard, warns that American media is no longer a traditional national information highway, self-regulated to prevent government intervention over the news and to ensure a free press, we can no longer claim ignorance of what has and is going on: We have to include stupidity.

The Supreme Court ruled in the 1930’s that whatever government subsidizes it can control (by regulation). Today, our government is subsidizing – controlling – everything.

The real enclaves of socialist thought are in our schools, colleges, legislative halls, courts, and the national news media.

They’ve done a wonderful job of selling citizens on the glories of human misery and enslavement. Around 42% of us are willing to try it (or are too ignorant to know or too stupid to understand what’s going on); and the socialism – a push for party dictatorship or whatever it is – has divided our nation.

We have been seduced, piously begged to meet in the middle, to compromise on issues – to completely forget principles – and “come together for the common good.”

By setting aside principles of proven value, in order to accept issues of dubious value, what have we accepted? When good is mixed with evil, what remains – after all the good is gone? 

We’ve met in the middle too many years too many times on too many issues; otherwise, how could we be over $30 Trillion in debt?

As with the “national” media, the Paris News folks have, like parrots, mindlessly regurgitated every socialist issue they’ve been sent by the Associated Press, USA Today, Reuters, and the left-wing Texas Tribune; then, they’ve shown their own confusion on the “Voices” editorial page. They’ve – it – has echoed the babbling calls of the emotionally disturbed and mentally deranged – about “extremists, domestic terrorists, white racists, Uncle Toms, and other deplorables” – in general, those who believe in Constitutional government – while complaining about a loss of readership.

In recent national elections, Paris and Lamar County voted for candidates who promised to vote for limiting government’s reach by an almost 2 to 1 margin.

Yet, the Paris News, like the nation’s media, wants to blame those who value a respect for the principles of the Ten Commandments and the Bill of Rights – the first Ten Amendments to the Constitution – as the reason for its demise.

And feels entitled to demand those whom it belittles and insults to give it money?

It seems they are unable to make a logical connection, but want to change the nation’s Constitution. They never, however, have a replacement for it.

Does the Paris News know that government “Diversity Officers” – controllers of the spoken and written word – are now placed in federal agencies and in the military?

Does the Paris News know that “Diversity Offices” are already in corporations not part of the Big Business-Big Government socialists cronyism, to make sure they do not run afoul of speech and thought requirements of the federal government?

Sound familiar? It should. Russian KGB Officers with the same responsibilities were in every USSR military, government, industrial and business entity.

Today’s wake-up call is the media’s socialist bias: It’s very close to being our homegrown equivalent of Pravda or China’s Xinhua News Agency.

Yet, while claiming to serve the community, it repeatedly condemns a majority of the community voters.

The Paris Texas Chamber received an email from a Razorback fan, in which he was giving kudos to the Gold Hogvillain of Rodgers, Arkansas for the following, which should be a required preface on every piece of local, state, or national “pending” legislation:

No cause, ever, in the history of all mankind, has produced more cold-blooded tyrants, more slaughtered innocents, and more orphans than socialism with power. It surpassed, exponentially, all other systems of production in turning out the dead. The bodies are all around us. And here is the problem: No one talks about them. No one honors them. No one does penance for them. No one has committed suicide for having been an apologist for those who did this to them. No one pays for them. No one is hunted down to account for them. It is exactly what Solzhenitsyn foresaw in The Gulag Archipelago: “No, no one would have to answer. No one would be looked into.”

  Until that happens, there is no “after socialism.“  

 

At its core, identity is ideology . . . 

Too often, local governments – those we elect – end up listening to and carrying out the recommendations of staff bureaucrats, which raises some interesting observations:

For decades we’ve been “educated” to believe that local elections are not partisan, so no party affiliations are disclosed, as party labels might sway voters.

So the potential for local government officials to sway elections in their party’s favor seems obvious.

Special interest groups that put government interests ahead of taxpayers have long held sway over local elections. They want them to be officially declared nonpartisan – because party labels will sway voters.

Any faux outrage over partisanship entering local elections is hilariously hypocritical.

Some of the indignation comes from those who routinely accuse others of being partisan because of their policy beliefs. But they insist that their positions are not partisan.

Partisanship may most often be associated with party identity but, at its very core, it’s ideology

We all have an ideology – a collection of beliefs and ideas – but some people criticize someone with whom they disagree as an “ideologue ’… just as they apply a negative connotation to ‘partisan’ while extolling their own partisan ideology by claiming that they ‘just follow the science/experts.’

But cooperation between elected officials belonging to different parties is more likely to assure more transparency and better government.

The absence of party labels confuses voters; a voter who must choose from among a group of candidates whom he or she knows nothing about will have no meaningful basis in casting a ballot.

 

Today, local government is political.

Affable, cheerful, sincere, political-partisans that we elect are given the authority and responsibility to spend our dollars wisely, to make decisions that benefit each citizen equally, and to assure that our schools are teaching the values of limited government and equal economic opportunity in a society that requires personal accountability.

Unfortunately, those we elected have failed us for decades.

They’ve listen to and allowed the “good government” professionals – the city managers, school administrators and the political opportunistic – those who benefit personally and professionally – to lead the process of setting the policies and making key decisions they want . . .

The reason we elect so many of the partisans is because they’re nice people; they mean well. Some just fail to understand, however, that the first part of their job is to ride herd on those whom we pay to carry out the policies to meet goals that benefit all of the community.

Too many of these seats are conceded to those who are part of the crowd who believe government is good and there should be more of it. It’s why Texas has the second-highest local debt nationally, and the 4th highest property tax rates in the nation.

Governmental staffs and the professional educationalists want these problems ignored.

When its for “the children” and “community” or “economic” development, there is no end that these partisans see to the use of taxpayer’s money.

When most of us think of government, we think of civil government with its various laws and controls.

But in the most basic of terms, there are essentially two kinds of government – internal and external. Internal government or self-government is the most important and always shapes the nature of external government.

Self-government comes from the heart and the conscience, one’s character, motives, affections, and convictions of life. Self-government affects everything in a person’s life – the way one relates to his fellowman – his speech – his aspirations – his conduct – his hopes – his future.

 

Every sphere of civil local government is a reflection of this internal sphere.

Shouldn’t we ask ourselves why government keeps expanding?

In fact, the more self-government the people possess, the less external forms of government are actually needed.

No government can be good – or just – unless its citizenry and rulers have learned to govern themselves.

Paris Texas seems to fear what kind of town it needs to be . . .

 

return to the Paris Texas Chamber

TRASH PICK-UP . . .

 

Back in July, 2022, the Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce warned, “Privatization of trash collection is coming. It will be interesting to read the fine print.”

Evidently, we said, privatized trash pickup is more efficient and less costly. (And added, “than by government? Gasp!”) 

Sure enough, in February 2024, trash pickup by a private firm begins, and the base rate increases to $18.08 a month for residential pickup. This is good until September 2024 – which is a scary thought or a reason to rejoice, depending on whether you’re paying or receiving the money from the new rate.  The way the City of Paris keeps book, this is a $1.49 monthly increase.

CARDS, the private firm will receive $10.29 of the $18.08 fee to pickup and deliver the trash to the landfill.  The rest of the fee goes to the city for “bill administration, liaison between the two, and monitoring the city-owned landfill.”  Included in this rate-game-playing, $1.79 is ear-marked for “city street usage and maintenance.”

As CARDS picks up and delivers the trash for 10.29 per month, isn’t that the trash pickup rate? So, when such city categories as “administration, liaison, monitoring, and city street usage” estimated costs are increased, WHY aren’t such costs included as a rate increase? 

After the addition of two new assistant city managers, since 2022,  surely “administration” charges have increased?

 

The city budget HAS not increased by diffusion.

Back in 2022, when explaining why there was no corresponding reduction in rates when trash pickup frequency was reduced, the city manager offered that the reduction of trash collection is related to the volume of waste collected, not its frequency of collection.  He also claimed that the last rate increase was 12-years ago, and that he would not recommend adjusting rates “at this time”.

The Paris Texas Chamber observed that IF the reduced trash collection was related to the volume produced, Paris was either producing less trash or littering the streets with it – and it was hard to tell which . . .

Our Chamber also said If we were not losing population, it would be as clear as Buttermilk.

The Paris Chamber stated that “It’s difficult to believe there hasn’t been a rate increase on everything over the past 10-years. And there has been – check a few past water and sewer bills.”  And we still stand by that . . .

 Every time an “adjustment” is made on “administrative, liaison or management cost” relating to city services, a rate increase is soon to follow. Money is swept from services – based on an estimated cost the city assigns for those items – and added to the general budget. That process allows the city to keep crying about how sad it is that rates for a service must be increased to cover the increased expenses of the selected service.

Its all a financial game or a way to fleece the rate-payers.   

Worse, what should be a criminal act of deliberate lies, citizens are told that trash pickup rates have “not been adjusted in more then 10-years.” It’s the chattering of weasels.

In 2017-18, the city added an estimated $7.60 monthly to the local sewer rates (around $100 a year MORE than we were paying) to “help pay for a new sewer treatment plant.” Then, in 2020, water and sewer rates were again increased another $$7.65 a month for 5,000 gallons. This we were told, again, was needed to help the sale of bonds to “finance construction of a new wastewater plant.”

And if the income from rate increases isn’t in an established, ear-marked fund for a new plant, as was promised, where did the money go? If the money isn’t there, where is the accountability? For that matter, where is the accountability for the jiggery-pokery with estimated “related? costs and deducting it from a services’ rate income?

 

Priorities lack structure.

Even published legal notices in Paris lack transparency; you seldom know what’s where – addresses are hidden behind legal descriptions of who did the surveys and unknown large block numbers.

Transparency, despite any claims to the contrary, does not exist in Paris, nor in government, local or otherwise. Government is very good at snow jobs, and coming up with schemes whereby it can fleece money from the taxpayers.  Supposedly, its the reason why we elect people to oversee those in government positions: To protect the rest of us, the citizen taxpayers, who provide the money.

But what do you do when they do wrong? Or even when they never ask, “Is it needed; is it worthwhile; and can we afford it?” or even more importantly, “Why would we waste the taxpayer’s money on that…?”

Paris has a history of using tax dollars to pay a few too much and too many too little.

There are not twelve people in Paris who knows to a dollar the total amount of incentives, in cash and kind,  given to a few large firms or insiders over the last two years – or the net value (if any) Paris has received in turn?

It’s doubtful, if even twelve people know the actual costs of trash pick-up in Paris. But looking at voting results in city elections, there are not 599 who care . . .

Occasionally, however, taxpayers are rewarded with a small Dr. Pepper, as those who close the door on full transparency know, man cannot live by the bread of chicanery alone.

                        return to    Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce

 

links:  On Organizational Innovation

         Local Government

       A Free Press . . .