Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce

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Dissent

Posted 2 years ago by parischamber

  dissent

Some people don’t like those who dissent from their ideas on how some things are done. They especially don’t like dissent by the Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce.

Since January 6, 2024, we’ve had two emails telling us that those in charge of “the way things are done” don’t like us.

We don’t care. We don’t trust people without a sense of humor or who cannot or are unwilling to think.

People who don’t have good ideas always throw rocks at people who do. It makes them feel better.

But there’s no growth or progress without intelligent dissent.

Dissent brings transition, changing that swirl of information within our minds, separating and streamlining and bringing clarity to that jumble of conflicting thoughts and emotions.

Without dissent there would never be a horse race or a football game. (My horse can beat your horse; my team can beat your team, etc.)

Unfortunately, the emotionally-disturbed and mentally-deranged disguise “dissent” and, like spoiled children, angrily use it to get their own way; going on a crying spree or a temper tantrum. But that’s not dissent, it’s destructive behavior, which should never be tolerated by adults.

Those eager or willing to preserve the status quo use dissent as an example of something undesired or harmful.

Ideas, however, should always be welcomed as not all ideas have the same value. Where people have a choice bad ideas eventually die – as shown by quick fads, styles, and no-taste that come and go. A good idea, one of an enduring value, however, will stand the test of time – and the challenge of dissent.

An endless variety of thieves – ranging from purse-snatchers, to those who steal from friends, private homes, businesses, banks, or even the tax from the Widow’s mite ( to give to the rich) – act on a bad idea.

Facing all this dishonesty is the great idea of dissent summed up in four little words: “You shall not steal.”

But we will have government do it for us . . .

And we have a government fighting to preserve a status quo while actively ignoring the idea that “Good fences make good neighbors.” And if you dissent from government policies, you are an extremist or domestic terrorists.

There must be dissent.

Without dissent, how do we know the value of what we’re doing? What are the yardsticks we’re using to measure the benefits of some idea?

Sooner or later, all ideas need challenging.

 

                                                   Return to       Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce

Links:

A Good Example of Bad Government

A Public Information (BS) Officer

Trash Pick-up

 

the city of paris  is adding a Public information (BS) Officer to the staff.

Paris needs a public information officer like a stray dog needs more fleas.

While years of weeds were still standing in some places and a new crop growing all over town, the City of Paris grew an assistant city manager and a deputy city manger to help the city manager to grow more government.

As the Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce previously asked, What did Paris need most, weeds cut or a larger city administration?”

Can anyone explain to local taxpayers why the city’s government is growing when the U. S. Census show that Paris has been losing population since 2000?

In the last two years alone, the city budget grew in excess of seven percent (at 3.5% compounded each year) which, in ten years, will add an estimated 40-percent to the taxpayer’s cost of government.

Over the last 2-years, have city services gotten 7% better? Were 7% of the city streets improved? Older neighborhoods improved 7%? Net jobs increased 7%? Have family net incomes across the board increased by 7%? In-city population increased by 7%?

And now, we’re adding a public information officer to tell us what?

 

Paris has been, and is, told a lot of things. Some are true; most are not. An example being, “No new taxes.” (Tax rates, like appraisals, can go down or up or stay the same. When appraised values go up, and rates stay the same, you still pay more. The increase is a new tax.)

Appraisals are guesstimates on market value, and when the guess is not correct, it’s wrong. A property’s actual value is only determined by its sold price, which has little to do with appraisal guesstimates.

Adding two new assistant city managers have certainly increased the city’s administrative costs over 7% — and we’re now adding a Public Information (or BS) Officer, who will spend 30–percent of their time telling us how things are going good in Paris, 33.5-percent covering up for city managers and assistants and council members, 66.5–percent in liaison (politicking) with friends to get their stories straight, and 90-percent of the time hoping some of us believe (him, her, or whatever alphabet they prefer).

 

The weeds keep standing, litter continues its decorating of streets, cars and other vehicles are parked in front yards, junk is in open view, and Paris increases the city budget to assure an administrative control overload.

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

Government is like tying one end of a 100-foot rope around your neck and the other end to an 18-wheeler leaving a Kerrville, Texas, truck stop on its way to El Paso – 490 miles and 7 hours and 30 minutes away on Interstate 10. The first 200-feet are not so bad.

But when that big rig starts hitting the posted 80MPH speed limit, you begin to lose tract of things.

And government has no speed limits of its own.

But it sets the speed limits we’re demanded to follow.

                                                    return to Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce

Links:

    The Big Myth

       A Good Example of Bad Government

     Trash Pick-up

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.

 

                                                return to   Paris Texas Chamber

 

Links:   Spending Money     

               You Don’t Stiff Your Customers

               Trash Pick-up . . .