Category: Paris Texas

A CONSPIRACY REQUIRES EVERYTHING BUT A BACKBONE.


A conspiracy allows the participants to slide up sideways to something they know they shouldn’t be doing.

Some things the Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce do know, but we never claim to know everything.  There is a whale of a difference in the two. And one of the things we do know is that a conspiracy may require everything but a backbone.

We also know when infringement on our name is evident (as seen above). 

We realize, as do others, that on  another front,  more then one someone approved the name, design, and decision to deliberately use a Paris Lamar County Chamber of Commerce logo for the Lamar County Chamber of Commerce webpage, stationery, advertising, etc.

We’ve known it since it first started in 2016. It’s amusing, in a pitiful sort of way. But what does it say about the membership of what-used-to-be-the Lamar County Chamber?  

Basically, the Paris Texas Chamber cannot or does not want to believe that the majority of that organization’s members approve such behavior.  IF they do . . . .

Since 1922, the year socialist author Sinclair Lewis’ book, Babbitt became a national best-seller, the “booster clubs”, chambers of commerce, and other such community organizations, have had to fight a bad reputation.

Like most things public, some do deserve a bad reputation; most don’t.

The good ones work to bring their communities together. They are responsible, honest and dependable organizations with their own self-defined objectives for the community they serve. They know their role: They establish goals to try and meet their objective.

They succeed when they are not trying to be both fish and fowl, but just the sizzle on the steak they’re cooking.

Those community and economic organizations, wiggling like an earthworm trying to escape the hook, that claim they are the first rose of spring, the needed rain on summer’s hottest days, the painter of fall colors, the designers of the winning snowflake of winter, trying to be everything, while promising they are the only way to salvation, are the ones with questionable identities. 

            They are the Walter Mitty’s of community organizations.

. . . .  a conspiracy can be identified as a continuation of social traditions that work to the advantage of certain groups and to the disadvantage of certain other groups. If the intent of a conspiracy exists for the purpose of perpetuating the advantage, then there is a conspiracy even if the details are never agreed to aloud by all the participants.

It’s why a conspiracy doesn’t require a backbone.

Name infringement, of course, is a “no-no!” Not only is it unethical, but illegal in some cases. So are Domain Squatters (when people knowingly use your brand name with other extensions).

Throw in the “conspiracy theory” to deny everything, and it is still fairly decisive that a conspiracy has – and is – actually producing political events that those engaged in the conspiracy cannot begin to reasonable claim are false.

                                                          return to Paris-Lamar County Chamber of Commerce  (tsk-tsk-tsk!)

 Links:

Affordable Housing

The Objective

                       LionsHead Specialty Tire and Wheel’s new 120,000 SF facility in the NW Industrial Park

the economic landscape

Its time for the Paris Chamber to express a well-meant “Good Job” to the Paris Economic Development Corporation (PEDC).  Despite challenges that comes with ignoring certain economic facts, thereby, to increase a perception and promotion by an oversell of smart planning, hard work, job growth, and the total dollar investments in Paris, the PEDC actually has seen extraordinary success over the past two or three years.

Almost as extraordinary as the lack of transparency.

The March 2023, Universal Fabricating announcement came with an anticipated 100 new quality jobs.

In April 2023, Houston-based Ametsa Packaging, LLC, announced a sugar liquefication and packaging plant and 100 new quality jobs at the former Sara Lee and J. Skinner facility.

Huhtamaki announced its expansion plans in August 2023 for 80 new jobs, increasing their already impressive workforce of 200. This project promises approximately $75 million in new investment for a reported 400,000 square feet of facility expansions and road and rail enhancements. (Huhtamaki’s announcement demonstrates why supporting the existing employer base is important for a community’s economic health.)

The PEDC claimed that over the next 10 years, these projects would infuse an estimated total economic impact of $1 billion into the local economy. And that the “ripple effect” of these investments will stimulate further economic activity.

“Enhancing our economic landscape”, the PEDC celebrated projects such as the Texas Department of Transportation on their new district headquarters in the PEDC-owned Gene Stallings Business Park, Delco’s grand opening of a state-of-the-art 550,000 SF facility on HWY 82 West, as well as the above LionsHead Specialty Tire and Wheel’s locating (the best-looking industrial building in Paris, [our opinion], closely followed by the Texas Highway Department’s new building, which as a government project is not subject to financial limits.)

All this, of course, is worthy of praise for a job well-done, even if other towns in the Dallas metroplex are seeing much greater job and residential growth. It doesn’t need, however, the exaggeration, nor the fuzzy obfuscation, which ignores obvious facts.

The objective facts:

Since 1993, when voters approved tax-funding the PEDC, General Plastic, Turner Industries, Oliver Rubber, Westinghouse, General Electric, and others are no longer here; those jobs are gone; payrolls missing in action. But all those jobs, and others from the numerous recent business closings, must be deducted from the number of new jobs being reported in order to have a half-way decent understanding of where we are in NET job creation.

Past payrolls are NOT objectively compared to current ones. Payrolls, investments, property taxes and sales tax receipts are subject to inflationary figures, which, in examination, are subjective.

Objectivity demands that if you are taking credit for every new gain, you must take credit for every loss.

But the PEDC is claiming credit for a billion dollar economic impact over the next ten years – not counting job loss, property tax abatement, misplaced priorities, plus an average $3 million PEDC budget cost (and $93 million for the 31-years its been in operation).

Evidently, the PEDC is the only entity in the economic landscape that doesn’t have to consider expenses.

Doing Better

Regardless, the PEDC has justified its existence, even if Paris might have been better served by spending the money on creating local residential improvements.

Or picking up the trash and cutting weeds in all of the economic landscape.

Maybe then, we wouldn’t have to give profitable firms money to come to Paris; they’d come because they wanted to…

Businesses need employees in a town that the management wants to live in.

 

                                                      return to      PARIS TEXAS CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

                  Links:

          Goosey Gander 

          29-Years of Cronyism

          Six Uncomfortable Truths, plus one:

How much benefit-bang for your tax dollars are you actually getting?

Do you – like the Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce – ever wonder just how much is the actual benefit from taxes? For each of the previous eight years, budgets for the City of Paris, Texas, have increased, just as they have in most communities.                               

Ultimately, clear evidence on how much money should be spent, and on what, remains elusive. And how much time can you afford to waste trying to wade through two or three hundred boring pages of government PDF filled with obscure acronyms and confusing charts?

Budgets are complicated—they take many twists and turns—and plenty of info is buried under different boxes and buckets.

The City of Paris budget grew at a compounded 3% annually rate for each of the previous 3-years. Now, it jumps to 4.28%, as Administrative costs for two non-needed assistant city managers and a public information officer, plus support personnel, must be covered. And there is a planned $128 million ($259,201,276 million w/interest) over-priced wastewater treatment plant that will be an excuse to increase the budget for years to come.

But if a city’s budget is growing as its population is decreasing, shouldn’t some benefits from spending need questioning​?

Most Texas’ communities have gained population, but the Paris population dropped from the 2000 high of 25,898 down to 24,476 in 2020, according to the U. S. Census.

This in a period when Texas gained 4.3 million new residents, the largest population increase of all 50-states: 20,851,820 (2000) to 29,145,505 (2024), a 22.8% gain. The state budget in the same time period, however, went from $99 billion (increased teacher’s pay $3,000 annually and promised a $1.7 billion tax cut) to $221 billion – a 223% increase. (The 2024-25 budget increased to $321.3 billion.)

Paris’ population numbers were saved by the 1.3% increase in Lamar County growth – from 49,822 in 2010 to 50,484 in 2020.

Unfortunately, 18.2-percent of in-city Paris families live in poverty today – and the percentage is growing; thanks to government.

Making matters worse, those living in Paris, age 65-and over, have increased from 16.7% in 2010 to 19.2%.

How much actual benefit do they get in taxes?

Politicians – governments – cheat. Legislation is written so that legislative members can say they reduced taxes, while increasing taxes. Texas cities are limited to a 3% annual property tax increase, politicians claim. They lie and they know that they are lying. So, how much actual benefit to they get in taxes?

Their laws allow governmental units to create several budgets: an Original, an Amended and an Actual Budget.

Then, there is the General Fund—the main pot which includes police, public works, etc.—an Enterprise Funds (items that function like a business, such as water and sewer fees, but are part of the local government. Some of these can get confusing because some are owned by government but managed by another party, like trash pick-up and disposal).

There is a Capital fund, where you have to watch out for things like debt, which often hides in all sorts of places. And pay attention to “inter-fund transfers”— where money is moved from one bucket to another.

Generally, Paris brags about the inflation-increases in retail sales or another point added to the Hotel Occupancy Tax, and other items, which are not counted as a “property” tax, but adds to government spending.

Our city government, like most governments, spends too much on amenities, which means we’re not all benefiting from taxes as much as we should . . .

“Experts” in government know that “As citizens often lack experience in the public sector and finance, citizens tend to have difficulty understanding how government works.”

Ronald Reagan knew: “Government is not your friend…”

But people in government know those not in government are stupid. THEY know what’s best for us!

Government is the nation’s largest employer. How do you think those 22-million employees vote? Taxes pay their salaries, as well as retirement, health costs, and other perks. Are their decisions based on your interests or “self-interest”?

Do you really think that the law-makers, who create laws that are not in the best interest of those they were elected to serve, don’t know what they’re doing?

We’re not getting our money’s worth when it comes to taxes; however, when it comes to global socialism, we’re getting what we pay for . . .

 

return to Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce

 

                           Links:

                                   You Don’t Stiff Your Customers

                                  “Figures don’t lie, but liars can figure”

                                   Plans, Snowflakes and Compromise