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 

                                                                                                  

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

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