Tag: Lamar County

 

Ron White declared, “You can’t fix stupid.” 

The comedian had to come up with that line somehow from some thing or some place. 

He’s made a lot of stops along the way. 

The only thing you can know for sure is that if he did stop in Paris, Texas, he wasn’t here long.

And while Paris may not be IQ city, it is, however, a brilliant place compared to, say, California, Illinois, Maryland, New York, Chicago, or Nutland, D. C. 

Or, Austin, Texas  –  even if the Legislature is not in session.

Some say you can also add-in the Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce, where the bulb glows dim most days. (Some of our worst friends and best enemies usually say that that we’re so dim that even on a bright day at high noon we think its midnight and there are no stars at all).

We, of course, know of no reason why some people inside the city limits should be so unkind.

Lamar County citizens –

 – who don’t live inside the Paris city limits, demonstrate that they are smarter than most of the in-city residents. The reason is that they don’t breathe the same air. There is some concern about those who do live close-in, however, as a few of them don’t know how to drive either.

Most folks believe that the community of Paris was built on a small hill, the highest elevation in Lamar County. But its not a hill; its just two or three small swellings of the earth over the top of a few large underground caverns. These are where the stupidity goes when one of our citizens die.

These caves contain a tremendous volume of stupidity.

Over the years, the expanding pressure has forced cracks to form between the caverns and up to the surface ground. These cracks release a constant supply of stupidity into the air inside the city limits, which create problems for residents, as well as for residential and business foundations.

Geologists say the largest cracks seems to be under City Hall and what used to be the Lamar County Chamber of Commerce.

Once you breathe in stupidity it lodges in the mind and cannot escape until the body kicks the final bucket, and then the stupidity stuffs seeps down into these caverns and it’s recycling time again.

Its a cycle that’s been going on for the last 75-or so years.

As fumes escape thru the cracks, by the time a new baby is seven months old it has breathed in enough stupidity to last the rest of its life. It takes an adult newcomer who moves here about three years or so, depending on how smart they were when they first got here. They show signs, that they’ve adapted to citizenship and love Paris, by beginning to litter, letting weeds grow, parking their vehicles in the front yard, and storing their junk along the side of their house and the overflow in the back yard.

After a decade or so, you can’t tell an oldtimer from a newcomer.

Old timers in Paris, who have accepted their fate, bet on how long it takes one of the new ones to show the second sign of increasing stupidity; the first sign being they obviously weren’t too smart or they wouldn’t have moved here.

But not as much money is changing hands on bets as it once did. Over the last two decades, not too many of the newcomers chose Paris. Instead, they settled in Lamar County to getaway from the stale smell of high humidity stupidity.

Amounts that city residents don’t inhale escape; drift off, and eventually create active members of the new Socialist-Democrat Party. That’s why it is growing so fast.

All this proves that not only White was right (you can’t fix stupidity), but it also proves you cannot contain it, either.

return to The Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce

 

Links:  On Organizational Innovation    –     Local Government    –    Amenities vs Essentials 

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

(with an apology to Woody Herman)

Most all personal “interpretations” are subjective, not objective.

The Goosey-Gander directive is ignored by most marketing people and politicians. They make decisions based on the false belief that they know what people want and / or will do. But they do not abide by “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.” Their personal interpretations are subjective, not objective.

The Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce believes that individuals determine what they like, want or will do. It’s why they drive marketing people and politicians crazy, which, in most cases, is no big deal; it being a very short drive.

Like other laws, city codes and ordinances are needed, but only if they can be carried out on a fair, equal, and objective basis.  But when open to “personal interpretation” they will never be fair or equal or objective.

And there’s very little that is fair or equal about what Paris does, nor how it does it. 

We zone areas, and then permit exemptions – for a good supporter or one who has a little influence. (Its only politics, you know . . .)

We create ordinances for the beautification and improvement of Paris, but don’t enforce them – or only “selectively” enforce them (favorite weeds can last for years undisturbed and some of the numerous substandard buildings (some owned by slum-landlords) can feed termites for decades).

The city restricts what you can do with or to your property but not what the city can do with or to theirs (try making the right turn off Bonham Street onto 7th Street SW, or compare city street paving standards verses those for private developers).

The Historical District requires “restoration” of buildings … mere “improvements” are not allowed. Then say that “restoration” can include central heat and air, concrete driveways, double-and-tripled glazed windows, electric opening garage-doors, various kinds of weather-proofing, insulation, musical doorbells, burglar alarms, and a hosts of other digital things and improvements that did not exist when most of those buildings in the district were constructed,

And the list goes on . . . 

Only 43,000 air conditioning systems were in national use in 1947.

The first residential unit was installed in 1914 and needed a room of its own: it was seven feet high, six feet wide and 20 feet long. One of these early units carried a price tag of $10,000 to $50,000, which translates to $120,000 to $600,000 at today’s rate of exchange.

Too many times, we’re killing improvement.

Trying to meet “restoration” requirements, instead of improvement, the Lamar County Courthouse’s recurring windows and/or roof leaks costs taxpayers a truck load of bushel baskets full of money.

The City of Paris spent nearly an estimated $500,000 on trying to restore the Grand Theater a decade ago, according to reports (or the money reported ear-marked for that purpose was diverted to some other use). Now, it seems some folks have lost their ever-loving minds and want to spend an additional $4-million or so on “restoring” it – while ignoring the fact that when the Grand was originally constructed it didn’t have air conditioning . . .

Logic seems to be missing: Restoring it to what point in time? The 1930s? 1940S? Or to original status? Air conditioning didn’t get into wide use until after WWII.

    Four million dollars would go a long way to clean-up, fix-up, and paint-up Paris.

We create Reinvestment Zones for areas that do not come close to being eligible; give cash and tax abatement as incentives. Some to those who do not quality for incentives; cash to subsidize those who need subsidizing the least; and we make up the rules as we go along. And if a rule or regulation is in our way, we ignore it or change it.

And, no: The Paris Chamber doesn’t want to hear excuses about “tough situations” or excuses about “difficult choices” or excuses about “walking a tightrope” and excuses about “exceptions” to a code or ordinance.

We want to hear what is good for the goose is good for the gander.

Anything else is wrong.