Tag: Paris News

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.“  

There is no “free” stuff.

Prior to 1987, government giveaways to private businesses were unconstitutional in Texas. Then, not-to-bright-voters were sold on amending the state Constitution to allow “free stuff” (incentive) programs to serve a public purpose.

Of course, voters, everywhere, have been sold a lot of things . . .

On June l, 1989, the Texas Department of Commerce approved a City of Paris request for an Enterprise Zone. To secure the designation, Paris had to claim the area was a “social and economic liability” and a “menace to health, safety, morals and welfare” – and promise and warrant a list of incentives that would be made available for economic endeavors – not just industry – that would locate within the zone. (Chapter 312.202. Criteria for Reinvestment Zone.)

Thirteen (13) days after the approval, the Paris News reported a Chamber of Commerce of Lamar County spokesman said that no incentives would be made available to businesses; only to industry. This violated oft-repeated and published guarantees the City of Paris made in it’s request for a zone.

We know the City lies, and ignores its own policies and ordinances; think zoning changes, street construction, demolishing buildings without asbestos reports, sidewalk repairs, signs, and the list goes on.

And now, leadership is so desperate for a success story, we’re subsidizing retail outlets.

It is not enough to promise fair play or to write policies into plans that claim to be fair. Those are words. It is the practice, what we actually do, that determines fair play. Transparency. Honesty. Character. Honor.

But Paris believes in corporate welfare: We give tax money, land, and other incentives to selected firms for a promise to create jobs.

The total costs are never considered. Those in leadership making the wonderful claims don’t want to know the net gain. They maximize what the ones footing the bills are getting for their money, which maximize the leaders importance.

Questions concerning their conclusions are not welcome.

The Paris Chamber has deplored this nonsense for years. Only after ‘all costs’ are included can the actual net gain to the community be known. It’s the same claim that every dollar spent in a community changes hands seven times. The COST of generating that dollar is seldom considered.

But until the costs – including every penny for land, utilities, grants, buildings, salaries, retirement, health care, vehicles, travel expenses, fees, meetings, advertising, all like-and-kind contributions, promotions, cost-sharing, etc.– the total amount of money transferred from taxpayer’s pockets for a project are known, the folks making the report are selling a lie.

None of that is “free” stuff.

IF Paris is to be the kind of town that people want to live in, we should implement policies that encourage private business investment by easing and streamlining the bureaucratic processes and work for neighborhood improvement in all areas; things that build a perception of a community that encourage business growth and innovation, and that reward its taxpaying citizens.

THAT is the only worthwhile incentive program.

return to The Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce

The good stuff is free from chemicals, harmful organisms and weed seeds. At least, that’s what we’re told. The good stuff is the plants and produce that are grown without the use of artificial pesticides, herbicides; and organic livestock for our meat, eggs, and dairy are raised on only organic feed – free from hormones, steroids, and antibiotics.

In short, the commonplace definition for anything labeled “organic” in a grocery store is free of man-made chemicals.

Most of the stuff that Paris citizens are told is also organic –

Currently, we’re told to celebrate the fact that the City of Paris is giving “incentives” to four businesses and, especially, the owner of the Towne Center Shopping Center.

The owner gets a 5-year, 50% property tax abatement (worth $167,500-or so). Then, a 50% reduction of the 2.5% local sales tax for 3-years go to the four stores, which is another $300,000 (rough guess).

Then, the city claimed all this would add around $70,000 of new income for the city. But wouldn’t that be losing income, as an anticipated one-half of the sales tax goes to each store? Or even a percentage of replacement income, as these outlets only fill spaces vacated when four stores previously closed?

If we had given those stores the same incentives, would they still be here?

If this new policy works, why not try and be as generous to every business in Paris? Think how much “new income” that would generate–

But how long can you continue to rob Peter to pay Paul? Taxpayers with inquiring minds or no minds at all want to know . . .

Since July 1989, the following has been the policy of the City of Paris:

  • (1) a spokesman for what used to be the Lamar County Chamber of Commerce was quoted in the Paris News as saying that no incentives would be available for retail businesses
  • (2) A Director of the PEDC stated to the head of real estate development department of a large retail outlet chain that no incentives are available for retail.
  • (3) City of Paris officials told the top 3 officers of a $1.5 billion firm that was interested in building a shopping center on the west side of Paris that no local incentives are available (and businesses don’t do well on the west side of Paris).

The city can talk about how it can make money by giving away money, but the Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce knows manure when we we hear it. The same goes for the ridiculous claims that the state’s Chapter 380 Program could add to the city’s tax base and increase revenues.

The only thing for sure is that somebody wins and somebody loses . . .

Under this new policy, local retail businesses are force to subsidize the new retail businesses. It’s a way to finance competition for those forced to pay full taxes. Or, a really stupid way of penalizing them.

Organic fertilizer is also called “organic manure” as it is made from animal waste or animal and plant residues. Examples are livestock and poultry manure, guano, finely pulverized fish, dried and powdered blood, ground bone, crushed shells, phosphate rock, and wood.

In terms of nutrients, a radish or a tomato or an ear of corn or a potato doesn’t know the difference between conventional or organic fertilizers.

So a lot of folks are willing to pay a higher price for manure-based food, which is no big deal: Citizens of Paris are paying to be fed the basic ingredient.