Tag: Paris Texas

 

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 

 

FOUR EXISTING FACTS in Paris, Texas:

One, a planned Internet-delivery service doesn’t need a government franchise

Two, every government door welcomes a monopoly or conglomerates making significant campaign contributions

Three, government takes care of government

Four, the Paris Texas Chamber a few years ago reported that the City of Paris had approximately $600,000 on hand from an Internet-fee, and wanted to spend the money on a public cable-sponsored channel and a public information officer. (Public meaning government.) The Paris Texas Chamber flatly stated that these were two terrible ideas.

We, now, repeat it.

(Note: Basically, the fee [1% of annual receipts] was authorized by the state [as a buy-off of local city control over local franchising] in exchange for the state taking control of all licensing of or permission for [franchising] telecommunication firms to do business in Texas.)

A government idea is like a flea on a dog: Its not turning the dog loose.

The last city manager of Paris, Texas – who left with more then what he had when he applied for the job and the city has less – sold a majority of the city council members some really dumb ideas: Including hiring two assistant city managers (to do what he asked to be hired to do), when Paris was losing in-city population; getting rid of employees by switching trash pickup to a private firm; refusing restoration of three or four key  downtown historical buildings (to show how smart he was); to employing a “Public Information Officer” – who probably is a nice guy who means well. But Paris doesn’t need someone selling more government.

Now, the City of Paris has over $865,200 in the cable-fee account, which can only be spent on equipment. And as it is a government rule, the equipment is communications-related stuff. 

As we repeatedly note, government takes care of government.

So, outside the basic four existing facts, legislators – the state cupcakes and the dangerous socialists getting rich in Nutland, D. C – come up with “public information channels” – which franchised cable providers must make available to local communities when requested.

These are actually PEG (Public, Educational and Government) Channels. They use the ‘fee” (tax money) collected by “forced compliance” from the cable subscribers, to sell local yokels more government. Examples being: pleas for what every department of government sees as needed; a 24-hour bulletin board offering various content about glorious things; professionally produced ‘free videos’ – some of which costs millions of tax-dollars to make – about services, future projects, and wonderful ‘progressive’ individuals; commercials and editorials about the magnificent things local, state and national governmental units are doing; professionally filmed canned debates about how to destroy the constitution or best serve some ‘special’ deserving group; snake oil sermons on how grateful us poor creatures who are not members of government must be to a benevolent government that provides us everything; and lots of science-fiction on the wonderful world of Paris, Texas.

As we recommended years ago, the funds should be used to create a wireless internet network with no-costs access within the city limits. Use the funds for a worthwhile purpose. The state claims that a local community cannot do it, but it can be done – and is being done. A community may not have the state’s permission to charge for access, but that, too, is being done. 

Regardless of any four existing facts, all the gravy doesn’t belong to the big cities or to the 8 cable Internet providers in Texas.

Paris needs to be creating opportunities for all citizens, not promoting more government, which needs limiting.

And it would be a home run for the downtown area.

 

return to     Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce

 

                                                                                                        links:  Private-Public Partnerships

                                                                                                                         The Objective Reality

                                                                                                                                Snake Oil

                                                                                                                              Incentivizing

For over a decade, the Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce recommended a vision vs  a brand.

We’ve known, and repeatedly put in writing, that “Paris needs a vision, a theme, and the protocols to make it a highly desired destination for a large, identified segment of the market.”

What the city, the local edc, the visitor’s and convention group, and what used to be the Lamar County Chamber of Commerce came up with is a brand that gives a new meaning to “Happy Days Are Here Again.”

Thankfully, the Paris Texas Chamber was not invited to the party where the decision to blow $85,000 of the taxpayer’s money on a “brand” bragging about how Texans in Paris reach high.

Based on arrest records, its likely smoking a peculiar weed or guzzling bottled moonshine or bonded and branded alcohol.

We would have asked if they really wanted to make Paris a desired destination for that large, identified segment of the market?

Currently, there’s already too much competition within it – as well as over consumption. In every B-movie, a crook with a gun tells those being robbed, “Reach higher.”

Now, the co-conspirators are wasting more dollars pasting this brand on all kinds of stationery, vehicles, signs, ads, etc., all paid for by mingling – on an equal basis – public and private funds or lying about it.

Sure, without a doubt, this “brand” has some sort of wobbly vision, and a theme that encourages some people to do strange things, like getting arrested for peeing in public.

Of course, it might be a little less objectionable if it didn’t make so many who participate think they can sing.

It’s not, however, the kind of vision or theme we had in mind – as standing out doesn’t always mean standing up.

When you’re lying in the gutter “reach higher” also means to try and climb the curb.

Paris may soon be known as the wrath of grapes or where the dawn comes up like thunder.

If we live up to the brand, Paris will be a place where you can start out fit as a fiddle and end up tight as a drum.

When the Paris Texas Chamber talks about a vision for Paris, it’s a way to build the kind of town where you and others (we) want to live.

The theme is a designed and designated focus on an established central objective. The vision and theme must have the imperative protocols that structure the necessary goals (steps) on how the objective will be achieved.  It must be defined and realistic, with worthwhile means to pay for achieving that objective.

Our community and economic development organization are good at promoting events that publicize and promotes the event (but not Paris: Paris is just a place where the Sphecidae or Crabronidae are having a meeting). But the vision is limited.

A mish-mash of events will not likely build the kind of community you want to live in – a town where others would want to live.

 

return to:    Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce

Link:

      Public-Private Partnerships

     Investing in People‘

     The Objective