By DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI News and Commentary

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, TUESDAY, SEPT. 16, 2014) — THE PLANET presents a new Greedysburg Address:

Floor score and seventy plus twenty thousand dollars ago, our Mayor brought forth to 70 Allen Street a new flooring, conceived in vanity and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created unequal. Now that we are engaged in this great civil war, testing when the city, or any city so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

We are met on a great battlefield of crime and gang war, the downtown. We have come to dedicate the new floors on Allen Street as a final resting place for $90,000 for those who gave their last cent in taxes that the Mayor and His Wife, the Mayoress, might enjoy comfort and luxury. It is altogether unfitting and unproper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate — we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow — this ground. The brave taxpayers who struggled here have consecrated it far beyond our power to add and subtract. The Bianchis will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, just as they will forget what taxpayers did here.

It is for us, the solvent, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which taxpayers have thus far so nobly advanced. It is for us to be here dedicated to that great task remaining before us, that on behalf of  these dishonored and broke taxpayers, we take revenge for that cause for which they gave the last full measure of discretionary income — that we here highly resolve that these taxpayers shall not have forked over in vain — that this nation, underTHE PLANET, shall have a new birth of revolt — and that government against The People, punishing of The People, and bleeding The People, shall perish forever from the TES corner office.

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Nordic Bomb Site:

• THE PLANET is hurt, insulted, and outraged at the Minnesota Vikings. We loved the suspension of Adrian Peterson, but not for the reasons you think. Peterson has a healthy understanding of the phrase “a good ol-fashioned whuppin’” and he could skate all afternoon for delivering a dose to his unruly child. We like the suspension because Peterson could not play against our New England Patriots, helping the B-Men to waltz to the 200th career win of Bill Belichick‘s career. However, we cannot bear the insult to the Norse people by the demeaning, degrading, and insensitive nickname of “Vikings.” How can the NFL tolerate such insulting, politically incorrect behavior that marginalizes a race of people? We’re sure Kirk Douglass, Richard Widmark, and Leif Erikson feel cheapened and devalued. As for Ray Rice, come on guys, say what you’ve been thinking: “Bitch deserved it for pissing him off.” Men are such animals.

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  Recognize this location?

  You may have missed this interesting item, which received scant notice and little discussion, save a brief editorial comment in Jonathan Levine’s Pittsfield Gazette. For its brevity, the small piece made a large point about the [continuing] trend of a “government-financed destruction of downtown.” This destruction comes about as close to a “vision” as you will get from the failed Mayor of Pittsfield (The MOP), his “pleasing call” invariably the herald of a lie. Levine wrote about Pittsfield School Department’s awarding of a $122,000 contract for “dropout prevention services.” They will locate this do-good waste of taxpayer dollars on bustling North Street in ”a street-level retail space.” As Levine correctly points out, converting retail space into another social service agency continues the decline to death for the poor downtown. As mayor, The MOP could have stopped this. He didn’t. Levine closes with a plum: “Landlords generally embrace government money.” Isn’t that right, Gary Scarafoni? Isn’t that right David Carver, owners of 100 North St.

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• PLANET Called It: DFM Newspapers Face Chopping Block

• Correspondent Craig Swinson recently posted this to THE PLANET on Facebook: “Hey Dan….I think The Eagle called you out on saying they are going to be sold… Now it seems they have to run articles about how they might be sold a month after you published it….interesting, they can’t even get a scoop on their own operation.” When THE PLANET reported that The Boring Broadsheet’s parent, Digital First Media, was putting 51 of its newspapers buildings and land up for sale, we went the next step, interviewing a former DFM executive, who told us about the ultimate plan to sell or close the newspapers themselves. With an absentee owner’s disregard, Digital First will not hesitate to let go of as many newspapers as it can. DFM is the country’s second largest newspaper chain (based on circulation). As the name suggests, it sees the future in its on-line platforms, not newsprint. When THE PLANET wrote about this, The BB chided us for being “premature.” Then on Sept. 12, DFM announced it would “evaluate and consider strategic alternatives” that could end up in the sale of the entire business. To do that, it will need to become more attractive to prospective buyers. Media experts say that can best be done by first selling off as many of its newspapers as possible. Officially, the company is playing it close to the vest, saying in a press release that it “will not disclose” its plans until its board decides on the future direction of the company. Our DFM sources suggest the most likely future path. They tell THE PLANET:

1. Digital First Media will put its all or most all of its 76 daily newspapers up for sale.
2. It will invest the money into its digital products.
3. The move will take place because of “an industry-wide drop in the sale of newspaper advertising.”
4. Newspapers it is not able to sell will be closed.
5. DFM will then look to unload its 160 weekly newspapers.

DFM CEO John Paton says the changes are being forced by a “seismic change” in “the news information industry in America.” Paton says this shift is “defined by the need to consolidate to rapidly complete in a digital world.”

THE PLANET finds this ironic to be the future and The BB the past while we own today.

Jeter: The End is Near … Finally

JETER: No class in Endless Finale.

Say no more about Derek Jeter. For all his supposed “class” on the baseball diamond, this man has inexplicably blessed an overblown, over-the-top farewell season that a true class act would not have allowed.

We shall say nothing about the Jete’s 0-for-24 streak.

He should have hung ’em up two years ago. Give me one game to win, and I’ll take Cal Ripken or Joe Cronin at short. Heck, I’d even take Rooster Burleson.

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“I am not a bully.” — The Mayor of Pittsfield, (2014).

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.