By DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI News and Commentary

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, TUESDAY, MARCH 24, 2015) — Before we get going, take note of the “Dog & Pony” show set for the “Ship of Fools.” It’s on tonight beginning at 7 p.m., city hall, council chambers, in a meeting of our Right Honorable Good Friends.

We refer to how The Suits will trot out their trained seals to sing arias in praise of the $150 million heist of taxpayers known as the proposed building of a new Taconic High School. Don’t fall for it. Just remember that They count on propaganda and apathy to sell this needless waste to bedraggled citizens. Show you are smarter than that. Demand that the council either put this on the ballot for a popular vote or, when the time comes for final approval, somehow find the backbone to reject.

Now then, on to the next phase of the Club story …

The Same Same Same Same Sa …

If you have spent much time traveling across the country, you know what THE PLANET means when we refer to “the homogenization of America.” You can see this in all sorts of areas and fields. For example, in …

Commerce.

In the flatlands of such a “pancaked” America, the local shops, restaurants, hotels, and workplaces owned, managed, and run by families, moms, pops, friends, and neighbors get eaten up by the Big Box companies.

At Mom & Pop’s Hardware, the profits go to them, their kids, and their communities. On the other hand, with Big Box Inc., the profits make a bead toward the plutocrats at HQ, whether it’s in Arkansas, Minnesota, or Pine Bluff. The locals are left with the minimum wage, no-benefit salaries of the service class, who are left with little discretionary income.

The point isn’t about the economics, for in truth, the Big Box model has a lot going for it, at least for consumers. Many of them would rather pay $1.29 for an item at Wal-Mart rather than $2.29 buying from My Neighbor’s Mart. We cannot count the number of small, locally owned businesses that have been driven into the ground by Big Box America. You can’t say it worked out well for Pittsfield.

Education.

In the pancaked, municipal USA, state and federal government has wrested control of public schools from the localities, whose miserable politicians have sold the educational souls of their communities for the dirty dollar. In place of local officials deciding on the specifics of curricula, we have Big Government mandating subjects, teaching methods, processes, and nearly everything else that goes into education and teaching.

Think, for example, of the alphabet soup of failed and failing academic programs that Big Gov sends our way as conditions for accepting the obscene amounts of public money hijacked to pay for the broken system. The coerced local acceptance of MCAS, MCT2, Common Core, Ed Reform, No Child Left Behind, STEM, and other monolithic systems have removed local control and effectiveness and replace it with a “once-size-fits-all,” replicated regimen. Thus we get stuck, time after time, with pedagogic failure, education’s equivalent of breakfast for dogs. Go ask the Pittsfield school committee of the Administration in the Mercer Building.

We could go on and on with example after example on how the uneven nails are being hammered down flat. The effect is to discourage individuality and require conformance, a philosophical imperative that demands allegiance to nameless, faceless corporate entities that in sum remind one of Big Brother in George Orwell’s great novel, 1984.

Boards Undermines with Its ‘Systemic Infantilism’ 

Allow THE PLANET to give you one more example of ensuing homogenization: the civil war raging at (pick one) [  ] The Pittsfield Boys and Girls Club … [  ] The Boys and Girls Club of Berkshire County. You see, the Club doesn’t even know what to call itself these days, let alone what it wants to do when (if) it grows up after its recent plunge into systemic infantilism brought on by its reticent Board of Directors.

There is compelling reason to believe that certain powerful members of the Club board heard the siren of the national dollars. In this narrative, they became enamored of the additional money available in the form of United Way money — if — and it’s a big one — it gives up local control in favor of loyal, unquestioning compliance with initiatives dicatated by the national Boys and Girls Clubs of America, based in Atlanta, Ga.

The city of Pittsfield has unique needs along the lines of the Club mission in education, jobs, character, leadership programs, health and life skills, arts, sports, fitness, recreation, and specialized programs. Pittsfield’s core is not HQ’s core. Atlanta doesn’t know Pittsfield from St. Petersburg. Peter Bell understood that, just as Jim Mooney, Fred Fahey, and Craig Crosier did in their day and would so today. Certainly concerned parents, kids, volunteers, and supporters — for whom the sacked personnel were the literal personification of the Club — understand that point.

Is That Why They Got Rid of Peter Bell?

The Club’s well-intended (we all know about “good intentions”) National Agenda would end up pushing a form of politically correct social programming on the Pittsfield Club and put it at serious risk of losing a local relevancy and effectiveness that, for so long, has helped shepherd generations of young people, this writer being one of them. A national override of local control would result in a Club tone deaf and blind to  the community’s needs. For example, such a club would fire good employees with great institutional knowledge and want in their place cowed, fearful employees who would blindly follow orders.

Is that why the board of directors blew up Peter Bell’s career, because Bell resisted the change? Did the board get impatient with Bell because he “got” Pittsfield so well and knew its needs so intimately? Did the board’s love of money trump that set of qualities?

Did the board in-effect smear Bell’s reputation by dismissing him and them keeping the reasons secret, allowing the ensuing whispering campaign? Is the board indirectly responsible for Bell’s death? Would Bell have been up on that garage roof if he still had his Club job? Those close to Bell say the loss of his livelihood at a place he cherished in a job he loved crushed him, but he manned up and refused to call out the board for their action because he wanted to spare the Club and those who love it the controversy. What does the board say to that?

Now that Terry Hughes is out of the picture, does he care to enlighten us on his current view of the board of directors? Did they sell Hughes out as well? Was he brought in for a suicide mission? Was he pledged the backing of the board, and then, when the heat rose, abandoned to take the fall. Did the board put Hughes in the ejector seat as a scapegoat? If not, why were they so silent as to why they fired him?

If Hughes wishes to address any of this, now that he has nothing left to lose, THE PLANET welcomes him, either in this forum or on PV-TV.

Though it is admittedly too early to offer conclusive statements, we can say that the Board of Directors has yet shown no sign of openness, transparency, or moving to heal the grievous wounds that it has inflicted on all those who love the Club and its mission. THE PLANET repeats its offer to board president John Donna, any board member, and particularly to interim director Chris Jacoby to appear before our microphones and/or reporter’s notebook to explain what’s going on and to take our questions. Unscripted, of course.

Finally, THE PLANET would not make the over-reaching judgment The Berkshire Eagle did on its editorial page on Monday, March 23. In another of its unsigned opinions, The Eagle said Chris Keegan and David Harte Jr. should not be re-hired. That’s a preposterous statement, given the fact that the newspaper couldn’t possibly know the full story of why they and others were dismissed in the first place.

Board of Directors: Come clean.

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“Sky full of eyes. Minds full of lies. / Black from their cold hearts down to their graves. /Murder the dawn. Spreading their scorn. / Cursing the son of which love was born. / We must keep them away or pretty soon we’ll pay and count the cost in sorrow. / Sacrifice. The future has its price. / And today is only yesterday’s tomorrow.” — Uriah Heep, “Circle of Hands” from the Demons and Wizards album, (1972).

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.