By DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, MONDAY, AUG. 3, 2015) — In verse, we would address it this way:

July is the cruelest month. 

Gunshots out of the dead city, mixing 

mayoral incompetence and desire,

stirring anger in citizens with dull indifference.

That’s how we would begin the discussion of the most recent murder and gunplay in Pittsfield, an all-too-regular occurrence in a city where the dam has broken, where the center can no longer hold. Yeats and Eliot, where art thou? Or is the predictive balm of literature of no use in the land of dry stone, gangs, drugs, gunplay, and ignorance?

July Was the Cruelest Month.

Two murdered, six wounded, in two separate incidents of gunplay. In the meantime, police logs, scanners, and the view from the streets speak of gunfire most every night in the city.  Ah, but it’s like that everywhere, the losers and apologists claim.

Those who have been outside the parochial limits of Podunk, Mass., know it is not so.

It’s like that everywhere is the provincial resignation hiding in the negativity of The Suits‘ fake “optimism” — the mayor’s, for example. A non-bylined story The Boring Broadsheet  after the most recent mayhem and bloodshed included this one-sentence paragraph: “Pittsfield Mayor Dan Bianchi said he does not consider the shooting to represent a threat to the general public.”

Seriously. The mayor Said. Those. Words. Linda Tyer, Craig Gaetani, and Donna Walto, the mayor’s ballot-certified opponents, must make the mayor eat those delusional syllables.

Welcome to Pittsfield: Murder, In Broad Daylight

KEENAN S. PELLET JR., murder victim, on Tyler Street, in broad daylight. City is safe, clueless mayor declares.

This latest murder and shooting took place Friday in broad daylight near First and Tyler streets, one of the city’s busiest areas. This section of town is loaded with businesses, motorists, families, and children. Shots were fired in an area teeming with innocent people killing an 18-year-old and wounding a 17-year old,  and the insensible mayor asserts the general public has no reason to fear.

Tell that to the people who canceled their planned visits to downtown Pittsfield this weekend. Tell that to those who canceled their reservations at the Crowne Plaza and Hotel-on-North (HON). THE PLANET heard of and from several of them. They bugged out of Shakespeare in the Common, Barrington Stage, and other venues. Who can blame them?

This out-of-touch, over-his-head bureaucratic mayor has welcomed every sort of degenerate into this city as part of the fine print in all that state grant money. He has raised taxes each year for four straight years until he has taxed the middle class nearly out of existence. He has failed to rebuild the economy and further depleted the tax base. He has increased spending to reward his buddies, and he has given you the tab.

Victim Not Exactly an Altar Boy

The newest of the dead, 18-year old Keenan Pellot Jr., was presented as a great kid with a smile that would light up the room. Don’t know if he was an altar boy or Boy Scout, but when the shooting stops, the hagiography begins, then sainthood. Pellott died on the final day of July. On the second day of the month, Keenan Pellot Jr. was released on his own recognizance after allegedly stabbing a man. Here’s the link, courtesy of THE PLANET correspondent Downtown Dweller: http://www.berkshireeagle.com/local/ci_28424029/conditional-release-man-pittsfield-knife-attack.

According to his family and published reports, Pellot worked at HON. Do you see the irony? The July 4 Massacre took place a couple short blocks from the $400-a-night venue. The second liquidation had as a victim an employee of the posh palace, whose backers present as the sign of a sunshiny, all-is-well Pittsfield Renaissance. Funny, we don’t recall seeing Michelangelo or Da Vinci in downtown Pittsfield lately. As long as the city’s clueless mayor continues to hide behind the exceptions to an otherwise unrelenting downward trend, Pittsfield has no chance.

In every sense, the plebiscite in the mayoral phase of Pittsfield’s upcoming elections is a vote on the future fate of the once-proud and thriving city. In every sense, returning Dan Bianchi to office will be an act of civicide: a city killing itself.

City Violence is Out of Control

THOMAS LEE NEWMAN — Alleged murderer. Not hand signals, tattoos, headware, then compare to public statements that the shooting was not “gang related.” (FACEBOOK PHOTO)

The Suits were trying to feed the public the false assurance of what THE PLANET shall call “discreet separateness.” They made it clear, right quick, that the latest murder and shootings were not related to the July 4 Massacre.

They also released, right quick, the names of the victim and the alleged shooter, Thomas Lee Newman of Pittsfield. They did this to imply the random nature of the violence and therefore the safety of the city.

For any thinking person, however, anyone capable of independent thought, the fact that the two murders and shootings were not related is a reason for trepidation and fear. Think it through.

With the mayor paralyzed and keeping the police in check, with the influx of drugs, with the growing menace of organized gangs, with more “affordable housing” and bennies luring the bottom feeders, and with the lack of political will, it’s only a matter of time before there more murder and mayhem erupts in our once-fair city.

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“Out of life’s school of war: What does not destroy me makes me stronger.” — Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, (1888).

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.

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