BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, MONDAY, MARCH 7, 2016) — It made for a deceptively good headline: “Jobs Report Shows Brisk U.S. Hiring in February” (NY Times). The mainstream media across the country gobbled it up, spoon-fed. The report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) comes from the U.S. Department of Labor, which is in Washington, D.C. It means, of course, that you can’t trust the data. Oh, you can believe the surface, but once you mine the information, another picture emerges. Believing the government report on face value is like looking at a Formica-coated kitchen counter and believing you’re looking at stone.

The BLS February report claims a net gain to the economy of 242,000 non-farm jobs.

What strikes you about that number?

THE PLANET is immediately hit by the roundness. The “000” number proves the figure to be essentially meaningless and fictitious. Burrowing into the number, we find that almost all of the jobs came in health care, social assistance, retail trade, and “drinking places” (Lach’s Lounge Rides Again!). These sectors produce low-pay,no-benefit jobs. Sinking further, we learn that on the whole, employers are cutting the hours (therefore the pay) of new workers. Finally, the numbers show wages trending down. If you’re happy with that, you definitely have not read Dickens’ Great Expectations.

In short, the “good news” story about jobs is fake.

Kinnas Digs It Out, THE PLANET Exposes It

Now on to the local scene. Last Thursday on PLANET VALENTI TELEVISION, supercitizen and former Pittsfield School Committee member Terry Kinnas revealed interesting information hidden in the 147 pages of followup material to the agenda for tomorrow’s meeting of our Right Honorable Good Friends in the city council. Agenda item six spells out Mayor Linda Tyer‘s request to borrow $2,027,157 for “traffic signal improvements” at two intersections: East Street and Woodlawn Avenue, and Tyler Street at Woodlawn. It’s part of the opening of the Woodlawn section connecting East and Tyler.

It’s easy to get into a discussion about whether the city should spend more than $2 million+ on more traffic signals. You mean there aren’t enough already? You mean to say that the city couldn’t better apply the $2 million+ to something else? Or better yet, you mean to say the city would be better off not borrowing an additional $2 million+ when it is already countless millions in the hole? THE PLANET hopes The Tyer Administration produces some answers tomorrow night. Until then, count us as Missourians — you know, “Show Me.”

Part of the data in the council packet supporting this expensive request is a copy of a letter sent Dec. 15, 2015 by Rod Jane, president of Pittsfield’s consultant New England Expansion Strategies (NEES) to Matthew Sucholdski of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration, Philadelphia Regional Office. The letter is buried inside a mountain of pages. Credit Kinnas for rescuing it from anonymity, for the letter proves that government in Pittsfield isn’t on the level.

The Pittsfield Economic Development Authority (PEDA) asked NEES to “develop an estimate of the projected job loss in manufacturing that will likely happen over the next 10 years” in the city and environs. Beware of that for which you ask. The information confirms the most dour projections one might conjure and certainly supports everything THE PLANET has written or spoken about the true state of Pittsfield’s finances. You can be sure PEDA wasn’t counting on that.

Shocking Jobs Loss, and an Even More Frightful Projection

NEES found that from 1969, with GE still at peak employment, to 2011, far after the company left the city high, dry, and loaded with industrial toxins, the city lost 78% of its manufacturing jobs. NEES then projected out the expected loss from 2012 to 2022. Over that decade and prior to SABIC Plastics‘ announcement of its exit from Pittsfield, NEES projected a loss of about 3.54% of the remaining total for each of the 10 years — and expected loss of 1,011 full time manufacturing jobs by 2022.

A Cluster F**k

NEES said the data were harvested prior to “the knowledge that SABIC was considering closing their Pittsfield facility.” Factoring in SABIC, Pittsfield will lose the entire decade’s projected loss by 2017 — next year! This leaves five more years of an expected annual decline of 3.54%. Bottom line is what NEES called in its letter to the Feds the Manufacturing Cluster Tipping Point (MCTP). An ominous sounding phrase, not to be confused with a “Cluster F**k.”

The MCTP is the point where the manufacturing declines “to a point where it becomes too small to sustain itself.” In other words, at the tipping point, the city’s economy begins to implode. In plain English, the report pinpoints the economic death of Pittsfield by 2022.

Here’s the punchline to this sick joke. Despite being armed with this data, the city’s School Building Needs Committee, chaired by school supt. Jason “Jake” JIV McCandless and Kathy Amuso, and the School Committee, chaired by Kathy “Lady Boots” Yon, suppressed the information while approving the $200 million construction of a new high school.

Call it what you will — manipulation, malfeasance, misappropriation of funds, corruption — it proves that The Fix Was In on the THS building project.

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“We must not fret over our own imperfections.” — St. Francis de Sales, from his Golden Counsels, (1610).

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.

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