By DANVALENTI

PLANET VALENTI News and Commentary

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, TUESDAY, JULY 8, 2014) — Welcome to the 1,000th column published here on THE PLANET since Sept. 30, 2010. Hoist one in our names, today, won’t you?

Yesterday, The Berkshire Eagle published a letter to the editor from the mayor of Pittsfield, a man going by the name of Dan Bianchi. As prose, it reads as blandly and timorously as the author is in person. As fiction, it stretches the truth to the breaking point and must have added at least a foot to the length of The Empty Suit‘s nose.

Here’s what TES wrote, as published in the Eagle:

To the editorial of THE EAGLE:

The Eagle editorial (July 2) was titled “Transparency is the best policy,” and suggests that the media should have total access to City Hall and city departments because they are taxpayer-funded. A media protocol was put in place to make the public more accurately and fully informed, rather than getting a fraction of the story on a particular issue by talking to a particular employee who may not have knowledge of the entire scope of a project or an issue. There are many taxpayer-funded organizations, all of whom have protocols for media. They include Congressman Neal, Governor Patrick and many Massachusetts mayors and our school system. They are organizations that are funded with taxpayer dollars.

The Empty Suit: Political paranoia, at Nixonian levels.

Maxmillian Construction and Petricca Industry, as well as smaller area contractors, often receive large government contracts. Berkshire Health Systems, General Dynamics, and Crane & Company are funded in part and in some cases totally from government contracts. There are many others and I am sure they all have media protocol programs as well. I can’t imagine an Eagle reporter showing up at General Dynamics, or Crane and being able to wander through the halls to prepare a story.

Can there be complete transparency when an issue is partially examined by a reporter and then editorialized by the newspaper’s management? The protocol was put in place to be efficient and responsive. In other words, to be business-like, as government is so often encouraged to be.

DAN BIANCHI

Pittsfield

The writer is mayor, city of Pittsfield.

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THE PLANET has sent in our response to the Eagle. Beyond that, we have some additional points to make.

Truly, one asks oneself, can a person who writes such a defensive and misdirected letter actually be in charge of the city and it’s nearly-$150 million budget? Let’s peel off the mayor’s skin via his letter, one sentence at a time.

TES: The Eagle editorial (July 2) was titled “Transparency is the best policy,” and suggests that the media should have total access to City Hall and city departments because they are taxpayer-funded.

Et tu, Frankie baby?

THE PLANET: This mischaracterization rests on the word “total.” No one (not the in Eagle editorial, not THE PLANET, not any decent journalist) would ever call for “total” access to anything. TES puts this word in, however, to make the reasonable objections to his sun-blocking policy seem draconian. Remember what Hitler said about lying: If you’re going to do it, do it “big.”

TES: A media protocol was put in place to make the public more accurately and fully informed, rather than getting a fraction of the story on a particular issue by talking to a particular employee who may not have knowledge of the entire scope of a project or an issue.

This “media protocol” was put in place for one reason,
to put a gag over the mouths of city department heads and to create in them a spark of fear. You can be sure they are going to pause once, twice, and three times before speaking to the press on any matter, even the routine ones. That will make city employees more hesitant and fearful when speaking to reporters. They will be less apt if the subject is in the least bit unpleasant or “negative,” as news often is in government at all levels.

In his letter, The Empty Suit ignores that he went for 30 months without a press policy. He never mentioned such a policy once, in all that time or in the campaign. So what could have happened to cause the panicky issue of one, and a secretive one at that?

Readers of THE PLANET and viewers of PLANET VALENTI TELEVISION know the answer: First, Bianchi tried to block access to this site from within city hall. He targeted THE PLANET because our  investigative work has unearthed an amount of Truth that the mayor finds distressing.

As you know, THE PLANET fought the ban and forced the mayor to back down. The very next day (June 24) — repeat that and let it sink in — the very next day, he issued his press policy. It’s another of those remarkable “Pittsfield coincidences.”

This is the way TES likes his department heads. He doesn’t trust city employees one bit. Of course, you can imagine what that has done for morale at city hall.

The Empty Suit also ignored the manner in which he issued the plan: He had hard copies hand-delivered to department heads, each with slightly different “signature” wording. TES did this to prevent the press, specifically THE PLANET, from getting a copy of the plan. As you further know, we not only got a copy, but we boasted that we would, in advance. We did this to teach the mayor another lesson about “access to government.”

He can put up all the roadblocks he wants, but all the obstacles in the world will never stop a smart journalist with a fat book of sources and the enterprise to use them. That includes this one.

One of those sources, who works in city hall, tells us that after we leaked the press policy, the mayor had, and we quote, “a screaming hissy fit” and threatened the recipients of his internal memo that he would find out the identity of the leaker. It reminds us of the scene in “The Caine Mutiny,” where Captain Queeg uses his insane “logic” to find out who stole the strawberries.

Bianchi never did find out how we got a copy of the Top Secret press policy, nor will he.

We know pretty much everything that goes in in city hall and in the corner office via our spies, gumshoes, operatives, sources, and our elite Z-Agents. We can leave it at that.

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Notice, too, how the mayor takes a swipe at city employees, particularly department heads, by saying they only know “a fraction of the story on a particular issue.” In that statement, Bianchi has just called city workers stupid and untrustworthy. The joke is, of course, that The Empty Suit typically lacks even “a fraction of the story on a particular issue.” He didn’t know about the sewage leakage, as just one recent example, until THE PLANET reported on it.

To sum up the section: The mayor never intended to release this policy to the public. He only did when we forced him to do it, and that after a denial that it existed from his crack #2, Julia Berkowitz Sabourin.

The rest of the mayor’s defensive letter justified his secrecy by referring to press plans of other companies.  Again, aside from being a non sequitur, he fails to address the reason why now, out of “nowhere,” he saw the need to limit press access. He concludes with this facile lecture on “transparency”:

TES: Can there be complete transparency when an issue is partially examined by a reporter and then editorialized by the newspaper’s management? The protocol was put in place to be efficient and responsive. In other words, to be business-like, as government is so often encouraged to be.

THE PLANET: The mayor hasn’t a shred of credibility when discussing “transparency.” He campaigned on it and barely won office, and then upon election, turned out to be the most secretive mayor in recent memory. Bianchi has elevated political paranoia into an art form, to Nixonian levels, except that the mayor doesn’t have one hangnail’s worth of Nixon‘s abilities. In TES’ case, our quick Freudian diagnosis is that the mayor has an inferiority complex that tries to assuage its pain by surrounding himself as much as he can with yes-persons, boot-lickers, coat-holders, and other assorted types.

Let us correct TES: “The protocol was put in place to make it inefficient and unresponsive.” The policy was put in place to gag department heads and make them fearful of speaking out.

THE PLANET is not concerned about our access to information. Since Bianchi tried to shut us out two years ago, our number of sources has only increased, and finding out “what’s what from who’s who has never been easier. We have fought this fight, rather, for our media brethren, who may not be in a position to make too much noise due to the restraints put upon them by nervous managements. THE PLANET hopes that through our battling, we shall make it easier and not, as the mayor wants, more difficult for our colleagues in the press to do their jobs.

Oh, yeah, one more thing. The mayor ends his letter in fine, uneducated fashion, with a sentence fragment.

Good Lord, what a gas bag.

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“And here we are as on a darkling plain / Swept with confused alarms of struggle and fight, / where ignorant armies clash by night.” — Matthew Arnold, closing lines of Dover Beach, (1867).

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.