By DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI News and Commentary

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, WEEKEND EDITION, FEB. 6-8, 2015) — Given that the low-wattage Pittsfield mayor loves to spend YOUR money, it comes as no surprise that the city has installed “Video Conferencing!” at 100 North St. and now in Room 203 at city hall.

How George Jetson! How cutting edge. How … um, 90s.

These are the days of Skyping on a Smart phone or tab, texting, and the “speaker” option on just about every telephone. Video conferencing, which looked like it would be The Next Big Thing in 1990, never did catch on in the Dreaded Private Sector and for good reason. Given, though, that Dan Bianchi probably doesn’t know that groceries are now laser-scanned, he can be forgiven for this latest waste of your hard-earned dollars that he steals from you each year in the form of grossly excessive taxes.

No word out on how much the tin-cans-connected-by-string cost Mary Jane and Joe Kapanski, but at any price its way too much — which is likely was the city overpaid a sainted (connected?) contractor to do the job. There’s also no word on who wanted this, who approved it, or how the money was allocated. Perhaps that’s because you, the Dumb Taxpayer (that’s how they see you) weren’t supposed to know about it.

Don’t tell anyone you read it in THE PLANET!

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Phonies Speaking with Phorked Tongues 

The great George Orwell wrote some of the most enlightening (and damning) prose on the dangers of “political language.” For example, at the end of his famous essay “Politics and the English Language,” he advised caution whenever  authority figures and officials speak or write, for they all too often make murder seem sanguine and give “solidity to pure wind.” Indeed, that abuse of official language runs as the subtext to his classic novel, 1984.

A more recent example of this comes to us from the business wires. Sony Corp. announced the firing of the company’s co-chair, a move widely expected in the wake of the hacking scandal, the most serious cyberattack ever launched against a U.S. form or agency. The culprits still have not been caught.

On Thursday, Sony announced the exit of co-chair Amy Pascal (not to be confused with 17th century philosopher Blaise “Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary” Pascal). Sony didn’t fire her. She apparently knows where too many of the remaining skeletons are buried. They shipped her off to the entertainment division to head a new production unit. THE PLANET isn’t sure what’s worse, getting fired or suffering a demotion that Corporate tried to mask as a promotion? Actually, we are sure. It’s getting fired.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Suck Your Sputtering Engines

In a statement, instead of owning up to the scandal that occurred on her watch, Pascal exhaled helium about how “energized” she was with the new “opportunity.” That’s like Joan of Arc saying she was excited about the “opportunity” of getting roasted “well done” or a serial fabulist like Dan Bianchi using the word “prudent.” Pascal then added that she and Sony Entertainment‘s CEO Michael Lynton “have been talking about this transition for quite some time.” Yeah, THE PLANET bets you were, beginning about three seconds after the news of the Sony hack hit the fan. As a superfluous modifier — what William Strunk and E. B. White call the leeches that lurk in the pond of prose — the “quite” in “quite some time” gives it away.

What she is actually saying is that ever since the hacking scandal released an avalanche of embarrassing e-mails and documents and almost sunk the company, her days were numbered. She soiled the bed. Lynton, making sure to gild the rotten cabbage head, talked up Pascal’s “extraordinary talents.”

Right. She was so talented that she lost the company’s its reputation and countless dollars.

This meandering route takes us to the use of language The Suits in Pittsfield have employed from the go-get in trying to foist on the public the whopping expense of a needless school construction project. The most egregious example of this kind of purposeful lie is the mayor’s claim that the project will be an economic engine —

— like EV (“1,000 jobs”) Worldwide was an economic engine.

— like Workshop Dead! was an economic engine.

— like Spiced restaurant was an economic engine.

— like the Beaconjob Cinema is an economic engine.

— like Nucleacid is an economic engine.

Shall we stop there? We could mention many more such projects that are bound by a common denominator: Eah has sucked up more public money than a pregnant 17-year-old welfare cheat with three kids by three different dads. The common element? Each of these sputtering “economic engines, to varying degrees, have used We The People as their financiers. Unable to get sufficient private-sector capital, the backers of such projects employ any means — wining, whining, dining, threatening, schmoozing, and even darker means — to milk the public moo cows.

The way backers speak of the school project is telling.

Here are but a few examples:

“All of these programmatic ideas have been developed in concert with the administration and teachers. These aren’t just our suggestions being imposed from elsewhere. We have met with the music teacher, the drama teacher and the librarians in reviewing all of these spaces to date.” — Carl Francheschi, DRA Architects, lead designer of the project.

“Programmatic ideas?” What does that mean? And they’ve “been developed in concert with the administration and teachers.” Yeah, Carl, but not “in concert with We Da People” pal. Francheschi is president of the architectural firm that stands to get a pretty penny from the THS project. What? You’re expecting him to give us an objective view?

“We’ve built schools in Springfield … we’ve built schools everywhere, taxpayers in Pittsfield are building those schools. It’s about time that the taxpayers of those towns build a school right here in Pittsfield.” — Pittsfield state rep Tricia Farley-Bouvier.

Trish, hon, argumentative rhetoric is one thing. THE PLANET respects competence in a good debate, even (especially) when it comes from the other side, because it forces us to “up our game.” But the blather you offer, as we can see here from your statement, is to reasoning and logic what pepper sauce is to a car seat. Babe, it’s about time that you support giving “the taxpayers” to whom you refer a friggin’ vote on this project.

“I, uh, (cough) I, um… $$$ It’s prudent that we, er, spend this money. It will $$ mean, like, um, so much to Teresa $$$$ and me come, er, Christmas time for, um, years $$$ to, you know, come.” — Pittsfield mayor Dan Bianchi. Forget his forgettable utterances. We read his thoughts.

“A society grows great when old men plant trees in which shade they know they’ll never sit in.” — Michael Boc, Taconic High School senior class vice president.

Ah, yes, we heard from The Children at the council meeting Tuesday night. Nice to see that this lad can cut-and-paste from Bartlett’s quotations. Just a side observation: When you steal either the words or ideas of others, you’ve committed intellectual theft, what we in the businesses call plagiarism. As for old men planting trees, hey, ya gotta do something after the prostate goes.

“If we don’t approve this, then we’ll put ourselves 10 years behind.” — Ward 6 city councilor John Krol.

Krol, president of the Pittsfield School Department cheerleading team, is all rah-rah, sis-boom-bah for spending $150 million of your tax dollars on this project. But, and here’s the big question, does he trust you enough to let YOU have a say? Will he support bringing this to a binding, city-wide referendum? As for “being 10 years behind,” he couldn’t have been referring to the proposed new school. He must have been talking about the city’s new videoconferencing system.

Finally, we hear from One of Us. He holds the highest office in the land, that of Private Citizen. His name is Robert O’Conner. He supports a citywide vote by the people, up or down, on the school building project. And we quote: “Homes being foreclosed on? Why? Because people can’t afford to pay their taxes.”

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We ask you now, dear readers. Of the six people we quoted, six from The Suits and one from We The People, who spoke the truth? Who spoke the most plainly, forcefully, and directly.

DEMAND YOUR SAY!

DEMAND A VOTE!

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“It’s safe in the city to make love in the doorway. … I’ll make you a deal, like every other candidate” — David Bowie, “Candidate,” from the Diamond Dogs album, (1974).

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE” and “THANK YOU, MALCOM BUTLER”

LOVE TO ALL.